After a few controlled tests, Ludger confirmed it. The rune array etched into his forearm guards was working. Not with his mana. With the mana core.

He drove his fist into the next runic golem and felt the familiar surge, not from his core, but from the core strapped into the rune. Freezing Enchantment detonated outward, blue-white light crawling across the froststeel as the construct’s chest flash-froze and shattered into brittle fragments.

The system chimed quietly in the back of his mind.

[Freezing Enchantment + 300 XP.]

[Wordweaver + 300 XP.]

The feedback loop was intact.

The enchantment still counted as his action. The rune recognized him as the caster, even though the energy source wasn’t his. The skill progressed. The class advanced. The strike landed with the same authority.

Efficient. Dangerous. Exactly what he needed. But not everything was good news. He couldn’t regulate the output. Not properly.

The mana inside a core wasn’t his. It didn’t respond to his circulation or obey his throttling. Once the feeder rune locked on and began drawing power, it ran at full capacity until the core was dry. No fine control. No partial activation. No gentle scaling.

It was on. Or it was empty. The result was immediate. The corridor temperature collapsed.

Frost raced across the stone floor, creeping up the walls in jagged patterns. Condensation flash-froze into brittle crystals that shattered under the faintest vibration. Even the labyrinth’s ambient mana circulation slowed, thickening like syrup under the sudden cold.

Ludger smashed another golem.

The impact sent a wave of freezing pressure down the passage, icing over runic lines and locking mechanical joints mid-cycle. The construct collapsed in a spray of frozen debris.

Fifty meters back, Viola and Luna felt it. Their breath fogged. Then crystallized.

Viola hugged her arms around herself. “What did you do?” she hissed through chattering teeth.

Luna’s shoulders were already dusted with frost, leather stiffening as the cold bled through insulation. She stamped once, trying to keep circulation moving. “This is not normal dungeon temperature.”

Ludger glanced over his shoulder, then at the core’s drain rate.

“Testing,” he said.

Another golem advanced. The feeder rune flared again. The corridor plunged several degrees in a heartbeat. Viola swore.

Luna exhaled slowly, eyes narrowing as she studied the spreading frost. “You can’t turn it down.”

“No,” Ludger admitted. “Once it starts, it runs until the core is empty.”

He shattered the last construct and watched the ice creep farther down the passage.

“Which means,” he added, “I need to plan usage windows.”

Because the setup worked. Too well. And if he wasn’t careful, the labyrinth wouldn’t be the only thing freezing solid around him. The mana core crumbled.

What had been a steady, blinding glow collapsed into a handful of grey dust that slipped through Ludger’s fingers and scattered across the frozen stone.

He shrugged. “Can’t have everything.”

Behind him, Viola and Luna exhaled almost in unison.

The temperature began to climb immediately. Frost retreated from the walls in slow, cracking lines. Ice crystals softened, then melted into thin streams that ran back into the drainage channels. The air stopped biting. Breath stopped fogging.

Viola rolled her shoulders. “Next time, warn us before you turn the labyrinth into a glacier.”

Luna flexed her fingers, waiting for feeling to return. “Or at least give us coats.”

They approached him carefully, stepping over the last shards of shattered golem as Ludger retracted the feeder rune and sealed the empty socket on his guard.

A few minutes later, they reached a split in the corridor. Two passages branched off into darkness, both reinforced with layered runic plating, both sloping downward into deeper sections of the dungeon. Ludger didn’t hesitate.

Seismic Sense expanded outward in a controlled pulse, mapping pressure differentials, structural density, internal circulation, and movement patterns far beyond normal perception. He read the labyrinth the way a strategist read terrain.

“Right,” he said.

They turned.

Viola shook her head. “I’m glad you can do that,” she admitted. “Avoiding dead ends is nice. But it’s annoying how you can do everything.”

Ludger walked on without looking back. “While you were worrying about your boyfriend, I was improving my skills.”

She stopped mid-step. “He is not my boyfriend.”

Luna glanced between them, then quietly moved ahead. Ludger smirked just enough for Viola to see it. The labyrinth swallowed them again, corridors tightening, mana pressure rising.

And somewhere deeper inside, whatever had drawn Lucius forward was still waiting. They advanced the same way they had before. Methodical. Efficient.

The second section tried to wear them down with repetition, tight corridors, layered patrols, overlapping fields of fire, but Ludger kept the tempo under control. He dictated when they fought, where they fought, and how long each engagement lasted. Every runic golem that stepped into their path was dismantled, its core extracted and sealed away before the labyrinth could react.

Once in a while, Ludger reached for one of those cores. He slotted it into the feeder socket on his forearm guard, reactivated the rune, and let Freezing Enchantment burn on borrowed power. The effect was immediate and brutal, temperature collapsing, runic circuits flash-frozen, stone turning brittle under the shock. The golems shattered faster than before, their defenses collapsing before they could adapt.

It saved him mana. A lot of it. But it came with a cost.

Each use pushed the feeder rune past safe tolerances. The internal channels overheated from the sudden surge, stabilizers cracked, and the alloy warped under the stress of uncontrolled output. After every activation, Ludger had to stop and work, rewriting glyphs, reforging micro-fractures with mana, reseating rune anchors that had been shaken loose by the discharge. It took time. Too much time, if he used it carelessly. So he rationed it. One core every five battles.

Just enough to flatten the hardest encounters. Just enough to reset the pressure on his reserves. Just enough to keep his mana from bleeding out faster than it could recover.

The rhythm settled. Four normal clears. One over frozen execution.

Repair. Move on. Not perfect. Not elegant. But effective.

Viola watched the pattern form and nodded once, satisfied. Luna said nothing, but her eyes tracked the repairs closely, memorizing the process.

And as they pushed deeper into the labyrinth, Ludger felt the drain finally stabilize. His mana wasn’t climbing. But it had stopped falling. For now, that was enough.

They had just finished another clean engagement when Ludger slowed.

Not because of movement. Not because of mana fluctuation. Because something in the corner of his vision caught the light wrong.

A faint glisten on the stone, too regular to be natural, too dull to be a rune. He turned his head slightly and let Seismic Sense sweep the corridor. The path it highlighted led to a narrow side passage.

A dead end. The labyrinth geometry there was static. No patrol routes. No circulation nodes. No defensive anchors. Which meant no reason for anything to be there. Ludger changed direction.

Viola noticed immediately. “Dead end,” she said.

“I know,” Ludger replied.

He walked anyway.

The passage was short. Twenty meters, maybe less. The stone floor sloped gently downward before stopping at a rough wall of unworked rock. No runes. No doors. No mechanisms.

Just bare stone. And something on the ground. Ludger crouched and reached for it. Viola and Luna came up behind him and stopped when they saw what he picked up. A wooden cup.

Simple. Unadorned. The kind used by delvers who didn’t want to waste weight on metal or glass. The rim was chipped. The handle is worn smooth by long use. Ludger turned it over in his hand.

Then brought it to his nose. The scent was faint. Old. But unmistakable.

“…Coffee,” Viola said slowly.

Ludger nodded. Real coffee. Imported. Expensive. Something you didn’t bring into a dungeon unless you expected to be there a long time. Or unless you wanted to feel normal while doing something insane.

Ludger straightened, eyes scanning the dead end again.

No tracks. No residue. No signs of recent combat. Just the cup. Left behind. Abandoned. Or forgotten. His jaw tightened slightly.

“This wasn’t dropped by Ironhand,” he said.

Luna folded her arms. “They drink alcohol. Or potions. Not coffee.”

Viola stared at the cup. “So… Lucius?”

“Or someone with his tastes,” Ludger replied.

He turned the cup once more in his hand. Coffee didn’t belong here. Which meant someone had stood in this dead end long enough to drink it. To think. To hesitate. Ludger closed his fingers around the cup.

They were on the right path… and whatever Lucius had been searching for… He hadn’t walked into the labyrinth blindly. He’d walked in with intention.

Luna took the cup from Ludger and turned it slowly in her hands, studying the worn rim and the faint residue clinging to the wood. Then she brought it to her nose and inhaled, eyes narrowing as she focused on the lingering scent.

“This was probably drunk within the last week,” she said after a moment. “The smell is faint, but it’s not old. Five or six days, maybe.”

Viola frowned. “But Lucius disappeared almost three weeks ago.”

Ludger nodded once.

“Which means he didn’t come here right away,” he said. “After he vanished, he spent time preparing. Acquiring gear. Stocking supplies. Planning how to enter without being noticed.”

And hiding it.

“He probably avoided buying anything while he was still at his mansion,” Ludger continued. “Too many servants. Too many records. If he’d started ordering delving equipment or specialized enchantments, people would’ve noticed immediately.”

Viola nodded slowly. “That makes sense.”

Then she hesitated, her gaze drifting back to the cup.

“…But someone like Lucius wouldn’t make mistakes like this,” she added. “Leaving something so obvious behind. The books. The notes. And now this.”

She turned the cup over in her hands.

“It’s almost like he wanted someone to find the trail,” Viola said quietly. “Maybe even to stop him.”

The words lingered in the air. Ludger didn’t answer right away. Lucius was cautious. Deliberate. Always thinking several steps ahead of consequences. Leaving breadcrumbs didn’t fit the man Viola had known.

Unless part of him had hoped someone would follow. Unless part of him had wanted an intervention. Or an excuse to turn back. Ludger closed his hand around the cup. Viola had a point. And that made the situation far more complicated than a simple disappearance.

Ludger broke the silence.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said calmly.

He turned the cup once in his hand, then slipped it into a pouch at his belt.

“We came to bring him back,” Ludger continued. “Thinking about his intentions doesn’t change that.”

Viola looked at him.

“If he wanted to be stopped,” Ludger added, eyes steady, “then that’s fine. I won’t have to break too many bones of his bones to convince him.”

Luna watched him closely. There was no anger in his voice. No frustration. No urgency. Just certainty.

Because whatever Lucius had been searching for, whatever he’d convinced himself he needed, none of it changed the outcome.

Ludger had come to retrieve him.

And the labyrinth was just another obstacle that needed to be removed.

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