Chapter 946

The illusionist’s brows lifted just a little.

“A rumor?” he echoed.

Alphonse nodded once, still looking out at the city.

“And I couldn’t ignore it.”

The illusionist pushed himself off the pillar and took a step closer.

“What rumor?”

Another pause. Longer this time. Consideration. Then Alphonse finally answered.

“That the late Emperor’s bastard daughter…” he said quietly, “is among the Lionsguard.”

The illusionist went still. For the first time since he had entered the room, his expression lost that easy, forgettable neutrality. Not completely. But enough.

“That,” he said slowly, “would complicate things.”

Alphonse’s gaze didn’t move.

“It does more than that.”

The illusionist let out a small breath through his nose, something between a laugh and a sigh.

“So instead of watching the situation,” he said, “you decided to ignite it.”

Alphonse finally turned his head slightly.

“I decided,” he said, “to control it before it grows beyond control.”

The illusionist studied him for a few seconds. Then his ordinary smile returned.

“Yes,” he said softly.

“That does sound like you.”

The illusionist was quiet for a few seconds after that.

Then he let out a small, humorless breath through his nose and said, “That sounds exactly like the kind of rumor Verk would hand to you.”

Alphonse’s eyes narrowed slightly.

The illusionist kept speaking, his voice mild in the same way a blade could look dull until it was in someone’s throat.

“A whisper placed carefully. Something believable enough to hook your attention, dangerous enough to provoke action, and uncertain enough that you’d feel compelled to move before anyone else could.”

His ordinary smile returned, faint and almost friendly.

“You love control so much, Alphonse, but sometimes you don’t notice when someone else is pulling your strings.”

That made the room colder.

Alphonse turned around fully this time and looked straight at him. No more distant observation through the broken window. No more detached attention split between the city and the conversation.

Just a direct stare. A hard one. The kind of gaze that would have made most people lower their eyes or rethink their words. The illusionist only smiled back. That, more than the words themselves, made the tension sharpen.

For a few heartbeats, neither man spoke. Outside, the capital continued to writhe in panic beneath the sealed barrier. Distant shouts drifted upward. Somewhere else in the city, another structure collapsed with a muted rumble.

Inside the office, all of that felt far away.

At last, Alphonse spoke.

“What are you going to do?”

His voice was calm, but only because he had forced it into that shape.

“Will you turn away from the plan now,” he asked, “because you dislike my methods?”

He took one measured step forward.

“Or will you stay on the ship until the very end?”

The illusionist watched him for a moment, saying nothing. Then his smile widened very slightly. Not with mockery. Not quite. With something quieter than that. Something harder.

“I told you before,” he said, “that I would give my life for our goals.”

He straightened away from the pillar completely now, the easy posture disappearing just enough to show that this answer mattered.

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“And I meant it.”

His eyes remained on Alphonse’s.

“In one way or another,” he said, “I’ll see them reached.”

The words settled into the room with a weight that did not need emphasis. Alphonse held his gaze for another second, then another. Whatever answer he found there, it seemed to be enough. Slowly, he turned back toward the ruined window and the city beyond it, his hands returning behind his back.

The illusionist remained where he was, still wearing that same plain smile that could disappear into any crowd… And below them both, somewhere in the darkness of the sealed capital, Ludger was still moving.

Morning came without mercy.

Ludger opened his eyes to rough breathing and a body that felt like it had been fed into a grinder and then put back together out of spite.

For a few seconds, he didn’t move. Not because he didn’t want to, but because even lying still made the damage obvious in ways he couldn’t ignore anymore. His chest rose and fell too hard. Each breath scraped at his lungs like he had inhaled embers and kept them there through the night. His muscles felt heavy in the wrong way, not merely tired but overused to the point of rebellion.

It had been over five hours since the fight with Drarc. And his body still hadn’t recovered from the exhaustion. That alone was annoying enough to make him frown. His mana circuits were fine.

That was the first thing he checked properly. No tearing. No lingering internal blockage. No warped flow from forcing too much power through them. The channels were strained, yes, but functional. Mana could still move. Healing still worked. That part had survived better than expected.

His stamina, however, was another matter entirely. It was recovering painfully slowly. Too slowly.

Ludger lay there in the dim morning light and stared upward for a moment, sorting through the sensation with the same cold focus he used on everything else. This wasn’t like when he had fought the giant sea beast. Back then, the damage had hit differently. Mana had been the bigger issue. His body had burned through power and strained itself, but the recovery had made more sense.

This time it was the inverse. Mana still answered. His body didn’t. That was the real problem.

His lungs had been burning for the last five hours, every breath reminding him that Rage Flow ×3 had been less a technique and more a short agreement with self-destruction. His joints ached with every heartbeat, each pulse carrying pain through his elbows, knees, shoulders, and spine like his skeleton itself was still protesting what he had forced it to do.

Honestly, he hadn’t expected this.

Or rather… he had known there would be a price, but not one shaped like this.

Now he understood. He had messed up.

Not in the sense that using the technique had been the wrong decision. Drarc had needed to die, and fast. There was no room to be gentle about that. But in terms of raw bodily strain, he had crossed a line his current body simply wasn’t built to handle cleanly. Rage Flow multiplied at that level didn’t scale like ordinary effort. It stacked pressure on top of pressure until flesh, breath, and motion all started failing in ways healing magic couldn’t immediately smooth over.

That was what he was feeling now. Not a wound. Consequences.

Ludger slowly pushed himself up anyway, jaw tightening as fresh pain spread through his chest and hips from the motion.

His breathing roughened again. Annoying. Still alive, though. That counted for something.

Ludger wobbled slowly from the side of pile of debris he had chosen as a hiding place.

The wreckage was the remains of buildings broken apart during the fight the night before, collapsed beams, shattered stone, roof tiles, broken plaster, and dust packed together into a half-buried mound large enough to hide a body without attracting much notice. It was crude, but that had been the point.

He could have hidden himself better with magic. An earth pocket. A false wall. A sealed chamber beneath the rubble. But that would have left traces. Mana residue. Signs that anyone competent could follow.

So instead, he had done it the uglier way and buried himself between the ruined leftovers of the capital’s panic and let the darkness do its job.

It worked. At least until morning. Ludger had barely begun to straighten when instinct screamed. Something sharp shot toward his forehead.

He twisted his neck to the side on pure reflex, the movement so abrupt it sent a flash of pain through his shoulders and spine. The attack passed close enough for him to feel the air split beside his face, then it slammed into the wall of debris behind him.

The impact was vicious.

Stone, brick, and timber burst apart in a violent spray as the weapon pierced clean through the rubble and left a huge hole behind. Dust exploded outward, and the remains of the structure groaned under the force.

Ludger’s eyes narrowed as he tracked it.

It looked like a whip… But wrong. Far too heavy. Far too sharp.

A long flexible weapon ending in a metallic point, narrow and brutal, something between a bladed lash and a piercing spearhead. The tip had buried itself deep into the wreckage as if the ruined wall were soft earth rather than packed stone and timber.

Then it was pulled back out. With ease. The weapon tore free in a shower of broken rock and splintered wood, the metallic point whipping back through the air with enough force to rip more debris loose on its return.

Ludger didn’t need another warning. Someone had found him. Helifted his gaze toward the building in front of him.

There, standing on a cracked outer wall like he had all the time in the world, was the man holding the weapon.

The chain-whip spun lazily at his side, metal links hissing through the morning air with a low, steady rhythm. At the end of it hung a triangular point, long and cruelly shaped, the edges thick enough to pierce deep without snapping and the barbed geometry ugly enough that once it went in, it clearly wasn’t meant to come out cleanly. It was the kind of weapon built for tearing.

Something that could punch through flesh, yank out a chunk on the way back, or hook into a target and drag them wherever the wielder pleased.

The man himself wore leather armor, worn enough to look practical rather than ornamental, with layered straps crossing his torso and metal reinforcements fixed where flexibility still mattered. A weathered hat sat low over his brow, close enough to a cowboy hat in shape that the silhouette alone looked out of place in the middle of the capital. His face was lean, his posture relaxed, and the way he held the whip made it clear he knew exactly how to use it.

Not a showman, then. A professional. He watched Ludger for a second, then gave a faint shrug.

“Sorry, kid,” he said.

The chain-whip kept spinning.

“But you need to die.”

Ludger straightened a little more despite the protest from his lungs and joints, his eyes flat as he looked from the weapon to the man. Morning really was getting worse.