Ludger didn’t react like he’d said something insane. He just said it again in a way that somehow made it worse.
“An underwater labyrinth,” he repeated. “We crossed it.”
Luna’s brain stalled. It felt like someone had yanked a lever and dumped sand into the gears.
“We were unconscious,” she snapped, finally finding her voice. “How is it possible for us to cross a labyrinth unconsciously? And you’re guessing, without proof…”
“I’m not guessing,” Ludger said.
Luna’s mouth hung open for a fraction of a second before she caught herself. “Then where’s your proof?”
He tilted his head, as if the answer was obvious.
“I don’t recognize the stars,” he said.
That landed like a thrown rock.
Luna’s eyes flicked upward instinctively, but all she saw was the tent roof and bright daylight beyond it. Still, the idea crawled under her skin, Ludger didn’t miss details like that. If he said the sky was wrong, then it was wrong.
“That’s… not enough,” she said, though she wasn’t sure if she believed herself.
“It’s not just the sky,” Ludger replied. His gaze slid toward the beach, toward the treeline, toward the water beyond it. “That thing is circling this island.”
Luna’s spine stiffened. “The monster?”
“I saw it,” Ludger said. “Not with mana sense, my mana’s gone, remember, but in the water. Something big is moving in patterns, too close, too consistent.”
His voice cooled, pragmatic in the way it always did when fear tried to take the wheel.
“Like it doesn’t want us back in the ocean anytime soon.”
Luna stared at him. Her thoughts tried to climb the words and kept slipping.
Other side. Underwater labyrinth. Wrong stars. The monster circling the island like a guard dog. It was too much. Too disconnected. Too impossible .
For a moment, she genuinely felt her mind go blank, like her brain had simply stopped processing inputs and decided to reboot later.
“…Ludger,” she managed, voice quiet and strained, “none of that makes any sense.”
He looked at her with that same maddening calm.
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s the problem.”
Ludger’s eyes stayed on the water while he spoke, like he expected the horizon itself to interrupt him.
“None of it makes sense,” he said, “unless the monster brought us here for a reason.”
Luna’s brow tightened. “Brought us…”
He nodded once, slow. “ You and I wake up on a beach we’ve never seen, under a sky I don’t recognize after falling right on the lap of that beast..”
His swollen hand lifted in a small, helpless gesture. “So either the world is playing jokes, or we didn’t ‘survive’ in the normal way.”
Luna’s lips parted, but nothing came out.
Ludger kept going, voice annoyingly even. “Maybe it ate us and then spat us out without digesting us.”
Luna stared at him.
“That would explain why I woke up yesterday on the beach with you,” he continued, like he was listing weather patterns, “while we were still… more or less alive.”
“Ludger,” Luna said, and it came out half warning, half plea.
He glanced at her, expression almost thoughtful. “Or maybe we escaped after becoming giant fish poop.”
Luna’s face didn’t move. Her eyes blinked once. Twice. Like her body was checking if this was a hallucination brought on by concussion.
Ludger’s mouth twitched, the closest thing to humor he’d allowed himself since she woke. It didn’t soften the words. If anything, it made them worse.
“Regardless,” he said, tone flattening again, “I didn’t find any remains of the ship. No broken mast. No floating crates. No bodies. No debris field. Nothing washed up except us.”
He leaned forward slightly, gaze sharpening. “So we’re alone on this island until we find more answers.”
Luna blinked again, her expression still blank, like her face hadn’t received instructions yet. But her chest tightened. Then tightened more.
Her heart began to race, fast and sharp, as if her body had understood the danger a full minute before her mind did.
Alone with him. No ship. No crew. No rescue.
And somewhere beyond the blue line of ocean, something big was circling, patient, intelligent, and close enough that the waves themselves couldn’t forget it.
“It’s too soon,” Ludger said the moment Luna shifted her weight.
She ignored him.
Not because she didn’t believe him, because believing him while lying down felt like surrender. She pushed herself up, teeth clenched as her skull protested, and stepped out of the leaf-and-bamboo tent into a wall of heat and salt-bright light.
The world snapped into focus in brutal detail.
White sand, coarse and scattered with broken shells. A line of dense green beyond it, palms, thick bushes, trees knotted together like they’d decided to become a wall. The air smelled alive. Wet leaves and fruit and sun-baked salt.
And the ocean… Luna froze.
It was too calm for what her memory insisted should exist. Too clear. Too blue. Like the sea was pretending it had never tried to kill them.
Then the surface shifted. Not a wave. Not wind.
A slow, deliberate roll, something vast moving just beneath the waterline. The ocean bulged, and a dark shape passed under it, long enough that Luna’s eyes tracked and tracked and still didn’t find an end. A ridge broke the surface for a moment, slick and black, then sank again, leaving a wake that spread outward like the sea itself was flinching.
It wasn’t trying to hide anymore. Luna’s throat tightened so hard she tasted metal.
Ludger stepped up behind her, close enough that she could feel his presence without him touching her. “Told you,” he said quietly.
Luna didn’t answer. Her hands flexed, empty, wanting knives that weren’t there.
The creature circled again, closer this time. It didn’t breach. It didn’t thrash. It simply moved, patient, controlled, like a guard making rounds. Like it had time. Like it knew they didn’t.
Luna forced herself to look away from the water, scanning the horizon instead.
Island.
Not a sandbar. Not a broken reef. A real island, large enough that the treeline curved away in both directions, disappearing into distance. The interior rose slightly, a green hump with thicker canopy, shadows pooling where the forest got dense. No buildings. No smoke. No sign of people.
Her gaze lifted instinctively, checking the sun out of habit, checking direction, time, orientation… And her stomach dropped.
The sun was high, but it sat wrong. Not in height, in position . Too far north.
In the Empire, at this hour, the light didn’t fall like this. The shadows weren’t angled this way.
Luna stared up for a long heartbeat, trying to convince herself she was disoriented from the concussion. But the sky didn’t care about head wounds. She lowered her eyes slowly, her pulse hammering.
“…Ludger,” she said, voice thin.
He didn’t respond with smugness. He didn’t even look satisfied. He just watched the ocean with that same exhausted focus, like he’d already accepted the impossible and moved on to the next problem.
Luna swallowed, dry throat scraping. Maybe what he said was true. Maybe they really had been dragged through something, through a boundary, through a door under the sea. To the other side of a labyrinth.
Ludger kept his eyes on the water for a few seconds longer, tracking the slow movement beneath the surface. Then he turned back toward the treeline.
“We should explore the island soon,” he said. “Carefully. There might be clues here, tracks, ruins, plants, anything that explains what’s actually happening.”
Luna pressed a hand to her temple, still staring at the ocean. “Soon?”
He nodded. “Once my magic is fully back, I can try to communicate with the beast.”
That finally made her look at him. “Communicate.”
“If it’s intelligent enough to do all this,” Ludger said, gesturing toward the circling sea, “then trying to kill us wasn’t its only option. It dragged us here instead. That means it may have a reason. Questions are cheaper than fighting.”
He glanced down at his swollen fingers and flexed them once. “But that’ll take a few more days. I need my mana circuits working properly first.”
Luna’s expression sharpened immediately. “We should start that now .”
Ludger gave her a flat look. “No.”
“Ludger—”
“It would be dangerous,” he cut in, voice calm and firm. “Neither of us is at full power. You have a head injury. I can barely move mana without feeling like my insides are being shredded.”
Luna’s jaw tightened, stubbornness flashing bright even through the pain.
He continued before she could argue. “If we rush this and make a mistake, we don’t get a second try. We just make things worse.”
His tone didn’t rise, but it got heavier, solid, practical, and immovable.
“You rest until your head stops pounding,” he said. “I will recover until my circuits are normal. Then we move.”
Luna frowned, clearly wanting to fight him on principle alone.
Ludger glanced at the ocean, then at the forest, then back at her. “This island isn’t going anywhere. And that thing out there already knows where we are.”
A dry edge crept into his voice.
“Being patient is not cowardice. It’s strategy.”
Luna held his gaze for another second, stubbornness still written all over her face.
Then, slowly, she nodded.
It wasn’t agreement so much as a temporary ceasefire, but Ludger accepted it. She turned without another word and made her way back toward the leaf tent, one hand near her temple, steps careful on the sand. Even from behind, he could see the pain in the way she moved, controlled, quiet, refusing to look weak.
Very Luna.
Ludger watched until she disappeared inside, then let out a slow breath and lowered himself onto the beach.
He sat cross-legged in the sand, spine straight, hands resting on his knees. The pose looked calm from the outside. Inside, it was a mess of heat, static, and grinding pain.
He closed his eyes and tried to move a thread of mana.
Pain flared immediately.
Not the clean strain of overuse. Not even the sharp burn of pushing too hard. This was worse, jagged, uneven, like trying to force molten metal through cracked pipes. His circuits answered with resistance, tremors, and a deep ache that made his jaw tighten.
Ludger exhaled through his nose and tried again, slower this time. Tiny cycles. No bursts. No shaping. No overdrive. Just circulation. Repair. Patience. The sea hissed softly on the shore.
A few minutes later, maybe more; time blurred when he was focused on not tearing himself apart, he opened one eye and glanced toward the water.
The monster’s shadow was there again.
It completed another slow lap around the island, massive body turning beneath the surface with almost lazy control. No attack. No roar. No display. Just a giant thing making rounds like a jailer checking walls.
Ludger sighed.
“Yeah,” he muttered, staring at the rippling blue. “I noticed.”
He looked down at his hand, flexed his swollen fingers once, then called up his status.
The familiar translucent interface appeared in front of him, sharp and real enough to almost feel insulting.
Name: Ludger
Level: 129 (2,450 / 12,900)
Current Job: Guild Master (Lv 65 – 1.620 / 6.500)
Current Class: Auramancer (Lv 24 – 1.300 / 2.400)
Health: 2180/ 7480
Mana: 14000/ 29680
Stamina: 4860/ 6860
Strength: 9166
Dexterity: 1425
Intelligence: 2435
Vitality: 748
Wisdom: 2968
Endurance: 686
Luck: 508
So the System still worked. Even here.
Even if this really was the other side of a labyrinth. Even if this place was another world, another layer, another locked zone hidden under the ocean and behind a monster big enough to toss ships like toys.
Then he paused.
[Morale + 10 XP]
…
[Morale + 10 XP]
…
[Morale + 10 XP]
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