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

Time inside a monster’s mouth didn’t feel like normal time.

It was just the steady sway of motion, the dull pressure of water outside, the slow rise and fall of living walls around them, and the soft glow of Ludger’s ward painting everything in pale light.

Luna held out longer than Ludger expected before she finally spoke.

“Ludger,” she said, voice low, like she didn’t want the teeth to hear. “Is the labyrinth… only being used by her?”

Ludger blinked once. It was a good question. Because if the monster knew the route, if it had been watching for four thousand years, then it had to know who else came through. Who else used the door. Who else might still be fishing on the other side for “resources.”

He didn’t answer immediately.

Instead, he tilted his head slightly and expanded Mana Sense, letting it brush against the sea monster’s presence. Not probing like an attack, just… asking, the way you listened for a response in a conversation where the other person didn’t speak with words.

He waited. The creature mana remained steady. Old. Dense. Controlled. No ripple of confirmation. No pulse of denial. Nothing. Ludger’s eyes narrowed.

She’s ignoring it.

Not because she didn’t understand. Because she didn’t want to tell him. For a moment, he considered pushing. Pressing the question harder through his mana, forcing a reaction, making the massive creature flinch the way a person flinched when you touched a bruise.

Then he decided against it. Picking a fight inside the mouth of your transportation was a special kind of stupidity.

“She’s not answering,” Ludger said quietly.

Luna frowned. “That means—?”

“It means she wants it secret,” Ludger replied, voice calm but edged now. “Probably the location, too.”

He glanced toward the darkness beyond the teeth, as if he could see the labyrinth seam through water and flesh.

“If others can find it,” he continued, “then they can use it. Hunt it. Lay traps. Follow it back.”

Luna’s expression tightened. “So she’s protecting the route.”

“Yeah,” Ludger said. His gaze went flat. “Or hiding who else is using it.”

The mouth chamber rocked gently with the monster’s swim, indifferent to their small, sharp fears. Ludger let his ward keep glowing and kept his voice low.

“Either way,” he said, “we should assume we’re not the only ones who know this door exists.”

Luna kept her voice low, but there was a sharp edge under it now, something practical returning as the fear settled.

“What about the mission?” she asked. “Rufas asked you to complete it. What are you going to say about… the elimination of the giant sea monster?”

Ludger stared ahead into the pale glow of his ward, eyes half-lidded, as if considering the question with the seriousness it deserved. Then his mouth twitched.

“I’ll tell him I killed it,” Ludger said smoothly, “and then I’ll scam the Empire for five hundred diamond coins.”

Luna’s head snapped toward him so fast the light caught her eyes. Suspicion tightened her expression like a drawn bowstring. Ludger continued without missing a beat, deadpan.

“And if it shows up again, I’ll just claim it was another one.”

Luna didn’t laugh. She stared at him the way you stared at a man holding a torch too close to a powder keg.

“…You’re serious?” she asked slowly.

Ludger held her gaze for a second longer, just long enough to let her wonder… Then he sighed.

“It’s a joke,” he said, tone flattening again. “I can’t build a strong guild by telling lies.”

Luna’s shoulders loosened by a fraction, but her eyes stayed narrowed like she was still deciding if he was safe to stand near. Ludger looked away, back toward the steady pulse of the sea monster’s mana surrounding them like an ocean inside an ocean.

“I’ll tell Rufas what happened,” he said. “It was a draw. It’ll take a while for the creature to return.”

A low grunt rolled through the mouth chamber. Not loud, but heavy enough that Luna flinched anyway. Ludger’s eyes shifted, Mana Sense reading the warden’s response with a faint, irritated tilt of his brow.

“…She’s denying that,” he said.

Luna blinked. “Denying what?”

“That it was a draw,” Ludger replied, and his mouth twitched again, this time closer to a smirk. “Apparently she thinks she won.”

The sea monster grunted again, deeper, like an offended judge banging a gavel.

Ludger shrugged, casual as ever, and looked at Luna.

“We can fight again,” he said. “I’ll win this time for sure.”

Luna stared at him, then let out a slow breath that was half disbelief and half exhausted amusement.

“You’re going to get us eaten one day,” she muttered.

Ludger’s eyes stayed calm.

“Not today,” he said.

Outside, the creature kept swimming, silent, ancient, and very clearly convinced it was the one giving them a ride home.

After a while, the pressure changed.

It wasn’t sudden, nothing about the creature movement was sudden, but Ludger felt it first in his ears, a slow easing that made the world feel less like it was pressing in on his skull. The water outside still smothered sound, but the muffling became lighter, less dense, like someone was slowly lifting a heavy blanket off their heads.

The mouth chamber tilted. Not down this time, up. Luna’s boots shifted slightly on the slick, flexing floor, and she instinctively reached for balance, fingers brushing Ludger’s sleeve. She didn’t comment on it. Pretended it hadn’t happened.

The living tunnel around them rose and fell with deeper breaths. The warden’s strokes changed cadence, slower and more vertical, and Ludger could feel the faint, steady pull of buoyancy taking over, like the whole world was exhaling.

Then the first hint of surface sound crept in. A distant, high hiss, water moving faster, bubbles tearing free.

The pressure in Ludger’s chest eased again. His ward light flickered subtly as the air in the mouth shifted, freshening, less stagnant, less wet, more like open sky even before they could see it.

Luna swallowed and whispered, almost reluctantly, “We’re going up.”

“Yeah,” Ludger said.

He didn’t sound nervous.

But his eyes were sharp now, focus returning to the immediate reality. Because getting out was only half the job.

The other half was what they were getting out into. The creature rose the last stretch.

Then—without warning or drama—its jaw muscles flexed.

The mouth opened. Light slammed in.

Not the pale glow of his ward, real sunlight, hard and clean, washing the slick interior in bright blue reflections. Salt air rushed over them, warm and alive. The sound of the sea returned in full, loud reality: waves, wind, distant gulls.

And beyond the teeth, framed like a doorway to sanity…

Blue sky.

Their sky.

Ludger blinked once, squinting up into it. He didn’t need stars to confirm it this time. The sun sat where it was supposed to sit for this time of day—not too far north, not wrong, not alien.

Home.

Or at least the right world.

Luna exhaled hard, the sound almost shaky, and stepped forward until the sunlight hit her face. She looked like she wanted to laugh and throw up at the same time.

Ludger’s eyes scanned immediately.

Ocean. Horizon. Waves. No mast. No sails. No smoke.

No SS Elaine. Nothing but water and sky, empty in every direction that mattered. His jaw tightened.

The creature grunted behind them, low, rough, decisive. Its mana pulsed with something like finality. Ludger listened with Mana Sense, caught the intent, and translated it automatically.

“It says we’ll have to go alone,” he muttered.

Luna stiffened. “Alone… as in—”

“No ride to the ship,” Ludger said, already accepting it. “No escort.”

The warden’s presence carried a blunt message: This is where my route ends. Ludger nodded once toward the massive head, not respectful exactly, but acknowledging reality like he always did.

“Fine,” he said.

He got up, planting his feet and testing his balance as the mouth-floor flexed under him. Then he reached back and tugged lightly at Luna’s elbow, more a signal than help.

“Come on,” he said, voice flat, eyes already scanning wind direction and wave patterns. “We’re walking from here.”

Luna’s gaze lingered on the empty ocean where the SS Elaine should’ve been, then she nodded and stood with him, shoulders squaring.

Whatever waited next… wasn’t going to wait politely.

They were right at the edge of the open mouth, feet braced, wind in their faces, the ocean below looking like a long, cold argument.

Ludger was already calculating the drop, angle, splash, how much mana it would take to keep Luna from sinking when something moved behind them.

Not teeth. Not tongue. Mana. Two spheres of it drifted out of the creature's mouth like bubbles rising in reverse, dense, smooth, perfectly contained. They glowed faintly, a pale blue-white that didn’t match Ludger’s wardlight. They hovered for a heartbeat in the sunlight… then shot forward.

Straight at them. Luna yelped and jerked back on instinct.

“What—Ludger—!”

The spheres hit. Not with impact. With an entry.

They slipped into their bodies like warm water poured into a cup, and for a split-second Ludger felt his internal mana flow reorganize, threads shifting, channels widening in strange new directions, as if his body had just been taught a new language.

Luna’s breath hitched, panic flashing across her face. She slapped a hand at her chest as if trying to pull the thing back out.

Ludger froze. Then he felt it. Not poison. Not a curse. A class imprint. His vision flickered. A cold, familiar rectangle of text snapped into existence in front of him like a system window materializing out of nothing.

New Class Acquired: Aquamancer + 07 Int, +07 WIS, + 07 DEX

Skill Unlocked: Water Manipulation (Lv.1)

Influence and shape nearby water. Basic control only.

Ludger stared at the alert for half a heartbeat, then let out a slow breath through his nose.

“Well,” he muttered. “That answers the swimming problem.”

Luna was still tense, eyes wide, hands half-raised like she expected her veins to start glowing.

“What happened?” she demanded. “What did it do to us?”

Ludger blinked the window away with a thought and rolled one shoulder as if checking his body for any hidden hooks.

“It’s a gift,” he said. “From the sea monster.”

Luna stared at him like he’d just claimed a storm had handed him a bouquet.

“A gift?”

“It can’t carry us back to land,” Ludger continued, voice matter-of-fact. “So it helped us that much. Water Manipulation.”

Luna’s expression shifted, panic loosening into disbelief. “You—what?”

Ludger’s eyes flicked to the warden’s massive face. He hesitated, then spoke loud enough for it to hear.

“What’s your name?”

The sea monster didn’t answer with words. It didn’t even bother with a grunt this time. It just exhaled.

A vast, controlled blast of air, like the world’s largest sigh, hit them from behind. The pressure caught Ludger and Luna mid-step and launched them out of the open mouth.

Luna shouted something that was probably profanity. Ludger barely moved, letting the wind take him, because fighting it would’ve been pointless.

They flew.

Not far enough to be comfortable, not high enough to be safe, just a clean arc toward the ocean.

And even before they could hit the water, Ludger saw the warden already turning away, huge body rolling, tail sweeping once beneath the surface.

Then it submerged. No dramatic splash. No farewell. Just a smooth sinking motion, the massive silhouette dissolving into the dark blue until there was nothing left but ripples and the glitter of sunlight on waves.

Gone. Like it had never been there. Ludger fell with his arms crossed, wind tugging at his hair, expression flat in the face of absurdity.

“What a weird creature,” he said, and then the ocean rushed up to swallow his words.

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