Marie looked up at him.

“It moved.”

“Yes.”

“I actually…”

“Yes.”

That shut down the useless part of the shock before it could waste time.

Ludger’s eyes drifted for a second as part of his mind registered the faint pull of System feedback. Some of his teaching-related skills gained a bit of experience from the demonstration and the assisted breakthrough.

[Student Understanding + 05 XP]

[Practical Demonstration + 05 XP]

[Teacher’s Support Lv + 05 XP]

But the value was low. Too low. He understood why immediately. He was assisting too much.

The temporary tune on the halberd was doing enough of the translation that Marie wasn’t really crossing the gap on her own yet. Useful for the lesson, yes. Good for proving the path existed. But not enough to count as strong progress in the eyes of the System.

That was still valuable. The point right now wasn’t skill experience. It was proof. And now he had it.

He looked at the others and said, “So the issue isn’t that you can’t do it.”

Their attention snapped fully back to him.

“The issue,” Ludger said, “is that you need a better bridge between your current mana habits and the earth.”

Marie lowered the halberd slightly, still staring at the low wall she had raised like she wasn’t sure whether it would disappear if she blinked wrong.

One of the others asked, “Can you tune all our weapons like this?”

“Yes.”

That answer came easily.

Then Ludger added, “Temporarily.”

That mattered.

Because if they grew dependent on a tuned tool before they developed the actual foundation, they’d just become clumsy versions of mages pretending their weapon understood the earth for them.

Not useful. He looked at Marie again.

“What did it feel like?”

That made her blink and think. She frowned slightly, searching for the right words.

“Less… slippery,” she said. “Like my mana stopped sliding off the ground.” Her grip tightened slightly on the halberd. “It still resisted. But it felt like the resistance was shaped.”

Ludger nodded once. That was a real answer.

“The weapon is helping align the expression,” he said to the others. “Not doing the magic for you. If you pay attention to the feeling now, you’ll start learning what the attunement is supposed to feel like without the assist.”

Now they all understood why it mattered. Not as a crutch. As a reference point.

One of them muttered, “That’s unfairly useful.”

“Yes,” Ludger said.

He took another weapon from the next instructor without waiting to be asked and began carving a temporary tune into it too.

“If I have to drag your mana into behaving properly for the first lesson,” he said, “then that’s what I’ll do.”

Marie stepped aside with the halberd and the half-raised wall, still focusing on the sensation while Ludger worked on the next weapon.

The others straightened, embarrassed expression gone now, replaced by sharper anticipation.

Good. Failure had done its job. Now he could build from there.

Ludger took the halberd back for a moment and looked at the others as he explained what he had actually done.

“I put the rune Earth Manipulation on the weapon,” he said.

Marie tightened their grip slightly as she looked down at it. Ludger continued in the same flat, practical tone.

“That created a temporary link between my knowledge of the spell and your mana.” He tapped the shaft once with one finger. “Not enough to make the weapon cast for you. Just enough to force your mana into touching earth-aspected behavior without slipping off the process completely.”

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

That made the others look at the halberd with even more interest. Because now it wasn’t just a lucky result. It was a shortcut.

“This is not the actual goal,” he said. “It’s only there to help you understand how earth-attuned mana is supposed to feel.”

They nodded, more serious now. He had taught them enough magic over the years that their magic senses should already be decent. Not great. Not refined enough for the kind of layered work he or Gaius could do. But decent. Better than ordinary trainees, certainly.

Which meant maybe the problem wasn’t only lack of contact with the earth. Maybe they also needed a cleaner comparison. A direct sensory contrast between elemental mana states. Yes. That would help.

So Ludger said, “Watch.”

He raised one hand, and a fireball formed in the air above his palm. Not large. Not meant for destruction. Just stable enough to serve as a lesson.

The trainees nearby had fully stopped pretending not to stare now, but Ludger ignored them and kept the fireball hovering there for the five instructors.

“Focus on the mana,” he said. “Not the flame.”

That distinction mattered.

They obeyed.

Ludger let them sit with it for a while, long enough that the structure of the fire-attuned mana became familiar, the aggressive expansion, the restless pressure, the constant urge to spread outward and consume.

Once he was sure they had the feel of it, he extinguished the fireball and replaced it with a floating water sphere. This one he held steadier.

“Again,” he said.

They watched.

This time the mana felt different immediately. Less hunger. More flow. More cohesion. A different kind of pressure, not explosive but adaptive. Something that wanted movement and shape both.

He let them adjust to that too. Then the water vanished, and a sphere of wind took its place.

Not visible all at once, but clear enough in the way dust shifted around it and the air trembled faintly under pressure.

“Feel the release,” Ludger said.

That one was harder for most people to lock onto. Wind didn’t sit as obviously as the others. It wanted motion, escape, redirection. It was hard to hold in the mind because part of its nature was not wanting to stay held.

Still, he made them focus on it until the difference settled. Only then did he form the last one. A cluster of earth.

Not a tower this time. Not a wall. Just a compact mass of dirt, mineral fragments, and dense packed earth gathered into one stable shape above his hand. It didn’t flare. Didn’t shimmer dramatically. Didn’t try to impress anyone.

It just existed. Heavy. Controlled. Structured.

“Now this,” Ludger said, “is what you were missing.”

The five of them stared at it harder than they had stared at any of the others. And that was right.

Because earth-attuned mana was easier to misunderstand if a person only thought of earth as “solid” or “heavy.” It wasn’t just that. It was support. Compression. Resistance that held shape instead of merely pushing back. A kind of stillness that wasn’t dead at all, just disciplined.

Ludger let them focus on it for a long while. Long enough that the practice yard around them faded a little. Long enough that the noise of trainees, instructors, boots, and voices stopped mattering. Long enough that the elemental comparison actually began sinking into their senses.

Once he was sure they had started to grasp it, Ludger lowered the earth cluster and repeated the process again. Fire. Water. Wind. Earth. Not because they were slow, but because elemental attunement often clicked better through contrast than explanation.

And each cycle made their reactions cleaner. By the third time, Tali was already narrowing her eyes before the earth cluster fully formed, like she was beginning to anticipate the quality rather than merely notice it after the fact.

By how long the wrong elemental habits lasted before their mana started settling into something denser and steadier.

By the end of the day, they managed it. Barely. Without any assistance, each of the five was able to move a little bit of sand in their hands. Not enough to build anything. Not enough to shape a wall. Not enough to call it magic in any impressive sense.

Just a little movement. A small drift of grains pulling together, lifting, shifting, or settling under their will instead of slipping away uselessly.

Tiny. Meaningful anyway. Ludger watched Tali make a few grains of sand climb across her palm and nodded once.

Small progress. But progress nonetheless. And in work like this, that was how foundations started. Once Ludger stopped letting them practice with the training wheels of his assistance, something changed immediately.

Not in the yard. Not outwardly, at least.

The five were still only moving tiny amounts of sand with embarrassing slowness. Their focus was strained, their control inconsistent, and every attempt still looked like the kind of progress a normal observer would politely call “a start” while privately wondering whether it was worth the effort.

But for Ludger, the change was obvious.

His Teacher class began gaining experience insanely fast.

[Student Understanding + 50 XP]

[Practical Demonstration + 50 XP]

[Teacher’s Support Lv + 50XP]

So that was how it worked. Not just “teaching people something.” Teaching them something rare. Something difficult. Something they could not simply pick up from common drills, public spells, or the usual half-baked magical traditions floating around the Empire.

Ludger had already guessed that the fewer people knew a skill, the more experience his Teacher class would give him when he passed it on properly.

Now that guess was confirmed. And once confirmed, it became useful. Very useful. Because right now he was only teaching basic earth manipulation. The absolute foundation.

If even this much gave his Teacher class that kind of return, then there was a lot more waiting above it. All the ugly, practical, useful things he had already clawed his way into understanding through overwork, trial, pain, and being too stubborn to stop when the magic refused to obey.

There was plenty he could teach from that class. And plenty of it would probably give him even more experience.

Ludger stood there in the training yard, watching the first five students of this new path drag grains of sand across their hands like children trying to command a mountain by threatening it politely.

And instead of disappointment, he felt a clear sense of direction settle in.

Yes. This was it. It was time to fully master the Teacher class. Not as some side benefit. Not as one more useful thing that happened while he did other work.

No. As a weapon. As a multiplier. Because teaching geomancy would do more than make roads and houses easier to build.

It would create specialists that could only be found at Lionsguard.