Ludger spent the rest of the morning training the kids.

Hard training. Boring training. The kind that built habits instead of legends.

He ran them through laps along the beach, then drills, footwork in sand, balance under uneven resistance, controlled strikes without mana reinforcement. When they complained, he ignored it. When they slacked, he corrected it. When they overreached, he stopped them.

“This doesn’t change when I’m not here,” he told them calmly as they formed lines to spar. “Morning and afternoon. Every day.”

A few heads lifted at that.

“You’ll spar twice,” Ludger continued. “No shortcuts. No excuses. Magic is for healing yourselves and catching food. Nothing else.”

That earned him a few disappointed looks. He could tell what they were expecting. Something new. Some hidden trick. A special lesson before he left. He didn’t give it to them.

“I won’t teach advanced techniques in the open,” Ludger said, voice even. “And I won’t do it in territory that isn’t ours.”

That shut down any remaining hope.Because they understood what that meant.

If he taught them something new, it would be somewhere safer. Somewhere controlled. Somewhere that couldn’t turn into a liability overnight.

They trained anyway.

By the time lunch rolled around, the recruits were exhausted, sweaty, and quietly proud of themselves. Ludger ate with them, said little, listened more, and mentally checked off what needed adjusting when he returned.

Afterward, as the camp settled into its midday lull, Ludger moved toward the edge of the stone structures. Quietly. Carefully.

He was halfway through slipping away when a hand landed on his shoulder. Firm. Familiar. He stopped and sighed.

“Looks like you’re about to do something fun,” Viola said from behind him.

He turned slowly.

She was smiling, not mischievously, not teasingly. Just knowingly.

“…I was hoping you’d be busy,” Ludger said.

She shrugged. “I was. Then I wasn’t.”

He exhaled through his nose. Of course she noticed. She always did.

Viola didn’t remove her hand. She stepped closer instead, voice low so only he could hear.

“You’ve had that look since sunrise,” she said. “The one you get when you’ve already learned something important and you’re lining up your next moves.”

Ludger closed his eyes for a brief moment.

“You didn’t say a word to me all morning,” Viola continued. “Which means you didn’t want my opinion. Which means you were planning to do something alone.”

He turned to face her. “Viola…”

“You’re going to the labyrinth,” she said flatly.

He paused.

Then nodded. “Yes.”

“And you were planning to slip out without telling me.”

“Yes.”

She snorted quietly. “At least you’re honest.”

Ludger took a breath, keeping his voice level. “I need to go alone. It’s safer that way.”

“For you,” Viola countered.

“For everyone,” he corrected. “If something goes wrong, it ends with me. No leverage. No pressure. No political fallout.”

She crossed her arms. “That’s convenient.”

“It’s logical,” Ludger said. “And right now, practicality matters more than feelings.”

Her eyes hardened slightly. “Explain.”

“The Ironhand Syndicate is watching the labyrinth,” Ludger said. “If I go alone, I can slip past them without being noticed. If you go with me, everything changes. Eyes follow. Questions start.”

“And?” Viola asked.

“And it’s better if everyone can see you here,” Ludger said. “Alive. Training. Visible. Unmoved. If someone inside Ironhand is compromised, that visibility protects you, and keeps them guessing.”

Viola tilted her head. “So I stay behind as bait.”

“Shield,” Ludger said immediately. “Anchor.”

She shook her head. “Same thing.”

Ludger pressed on before she could cut him off. “You asked me to come here to help find Lucius. You asked me to act because you couldn’t. That doesn’t mean you have to put yourself in danger now.”

She stepped closer.

“That’s exactly what it means,” Viola said.

He frowned. “Viola…”

“No,” she cut in. “You don’t get to make this argument like I’m a bystander.”

Her voice stayed calm, but there was steel under it.

“I’m the one who asked you to come,” she said. “I dragged you into this mess because I couldn’t solve it alone. I don’t get to sit back in a camp and wait while you walk into a labyrinth that might not even belong to this world.”

“That’s precisely why you should stay,” Ludger replied. “If something happens to me…”

“… then it happens,” Viola said. “Just like it would if something happened to Lucius. Or to you any other time.”

She met his gaze without flinching.

“You don’t get to protect me from the consequences when I’m the reason you’re here.”

Silence stretched between them. Ludger searched for a counterargument. Found none that didn’t rely on authority instead of logic. Viola saw it immediately.

She exhaled, softer now. “You think going alone makes this cleaner. Safer. Smaller.”

He didn’t deny it.

“But this was never small,” she said. “And it stopped being clean the moment Lucius vanished.”

She rested a hand lightly on his arm, not stopping him, just grounding him.

“If you go,” she said, “you don’t go pretending this isn’t our problem. And you don’t go pretending I’m not involved.”

The wind rolled in from the sea, carrying salt and the distant sound of sparring. Ludger finally sighed. Deep and resigned.

Ludger exhaled.

“All right,” he said. “You can come.”

Viola’s eyes lit up—just for a moment.

Then a voice spoke from behind them.

“In that case,” Luna said calmly, “I’ll be coming too.”

Ludger froze. Slowly, very slowly, he turned.

Luna stood a few steps away, hands folded behind her back, posture relaxed. She had that irritatingly neutral expression she used when she knew the answer before the question was asked.

“…How long have you been there?” Ludger asked.

“Long enough,” Luna replied.

He pinched the bridge of his nose and dragged a hand down his face.

“Looking after Arash and Elle is easier than dealing with you two,” he muttered.

Viola opened her mouth. Then closed it.

She wanted to complain about being compared to toddlers. She really did. But she’d learned, through experience, that doing so right now would only make things worse.

So she waited. Ludger didn’t argue anymore. He just lifted a hand and began writing runes into the air. Sharp. Precise. Invisible to anyone without mana sensitivity.

Viola felt the pressure change immediately. Then Ludger kicked the ground.

Sand exploded upward, erupting into a towering curtain that blocked sight, sound, and mana perception in a single motion. The camp vanished behind it. Training shouts muffled into nothing. Inside the veil, Ludger finished the final glyph.

Wind Overdrive.

The runes dissolved, and were absorbed.

Viola felt it first. Her body lightened. Resistance vanished. The world seemed to let go of her.

Before she could comment, Ludger grabbed both of them. And threw them.

The sand curtain collapsed a heartbeat later.

To anyone watching, the beach was empty.

No Ludger. No Viola. No Luna.

They were already gone… cutting through the ocean like spears, bodies wrapped in silent wind, plunging beneath the surface before a single splash could betray them. The sea closed overhead. And the hunt began.

They cut through the ocean like ghosts.

Wind Overdrive wrapped them in a thin, invisible sheath, parting the water before it could resist them. There was no drag. No pressure crushing in. No frantic need to surface for air. The sea simply opened and let them pass.

Viola had swum before. This wasn’t swimming. This was flight, translated into water.

Schools of fish scattered as they passed, silver flashes twisting away at impossible angles. Some didn’t flee at all, instead drifting alongside them for a few heartbeats, curious rather than afraid. Long, ribbon-like creatures pulsed with bioluminescent patterns, blues and greens rippling down translucent bodies. Shell-backed things crawled along the seabed far below, leaving glowing trails in the sand.

Viola’s eyes widened.

There were creatures here she had never seen. Never even heard described. Angular silhouettes lurking in the distance. Massive shadows moving slowly beneath reefs that looked more like forests than stone. Things with too many fins. Things with none at all.

Something enormous shifted far below them, stirring clouds of sand without ever fully revealing itself. Her heart skipped.

Luna noticed immediately and adjusted position, subtly placing herself between Viola and the deeper dark, not blocking her view, just… ready.

They moved on.

Wind Overdrive kept them fast. Too fast. The scenery blurred into streaks of color and motion as Ludger adjusted their vector with tiny shifts of mana, weaving them through coral spires and kelp forests without ever slowing.

Viola stole another glance at him. He was calm.

Not focused in the way someone strained themselves, but relaxed. Like this was just another environment he’d already accounted for. His control was absurd. Precise. Efficient. The spell didn’t flare or wobble. It didn’t waste energy. It obeyed.

He’s doing all of this while tracking direction, she realized. And depth. And threats.

Once again, her little brother shocked her. Not because he was strong. But because he made something this dangerous look routine.

They crossed miles of ocean floor in minutes, leaving the strange, beautiful chaos of the deep behind them as the seabed slowly rose and the shadows thinned.

Ludger could have done it differently.

A single wind sphere would have been enough, dense, layered, perfectly sealed. He didn’t need runes for that. Not anymore. Raw control alone could have carried all three of them across the ocean without effort.

He chose not to.

Instead, he maintained the runic framework of Wind Overdrive, letting the inscriptions do the heavy lifting while he fed them mana and micro-adjustments. It was slower than brute optimization. Less efficient.

And exactly why he did it. This was a good opportunity.

Runes behaved differently under sustained pressure, especially in hostile environments. Water resistance, depth variance, ambient mana interference, every factor forced the runic logic to adapt. He could feel it, the way the inscriptions refined themselves as they absorbed real-world conditions.

His Runic Mage class responded subtly, threads of understanding slotting into place without a system prompt announcing it. That was fine. He didn’t need validation for something this basic.

It would come in handy later. They moved separately, bodies aligned but not touching, each wrapped in their own current of shaped wind. There was no way to talk like this, not without breaking concealment or wasting mana.

That suited him. Ludger needed the silence.

Alone, he could brute-force his way through what waited ahead. He knew that. Push harder. Hit faster. Overwhelm the labyrinth before it could adapt.

With Viola and Luna, that approach was off the table. Which meant he had to think. He welcomed it.

Nothing good came from getting used to solving every problem with more punches than thoughts. Power without restraint turned sloppy. Predictable.

And predictable was dangerous, especially in a place built to punish assumptions. The labyrinth ahead wasn’t just a test of strength.

It was a system. And systems were meant to be understood, not bullied.

As the land grew clearer in the dark water ahead, Ludger adjusted the runes once more, tightening control, conserving mana, preparing.

This time, he wouldn’t just clear it.

He would conquer it.

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