Chapter 199

For a long while, nothing happened. The cave returned to its usual silence—just the faint drip of water and the soft rasp of Gaius’s breathing. His hopes dulled again, sinking beneath exhaustion. Maybe it really

had

just been cave tremors. Maybe his body was finally imagining things.

Then the ground shuddered.

Not a wandering tremor this time—a focused one, steady and deliberate. The kind born from

will

.

The air hummed, fine dust raining from the ceiling. The torch beside him flickered as tiny streams of sand began to fall beside the table. A thin crack split open in the ceiling, widening with a slow, grinding groan. Gaius squinted up through the dust as pebbles rolled down his chest.

“What in the—” he started, and then the ceiling

burst.

A chunk of stone gave way, collapsing inward with a roar. Sand poured down in a thick stream, and through it—like a ghost surfacing from the earth—dropped a small figure in a dark coat. The boy landed in a crouch, a faint ripple of mana pushing the falling dust aside before it could bury him.

Gaius blinked, speechless. “What the hell are

you

doing here?” he croaked.

Ludger brushed sand off his shoulder and looked up, expression calm despite the situation. “Saving you,” he said dryly. “Like I did with Princess Peach.”

Gaius blinked again, bewildered. “Who?”

“Never mind,” Ludger muttered, already stepping closer. He examined the runed chains, eyes narrowing as he pressed his palm against one of the glowing sigils. The faint vibration of mana beneath his hand made his frown deepen. “Draining chains. Nasty work. You’ve been down here a while.”

“I’ve had better weeks,” Gaius said through gritted teeth.

Ludger crouched beside the stone table, his tone still perfectly flat. “Don’t move. I’m going to break these.”

He raised his hand, mana swirling in a slow, deliberate pattern across his fingers—sand and stone bending to his command. The ceiling above still hissed as more dust fell through the hole he’d made, but Ludger ignored it entirely.

For Gaius, the sight of his old student standing there—calm, precise, and somehow

here

—felt unreal. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh or curse. But for the first time in days, something in his chest loosened.

Ludger was here. And hell itself was about to have a problem.

Ludger didn’t hesitate. He pressed his palm against the chain, feeling the faint hum of the runes crawling through the metal — a living current of mana siphoning energy straight out of Gaius’s veins. His expression hardened.

He activated Overdrive.

A pulse of power surged through his body, setting his nerves ablaze. His right arm glowed faintly as veins of molten-orange light traced down to his knuckles. Then came Weapon Enhance, his mana wrapping his armguard in a shimmering sheath of condensed force.

“Hold still,” he muttered.

Gaius opened his mouth to warn him, but Ludger was already moving. He reached into his armguard drew a small rune — the sigil for Heaviness. It burned faintly against his armguard before fusing into it. The entire limb grew heavier, denser, until the stone beneath his boots cracked.

Then he struck.

The impact echoed like thunder trapped in a bottle. A deep metallic

clang

exploded through the chamber, followed by a wave of vibration that sent cracks spidering along the walls. Sparks leapt off the chain — bright, white-hot, brief.

Ludger staggered back, jaw tightening as pain shot up his arm. His hand throbbed violently, the shock rattling his bones all the way to his shoulder. His fingers trembled uncontrollably, and his eyes watered from the force of it.

“...ain,” he hissed in pain under his breath, the word barely escaping his clenched teeth.

The chain didn’t break. It had bent slightly — a dent the size of a thumbprint, nothing more.

Gaius exhaled heavily, his tone grim but calm. “Those aren’t ordinary chains,” he said. “Reinforced steel. Layered enchantments. They drain your mana and use it to harden themselves further. The more you hit them, the stronger they get.”

Ludger gritted his teeth, shaking the numbness out of his fingers. “Yeah… you could’ve said that

before

I hit it.”

Gaius sighed, closing his eyes for a moment. “Didn’t think you’d be that reckless, boy.”

Ludger cracked his knuckles with his other hand, smirking faintly through the ache. “I have my moments. Reckless gets results. Just… give me a minute to think.”

He studied the chains again, this time not as a wall to break — but as a puzzle to unmake.

Ludger crouched again beside the chains, jaw tightening as he studied the glowing runes etched into the metal. Each one pulsed faintly, drinking from Gaius’s life like a leech—synchronizing with his mana, siphoning it, looping the energy back into itself.

Breaking them by force was suicide.

He could feel it now: if he dumped more power into that circuit, the backlash would rip through the chamber like a buried explosion.

“…Damn it,” he muttered, rubbing his sore wrist. Then the thought came, quick and sharp—

if I can’t break it, maybe I can unmake it.

His eyes narrowed. He still had his

Rune Crafter

skills. If he could identify the core frequency of the mana flow inside the runes, he might be able to destabilize the circuit—bleed out the stored mana instead of triggering it. Basically, a reverse inscription.

The catch?

He’d have to match the mana’s resonance

perfectly.

The runes were fed by

Gaius’s

energy, not his own. A geomancer’s mana wasn’t gentle—it was dense, and explosive, the kind that could shift landscapes when unleashed. If Ludger missed the frequency even slightly, the feedback would ignite the stored power in the chains and blow half of a mountain apart.

He swallowed, eyes tracing the runes’ glow. “So… I either find the right pulse,” he muttered under his breath, “or we both redecorate this cave across a few kilometers.”

Gaius raised a brow, weak but alert. “You’re planning something stupid again.”

“Probably,” Ludger said. “But if I can tune into your mana flow, I can drain these things before they detonate. It’s like… opening a locked door without triggering the alarm.”

“Except the alarm levels a mountain,” Gaius replied flatly.

Ludger smirked faintly. “Yeah. No pressure.”

He cracked his knuckles and extended his hand toward the first rune, his own mana unfurling slowly, testing the vibration in the air. The rhythm was wild and heavy, like a heartbeat buried in stone. He inhaled, steadied himself, and began to match it—slow, careful, precise.

One mistake, and the entire hideout would collapse. But that was fine. He’d always been good at walking the line between disaster and genius.

Ludger stayed crouched for a long moment, staring at the glowing runes and the steady pulse of Gaius’s mana through the chains. Every instinct in him said

don’t.

His brain kept replaying the math — one wrong touch, one unstable surge, and the entire hideout would go sky high.

He exhaled sharply and pulled his hand back.

“…Sorry, old man,” he muttered. “I’m not risking my neck for you.”

Gaius blinked at him, weary eyes softening. “Understandable,” he said quietly. “Not the kind of gamble anyone should take.” He managed a faint, tired smirk. “Especially not for someone who already looks half-dead.”

Ludger didn’t respond. He just stood there, silent, fists clenched, the torchlight throwing long shadows across his face. Then Gaius noticed something — the boy wasn’t walking away. His stance shifted slightly: legs braced, back straightening, hand rising like a blade.

“...Ludger?” Gaius frowned. “What are you doing?”

The boy didn’t answer. His eyes narrowed, focus sharpening to a deadly stillness. Mana began to hum around him — not calm or balanced this time, but violent, unstable. He was drawing everything he had left into his right arm.

The air rippled.

Ludger let out a slow breath and forced his mana to

bend

— adjusting its frequency, forcing it toward an earth attunement. He wasn’t practiced at it, but he’d seen Viola do it a hundred times under Gaius’s supervision. She made it look easy. He made it look like agony.

His armguard glowed a dull brown. Then the glow deepened to brownish-gold — the color of earth mana straining against his veins.

“Ludger—” Gaius started, alarmed.

Too late.

Ludger activated everything.

Rage Flow. Blood Hush. Bone Breaker.

The cave filled with a low, growling hum as his veins flared crimson under his skin. His heartbeat slammed like war drums, each pulse fueling his arm with brutal precision. He raised his hand like a sword, breath hitching from the burning pain crawling up his arm — and then he

swung down.

The impact detonated.

Stone screamed. Chains wailed like struck bells. The entire hideout

shook.

Gaius flinched, the shockwave slamming through the table beneath him. For a heartbeat, there was silence — then the sharp, visceral sound of

snapping bone

overlapped with the

shatter

of metal.

Ludger stood frozen in the aftermath, his right arm hanging limply, blood running down to his fingertips. The chains binding Gaius hung broken — not cleanly cut, but

fractured,

like glass hit by a hammer.

Gaius stared at him, stunned. “…You idiot,” he said, voice somewhere between disbelief and pride.

Ludger hissed through his teeth, trying not to shake. “Yeah,” he muttered, lips twitching. “But an effective idiot.”

Gaius looked at the boy’s trembling arm, then at the broken chains hanging in pieces beside him. “You said you weren’t willing to risk your life for me,” he said hoarsely. “Was that a lie, or are you just that bad at math?”

Ludger wiped a smear of blood from his chin, smirking despite the tremor in his right hand. “Wasn’t lying. I said I wouldn’t risk my

life.

” He flexed his bruised fingers and winced. “Didn’t say anything about sacrificing an

arm

for a few days.”

Gaius blinked, half in disbelief, half in admiration. “Reckless idiot,” he muttered, though his tone had softened. His left arm and leg were free now, the runes on that half of the chainwork gone dark. He could already feel his mana flowing again, sluggish but steady. “You’ve done enough. Don’t—”

Ludger didn’t listen. His eyes were fixed on the other side of the table, where the remaining chains still glowed faintly with stolen energy.

“Still got work to do,” he said under his breath. He rolled his left shoulder, testing it, and muttered, “I wonder if sacrificing both arms for an old man counts as a good deal.”

Gaius gave a dry chuckle. “Only if the old man lives long enough to pay you back.”

Ludger smirked faintly. “If it were for a pretty girl, I’d say it was worth it…” He didn’t finish the sentence.

His head snapped toward the tunnel — footsteps

.

Heavy, methodical, closing in. The sound of boots and armor scraping stone.

No time.

Ludger clenched his left fist, Overdrive flaring again as mana flooded his arm like molten lead. His veins pulsed golden brown beneath his skin. This time, he didn’t even bother with words — just focus.

He swung.

The second strike cracked through the chamber like a thunderclap. Stone splintered, dust filled the air, and the light from the runes winked out one by one.

When the echo faded, both chains lay shattered — and Ludger dropped to one knee, breathing hard, both arms limp and twitching.

“Done,” he muttered, voice strained but steady. “Now… let’s deal with whoever’s dumb enough to come down here.”

When Aaron stormed back into the prison chamber, the first thing he noticed was the silence. The air felt

wrong

—too still, too charged. Then his eyes adjusted to the light.

And he froze.

Gaius Stonefist was standing.

Barefoot, filthy, blood on his jaw—but upright, steady,

alive.

The chains that had once pinned him to the stone table now lay in shattered fragments at his feet, the drained runes flickering their last faint glow.

Beside him stood a boy.

Small. Pale, his arms hanging uselessly at his sides like broken branches.

Aaron’s mouth went dry. His mind needed a second to even process what he was looking at—a half-dead middle-aged man and a kid who looked like he couldn’t even lift a sword, standing in the middle of a demolished prison.

The hole in the ceiling told the rest of the story. A tunnel—clean, deliberate, carved through solid rock. Fifty meters of ground breached like wet clay.

Aaron blinked once, twice. “You’ve

got

to be kidding me…”

His gaze flicked between the two, trying to piece it together. He’d heard rumors, faint stories that Gaius had trained a few brats a couple of years back—one of them a prodigy with earth magic, a real talent. He hadn’t believed it. No kid could pull off something like this.

Apparently, he’d been wrong.

The boy—Ludger—tried to shrug, though it came out awkward with both arms limp and trembling. “Hey,” he said flatly, voice dry as dust. “Surprise inspection.”

Aaron’s jaw clenched. “You’re the little rat he trained?”

Ludger tilted his head. “I’m the better student,” he said, deadpan. “He’s just a worse teacher.”

Gaius, despite his exhaustion, couldn’t suppress a hoarse, incredulous laugh. The sound made Aaron’s lip curl.

For a moment, none of them moved—the three of them framed by the torchlight, dust still falling through the cracked ceiling. Then Aaron’s hand twitched toward his blade, his smirk returning, thinner and sharper than before.

“Well,” he said softly, eyes narrowing. “Guess the cleanup just got interesting.”

Aaron’s laugh came sudden and loud, bouncing off the stone walls. It wasn’t the kind of laugh born from amusement—it was something sharper, heavier, edged with disbelief and scorn.

“You’ve got a

mouth

on you, brat,” he said between chuckles. “Better than your teacher, that’s for sure.” He wiped a tear from the corner of his eye, still grinning. “A pity you won’t get to brag about it for long.”

Ludger didn’t respond. His expression stayed flat, but his sharp eyes flicked up, studying Aaron’s stance, his shoulders, his breathing. The man’s grin might’ve looked careless, but his weight was shifting—he was already preparing to move.

Even if Ludger had freed Gaius, the reality hit him fast and cold. He was running on fumes. His body ached, both arms were nearly useless, and his mana was barely a trickle after breaking those chains. Gaius wasn’t in any shape to fight either; he was half-starved, mana drained to nothing.

They were standing—barely. But

fighting

? That was another story.

Aaron rolled his neck, the joints cracking audibly in the heavy silence that followed. “You know, I was hoping I wouldn’t have to get my hands dirty again today,” he said, his grin twisting wider. “But it looks like I’ll have to earn the rest of my pay after all.”

He reached behind his back and drew out a steel staff—thick, perfectly balanced, the metal etched with faint glyphs that shimmered under the torchlight. When he spun it once, the sound cut the air like a blade.

The temperature in the chamber seemed to drop.

Aaron twirled the staff once, resting it over his shoulder as he smirked. “Let’s make this quick, shall we? I still have a client to report to… and I’d rather not explain how I let a half-dead geomancer and a ten-year-old cripple walk out of my base.”

Ludger tried to shrug again but failed halfway through, his limp arms making the motion look almost comical. “Guess you’ll have to explain it anyway,” he muttered under his breath.

Aaron’s grin faltered just slightly. Then he lunged forward, staff flashing under the dying torchlight.

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