Ludger kept moving as if nothing had changed.

He advanced through the drowned corridors with the same relentless pace, but now there was a new sharpness to him. His body cut through the water like a machine built for this environment. No hesitation. No wasted movement. No unnecessary adjustments.

When a runic golem emerged, he didn’t charge. He raised a hand.

Mana bolts streaked through the water in tight, efficient patterns, striking joints, cores, circulation channels. Each impact layered cold into the construct’s frame. Frost crept across armor seams. Runes flickered. Propulsion arrays stalled.

The golem froze in place. Then Ludger summoned an earth sphere.

Dense. Hardened. Spinning so fast that the surrounding water twisted into a spiraling funnel. The pressure dragged debris inward, pulling the immobilized construct into the center of the vortex. He fired.

The sphere punched straight through the golem’s chest.

Stone exploded. The core ruptured. The torso disintegrated into frozen fragments that scattered through the corridor like shrapnel. He didn’t even slow. Another shadow appeared. More bolts. More ice. Another cyclone. Another shattered golem.

Viola followed behind him in stunned silence.

She had fought beside Northerners. She had seen berserkers tear through enemy lines like living disasters. She had watched shamans turn battlefields into smoking ruins.

This was different. Ludger wasn’t fighting like a warrior. He was operating. Target acquisition. Disable. Terminate. Advance.

His movements were so precise, so repeatable, that he looked less like a person and more like a runic construct executing a combat routine. Even the golems felt slow compared to him now.

Viola opened her mouth more than once, wanting to ask if he was okay. But he never gave her a chance. He never stopped…. And worse, she could feel it.

If she interrupted him, she would break the rhythm. And something told her that rhythm was the only thing keeping him functioning at this level. So she said nothing. Luna said nothing. They followed.

For twenty straight minutes, Ludger swam, fought, froze, shattered, and advanced without pause. His mana bolts never missed. His spheres never slowed. His body never hesitated.

Until finally, his lungs demanded what his will refused. He angled upward and kicked hard.

Wind Overdrive carried him toward the narrow air pocket beneath the ceiling. He broke the surface in a rush of steam and mist, dragging in a long, controlled breath.

Viola and Luna surfaced beside him. For the first time in a while, Ludger stopped moving.

Water dripped from his hair and armor. Steam rolled off his skin. His eyes burned with a focused intensity that hadn’t faded yet.

Viola finally broke the silence.

“Are you going to explain what’s going on with you?” she asked.

Ludger looked at her, then nodded once.

Without another word, he raised his hand and began writing in the air again. The same rune.

It formed as a distortion in the mana around them, strokes folding into existence like pressure lines in water. The symbol hovered between his fingers, dense and stable, humming with contained energy. Viola felt her pulse pick up.

“…You’re not about to do something weird to me, are you?” she asked.

Ludger glanced at her. “You asked.”

That was not reassuring. He flicked his wrist. The rune drifted toward her.

For a moment, her instincts screamed at her to dodge. She had no idea what it was, no idea what it would do, and no idea what it might cost. But this was Ludger. He had never once harmed her. Never once gambled with her life. So she didn’t move. The rune touched her chest. And sank in. Her breath caught.

Mana spread through her body like warm liquid, flowing along her channels, threading through muscle, nerve, and bone. It wasn’t overwhelming. It wasn’t violent. It was precise, settling into place with uncanny familiarity.

Her heartbeat slowed. Her thoughts sharpened.

The fog of fatigue that had been building from hours of fighting and swimming dissolved, replaced by a clean, focused clarity. Her mana circulation smoothed, pressure stabilizing as if invisible hands were tuning her core.

“…What is this?”

Her mind felt clear. Not just awake, aligned. Every sensation snapped into focus. The sound of water below. The echo of distant currents. The weight of her sword at her hip. Even her breathing fell into a perfect rhythm.

She had felt something like this before. Meditation.

When she sat cross-legged, shut out the world, and forced her body into absolute stillness, she could double her mana recovery speed. But it took time. It took discipline. And it only worked when she was completely relaxed.

This? This did the same thing instantly. Swimming. Under pressure. In the middle of a flooded labyrinth.

Ludger watched her carefully. “It’s a Meditation  rune,” he said. “It aligns your thought patterns with your mana flow. Reduces waste. Stabilizes circulation. Just like real Meditation”

Viola flexed her fingers slowly. “So… you’ve been doing this to yourself.”

“Yes.”

“…Of course you did.”

She took a slow breath and felt her mana respond instantly, flowing smoother, stronger, more efficient than before. Then she looked back at him, eyes sharp.

“Next time you decide to rewrite your own body in the middle of a dungeon,” she said, “you tell me first.”

Ludger almost smiled. Almost.

Luna broke the moment of quiet.

“Runes that affect the behavior of others are dangerous,” she said. “You’re stepping into territory that most mages avoid for a reason. That kind of control can be abused.”

She looked directly at Ludger.

“You basically have the power to manipulate others now.”

Ludger shook his head. “You’re exaggerating.”

Viola flexed her fingers again, testing the flow of mana through her body. Her thoughts were still sharp, clean, free of the emotional noise that usually crept in during long delves.

“I’m calmer,” she admitted. “Part of my brain is definitely filtering useless thoughts. But I can still push against it. If I want to break the effect, I can.”

She clenched her jaw slightly, and the rune’s influence loosened at once. Luna studied her carefully, then nodded.

“Then it’s not coercion,” she said. “It’s optimization.”

After a moment, she added, “Still… meditation like that is something only master sages are supposed to be able to do. The kind that spend decades isolating themselves in mountain temples.”

Ludger gave a small nod.

“Cor is working on it,” he said. “He’s close. But I’ve been refining these techniques for almost ten years now.”

He glanced at the water below.

“When you use mana as often as I do, inefficiency becomes lethal. So you learn to fix it.”

Luna was quiet for a few seconds.

Then she exhaled slowly. “You’re terrifying for reasons that have nothing to do with how hard you punch.”

Viola snorted. “You’re just realizing that?”

Ludger rolled his shoulders and looked below.

“Break’s over,” he said. “We move.”

The water below waited… And now, they were better prepared to face it.

Sage Lv 105(+4 INT, +8 WIS / level)

Skills:

[Mana Bolt Lv 35]

[Mana Wall Lv 06]

[Spiritual Core Lv Max]

[Meditation Lv 81]

[Mana Armor Lv 11]

[Mana Arrow Lv 11]

[Arcane Arrow Lv 11]

[Mana Spear Lv 11]

[Arcane Focus Lv 11]

[Astral Veil Lv 11]

[Mana Sword Lv 11]

[Mana Cyclone Lv 11]

[Mana Fang Lv 11]

[Mana Channeling Lv 11] 

[Overcast Lv 11]

[Mana Discharge Lv 11]

[Magic Elemental Field Lv 11]

[Mana Blessing Lv 11]

[Mana Agony Lv 11]

[Mana Magnet Lv 11]

[Sage’s Will Lv 15] – Doubles the parameters gained per level after level 100 on the class.

Saying that Ludger had merely been using Sage techniques for a while would have been a gross understatement.

He had already stripped that class down to its bones months ago. Learned everything it had to teach him. At this point, the only thing left was refinement. Levels. Repetition. Pushing every single skill to one hundred.

Not because he needed more options, but because he refused to leave inefficiency anywhere inside his system.

And now, with the Meditation rune active, the results were immediate. His mana regeneration doubled. Then doubled again when stacked with the amulet Lucius had given him.

The sensation was unmistakable, his core felt like a furnace hooked directly to a river. No pauses. No gaps. No recovery windows. Just constant replenishment, smooth and stable.

For the first time since entering the third section, Ludger wasn’t fighting attrition. He was overwhelming it.

They descended again.

This time, when runic golems emerged from the depths, Ludger didn’t hesitate or conserve. He spammed.

Mana bolts tore through the water in rapid succession, freezing propulsion runes mid-burst. Earth spheres followed immediately after, spinning like siege rounds and detonating through torsos and cores before the constructs could adapt.

When a pair tried to flank him from above, he deployed layered bolts that split mid-flight and curved into their joints.

Essentially, he copied a trick that had once nearly gotten him killed. Mana mines. Condensed nodes of unstable energy that drifted forward slowly, harmless at first glance. Then they detonated. And not just with raw force. They changed their element mid-flight.

The first exploded in ice, flash-freezing the water and locking the golem’s movement.

The second converted into compressed wind, creating a vacuum pocket that crushed its torso inward. The third turned into molten earth and burned straight through the exposed core. Viola watched it happen with wide eyes.

“…That’s cheating,”

Luna recognized the pattern.

He fired another volley. A golem lost an arm.

“But she had good ideas.”

The corridor filled with drifting debris and shattered runes. Broken constructs sank into the depths, cores dim and useless.

Ludger advanced through it all like a walking artillery platform. With Meditation active, he wasn’t burning himself out. With his amulet feeding regeneration. With his runes optimizing circulation. With his experience stacking tactics from past enemies. The labyrinth wasn’t wearing him down anymore. It was running out of monsters.

As the third section’s currents shifted and deeper structures groaned in response, one thing became clear to both Viola and Luna: Whatever Lucius had gone looking for… He had walked straight into a place that now belonged to Ludger.

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