Chapter 517

Lucius rubbed his face with one hand, exhausted. “You’re really like this all the time?”

Viola didn’t take her eyes off Ludger. “Only when there’s something valuable within reach.”

Ludger turned back to the lake, smirk fading into focus. “Then we agree.”

Viola stepped closer, lowering her voice. “Listen. I don’t care if you take some. I

want

you to take some. But if you act like this around Ironhand, they’ll make it a matter of pride..”

Ludger’s eyes narrowed slightly, not in anger, but in calculation.

“Fine,” he said at last. “We won’t tell them.”

Viola stared. “…That’s your compromise?”

Ludger’s expression went calm again, like a door closing. “That’s the smart option.”

Ludger didn’t argue with Viola anymore. Not because he’d agreed. Because his brain had already moved on to the part that mattered: transport.

He climbed back up first, then went further, out of the shaft, away from the colorful growth, to a patch of ruined street that was flat enough to work with. He pressed both hands to the ground and raised an earth container the way a blacksmith raised a mold.

Thick walls. Reinforced ribs. A lid that could seal. He even shaped grooves for straps, because carrying a stone barrel without anchors was how you died stupidly.

It was big.

Too big, honestly. The kind of big that made the back of his neck itch when he imagined dragging it through tight tunnels.

Then he carved a pump.

Not a metal contraption, he didn’t have the parts for that. A runic pump, built from what he did have: stone, wood fragments of old ruin metal. Intake rune. Pressure rune. Directional rune. A stabilizer so it wouldn’t explode the moment mana spiked.

He tested it once on a puddle. The water snapped into motion, pulled cleanly through the channel and spat into the container with a controlled stream.

Good.

He brought it down into the cavern, anchored it on the last platform, and started pumping.

The lake didn’t resist. The water flowed willingly, as if it didn’t care about being stolen. That fact bothered him more than if it had fought back.

The container began to fill.

And with every minute it filled, Ludger’s headache grew, because his mind kept running the route backward.

Boss chamber. Guardian. The hole he’d forced open.

He’d been proud of that breach at the time. A clean solution. A controlled violation of labyrinth rules.

Now he pictured trying to get a massive earth container through there and felt an honest, physical pain behind his eyes. He could make the hole bigger.

Which meant going back to the boss chamber and chewing through the auto-repair again, but this time with a gap wide enough to haul a small building through. It was possible.

It was also the kind of work that made enemies, even if none were present. He could break the container down and rebuild it on the other side.

But then he’d need a way to keep the water stable during the transfer. If the mana density changed, if the “source” effect faded, if it turned into expensive-tasting puddle juice halfway through…

He would have murdered a lake for nothing. Viola’s words came back to him, irritatingly reasonable.

Negotiate. Secure supply. Don’t turn this into pride.

Maybe she was right.

If this water mattered, and it did, then a one-time theft wasn’t the best play. A continuous supply was. But that meant telling Ironhand.

And telling Ironhand meant politics, claims, and people with fragile egos learning there was a miracle lake on the far side of “their” labyrinth, even if they could negotiate with Rathen, the knowledge would spread on the empire..

Ludger didn’t love any of those variables. He glanced at the shimmering water as it ran through his runic pump, bright as bottled moonlight.

“Fine,” he muttered under his breath. “Maybe we share.”

Viola raised an eyebrow. “Did you just say something responsible?”

“I said

maybe

,” Ludger corrected immediately.

The pump continued to thrum. In the end, he slowed it down and stopped before the container was full, not because he’d run out of time, but because he’d run out of certainty.

He wasn’t going to gamble the whole expedition on hauling a stone tank through a labyrinth breach while guessing how the water behaved.

Not when Aronia existed.

He sealed the lid with a quick distortion-and-pressure rune combo, enough to keep it from sloshing and bleeding mana, and stepped back.

“We take this much,” he decided. “We test it at home some.”

Lucius frowned. “Test it for what?”

“For

what it is,

” Ludger said. “Why does it restores mana? What makes it different? Whether it stays different.”

He looked at Viola, expression flat again, headache still there.

“And whether it’s worth starting a negotiation war over… or worth keeping quiet until we understand what we’re holding.”

Viola didn’t argue this time. She just nodded once, serious.

“Aronia first,” she agreed. “Then we decide how loud we want to be.”

Half a day later, Ludger’s patience was gone and his preparations were finished.

A large cart of stone sat on the cracked street like a blunt declaration of intent, thick wheels shaped from compacted rock, axles reinforced with runic braces, and a broad platform built to distribute weight instead of sinking into soft ground. Strapped onto its back was the sealed container, heavy and ugly and precious.

It wasn’t elegant. It didn’t need to be. Ludger hooked his grip under a ridge he’d shaped into the front, leaned forward, and started pulling.

The cart moved with a low grinding rumble, stone on stone, heavy enough that even the dense air down here seemed to push back. He could have made it float. Could have made it glide like a proper mage’s transport.

But he didn’t trust “easy.”

Easy broke when you needed it most.

They’d only gone a few dozen steps toward the staircase back to the labyrinth breach when Viola stepped in front of him.

Ludger stopped automatically, more from reflex than respect. His eyes narrowed.

Viola didn’t look at him.

She looked past his shoulder, straight at Lucius.

“What are we going to tell them outside?” she asked.

Lucius blinked. “Tell who?”

“Ironhand. Rathen. Your people.” Viola’s voice stayed controlled, but there was heat under it. “Everyone who’s going to ask where you disappeared to.”

Ludger tilted his head. “We tell them you took a vacation to waste time in a ruined city.”

Viola didn’t even glance at him. She ignored him with the practiced ease of someone who’d been doing it since childhood, then kept her eyes on Lucius.

She waited.

Lucius’ gaze dropped to the ground. He looked tired still, but the strain had shifted. Not just exhaustion anymore, something sharper behind it, like his mind had finally found a shape to cling to.

He took a slow breath.

And thought.

Long enough that Ludger could’ve started walking again and dragged the cart around Viola if he wanted. He didn’t. Not because he was being kind, but because the answer mattered.

Finally, Lucius lifted his head.

“I’ll tell them the truth,” he said quietly. “As much of it as I can,  once I return.”

Viola’s expression didn’t change. She didn’t push. Just watched.

Lucius continued, voice steadier now. “I went to study the area. I followed traces of knowledge and ruins, trying to find answers.” His jaw tightened. “And I’m still trying. I want to understand what this place was… and why it ended.”

He looked toward the forest-choked skyline, where broken structures hid behind trees like memories that didn’t want to be spoken aloud.

For a moment, there was silence. Only the faint creak of stone under strain and the distant drip of water echoing up from the shaft.

Ludger shrugged.

“Fine,” he said, tone indifferent. “At least it’s believable.”

Viola shot him a look, half warning, half exhausted. Then she stepped aside.

Ludger leaned forward again and pulled, the cart groaning into motion as they headed back toward the labyrinth, toward the breach, and toward the problem of explaining an impossible trip to people who would

absolutely

try to make it political.

Ludger kept pulling.

Stone wheels groaned over cracked street, and the cart followed like a stubborn animal that only moved because it understood the concept of force. He didn’t look back. Didn’t slow down. He didn’t need to hear whatever emotional cleanup Viola wanted to do behind him.

He just needed distance.

A few dozen meters later, the voices behind him dipped lower. Viola said something, he couldn’t catch the words, but he caught the tone. Firm. Quiet. The kind of tone people used when they were trying to give someone a piece of advice without making it dramatic.

Lucius answered with a single nod.

Then there was motion.

Viola dashed forward, boots hammering over broken stone, closing the gap with the easy speed of someone who’d been trained to fight, not stroll. Luna flowed after her without hurry, already positioned where she needed to be, near Ludger’s flank, eyes on the trees, posture calm and lethal.

Viola fell into step beside them.

Ludger finally glanced sideways, just enough to be annoying. “So,” he said, voice dry, “did you mark your first date or something?”

Viola’s brow twitched.

“Maybe the date of your marriage?” he added, completely straight-faced.

Viola almost choked on her own breath.

“What, no!” she snapped, too loud, then immediately regretted it. She caught herself, jaw clenching hard enough that a lesser person might’ve cracked a tooth.

Lucius wasn’t her boyfriend.

Not now. Not then. Not ever, at least not in a way she was willing to admit even to herself.

And more importantly—

Lucius looked like a man who’d been dragged through the inside of his own head and left there. He was upright, breathing, and trying to pretend his choices hadn’t shattered something important. He didn’t need Ludger’s humor aimed at his ribs.

Kicking a dog that was already down bad wasn’t her style. Even if the dog had technically walked into the pit on purpose.

Viola took a deep breath. Then another. Slow in, slow out, like she was trying to force her temper back into its cage.

“No,” she said again, quieter this time, clipped and controlled. “Lucius isn’t my boyfriend.”

Ludger hummed. “Sure.”

Viola shot him a look that promised violence later.

Luna, walking on Ludger’s other side, didn’t react at all. If anything, her eyes seemed slightly more alert, as if she’d added “sibling banter” to the list of threats to monitor.

Viola exhaled hard and kept her gaze forward.

“Just pull the cart,” she muttered.

Ludger’s mouth twitched. “I am. Someone has to carry the relationship.”

Viola inhaled sharply, then forced herself to breathe instead of murdering him.

One problem at a time.

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