Chapter 153

Later that day, the cold wind had quieted, leaving the area buried in pale light. Most of the northerners were tending the cattle or eating near the fires — but Ludger stayed behind, stripped to his undershirt, breath fogging in steady bursts as he squared up against the windt.

He raised his fists. The faint red glow returned.

His pulse spiked instantly. The air thickened. The world narrowed to motion.

He struck.

A clean jab — snow puffed away in a ripple.

A hook — the wind groaned, the snow moving to the side.

A kick — the snow split under his heel.

Each hit carried more weight than it should have. The power coiled tighter and tighter through his veins, every movement faster, heavier, meaner. For a few minutes, it felt

incredible.

Then the burn set in.

His lungs started to ache. His knuckles throbbed beneath the armguards. The red energy that had felt sharp and exhilarating a moment ago now pulsed with something hotter — frustration, anger, pressure with no direction.

He punched again, harder. His breath came in ragged bursts.

And then the thought crept in —

just one more hit.

Followed by another. And another.

Each strike felt less like training and more like release. His jaw clenched, the edges of reason blurring beneath the rush. Finally, he caught himself mid-swing. The glow around him wavered, and he forced the skill off with a grunt.

The silence after the energy faded was jarring — like dropping from a sprint into a dead stop. He stood there, chest heaving, sweat freezing along his neck despite the heat still coursing through him.

The strength, the speed — all of it was real. But so was the exhaustion. His muscles trembled with fatigue, and his mind felt… fogged. Heavy. It wasn’t just draining mana — it was draining

focus.

Ludger exhaled slowly, staring down at his hands. “Powerful,” he muttered. “But it’s a damned parasite too.”

The class was everything it promised: raw might, boosted reflexes, pain resistance — but at a price that wasn’t written anywhere on the System screen. The longer he used it, the more the fury crawled under his skin, whispering to hit harder, to stop thinking, to

break.

Still, despite the ache and the heavy breath, a small, tired grin tugged at his mouth.

He’d found something new. Something he could build on. Something that might make the difference.

By the time he returned to camp, the firelight flickered low. He collapsed onto his bedroll, muscles stiff but his mind finally cooling. The sound of the wind outside carried faint laughter from the northerners, the clang of tools, the quiet hum of a growing alliance.

Ludger closed his eyes, exhaling one last time.

“Tomorrow,” he murmured.

Sleep took him before the words had fully left his lips.

Morning broke cold and sharp, the kind that bit the lungs with every breath. A thin mist hung low over the fields, and the sound of distant cattle echoed faintly through the camp.

Ludger was already awake before dawn. He sat at the edge of his cot, strapping on his red-and-silver armguards with practiced precision. His movements were calm, methodical — the quiet ritual before a dive.

Outside, Kharnek’s booming voice barked orders as the northerners gathered weapons and supplies. Their voices carried through the camp, rough and confident, but there was an undercurrent of tension. No one entered the labyrinth lightly — not after what they’d seen inside of it.

Ludger stood, fastened his coat, and adjusted the small pouch of potions that he got from Lord Torvares visit. The frost clung to the edges of his boots as he stepped outside into the morning air.

The labyrinth entrance was ahead. The sight of it always made the back of his neck prickle.

He tightened his gloves, exhaling through his nose. “Alright,” he muttered, “let’s make this one count.”

Kharnek noticed him approaching and grinned. “Ready to wake the frost spirits, boy?”

“As I’ll ever be,” Ludger said.

Ludger smirked faintly, but his thoughts were already elsewhere — buried beneath the focus. The alliance had grown stronger, the fields were stable, and trade routes were finally opening. If he could push deep enough into the labyrinth this time, they’d secure another bunch of

Froststeel

, maybe even double their mining yield.

That would mean more shipments south. More coin flowing into the Lionsguard’s accounts. And with enough coin… he could finally

pause.

He pictured his mother again — her calm voice, her hand resting on her stomach. The faint kick he’d felt beneath his palm. A strange warmth spread through his chest that had nothing to do with mana.

If I can get enough Froststeel to sell for a few months’ reserves,

he thought,

I can take time off when the baby’s born. A month or two without worrying about the guild, the border, or politics… just to breathe for once.

He adjusted his gloves again and started walking toward the frozen entrance. The ice reflected his faint red glow as he passed, the cold light catching in his silver gauntlets.

Together, they approached the labyrinth’s gate as it began to rumble open, ancient ice cracking like thunder. Cold mist spilled out around them, the air thick with mana and the scent of frost.

Ludger flexed his hands once, feeling the weight of the gauntlets, the pulse of mana in his veins, and the faint echo of the new class waiting to be unleashed.

“Let’s get to work,” he said quietly.

Kharnek came up beside Ludger and jerked his chin toward two figures waiting a few paces off. “Two more,” he rumbled. “No crowd. The labyrinth eats crowds.”

The first was a mountain in furs—broad as a doorframe, beard braided with copper rings, a scar puckering one cheek. He wore layered leather over scale, a short-hafted axe at his belt and a wicked ice-pick strapped along the spine. His eyes had the flat, workman’s calm of someone who’d dug more graves than he’d brag about.

The second was a woman in slate-gray wraps, lean and steady. Bone glyphs hung from a collar of sinew, each etched with frost-bitten sigils. Her staff was black horn capped with a coin of ice that didn’t melt.

“Ulf,” Kharnek said, clapping the big man’s shoulder hard enough to make the rings in his beard click. “Breaks things that don’t want to break.”

Ulf grunted. “Aye.”

“And Brynja of the Grey Ash.” Kharnek’s tone shifted—just a shade more respectful. “Shaman. Hears the cold when it starts to lie.”

Brynja inclined her head the barest fraction. Her eyes, pale as hoarfrost, slid over Ludger and didn’t linger. Not hostile—measuring.

Ludger hadn’t seen either of them in camp. He didn’t need Kharnek’s next words to guess why.

“They sit with the side that doesn’t trust you,” the chieftain said, blunt as iron. “Good. Let them see with their own eyes.”

Ulf folded his arms. “We don’t trust most Imperials,” he said, voice like shovel-on-rock. “Nothing personal. Just history.”

“Fair,” Ludger said. “I won’t ask for trust I haven’t earned.”

Brynja’s gaze dipped to his gauntlets, then to the earth-dark aura that always seemed to hum around his boots. “Your magic pushes the ground too smooth,” she said, voice low and even. “Paths that clean make the ice above think it’s invited. It sinks, creeps, finds you. We’ll need counter-sigils.”

“I’ll follow your lead on the sigils,” Ludger replied. “You follow mine on the footing.”

That earned the smallest quirk at the corner of her mouth—gone as soon as it came.

Kharnek stepped between them, making the shape of the team with his hands as if setting stones. “Four is right,” he said. “The ice hates noise and crowds. Two to take the front—me and Ulf. One to read the ground and heal us—Ludger. One to smother the labyrinth’s temper—Brynja. Everyone else stays topside to keep the cattle in and the wolves out. If we don’t come up by nightfall, they pull back to the second wall and hold.”

He looked to Ludger, frank. “It’s also politics. The clans who spit at this alliance sent witnesses, not blades for you. If you’re false, they’ll sing it by dark. If you’re true, they’ll have to swallow the song.”

“Then let’s give them something worth choking on,” Ludger said, dry as dust.

Ulf’s scar tugged—maybe a smile, maybe a twitch. “We’ll see if your walls swing as hard as your mouth.”

“Only when they have to,” Ludger answered.

Snow hissed softly as the labyrinth doors yawned wider. Cold spilled up like a breath from a sleeping beast.

“Move,” Kharnek said, turning into the blue.

The descent into the labyrinth was slow at first.

Frost clung to the carved walls in layers, a crystalline skin that glittered under their torches. The passage twisted downward, the air cold enough to bite the lungs, yet surprisingly open. Ludger had expected jagged spires of ice, stalactites dripping danger, uneven stone to trip their footing. Instead, the interior was… almost

crafted.

The walls were smooth, the floor eerily even. Every reflection shimmered back at them like a hundred ghosts waiting just beyond reach. The blue light from the froststeel veins running through the walls cast a haunting, mirrorlike glow across the corridor.

“This doesn’t feel natural,” Ludger muttered.

Kharnek grunted. “It isn’t. The labyrinth shifts, rebuilds itself after every storm even the parts that we tried to mine before.. It’s part mine, part tomb.”

Ludger’s boots crunched on the frozen floor, his reflection wavering beneath his feet. The deeper they went, the more the faint hum of mana filled the air — like the entire structure was breathing.

Behind him, Brynja’s staff tapped softly against the ground, the magic on it glowing faintly. Ulf followed like a shadow, axe ready but eyes flicking to every corner.

Then Kharnek’s tone sharpened. “Stay sharp. The dead here don’t rest. Skeletons hide in the ice — like cracks waiting to move.”

Ludger frowned. “Hide in the—?”

He didn’t finish.

The light from his armguards caught something ahead — a faint shimmer in the wall, subtle but wrong. It was the outline of something

humanoid,

blended into the ice so perfectly that only the distortion gave it away.

He barely had time to react before the figure

shifted.

The ice cracked and peeled away like a cocoon breaking. A skeletal warrior stepped free, its bones rimmed with blue froststeel, the same metal running like veins through its body. The weapon it carried wasn’t forged — it

formed,

a blade extruding from its forearm in a cascade of ice that hardened into a razor edge. Its other arm curved outward, the frost reshaping itself into a shield.

Ludger squinted his eyes

“Now you see it,” Kharnek growled, stepping forward, axe ready. “The froststeel here remembers the will of the dead.”

The skeleton’s hollow eye sockets flickered with a ghostly blue light as it raised its weapon. Ice cracked under its steps.

Brynja’s voice came quiet but taut. “This one’s old. Strong. Don’t let it touch the walls — it’ll heal.”

Ludger nodded, spreading his stance. Mana coiled around his fists, the faint red from his armguards spilling across the blue. “Got it.”

Kharnek grinned, teeth bared. “Good. Then let’s remind the dead why we’re still breathing.”

The skeleton lunged — and the first battle of the dive began, steel and ice colliding beneath the frozen breath of the labyrinth.

Kharnek didn’t hesitate. The instant the frost skeleton hissed and raised its ice blade, the chieftain’s boots pounded against the floor like thunder.

“Stay back!” he barked, voice echoing through the icy hall.

The thing wasn’t massive—barely the size of a grown man—but compared to Kharnek’s bulk it looked like a child wearing armor. Still, Ludger frowned as he watched him charge in bare-handed. The chieftain hadn’t brought his club, only now he realized.

“Why the hell did you—” Ludger began, but he stopped halfway.

Kharnek ducked under the skeleton’s first swing. The ice blade carved the air with a screech, shards flying off the wall where it struck.

Kharnek didn’t counter with a weapon. He

slammed

his fist forward.

The blow struck the skeleton’s shield full-force. The sound was like a glacier cracking—metal-hard ice snapping under raw muscle. The impact threw the undead back several meters, slamming it against the wall.

It tried to reform its stance, the frost knitting itself back across its ribs—

—but Kharnek was already on it.

He grabbed the creature’s arm and drove a massive punch straight into its skull. The head shattered like brittle glass, fragments spraying across the hall. The blue glow in its sockets flickered out instantly.

Then, as if to make sure, Kharnek dropped an elbow straight into its chest, the weight of the strike making the floor tremble. The ribcage collapsed inward, frost and bone turning to powder beneath him.

By the time he stepped back, all that was left was dust, melting ice, and a dull shard of froststeel glittering in the torchlight.

The air went still again.

Kharnek shook out his hand, snowflakes clinging to the blood on his knuckles. “Too small for a proper fight,” he muttered.

Ludger exhaled, tension easing slightly. “So that’s why you didn’t bring the club,” he said. “You’d just end up bouncing it off the ceiling.”

The chieftain grinned, teeth flashing. “Aye. These halls are too tight for swinging. Down here, fists work better than any hammer.”

Ludger crouched beside the remains, the froststeel shard gleaming faintly in the blue light. He picked it up, turning it in his hand. The metal was pure—freshly formed from the labyrinth’s mana.

“Efficient as always,” Ludger murmured, pocketing the shard.

Kharnek cracked his knuckles again, glancing down the corridor where the shadows rippled like water. “Good warm-up. The deeper ones won’t die that easily, they will come in groups.”

Ludger straightened, eyes narrowing. “Then let’s hope they’re not hiding in every wall.”

The chieftain chuckled. “They probably are.”

And with that, the group pressed on—boots crunching softly over the fading traces of ice, deeper into the frost-veined labyrinth where the cold itself seemed to breathe.

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