After the water stunt, Ludger decided to focus on his goal and he stopped paying attention.
Not out of cruelty. Out of habit.
Up on the narrowing tip of the earth pillar, he let their muffled bickering fade into background noise and turned his gaze outward. Trees. Endless trees.
A sea of dark green that rolled in every direction, swallowing the light and breaking it into shards between branches. From this height it looked almost uniform, until he focused.
Then the pattern showed.
Ruins, scattered like broken teeth. Not one or two. Dozens. Stone lines half-buried under roots. Rectangular shadows where walls used to be. A collapsed arch in the far distance that was too straight to be natural. And further out, barely visible through the haze, a spine of something larger, fragments of structures that had once been connected to the city Luna found.
Or the city had once been connected to them . Same difference. The point was scale.
This wasn’t a lone settlement that got unlucky. This was an entire region that had been built over, built through, and then abandoned so thoroughly that the forest had claimed the victory without even needing to fight for it.
Ludger narrowed his eyes and tried to spot a clean line on the horizon. Ocean. Coast. A change in air. Anything. Nothing. Just layers of treetops and distant silhouettes. He clicked his tongue, then shifted his weight. The pillar responded with a low, ugly groan.
It wasn’t stable anymore. He’d raised it fast, with speed prioritized over stability, and now the structure was paying the price. Fine cracks ran down the sides. The upper section had started to crumble under his weight, grains of dirt and fragments of stone sliding off like sand from a blade.
He could push it higher. Reinforce. Add a spine. Anchor it deeper.
Or he could do what he could do now, cheat.
He had ways to mimic flight. Wind Overdrive, short bursts of wind chained together until it looked like flying to anyone who didn’t know better. It wasn’t graceful and it wasn’t cheap, but it worked.
He just didn’t need it. Not yet.
He’d already confirmed the important part: they weren’t near the coast, and the ruins weren’t isolated. If there was an ocean, it wasn’t close enough to matter in the next hour. And if there were people real people, he’d rather find them by signs, not by burning mana to play bird.
Ludger stepped down and let the pillar continue its slow collapse behind him like a discarded tool. He landed near the others without a sound, boots touching cracked stone as if gravity had signed a contract with him.
His eyes swept the ground once, then Lucius, then the treeline.
“Alright,” he said, voice flat. “We move. The longer we stand here, the more this place gets to decide what happens next.”
Ludger looked at Viola, then at Lucius, and made a decision the same way he made most of them.
“You two get half a day,” he said.
Viola blinked. “Half a day?”
Lucius lifted his head a fraction, wary. Like he expected the offer to have teeth hidden under it.
“It’s generous,” Ludger added, because apparently he needed to spell it out. “We’re not in the guild hall. We’re in a dead city on the wrong side of a labyrinth.”
Viola’s mouth twitched. She wanted to argue. She also knew better than to waste air. Half a day was more than he usually gave anyone when there were unknown variables in the dark.
Lucius swallowed. “And after that?”
“After that, we leave,” Ludger said, like the idea of staying longer was a joke. “Or we waste time here with you. I’m flexible.”
Viola exhaled sharply through her nose, then shoved a damp strand of hair out of her face. “Fine. Go play scavenger.”
Ludger nodded once, already shifting away. “Luna.”
She was there instantly, like the word had pulled a string.
He kept his voice low, not secrecy for its own sake, but because information carried weight. “You stay close enough to hear them scream. Not close enough to hear them talk. If anyone else is in these ruins, I want you to find them first.”
Luna’s eyes flicked to Viola and Lucius. A brief pause, permission asked without words.
Ludger gave a small nod. “Half a day.”
Then he turned away before sentiment could trap him.
Because he didn’t come here to babysit a noble’s feelings.
He came here for answers. And if answers weren’t available, then value would do.
The mana cores from the runic golems they’d shattered back in the labyrinth were already a small fortune. Clean, dense, stable cores like those sold well anywhere that understood runes.
But cores were… expected. Everyone who walked into a golem labyrinth walked out thinking about cores.
Ludger wanted something rarer than a predictable profit. Something that didn’t just sell, something that shifted the board when he brought it home.
A schematic etched into metal that shouldn’t exist. A production rune designed for mass output instead of artisan work. A control lattice. A core refining array. A forgotten workshop. A piece of the “why” behind the golems, not just their hearts.
He glanced at the ruins again, at the straight lines under moss, the crushed brick, the faint geometry of old streets beneath the roots.
A city this big didn’t fall without leaving something behind.
People stripped personal items first. They always did. Gold. Tools. Keepsakes. Anything that felt valuable..
What they didn’t strip were the things that were too heavy, too dangerous, too cursed, or too incomprehensible to carry. Those were the things Ludger liked.
He rolled his shoulders once, his mana flow smoothing like a blade sliding into a sheath.
Half a day. He didn’t need more.
He stepped into the forest-claimed street line, boots crunching on centuries-old debris, and let Seismic Sense bloom outward, quiet, patient, hungry, searching not for footsteps…
…but for hollows, chambers, buried metal, and the unnatural density of something the world had tried very hard to hide.
Lucius stayed quiet for a while after that.
Not the proud, “I refuse to give you the satisfaction” kind of quiet. More like he was sorting through a pile of thoughts that all smelled like smoke and regret, trying to figure out which one wouldn’t get him killed.
They’d shifted positions without really deciding to, Viola sitting on a broken slab with her arms crossed, Lucius leaning against a half-collapsed wall, and Ludger standing a few steps away like a guard dog that had learned to speak.
Luna was… somewhere. Close enough to intervene. Far enough to pretend she wasn’t listening.
Lucius cleared his throat. “There’s something else.”
Viola’s eyes sharpened. Ludger’s didn’t change. Lucius rubbed at his brow.
“On the southern side of the ruined city. Past the bigger industrial shells. I found… plants. Flowers. Herbs. A lot of them.”
Ludger’s gaze flicked to him. “Plants exist.”
Lucius let out a tired breath, almost a laugh. “Not like these. Not what I’ve seen in the empire. Not what grows on our side.”
Viola tilted her head. “Different how?”
“Color. Shape. Mana density,” Lucius said, searching for words that didn’t sound insane. “Some of them looked like normal herbs until you looked closer. Veins like thin silver thread. Petals that shimmered. And the smell… sharp. Clean. Like crushed mint and metal.”
That got Ludger’s attention properly. His brow tightened.
“Only in the south?” he asked.
Lucius nodded. “Only there. I walked in circles for days. The north side is mostly dead stone. The west is ruins and vines. But the south… it’s like the ground decided to stop being normal.”
Ludger’s eyes narrowed. “Why only there?”
Lucius spread his hands in a helpless shrug. “I don’t know. I don’t have your… senses.” His mouth twisted. “Or your obsession with dirt.”
Viola snorted despite herself.
Lucius continued, more serious. “Maybe something is in the soil. A deposit. A leak. Waste from whatever those factories used to do. I dug a little. The dirt is darker there. Softer. Like it’s been… fed.”
Ludger stared at him for a beat, then looked past him toward the tree line as if he could see the southern district through the forest. His mind ticked over, quiet and fast.
Dense ambient mana. Industrial remnants. A city stripped clean. And a patch of ground that still produced uncommon herbs like it was proud of itself.
That wasn’t random. That was a clue.
Lucius hesitated, then added carefully, “With your earth magic… you might be able to tell. If something is mixed into the soil. Or buried under it.”
Ludger didn’t answer immediately. He simply stepped closer and placed a hand on the cracked stone at his feet.
Seismic Sense spread out like a slow breath.
Not the wide sweep he used to map mountains. A focused pulse. Controlled.
The world answered in layers, density, hollows, old foundations, the faint bite of buried metal. He felt the ruined street beneath them like a scar. Felt the way the forest roots crawled through old brick. Felt water pockets trapped deep underground like quiet lungs.
Then he angled it south. And his expression shifted. Not surprise. Not fear. Annoyance. Because the ground did feel different that way.
A subtle change in texture, like the soil had been worked, then worked again. Packed in places it shouldn’t be. Mixed with fine grit that wasn’t local stone. And under that… traces of something that didn’t behave like normal earth.
It drank mana. Not like a rune. Not like a core. Like a sponge saturated with old purpose.
Ludger lifted his hand slowly and looked at his palm as if he expected it to be stained.
Viola’s voice came quieter. “What?”
Lucius watched him, tense.
Ludger exhaled through his nose. “You’re not imagining it.”
Lucius’ shoulders loosened an inch. “So there is something.”
“There’s always something,” Ludger said. “The question is whether it wants to kill us, or it can be useful.”
Viola’s lips curled. “That’s your favorite question.”
“It’s the only one that matters,” Ludger replied, then nodded toward the south. “Half a day, remember? You two talk. If you’re done early, keep your mouths shut and your weapons ready.”
Viola rolled her eyes, but she didn’t argue.
Ludger’s gaze slid to Lucius. “You’re coming with me.”
Lucius flinched. “What? Why?”
“Because you found it,” Ludger said flatly. “And because if you’re lying, I will be the one delivering nose breaking punches..”
Lucius swallowed. “I wasn’t lying.”
“I know.” Ludger’s tone didn’t soften. “That’s not the point.”
He turned as if the conversation was already finished, then paused just long enough to toss one more sentence over his shoulder.
“And if those herbs are growing off alchemical runoff or mass-production waste…”
His eyes sharpened, cold and practical.
“…then there’s a chance something valuable is still buried there. Something no one bothered to carry.”
Lucius looked toward the southern ruins, and for the first time since they’d found him, his expression carried something other than exhaustion.
Wariness.
Because he remembered what had drawn him here in the first place.
And Ludger, of course, had just decided to go digging for it.
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