Ludger kept his strokes steady and efficient, conserving strength. He could feel the cores in his pouch bumping against his side. He had what he came for… And he still had a lot of work ahead of him.

Getting this out of the labyrinth was only step one. Keeping it secret was step two. Explaining it to Aronia without letting half the world sniff the news was step three.

Ludger swam forward, pulling the cart like a stubborn anchor, while Viola and Luna flanked him near the surface, silent, ready, and already thinking about the next fight.

When they finally pushed through the last stretch and breached the exit, the world greeted them with sunrise.

The sky over the coast was pale gold, the kind of soft light that made everything look calmer than it had any right to be. Waves hissed against the rocks in the distance. Salt filled the air. The Ironhand camp was waking up, fires being rekindled, people stretching sore limbs, shouted orders drifting between tents and stacked crates.

A normal morning.

Right up until three soaked figures stepped out of the labyrinth entrance like they’d crawled out of a nightmare and decided to wear it casually… And right up until Ludger dragged a massive cart behind him.

Stone wheels. Stone frame. A sealed earth container large enough to make any reasonable person ask what in the abyss is that? It scraped and rumbled over the ground, leaving wet grit and faint rune-glow in its wake.

Ironhand workers froze mid-motion.

A man holding a coil of rope forgot how hands worked. Someone with a hammer just… stopped. A pair of guards stared like they were watching a funeral procession led by an accountant.

Ludger didn’t slow. He didn’t even look guilty.

He glanced at the nearest cluster of stunned syndicate members and lifted his chin slightly, polite as a clerk.

“Have a nice day of work,” he said.

Viola, walking beside him with water still dripping from her hair, nodded at them like she’d just passed neighbors on a morning stroll.

Luna did the same, small, precise, courteous. As if none of this was weird. As if dragging an absurd stone cart out of a labyrinth at dawn was a normal part of summer.

For a heartbeat, the Ironhand camp remained silent, caught between confusion and the instinct to pretend they hadn’t seen anything that would require paperwork.

Then one of them finally found his voice.

“Wh—”

But Ludger was already past him.

The three of them kept moving, boots hitting the packed earth with steady purpose, the cart grinding behind like a stubborn secret. They didn’t answer questions. They didn’t stop. They didn’t even glance back.

Before long, they were on the stone bridge that connected the archipelago to the continent, mist hanging low over the drop, sunrise painting the edges gold.

And then they were gone, disappearing into the morning as if the labyrinth hadn’t just spat them out with a prize big enough to start a war.

Viola rode the cart like it was a throne she didn’t want to admit she’d claimed.

She sat on top of the sealed container, legs dangling off the side, boots swaying slightly with every heavy grind of stone wheels across the bridge. Luna sat a little behind her, steady and silent, posture relaxed in the way only dangerous people could manage.

Below them, Ludger pulled.

One hand hooked under the cart’s front ridge, the other free in case he needed to reshape the wheels or stop the whole thing from tipping. His pace was consistent, too consistent, like he’d already turned this into a task and refused to let feelings get a vote.

The stone bridge stretched ahead, damp from ocean spray, leading back to the continent and all the problems they’d temporarily outrun.

Viola watched his back for a while, then finally spoke.

“So… what now?”

Ludger didn’t look up. “I prepare for the next expedition.”

Viola blinked. “That’s it?”

“That’s all,” he said, as if the question had been silly.

She leaned forward slightly, hair drying in the wind. “And Lucius? And the Ironhand syndicate? And the fact we just walked out of their labyrinth dragging a suspicious stone tank like it’s a morning errand?”

Ludger’s grip tightened for a moment, then relaxed.

“You can go talk with Rathen,” he said. “Tell him whatever you want about what you found. About Lucius. Just don’t say anything that will cause me problems.”

Viola’s eyes narrowed. “And you?”

“I’m busy.”

“Busy doing what?” she snapped, then immediately regretted the edge in her voice.

Ludger finally glanced up at her, calm, flat, and completely unbothered by her tone.

“Making sure we don’t die in the spider labyrinth,” he said. “Making sure Aronia can analyze this water before someone else sticks their hands in it. Making sure our next run doesn’t turn into a rescue mission.”

He looked forward again and kept pulling.

“I don’t have more time to waste with that kind of business,” he added, voice dry. “Politics. Explanations. Noble feelings.”

Viola’s jaw tightened. “Lucius isn’t just ‘noble feelings.’ He’s a viscount. He’s—”

“He’s alive,” Ludger cut in. “That’s the important part. Everything else can be managed by people who enjoy talking.”

Viola stared at him, equal parts furious and exhausted, then threw her hands up.

“You’re the same as ever.”

Ludger didn’t deny it.

He just kept walking, dragging the cart across the bridge, while the sun climbed higher behind them and the continent waited with all the things Ludger considered distractions, right up until they became emergencies.

Luna spoke without warning, because she didn’t do “soft.”

She was still sitting behind Viola on the container, hands folded, eyes scanning the bridge approach and the coastline beyond like she expected an arrow to try its luck.

“It’s clear now,” she said quietly.

Viola glanced back. “What is?”

Luna’s tone didn’t change. “Lucius will lose his position.”

The words hit like a stone dropped into still water.

Viola’s posture stiffened. Ludger didn’t stop pulling, but the cart’s grind sounded louder for a moment, like the bridge itself reacted.

Luna continued, precise and merciless. “It will take months for him to find anything useful on the other side. If he stays. If he studies.” Her eyes flicked toward the distant line of the port, then to the tents shrinking behind them. “Months he doesn’t have.”

Viola’s mouth opened, then closed. Her throat worked once. “He can come back. We can—”

“Not in time,” Luna cut in. Not harshly. Just… factual. “The administration on his lands was already collapsing. His father is dead. His household is weak. The court doesn’t wait for a man’s personal quest to finish.”

Silence stretched. Then Luna delivered the blade.

“So the new Regent of the Empire will have the chance to give the coast to anyone he wants,” she said. “Legally. Quietly. With paperwork.”

The bridge suddenly felt narrower. Viola’s hands clenched on the edge of the container. Her. eyes went distant, running through political consequences she hated thinking about.

Ludger’s steps slowed half a beat. Then his jaw tightened so hard it was almost visible. The atmosphere went tense enough to snap.

“…So that’s it,” Ludger said. His voice stayed low, but the calm was gone. “That’s the play.”

Viola looked down at him. “Ludger…”

“He’s doing exactly what our enemies want,” Ludger snarled, and the word sounded wrong coming from him. Too raw. Too sharp. “He disappears. He destabilizes his own territory. He hands the coast to the Regent on a silver tray and calls it ‘research.’”

His fingers dug into the stone ridge until the earth creaked under the pressure. A faint tremor ran through the cart, an involuntary flare of control, his mana spiking like a warning.

“The moron can see it,” Ludger continued, voice tight. “Anyone with half a brain can see it.”

Viola flinched. “Don’t call him…”

“But he doesn’t care,” Ludger finished over her, teeth bared in a grim line. “That’s the part that makes me want to bury him.”

He kept pulling, but now the motion had force behind it, anger turned into momentum.

Luna didn’t react. She never did. She’d said her piece and let it land where it landed.

Viola swallowed, eyes hard. “He’s not trying to betray us.”

“I know,” Ludger said. “That’s what makes it worse.”

He stared forward at the continent ahead, at the sunlight creeping over stone and sea, and his expression settled into something colder than anger.

“Playing the enemy’s script without meaning to,” he muttered. “That’s how people get killed.”

And for the first time since they’d left the other side, it wasn’t monsters or golems or labyrinth rules that felt like the real threat.

It was politics. And Lucius walking straight into it with his eyes open.

Ludger kept walking, but his mind was already elsewhere, running scenarios the way it always did when the world tried to corner him. If Lucius lost the coast, the deal didn’t just change. It would be rewritten.

The Ironhand syndicate’s contract over the runic golems labyrinth, “technically theirs,” as Viola had put it, was only stable because Lucius still existed as a legal anchor. A weak anchor, but an anchor.

Remove him, and the Regent could step in with a neat smile and an official seal and say:

New administration. New terms. Empire’s cut increases. Syndicate complies, or the Empire finds a different syndicate.

Maybe they’d call it “standardization.” Maybe “resource security.” Maybe “protecting the coast.”

Whatever words they used, the result was the same. They’d force Ironhand to renegotiate the mana core split.

And once the Empire started asking for a bigger cut, everyone else’s share shrank. Lionsguard included. Torvares included. The people actually bleeding in the labyrinth included.

Ludger’s blood boiled. It wasn’t certain. Nothing was. The world loved throwing curveballs just to prove it could… But it was obvious.

Obviously in the way a falling rock was obvious, you didn’t need prophecy to see where it was going. You just needed eyes and experience.

And as if that wasn’t enough, there was another thorn lodged under his skin.

They had hidden an heir of the late Emperor in the guild. Because of Torvares.

A political asset so radioactive that just existing in the same room as it made people start plotting in their sleep. The kind of secret that turned allies into liabilities and enemies into eager volunteers.

Ludger exhaled through his nose, slow, controlled. His grip on the cart tightened until the stone groaned. He wanted to punch something. Not metaphorically.

He wanted to put his fist through a wall, through a tree, through the face of the invisible man writing these scripts and handing them out like pamphlets.

He could already feel the stress coiling in his shoulders, that familiar pressure that begged for motion, violence, release, anything but thinking.

Ludger swallowed it down anyway. Because punching things didn’t fix politics. It just made you feel better right before the next problem arrived.

Still…

He glanced at the horizon, jaw tight, eyes flat.

When we get back, he promised himself, I’m finding something that deserves it.

And if nothing deserved it?

He’d build a target out of stone and beat it until his hands stopped shaking.

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