All Jobs and Classes! I Just Wanted One Skill, Not Them All!

Chapter 656

Ludger didn’t bother with the square.

He didn’t bother with Arslan’s panic pacing either, because panic was loud, and loud made people stupid. Loud made them generous in the wrong places. Loud made them promise things that became knives later.

So he walked. Past the last proper street. Past the newer earth-shaped southern wall where the stone still looked too clean, too young. Past the fields that had started to creep outward like the town was trying to prove it belonged here.

And then he saw them. A sea of bodies and carts and tarps sprawled across the outskirts like someone had spilled a city and didn’t bother to clean it up. Smoke drifted from low fires. Children moved with that careful, hungry energy that meant they were trying not to take up space. Men and women hammered stakes into hard ground, raised canvas, dragged broken boards into shapes that almost looked like shelter.

Almost. Rokram had bled these people out and dumped them on Lionfang’s doorstep. A thousand souls with nowhere left to point their fear except forward. Ludger kept his pace steady. No escort. No banner. Just a boy in a green scarf and a coat that had seen too much battlefield dust.

Heads turned as he passed near the nearest line of tents. Some recognized him. You could tell by the way their eyes sharpened. The way their hands stopped moving for half a heartbeat. The way words formed and then died before they could become mistakes.

No one spoke.

They didn’t cheer. They didn’t beg. They didn’t spit. Just watched, silent, tense, measuring. Good, Ludger thought. Better than a crowd with opinions. He stepped into an open patch of earth beside their growing camp and planted his boot. Then he got to work.

Mana flowed like a familiar pressure behind his ribs, the deep, stubborn kind that had once built walls while arrows fell like rain. He exhaled, and the ground answered. Stone rose. Not in delicate, artistic arcs. Not in grand monuments. In rectangles.

Foundations first, flat, thick, and clean. Then walls, straight and tight, rising fast like the earth was snapping into position. Door frames. Window gaps. Support beams shaped out of packed stone and fused dirt. Roofs slanted just enough to shed rain.

Simple houses. Brutally practical. The refugees stared like they couldn’t decide if they were witnessing a miracle or a scam. He didn’t look at them. He didn’t need to. He just kept pulling buildings out of the ground. The work became rhythm. Step. Plant. Pull.

The mana pressure rose, bled out, rose again. Sweat gathered under his hairline. His arms started to feel heavy, not from lifting, but from forcing precision through exhaustion. Each house was a demand: stay straight, stay stable, don’t you dare collapse later and turn into a corpse-maker.

Behind him, the camp grew quieter. Not respectful quiet. Witness quiet. The kind you got when a hundred starving people watched food being cooked and didn’t trust it was real.

By the time the first hundred were up, the refugees were standing closer. Some of the braver ones, men with callused hands, women with tools on their belts, walked the perimeter and tapped the walls like they expected them to be hollow. They weren’t.

“Lionsguard…”

“That’s him.”

“Vice Guildmaster…”

“He’s a child—”

“He’s not—”

Ludger kept building. He forced the last roof into place, slapped the wall with a flat palm to seal the seams, and then the mana inside him finally did what it always did when he pushed too far.

It snapped. Not painfully. Not dramatically. Just… empty. Like trying to breathe and realizing the air was gone. Ludger stood there, chest rising and falling, hands hanging at his sides. The world felt a touch too bright. A touch too loud. That post-drain fog creeping at the edges of his thoughts.

He didn’t let it take him. He turned slowly to face the crowd that had gathered without realizing they were gathering.

Hundreds of refugees now stood in a loose half-circle at the edge of their camp, eyes locked on the line of fresh-built stone homes. Children peeked out from behind legs. Men held onto tools like they were weapons. Women hugged bundles close like the bundles might vanish if they relaxed.

Ludger’s gaze cut across them. A boy’s face, sure. But his eyes were the kind you earned by making decisions that left bodies behind. He spoke without raising his voice, and still it carried.

“Those who came here to contribute will be welcome in Lionfang.”

A ripple moved through the crowd, relief trying to bloom. He crushed it immediately.

“But don’t confuse welcome with charity.”

Silence locked in, tighter than before. Ludger lifted one hand and pointed at the new houses behind him. One hundred solid shelters in a neat grid, like a small town had sprouted overnight.

“Those are not gifts.”

He paused, letting the words settle.

“Lionfang doesn’t have the luxury of handing out land and homes because someone is afraid. We’re a border town. We survive because everything we build has purpose.”

He let his eyes scan again, sharp, dispassionate.

“The Lionsguard will give jobs and tasks immediately. You will work. You will build. You will repair. You will haul, clean, dig, cook, sew, guard, farm, craft. Whatever you can do, you will do it.”

A few faces tightened. A few jaws set. A few nodded like they’d been waiting to hear something solid. Ludger’s mouth twisted a fraction, almost a smile, if you didn’t know him.

“That work will do two things. It will help you assimilate into the town. And it will get you back on your feet.”

He didn’t soften the next part.

“And the profits will be shared with the Lionsguard. Because the Lionsguard will be feeding you, organizing you, protecting you, and putting its name on the line for you.”

Now murmurs started, uneasy, uncertain. He raised his hand slightly and the murmurs died. Not because of mana. Just because there was something in his posture that said I don’t care about your feelings, only your choices.

“These are the terms.”

He took a step forward.

“If you can’t accept them, turn around and leave immediately.”

Another step.

“This isn’t up for debate.”

A man near the front opened his mouth, maybe to argue, maybe to plead. Ludger’s eyes snapped to him and the man shut it again, like his tongue remembered pain. Ludger kept speaking, voice even, flat as stone.

“We are not your enemy. But we are not your saviors either. You want stability? You want safety? You want a roof that doesn’t fall apart in the rain?”

He gestured toward the houses again.

“Earn it.”

He lowered his hand and held their gaze like a challenge.

“Registration by name and trade starts now. Jobs get assigned today. If you lie, if you steal, if you cause problems, Lionfang will not swallow you. It will spit you back out.”

A cold promise. Then, finally, a thread of something else, a practical mercy wrapped in steel.

“If you contribute, you’ll find something this town doesn’t give lightly.”

His eyes flicked to the wall. To the rebuilt stone. To the market smoke drifting in the distance.

“A place among us.”

He let the word hang. Then he turned his head slightly, as if addressing the air as much as the people.

“First task: anyone with carpentry, masonry, or hauling experience, step forward. You’re helping finish these rows and build latrines before nightfall.”

The crowd hesitated. Then, one person moved. Then another. Then ten. Hands rose. Feet stepped out. Tools were lifted. And just like that, fear started to become motion. 

Ludger watched it happen with the same expression he’d worn in Rokram while ants died in piles. Not satisfaction. Not pride. Just calculation. Even amidst chaos, there was opportunity. And Lionfang was going to take it, before the empire, the plague, or the next breach did.

The first week was the dangerous one.

Not because of monsters. Not because of the empire.

Because when you packed that many hungry people into the shadow of a wall, you didn’t get peace, you got friction. You got whispers turning into arguments, arguments turning into fists, and fists turning into someone’s cousin deciding a knife was the only language that mattered.

And Lionfang was a border town.

It didn’t have the luxury of letting that kind of fire spread.

So Ludger watched. He didn’t do it dramatically. No speeches every morning. No grand patrols to show the flag. He just… kept a closer eye than anyone realized.

From the market roofline. From the half-built new streets. From the guildhall’s balcony. From the wall at dusk when the light made the camp look like a second city stitched onto the first.

Hundreds of stone houses meant people slept under roofs instead of tarps. That alone killed off half the panic. It was harder to feel like prey when you could close a door. So Ludger treated the refugee wave like a resource problem, not a charity problem.

If the town’s supplies shrank, everyone died slower. If the town’s output expanded, the whole mess turned into momentum. That was the only math that mattered. At first, some of the refugees tested the edges.

A few tried to claim extra plots of land, as if standing on soil made it theirs. A few tried to “reclaim” food from carts that weren’t theirs. A few tried to bully their way into better assignments, because they’d been important back in Rokram and their pride hadn’t died with their city.

They made noise. It didn’t last. The direwolves showed up on the next day. Not a parade. Not an intimidation march. Just a pair of massive gray beasts padding through the new housing rows like they owned the ground itself, because in a way, they did. Their owners walked beside them in plain clothes, hands loose, eyes bored. Lionsguard handlers.

The wolves didn’t bare their teeth. They didn’t need to. They just looked at people the way apex predators looked at rabbits. The camp got quiet fast. Not fearful quiet. Ordered quiet. Because even the dumbest troublemaker understood one universal truth: you could argue with a man. You could threaten a man. You could even stab a man if you were desperate enough. But you couldn’t negotiate with a creature that saw you as meat and had been trained to only wait for permission.

After that, the worst of the noise died down to grumbling. Grumbling was manageable. Ludger could work with grumbling. What he couldn’t work with was idle hands.

Idle hands became bored hands. Bored hands became stupid hands. Stupid hands became problems, and problems ate time like a fire ate dry wood.

So he moved fast. Too fast. He built a system out of necessity and duct-taped discipline. Registration led to assignment. Assignment led to work crews. Work crews led to output. Output led to food and coin circulating instead of stagnating.

And he did it while running on exhaustion and stubbornness. The jobs weren’t glamorous. They weren’t meant to be. Farming crews went to the fields outside the southern wall, expanding irrigation ditches and planting anything that could grow in the soil Ludger had already bullied into fertility.

Fishing crews got shoved toward the river routes, working under guard and learning not to die to the current. Nets were mended, boats patched, routes mapped. The first good haul got celebrated like a festival.

Sewing and weaving crews formed in the empty warehouse spaces, hands that had once stitched fine clothes in Rokram now patching work coats and making blankets. Cloth turned into survival.

Forging didn’t keep up—Lionfang had a handful of smiths, not a city’s worth, so Ludger did the next best thing.

He created work out of broken things. He bought more. A lot more.

Wagons started arriving from outside with crates of damaged armor and bent weapons. Scrap iron. Dented helmets. Rusted mail. Tool heads with fractured sockets. Anything that could be repaired, sharpened, rehandled, resealed, repurposed. It didn’t matter if the refugees couldn’t forge a blade from raw ore.

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