Viola’s grip tightened on her sword. Luna’s expression didn’t change, but her eyes sharpened.

“But,” Ludger continued, “Lucius knew that too.”

He looked between them, voice calm and flat.

“He wouldn’t come this far expecting to brute force a guardian alone,” Ludger said. “If he reached it, then he prepared. Gear. consumables. contingencies. Maybe even a method that isn’t combat.”

Viola swallowed. “Like what?”

Ludger’s gaze drifted back toward the corridor.

“Who knows?,” he said. “He is supposed to know as much as runic golems as Rathen and these guys aren’t as troublesome as the ones from the Velis league..”

The words hung there. Because if Lucius had truly been chasing knowledge from “the other side,” then fighting the guardian might never have been the plan. The guardian might have been the gate.

They rested a little longer, testing small things.

Viola tried a few slow swings with her sword in the dry pocket, feeling how the Meditation rune kept her breathing steady and her mana circulation smooth. Luna checked angles through the translucent earth, tracking patrol shadows whenever they drifted by. Ludger adjusted the reflective runes once, then sat back, letting his core settle.

After a while, Viola spoke again.

“Can you do something else with runes?” she asked, eyes on him. “Like… can you use one to let me use the Northerner technique too?”

Ludger blinked. “Rage Flow?”

Viola nodded. “Yes.”

He stared at her for a second, expression flat in a way that usually meant he was doing internal math. Then he exhaled.

“Probably,” he said. “In theory.”

Viola’s eyes brightened slightly.

“But I won’t,” Ludger added immediately.

She frowned. “Why not?”

“Because the moment I start handing out combat-state manipulation through runes,” Ludger said calmly, “it becomes a pattern. And that pattern puts a target on my back.”

Viola opened her mouth, then closed it, waiting.

“It also makes Luna think I’m walking down the path of becoming someone who brainwashes people,” Ludger finished.

Luna’s head snapped toward him.

“I wouldn’t think that,” she said—almost at the same time he finished speaking, just a beat too late to stop it from landing the way he meant it.

Viola looked between them, eyebrows raised.

Ludger’s mouth twitched faintly. “You hesitated.”

Luna’s expression tightened. “I didn’t.”

“You did,” Viola said immediately, far too pleased with herself.

Luna sighed, long and controlled. “I didn’t hesitate. I was processing.”

“That’s what hesitation is,” Viola shot back.

Ludger ignored them both and kept his tone level.

“Rage Flow is dangerous,” he said. “It’s not just more power. It changes decision-making. It changes risk tolerance. It changes how long you can keep thinking clearly.”

He tapped his forearm guard once. “If you want it, learn it the normal way. Earn the control.”

Viola’s lips pressed together, annoyed, but she didn’t argue further.

Because even she could admit one thing:

Watching Ludger struggle to keep his mind intact while using Rage Flow underwater had been enough of a warning.

Viola stared down into the dark water beyond their shelter, jaw tight.

“I’m not coming all this way just to watch you fight the guardian,” she said. “I want to help.”

Ludger looked at her for a long moment, then asked quietly, “Would you actually feel satisfied fighting it with my assistance?”

Viola blinked, surprised by the question. He wasn’t challenging her ability. He was challenging her reason. She exhaled and met his gaze.

“Our priority is finding Lucius,” she said. “Not my pride. Not my need to prove myself.”

Her voice hardened slightly.

“If you need to carry me through a guardian to get him back, then do it. I don’t care how it looks.”

Ludger studied her another second, then nodded once.

“Good,” he said.

Luna’s eyes flicked between them, then she adjusted her grip on her knives.

“Then we stop pretending this is training,” Luna murmured. “And we treat it like retrieval.”

Ludger stood.

“All right,” he said.

The water outside shifted, distant currents whispering through the drowned corridors.

The final chamber waited.

When the rest was done, when their breathing had steadied, their muscles stopped trembling, and Ludger had checked the rune concealment one last time, they moved.

The dry pocket collapsed behind them as Ludger released the earth construct, letting water reclaim the space without leaving anything unnatural behind. They slipped back beneath the surface and advanced in a tight formation, following the corridor’s slow bend as it widened and the pressure in the mana grew heavier, like the labyrinth itself was leaning closer to listen.

The entrance came without warning.

The hallway opened into a tall arch carved from black stone, its edges rounded by age and water. Rune-like markings crawled along the frame in spiraling patterns, neither fully Imperial nor Velis, more like an older script etched by hands that had never heard the Empire’s language. Some of the grooves still held faint mana residue, pulsing weakly as if the stone remembered being used.

Beyond the arch, the corridor dropped away.

Not into another flooded passage. Into a cavern. A final chamber. Even underwater, it was massive.

The ceiling rose so high that it disappeared into dimness, two hundred meters at least, perhaps more. The water filled only a fraction of it, reaching about a quarter of the height before giving way to a vast, open air space above. That meant the chamber wasn’t fully drowned like the rest of the third section; it was a submerged basin inside a cathedral-sized ruin, with a broad pocket of air suspended overhead.

The scale made Viola’s stomach tighten.

It looked like the skeletal remains of an ancient indigenous civilization, pillars fractured and half-buried, staircases leading nowhere, collapsed platforms suspended in the water like broken bridges. Stone statues, worn smooth by time, stood in scattered formation, faces indistinct, bodies carved in rigid poses that suggested worship or warning. The walls were covered in the same rune-like markings, spirals and angular lines interwoven with patterns that resembled waves and veins.

Nothing here felt like a mere dungeon room.

It felt like a sanctuary that had been violated and repurposed.

The water was clearer than in the corridors, but darker, so deep that it swallowed light after a few meters. Currents moved slowly through the chamber, circling around the central structure like a patient heartbeat. Ludger stopped just inside the arch and hovered, Seismic Sense extending into the open space.

Viola and Luna held position behind him, staring up at the impossible height of the ceiling and the drowned ruins below it.

Whatever guarded this place didn’t need narrow corridors or choke points.

It had room. Enough room to make a party feel small. Enough room to make even a strong delver feel like prey.

The first sign of the guardian wasn’t movement.

It was pressure.

A subtle change in how the water flowed, like the chamber had inhaled. The slow currents that circled the ruins tightened, converging toward the far end of the cavern where the darkness deepened into something almost solid.

Ludger’s Seismic Sense brushed against something massive.

Something rooted.

Something that didn’t feel like stone even though it stood still.

At the end of the chamber, half-shrouded by distance and wavering light, there was what looked like a statue.

A towering figure rising from a broken platform, its silhouette rigid and ancient, as if it had been carved to watch over the drowned sanctuary. For a moment, it was easy to believe it was part of the ruins, another relic worn down by centuries of water and neglect.

Then the “statue” moved.

Just a fraction. A head turning. A shift in weight. The runic lines along its body flared faintly, like veins igniting under skin… And the illusion shattered.

It wasn’t a statue. It was a runic golem. A guardian.

It pushed off from the far platform with a controlled burst, gliding forward through the water as if it belonged here more than anything alive did. As it approached, details resolved out of the darkness, and Viola’s breath caught.

This model was built for war. It had six arms.

Two of them were mounted high and wide, each holding a thick shield shaped like a slanted slab of black alloy and stone. The shields weren’t passive barriers, they were covered in layered rune patterns that pulsed in synchronized waves, suggesting they could redirect force, absorb mana, or even project fields.

Below those, another pair of arms carried spears, longer and heavier than any she’d seen so far. The shafts were reinforced with spiral inscriptions that ran the entire length, and the spearheads were not simple points but multi-edged drills designed to bite, twist, and tear.

And the last two arms… Those were the worst.

They ended in cannon-like assemblies built directly into the forearms, wide-barreled and ribbed with cooling grooves. Runes glowed along the inner rings of each barrel as compressed mana gathered, condensing into visible spheres before tightening into lethal projectiles. They weren’t just ranged weapons.

They were artillery.

The golem’s torso was broad and plated, its core buried deep behind overlapping layers that shifted slightly as it moved, always keeping the most protected angles toward the intruders. Fins and stabilizer ridges lined its back and hips, etched with propulsion arrays that gave it unnatural control in the water. Every motion looked planned, measured, optimized, as if it had fought this battle a thousand times in simulations.

Its eyes. two narrow slits of pale light, locked onto Ludger.

The water around the guardian vibrated as its cannons charged.

And in that instant, the chamber didn’t feel vast anymore.

It felt like an arena.

And the guardian had just declared that only one side was allowed to leave it alive.

Ludger didn’t waste a second.

The moment the guardian’s cannons began to charge, he raised both hands and wrote in the air, fast, sharp strokes that carved runes into existence as if the water itself were his ink. The symbols were dense, aggressive, and heavy in a way that made the chamber feel smaller just by existing in it.

Rage Flow.

Not the slow, learned technique of the Northerners.

A forced ignition, compressed into a rune.

Ludger flicked his wrists.

Two runes shot forward like darting fish and struck Viola and Luna in the chest. They sank in.

Viola’s breath hitched. Luna’s eyes narrowed instantly, body reacting before her mind finished understanding what had happened. A pulse of energy spread through them, hot, violent, and intoxicating. It didn’t feel like mana moving through channels.

It felt like a second heartbeat slamming into place.

Their bodies entered the berserker state.

They weren’t suddenly hulking. Viola was still lean and athletic, Luna still compact and efficient. But their skin reddened, heat blooming beneath it as muscles tightened under the surface. Veins rose along forearms and necks. Jaws clenched as the world sharpened into a narrower, harsher focus.

The urge to move. to act, became overwhelming.

And yet they didn’t lose themselves.

Not completely.

Both of them forced enough control to turn and look back at Ludger.

He stood with his right hand open.

Five fingers extended.

Viola understood immediately.

Five minutes.

Luna’s eyes narrowed. She didn’t like it, but she understood it too.

It would last five minutes. That was all he could safely give them. That was all he was willing to risk. It was their only chance.

Ludger didn’t explain. He didn’t waste breath on reassurance. He was already turning inward, mind shifting away from planning and toward execution. The guardian was huge, armored, and designed to control space.

So Ludger would control something bigger.

He raised both arms.

And the chamber answered.

The water around them began to move.

Not as currents. Not as waves.

As obedience.

Pressure shifted. The floating debris reversed direction. The entire flooded quarter of the final chamber trembled as if a giant had placed its hands around it. Spiral patterns formed in the water, tightening and deepening, responding to Ludger’s mana and intent.

Above, the air pocket shivered.

Below, the ruins vanished behind rising turbulence.

And then, slowly, terrifyingly, every drop of water in the chamber began to align with him.

Like the ocean had decided to take his side.

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