The group dispersed before midnight.

Kaela, Maurien, Ragan, Harkun, Sivra, and Renvar slipped out through the city’s sewers one pair at a time, moving through Coria’s underbelly like smoke that left no scent. No dramatic goodbyes. No lingering chatter. Just nods, sharpened eyes, and silent departure.

When the last footstep faded and only three remained, the hidden chamber felt bigger, quieter, almost deceptively safe.

Ludger sat cross-legged on the floor, sorting through runic notes while Linne and Dalan adjusted gear, calibrated mana tools, and prepared the small telegraph-like console they’d hidden behind crates.

“Communication takes time,” Dalan explained while tightening a screw. “Rich nobles and academies use these runic transmitters for short written messages. Slow, expensive, but better than a courier. Our… friends will contact us when they reach their cities.”

Ludger looked at a rune on the side of his torso, it was the emergency one. If he filled with mana, others would receive a message according to the output of mana used. The others could also do the same.

Linne nodded, checking mana crystals. “Receiving range isn’t perfect, so if they’re too far, the text might arrive scrambled or incomplete. That’s why we wait a couple hours first.”

Ludger leaned back against the cold stone wall, helmet off, hood lowered, calculating timing down to minutes. He didn’t like waiting, but strategy demanded patience.

And patience didn’t mean inaction.

While he waited, he reviewed the map again, scanning three cities where his team would watch. If any of those cages opened, if any slaver moved, if any illegal choker surfaced… it would signal a chain reaction across all Velis territory.

Linne eventually glanced over her shoulder.

“What happens after you unravel all this?” she asked, voice cautious. “After you drag slavers into the light and every guild here is scrambling for cover?”

Ludger didn’t look up from the map.

“I go home.”

Linne blinked. “…Just like that?”

He nodded.

“The beastmen will see we act, not talk. They’ll trust the Lionsguard. Then we repeat the process in the Empire.”

Dalan let out a thin, strained smile, somewhere between admiration and fear.

“So basically… you’re a storm of chaos.”

Ludger lifted his gaze. Calm. Clear.

“I remove rot. Wherever it is.”

Dalan scratched the back of his head.

“You don’t just remove it, Ludger. You expose it, rip it up by the roots, then make everyone watch you burn it.”

Linne exhaled a laugh with no humor.

“This city has no idea what’s coming.”

Ludger rolled the map shut and stood, armor rustling like whispering gravel.

“No city ever does.”

The room fell silent.

Outside, Coria’s bells began to chime, signaling the beginning of a new day.

A day in which merchants would trade, students would rush to classes, nobles would host tea parties… completely unaware that a boy in shadow-runed armor sat underground planning to dismantle their underworld by nightfall.

Ludger waited. Hours passed like coiled springs tightening.

Then the crystal-console chimed. A single rune flickered to life. Signal received. His teams had reached their destinations.

Ludger placed two fingers over the message crystal and pushed mana into the etched rune-lines. A soft hum answered him, delicate, like glass about to resonate, and he visualized the signal structure as Linne had taught him.

Focus, compress, release. A blue rune sigil shot across the transmitter like a spark running down copper wire. It flickered once, then vanished.

Standby. Wait for night. No further instructions needed. They knew how he moved. They knew he preferred to strike when shadows were deep and eyes were tired.

Maurien and Kaela would blend with wind and rooftop currents. The avian tracker, Sivra, would stalk from above like a silent hawk.  Harkun would scent trails through alley rot and tavern filth. Ragan’s instincts would sniff lies before they formed. Renvar would… hopefully follow orders.

As long as they remained unseen, their risk was low. Linne and Dalan soon left through the back exit, to maintain their routine, avoid suspicion, and spread subtle whispers where needed. No sudden disappearances. No odd behavior. Acting normal was often deadlier than any blade.

That left Ludger alone in the dim chamber. He lay back on the cold stone, eyes drifting shut, letting exhaustion unravel from his muscles. His breathing deepened, mana streams settling like cooled magma in his veins. A rare moment of stillness.

Hours later, midafternoon, he woke without grogginess. Mind sharp. Calm in a way dangerous men often were. He stretched his fingers, flexed joints, then sat at the table and unrolled the map again, eating dried meat and stale bread with methodical bites.

He traced the inked circles marking the suspected networks. The armory ring near Verk’s old estate. Two cities with nearly identical formation. All had paths. All had funding trails even Linne couldn’t track cleanly.

He tapped his knuckle against the parchment.

Labyrinth entrances.

He didn’t notice it before, but every city he’d marked… every suspicious compound… sat along labyrinth access routes. Some openly used. Others partially sealed. One, in the southeast, had reportedly collapsed decades ago. Ludger leaned closer, brows pinching.

Yes, of course cities built near labyrinths. Safe zones needed resources. Mana stones. Monsters corpses. Trade routes. It made sense. But three different suspicious clusters sharing the exact same triangular spacing around labyrinth access points?

That was intent. Not a coincidence. He circled the spots with charcoal, brain sharpening like a blade.

Were they moving slaves through labyrinth tunnels? Or hiding captives where only delvers go? Or using labyrinth mana pools for forging and runesmith work?

If enemies wanted to hide something without the public noticing, the labyrinth corridors were perfect. Dark. Unmonitored. Filled with monsters to silence intruders.

He sat back in the chair, appetite gone. This wasn’t piracy. It was infrastructure.

A network planned through dungeon veins, connecting empire, Velis league, and beastmen territory. Someone wanted war, chaos, and trade control on all sides. Rodericks. Verk’s flock. Primal radicals.

All threads feeding one tapestry. Ludger stared at the map a long moment, fingers drumming. A labyrinth investigation meant a fight was almost guaranteed.

And if he was right…

He wouldn’t be hunting slavers in mansions. He would be dragging them out of the dark. Night couldn’t come fast enough.

Night swallowed Coria under a blanket of gray mist and academy smoke. The city below glimmered with mana lamps like stars drowning in fog, perfect for infiltration. Footsteps echoed softly through the underground chamber as Linne and Dalan returned, cloaks damp with street dew and the smell of iron foundries clinging to them.

They found Ludger already armor-clad, runic leather tight over muscle, helmet half-lowered, checking straps with the quiet routine of someone preparing for violence. He was early, too early for most infiltrators, but Ludger preferred scouting alone before the storm.

He snapped one final rune into place on his wrist guard, mana pulsing faintly beneath the layered leather.

“I’ll move first,” he said, almost casually. “If I find anything… odd. We start tonight.”

Linne opened her mouth to ask what exactly qualified as odd, then thought better of it.

Dalan rubbed his forehead. “We figured. You were never the wait-till-tomorrow type.”

It was then Ludger paused, a stillness that made both engineers look up. His gaze wasn’t on his armor or the door, but on the map pinned to the wall with knives.

“Tell me something,” he said. “Is there any chance that normal people, not insane people, would try to escape using labyrinth routes?”

Linne and Dalan stared at him like he’d asked whether water could burn or if gravity sometimes took weekends off. Dalan even let out a confused laugh.

“Escape? Into a labyrinth? Ludger, nobody sane chooses to live where monsters respawn forever.”

Linne shook her head, muttering as if explaining to a child, “Only desperate or deranged fools disappear into labyrinths. Some tried in history, none returned. There’s nothing but death, mana corruption, and endless territory crawling with creatures that adapt to kill you.”

Ludger’s eyes narrowed, not at the danger, but at the assumption.

“Then what lies beyond labyrinths?”

Silence. Real silence.

Both engineers froze, eyes losing focus like old memories were dragging themselves up from half-forgotten scrolls. Dalan slowly lowered the tools in his hands. Linne’s breath hitched.

The room suddenly felt colder.

“The… rumors,” Linne murmured. “About the deepest floors of ancient labyrinths connecting to… other lands. Forgotten realms.”

Dalan swallowed, voice dry.

“Places where even rulers and guildmasters don’t go. Gates that only open once in generations, if ever.”

“Stories say,” Linne added, voice barely above a whisper, “those who push too deep vanish from history. Not dead, just… gone.”

Ludger didn’t flinch. Not fascinated. Not afraid. Just calculating.

“If someone wanted to move people or goods unseen,” he said slowly, “hiding inside a labyrinth route or beyond it would make sense.”

Two engineers stared at him like he was insane, or exactly right.

No guards. No politics. No witnesses. A perfect shadow pipeline. Ludger’s helmet slid into place with a soft click. The runes on his armor dimmed. His mana quieted like a blade sheathed in water.

“I’ll check the nearest labyrinth tunnel entrance eventually. I am starting to think that Verk and the Rodericks ran away to one of those…”

Ludger slipped out of the hideout with the quiet certainty of someone who had done this too many times. The door barely creaked. His boots touched stone without echo. Smoke clung to the air like a cold veil, diffusing lantern light into hazy halos that made the night feel dreamlike, or like something waiting to wake screaming.

He bent his knees once and launched upward.

The leather of his new armor flexed without sound as he caught the edge of a roof, pulled himself up, and vanished into the mist. Up here, Coria was a world of chimneys and shadow, blurred rooftops stretching like jagged teeth under a poisoned sky.

He moved. Light steps. Controlled mana in his legs. Sword Dancer footwork threaded with Earth Overdrive balance, letting him cross rooflines without tiles shifting beneath him, or so it felt like, he wasn’t using any of that, the armor just made him a lot stronger naturally. If anyone below glanced up, they’d see nothing but silhouette flickers swallowed by fog.

His destination pulled at him like a compass:

The Guild Quarter.

Where merchants slept behind triple-locked doors. Where delvers stored monster cores and enchanted loot. Where high-ranked rune-smiths and wealthy artificers lived in estates with too many guards for comfort. And where, coincidentally, layouts mirrored Verk’s network.

Wide courtyards, storage warehouses in a ring formation, central manor structures with reinforced cellars. Defensive enchantments everywhere. A fortress to protect valuables. Or hidden crimes.

Ludger paused on a slanted roof, mist swirling around him like pale smoke. Below, drunk adventurers stumbled from tavern doors, laughing too loud, while armored guards patrolled with glowing runic spears that hummed softly in the dark.

Strong fighters, Ludger noted.

Runic gauntlets, mana plates, shield generators. Easy to justify in a city like this, but better for hiding captives or illegal goods too.

He crouched, observing sightlines, patrol routes, guard rotations. He mapped them with Seismic Sense and memorized intervals between passes.

No rush. No witnesses. One mistake, and the entire district would swarm like hornets.

He inhaled cold, metallic air.

Then, quiet as falling ash, he sprinted again, rooftop to rooftop, a ghost threading needlepoints between lantern glow and blind angles.

Verk’s estate had been a crack. The Guild Quarter was the wall behind it. And Ludger was already climbing.

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