Chapter 732
By the time they reached the end of the first section, the labyrinth had stopped pretending it was just damp stone and bad air.
The corridor sloped downward into a throat of darker rock, and everything about it screamed reptilian territory, not metaphorically, not aesthetically. Literally.
The grooves in the walls grew deeper and more regular, like scale patterns carved by claws instead of tools. The moisture wasn’t just dripping anymore; it clung in a slick film that made every step sound too loud. The smell changed too, less rot, more musk, more sharp venom-bite, like something had been living here long enough for the stone itself to absorb it.
The air got warmer. Not “comfortable warm.” The suffocating warmth of a nest.
Several of the newer members swallowed as they stared down the incline. The bravado they’d forced on the surface was thinning now, replaced by the quiet, practical fear that came from realizing the labyrinth didn’t care what you called yourself.
Harold halted at the top of the slope and looked back at the group. His eyes were bright with that veteran’s mix of caution and opportunity.
“We haven’t faced the guardian yet,” he said.
A few recruits shifted. They’d heard stories. Everyone had. The guardian of the first section wasn’t the strongest thing in the labyrinth, but it was the threshold, proof that you either belonged here or you were food.
Harold’s gaze slid to Ludger.
“And since you’re around,” Harold continued, voice gaining a deliberate edge, “this is a good opportunity.”
Ludger’s expression stayed flat. He didn’t ask what kind. He already knew Harold well enough to predict the shape of the stupidity before it landed.
Harold’s mouth twisted into a grin anyway.
“Even better,” he said, loud enough that the recruits could hear every word, “how about you show the new members how you can solo the guardian.”
The effect was immediate. A ripple of excitement ran through the recruits like someone had dropped a spark into dry straw. Eyes widened. Shoulders straightened. A few leaned forward as if they didn’t want to miss a single movement.
It was rare. Not just to see a guardian fight, those happened.
To see someone solo one while veterans watched? That was the kind of thing people talked about for months. The kind of thing that turned into exaggerated tavern stories by the second retelling.
Selene’s smile sharpened. Aleia watched without expression, but her eyes were attentive. Cor’s face stayed gruff, though his posture suggested he was already evaluating whether this was “teaching” or “showboating.”
Ludger looked at Harold. Then he looked at the recruits, wide-eyed, hungry, expecting a spectacle. He exhaled once through his nose.
“I don’t want to show off,” Ludger said.
The excitement faltered. Confusion replaced it, like they couldn’t process the idea of someone refusing free admiration.
Harold lifted an eyebrow. “It’s not showing off. It’s education.”
“It becomes showing off the moment you call it a demonstration,” Ludger replied, tone dry.
Selene laughed under her breath. “He’s allergic to fun.”
Ludger didn’t look at her. “I’m allergic to wasting time.”
Harold’s grin didn’t fade. If anything, it widened, because Harold had that specific kind of stubborn that treated refusals like obstacles to push through.
“You don’t want to show off,” Harold repeated. “Fine.”
He gestured toward the slope, toward the deeper stone, toward the place where the first section ended and the labyrinth became something more serious.
“Then don’t show off,” he said. “Just win.”
The recruits’ eyes lit up again. Ludger stared at Harold for a beat. He could feel the trap being set. Not in the labyrinth. In expectations. If he did it, he’d feed the myth. If he didn’t, he’d disappoint a room full of people who were looking for courage they could borrow.
Either way, it would change how they saw him. He didn’t like that. He liked being underestimated. Ludger crossed his arms, gaze drifting down the slope where the warm air rose like a breath.
“…We’ll see,” he said finally.
Not yes. Not no. Just a promise that he would decide based on what waited below, not based on applause. Cor grunted, satisfied with the lack of theatrical certainty. Aleia adjusted her grip on her bow.
Selene’s smile didn’t leave, because even a reluctant Ludger was still Ludger, and watching him do anything in a labyrinth was never boring. And the recruits? They held their breath like they were about to watch a storm choose a direction.
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They crossed into the second section the way you crossed a border in hostile territory, quietly, and with the feeling that the land itself wanted you dead.
The slope widened into a long, descending corridor where the rock looked less like stone and more like old, scaled hide turned to mineral. The grooves weren’t random here. They were patterned, layered, repeating, like the walls had been scraped by generations of claws moving in the same paths.
The air changed again.
Warmer. Thicker. Humid enough that breath felt heavy in the lungs. A faint mist clung low to the ground, hugging the uneven floor and pooling in shallow depressions. The water wasn’t just in puddles now, it ran in thin sheets across the stone, making everything slick and unpredictable.
And the sound…
The second section carried noise differently. Echoes didn’t bounce clean. They warped, swallowed by wet stone and narrow side tunnels. It was the kind of acoustics that made it hard to judge distance. perfect for ambushes.
Perfect for reptilians.
Harold raised a fist and signaled the recruits to tighten formation. Cor muttered a short phrase and the faint outline of a mana ward shimmered around the group like a barely-visible skin, nothing flashy, just enough to blunt sudden venom spray or a glancing hit.
This time, the veterans didn’t hang back. They joined Ludger’s “little hunt” whether he wanted them to or not.
Selene drifted to the front-left, loose and ready. Aleia took a sightline position with her bow already half drawn. Cor moved with them, staff in one hand, the other hand free, ready for spells without looking like he was doing anything at all.
Ludger didn’t complain. He only adjusted his own pace, matching Harold’s, using Seismic Sense to read the floor ahead like a map written in pressure and mass.
And the labyrinth responded immediately. Wrong shapes. Clusters of bodies pressed into side pockets. Something waiting in an elevated shelf of rock, clinging like a lizard to a wall.
A thin corridor branching off at a sharp angle, too clean, too perfect, like it was designed for things that moved on four limbs. Ludger lifted a hand. Harold halted instantly.
“Ambush,” Ludger said quietly.
The recruits’ eyes widened. Hands tightened around knives. Then the water ahead rippled. Reptilians erupted from the mist like thrown blades.
Not the lone crocodilian they’d killed earlier, these were smaller, faster, built like tunnel wolves with scales. They came in a cluster, low to the ground, bodies slick with wet stone sheen. Their eyes were bright and mean, pupils thin as needles. One of them had frills along its neck flared wide, pale membranes twitching as it hissed, a warning, or a signal.
Cor moved first. He didn’t raise his staff. He didn’t chant. He simply lifted his free hand and flicked his fingers like he was throwing pebbles.
Mana arrows formed in the air, thin, hard-edged shapes of condensed force, then shot forward with silent speed.
They pierced the lead reptilians cleanly through the skull and chest, punching straight through scale and flesh like the creatures weren’t armored at all. Two bodies dropped mid-lunge, sliding across wet stone in ugly, twitching heaps.
Aleia’s bowstring sang. Real arrows followed, feathered shafts snapping into throats and eye sockets with ruthless precision. No wasted shots. No panic firing. Every release was a decision with a body attached to it.
Harold stepped into the remaining wave like a wall made of angry steel. Sword in his right hand, shield in his left.
The first reptilian slammed into his shield and bounced off with a wet crack, its claws screeching uselessly. Harold’s sword came down in a chopping arc that split the creature’s skull ridge, then he slammed his shield forward again, brutal, efficient, driving another reptilian back into the stone hard enough that it stopped moving.
Selene was… Selene. She didn’t bother with formation. She punched everything that moved.
A reptilian lunged at her leg, she pivoted and drove her fist down like a hammer, crushing its head into the floor with a single impact. Another came from the side, she snapped a palm strike into its jaw hinge, dislocating it and ripping the head sideways in one grotesque motion. Her grin never left, bright and delighted like she was doing morning exercise.
Ludger watched it all with a strange calm. Efficient kills. Clear roles. Veterans flowing like they’d rehearsed it.
He kept his bow ready, but he didn’t need to shoot. Not yet. Seismic Sense fed him positions, and he used it to call out angles instead, small corrections that kept recruits from stepping into a second trap pocket.
As the last reptilian twitched itself into stillness, Ludger’s eyes lingered on Harold. Sword and shield. Not the warhammer Harold had carried when Ludger first saw him, when he’d looked more like a walking siege engine than an adventurer.
Ludger wondered when the change had happened. And then the answer slid into place on its own. Harold had come to the second branch of Lionsguard.
Sword and shield looked disciplined. Sword and shield looked commanding. A warhammer made you look like a crazy warrior who solved every problem by making it flatter.
Ludger’s mouth twitched faintly. So Harold had evolved. Not away from brutality, just into a form that could be followed without fear.
The second section stretched ahead, mist thickening, walls narrowing again into scale-grooved stone. Side tunnels branched like veins, each one a potential mouth full of teeth.
This wasn’t a place you cleared once and called safe. This was a place you survived by refusing to relax. Harold wiped reptilian blood from his sword edge against a scrap of cloth and glanced back.
“Keep moving,” he ordered.
Selene cracked her knuckles happily. Aleia nocked another arrow without even looking. Cor’s eyes stayed cold. Ludger shifted his grip on the bow and followed, thoughts already mapping the next ambush before the labyrinth could even try to hide it.
Ludger’s Seismic Sense stayed stretched ahead of the group, thin, patient threads of awareness pressing into the floor, into the walls, into the shallow water sheets that hid more than they showed. Every few steps he adjusted their line without announcing it, guiding them around bad angles and dead pockets the way a shepherd guided a herd away from cliffs.
Harold noticed. After the last ambush, Harold fell into step beside Ludger and spoke without looking at him, voice pitched low so the recruits behind wouldn’t get distracted.
“You should teach the others how you’re finding them,” Harold said.
Ludger glanced sideways. “Seismic Sense?”
Harold nodded once. “Whatever it is. The principle. The method.”
Cor, walking a step behind, snorted.
“My Mana Sense can’t pinpoint clusters like that,” Cor admitted, tone rough. “Not in this section. Too much mana in the air. Too much… noise.”
He tapped his staff against the ground once, as if annoyed at the labyrinth for existing improperly.