The labyrinth’s entrance didn’t look like an entrance anymore.

From this side, it was a scar in reality, a wall of dense water hanging in the air where stone and corridors should’ve been, rippling faintly as if it was pretending to be natural. The ruins and the forest stopped at it like the world had drawn a line and refused to explain why.

Viola slowed as they approached, eyes fixed on the shimmering barrier. “Do you think the guardian will be waiting for us?”

Ludger didn’t slow. He tightened his grip on the cart’s front ridge and dragged it to a stop a few steps from the wall.

“There’s only one way to find out,” he said.

Viola frowned. “That’s your answer to everything.”

He stepped forward and raised a hand. Mana gathered, compressed, controlled. Then he fired.

Bolt after bolt hammered into the barrier, not with heat but with raw impact. The wall shuddered and fought to seal, but Ludger didn’t give it time. He kept punching the same spot, rhythm tight and brutal, until the surface finally tore open enough to show what was on the other side.

A glimpse of the boss chamber.

Stone. Ruined floor. The faint outline of the massive runic guardian slumped where it had fallen.

Ludger didn’t step through. Not yet.

He leaned in and pressed his head against the watery edge like someone listening at a door, then extended his senses through the gap.

The water chilled his hair. Mana slid across his skin. He ignored it and looked, not with eyes, but with the silent map Seismic Sense painted inside his skull.

Stillness. No movement. No heavy shift of six arms reassembling. No sudden pressure changes from a cannon priming. He pulled back.

“The guardian’s still down,” he said.

Viola exhaled, the tension leaving her shoulders in one clean release. “Thank—”

“However,” Ludger added immediately.

Viola froze. “However, what?”

Ludger angled his head, eyes narrowing as he stared through the hole again.

“It’s not as destroyed as it was before.”

Viola’s relief snapped into suspicion. “How?”

Ludger shrugged, and for once it wasn’t smug. It was genuine irritation.

“No idea.”

He kept his gaze on the fallen construct. The cracks in its body were still there, the fractured plates still split, but the damage looked… less. Like someone had stitched a broken bone overnight. Like the labyrinth had decided that “dead” was negotiable as long as enough time passed.

Viola’s jaw tightened. “So it heals.”

“Apparently,” Ludger said. “Or it repairs. Or it’s lying.”

Viola swallowed hard. “That’s reassuring.”

Ludger glanced at him. “It’s not.”

Then he stepped closer to the breach again, fingers flexing as if he was already calculating how many bolts he’d need to force the gap wider.

“Don’t relax,” he said to all of them. “If it’s repairing itself, then we’re on a clock. And I don’t like clocks I didn’t build.”

Ludger wasn’t about to drag a miracle lake’s worth of mana-water into a boss chamber full of labyrinth water and pretend that nothing could go wrong.

Then he turned back to the wall.

He raised his hand and fired again, mana bolts pounding the same spot until the water barrier tore open with that stubborn, elastic resistance. The gap widened just enough to see the boss chamber clearly. The guardian still lay slumped where they’d left it, cracked and ugly, but undeniably less ruined than before.

Ludger’s eyes narrowed. Clock. He didn’t waste another second.

“Viola. Luna.” He jerked his chin toward the breach. “Go.”

Viola frowned. “And you?”

“After.” Ludger’s voice stayed calm, like this was routine. “Swim close to the surface. Don’t go deep.”

Luna’s head tilted slightly, questioning without words.

Ludger answered anyway. “If something in the water grabs, it grabs down low. And if golems come, you need room to move. Surface gives you options.”

Viola glanced past the breach, toward the long flooded stretch they’d fought through before. “The guardian—”

“Out,” Ludger said. “Still down. Don’t poke it.”

Viola’s mouth tightened. She didn’t like taking orders. She liked even less that the orders were sensible.

“And don’t assume the path is clear,” Ludger added. “The guardian might be out, but the other runic golems will probably be awake and working. They’ll block the route to the exit if they get the chance.”

Viola rolled her shoulders once, settling into readiness. “So we fight our way back.”

“Or you move fast enough that you don’t have to.” Ludger pointed at the breach. “Go now.”

Luna slipped through first, smooth and quiet, immediately flattening to the surface of the water like a shadow that had learned to swim. Viola followed with less grace and more aggression, but she kept close to the top like he’d said.

They vanished into the flooded corridor beyond, ripples fading.

Ludger stepped through the breach just far enough to enter the boss chamber, then angled his Seismic Sense toward the rubble pile where he’d left the cores earlier.

“I’m not leaving those behind,”

Then he turned away, water splashing as he crossed the chamber toward the fallen giant, intent on reclaiming every core he’d earned, before the labyrinth decided to finish repairing what he’d broken, and before Viola and Luna had to spend their strength fighting alone.

Ludger didn’t bother with elegance.

He reshaped the cart’s underside, carving shallow cavities along its frame, then cracked the stone in precise spots and let pockets of air form inside, sealed chambers, not leaks. The moment he did, the cart’s weight shifted. The wheels didn’t matter anymore.

He pushed it into the boss chamber water.

The stone platform dipped, groaned, and then, slowly, began to float, buoyed by the trapped air like a crude ship. The heavy container rode on its back, sealed and stubborn, its runes holding tight. Good enough.

Ludger guided it with small nudges of earth magic, keeping it from spinning, keeping it close to the surface. He didn’t like anything drifting in unknown water, but he liked sinking even less.

Once it was stable, he turned toward the fallen guardian. The thing still looked dead.

Six arms sprawled across cracked stone like broken scaffolding. Plates of rune-metal split and misaligned. One cannon arm warped and vent-scarred. It should’ve been inert. It had been inert.

Ludger approached anyway like it was waiting to bite him.

He stopped a few steps away and let Seismic Sense wash over it. Not just the ground, he focused on the body itself, on its density, its joints, its core cavities.

No sudden movement. No pressure spike. He crouched and reached toward the fissure in its torso where he’d ripped cores out earlier. His fingers were a breath away from the shattered housing when he froze. Because he felt it. Not with sight. Not with hearing. With the earth.

Metal shifting slow, quiet, deliberate. Internal braces drawing tight. Plates creeping closer together like bone knitting after a break. Not fast enough to be “revival,” but steady enough to be terrifying if you gave it time.

Repair.

The guardian was repairing itself. Ludger pulled his hand back and stared, jaw tightening.

“…So you are reparing,” he muttered.

He watched the cracked seams for another second. A tiny sliver of rune-metal slid into place with an almost apologetic scrape, guided by forces that didn’t care whether the construct was “dead” or not.

Was that the labyrinth doing it?

Probably.

The whole place had shown that it hated damage, hated permanent change. Auto-repair was in its nature.

But the pattern of the metal movement didn’t feel purely external. It wasn’t like stone filling a hole. It was structured. Intentional. Like the guardian itself had a built-in maintenance lattice, a self-repair feature that kicked in the moment it had enough ambient mana and time to work with.

“Both,” Ludger decided quietly. “Of course it’s both.”

He exhaled once, then moved again, faster this time. No hesitation now.

If the thing was repairing, then every second mattered.

He reached in and pulled the stored mana cores out of the rubble where he’d left them, dense, cold weights that thrummed faintly in his grip. He checked each one by feel, then tucked them into a rune-sealed pouch he’d shaped from layered cloth and hardened earth, ugly, but functional.

His eyes flicked back to the guardian’s chest. The cracks were still there. But they were… smaller. Ludger’s expression darkened.

“If you were outside this place, you probably wouldn’t repair at all.”

No ambient labyrinth mana. No system support. No reality rules bending in your favor.

Which meant the guardian’s repair wasn’t just a neat trait. It was a tether. It belonged here.

And if he ever wanted to keep it dead… He’d have to stop thinking like a fighter and start thinking like a saboteur. 

By the time Ludger reached the corridor, Viola and Luna were already working.

He found them in the flooded stretch where the ceiling dipped low and the air pocket thinned, Viola half-submerged, shoulders tense, eyes locked forward. Luna was almost invisible against the waterline, only the faint ripple around her giving her away.

A runic golem floated nearby in pieces.

Not politely disassembled. Shattered, torso cracked, limbs broken, core housing split open like a ribcage.

Viola wiped water from her face and glanced at Ludger. “You’re late.”

“I was busy,” Ludger said, and didn’t bother adding stealing your future supplies.

Another golem surged from the dark, trying to come in low and fast the way they’d learned the hard way, aim for legs, drag down, drown. Viola met it head-on, driving forward with a short, brutal burst of Overdrive that sent a shock through the water. Luna slipped under, blade flashing once at a joint, and the construct’s movement stuttered.

Ludger didn’t waste mana showing off. One clean disruption bolt hit the golem’s chest seam. The rune lattice inside hiccupped.

Viola’s follow-up strike caved the torso in with a crack that echoed through the water like a snapped mast. The golem came apart in slow motion, fragments sinking and spinning, the core popping loose and drifting down like a dying lantern.

Viola caught it before it disappeared.

She didn’t even smile.

They’d earned enough confidence for that now, even in the third section, even in the water, even with the labyrinth trying to grind them down by inches. It wasn’t arrogance anymore. It was repetition. It was competence becoming normal.

So no, it wasn’t a surprise. Ludger nodded once, satisfied, and then turned back toward the floating cart and container.

“Alright,” he said. “We move.”

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