Chapter 537

Ludger didn’t hesitate when he reached the entrance again.

The cavern-mouth waited in the island’s center like a grand doorway pretending to be a natural hole, arched stone, pillar-like ribs, web curtains hanging in heavy sheets that swayed faintly as if the labyrinth was breathing.

He stepped through. No announcement. No dramatic pause. Just a decision made and executed.

Because after last night, the idea of letting another wave pour out into the open made his skin crawl. They’d survived once. Barely clean.

But open ground meant too many variables, crows above, spiders below, exhausted kids in the middle. The next time the timing lined up wrong, someone would die. Not because they were weak, but because the battlefield would be stacked against them.

Better to cut the source. Better to drag the fight back into tunnels where numbers didn’t matter as much and angles could be controlled.

The air inside was cooler and drier, carrying that dusty cloth smell and the faint sweetness of rot. The light behind him faded fast, swallowed by depth. Webbing clung to the stone in layers, and every few steps his boots stuck slightly before peeling free with a quiet pull.

He let Seismic Sense bloom forward in a tight cone, mapping corridors, slopes, and hollow spaces. He didn’t search for beauty this time. He searched for flow, where the monsters had traveled, where the pressure points were, where the exit lanes allowed a swarm to spill out.

This place is a tap,

he thought.

And last night someone or something opened it on purpose.

His jaw tightened. As he moved deeper, another thought settled in, ugly and practical. He might have to hurry up with the spider silk harvesting. They’d come here planning a couple of days. Fill the ship, leave, maybe push to the guardian chamber.

Now? Now he wasn’t sure they could afford to linger. Who knew what would join the next attack. It had started with crows. Then spiders. Coordinated like a staged assault.

If the island had other “neighbors” another labyrinth influence bleeding into the same airspace, another predator drawn by the noise and blood, then tomorrow night could bring something worse. Something that didn’t throw feathers or stab with legs.

Something that ignored shields. Something that flew

and

dove into the sea. Ludger exhaled slowly, forcing the worry into a neat box in his mind labeled later. First, he’d see what the labyrinth looked like from the inside. First, he’d figure out why only first-section spiders roamed outside.

And first, most importantly, he’d make sure nothing else could crawl out of this hell hole and turn his trainees into a lesson he never intended to teach.

The labyrinth swallowed him in layers.

The first corridor was wide, too wide to feel like a “cave” and too straight to feel natural. Stone walls rose on either side like the inside of a cut throat, smoothed and shaped into long planes that guided the eye forward. The ceiling arched high enough that sound didn’t bounce back quickly. It just… vanished upward.

And everywhere… Cobwebs.

Not the thin, dusty strands you brushed off with a grimace. These were structures.

Sheets of pale silk stretched from wall to wall like curtains, thick enough to dull sound and turn the air heavy. Ropes of webbing ran along the corners where stone met stone, braided into cables as thick as a wrist. Some strands were anchored into the rock with hardened nodes, almost like the spiders had riveted their work into place.

The floor was worse.

A layered carpet of webbing lay over the stone slabs, soft in places, stiff in others, sticking faintly to Ludger’s boots with every step. Where the silk was thinner, he could see the original floor, flat stone plates fitted together like a road, worn by time and then buried by the colony’s relentless work.

He frowned. He’d expected webs. He hadn’t expected… industry.

Then he saw the eggs. They were everywhere. Not scattered randomly. Placed.

Clusters tucked into alcoves and corners, bundled in thick white sacks that bulged like swollen fruit. Some were small, fist-sized pods lashed together in bunches. Others were larger, basket-sized masses wrapped in multiple layers, reinforced with extra silk cords like the colony was protecting its investments.

In the dim light, the egg sacks looked like pale lanterns hung too low. And some of them moved.

Not “hatching.” Not yet.

But shifting, subtle, like something inside rolled against the membrane as the air changed around Ludger. A faint tremor ran through a few sacks when his steps vibrated the floor.

His stomach tightened.

They’re breeding inside the labyrinth… like this is a fortress,

he thought.

He hadn’t expected them to multiply so aggressively.

Outside, the island looked like it had been abandoned by hunters for years, webbing everywhere, the ecosystem stripped clean. He’d assumed the surface was the main colony, the labyrinth just the source.

But this…

This was the heart. Corridors that weren’t cramped. Corridors built for movement. He paced forward and measured it with his eyes and Seismic Sense.

This main passage was wide enough for ten people to walk side by side without brushing shoulders. The ceiling height matched it, built to accommodate mass traffic, not a single file crawl.

It felt less like a monster den and more like a grand hall that had been repurposed into a nursery. Ludger’s breath fogged faintly in the cooler air. He listened. The labyrinth wasn’t silent.

Under the thick webbing, there was a constant soft rasp, tiny legs moving somewhere deeper, silk being pulled and laid, the endless background labor of a colony that never slept.

He tightened his grip on his weapon and narrowed his eyes.

If this is just the beginning…

He kept walking anyway, because the only thing worse than spiders multiplying like this…was letting them keep doing it.

Ludger stared at the egg sacks for one more breath, then made a decision.

No hesitation. No debate about “maybe these aren’t all active.”

If they’d poured out last night in those numbers, then these weren’t decorations.

These were the next wave. He extended his hand and pulled pebbles from the air with his mana, small, hardened bullets condensed by earth mana until they were dense and smooth. Dozens became hundreds, hovering around his palm in a tight orbit.

He raised his hand toward the nearest cluster of eggs.

Then he started launching them with his thumb, his fingers snapping forward in quick, brutal flicks that turned each pebble into a screaming projectile.

Crack.

The first egg sack ruptured.

The membrane split, and something wet and pale spilled out, unfinished bodies, soft shells, twitching legs that never got the chance to become real monsters.

Ludger didn’t flinch. He flicked again. And again.

Pebbles hammered into egg sacks with relentless rhythm. Each hit produced a sharp fracture, then a wet collapse, splitting membranes, bursting clusters, dropping the ruined contents onto the webbed floor with damp, ugly sounds.

Splut.

Thud.

Wet tear.

The air filled with a sweet rot smell that made the back of the throat tighten. Ludger ignored it. He didn’t slow.

He swept his hand sideways and raked a whole alcove of egg bundles, pebbles punching through the white bulges like nails through fruit. Cracked sacks sagged, then tore, then collapsed into ruined piles.

He kept walking forward while firing, destroying everything within reach, corners, ceiling-hung pods, bundles tucked behind silk curtains. No mercy. No wasted mana.

Just cheap kinetic violence and a quiet, ugly efficiency.

By the time he reached the end of the first long corridor, the floor behind him was littered with shredded membranes and broken sacs, the web carpet stained and sagging under the wet weight of what had been inside.

That was when the spiders finally responded.

They came from deeper in the first section, white bodies skittering into view at the far end of the hall, legs clicking, heads low, moving fast as if they’d smelled the loss.

A dozen at first. Then more.

They surged toward him, not cautious now, not hiding behind webbing, angry, direct, trying to stop the thing that was destroying their future.

Ludger didn’t retreat. He didn’t even change expression. He raised his hand, thumb snapping forward again. Pebbles cut the air in a tight storm.

The first spider took one through the head and folded instantly, legs collapsing like someone had yanked its strings.

The second lost two joints mid-stride, legs shattering, body skidding across silk.

A third tried to leap, three pebbles hit it in a line and punched through its thorax, stopping it midair and dropping it like a thrown rag.

The rest didn’t get closer.

They died in a staggered wave, heads cracked, bodies pierced, legs snapped, each one falling before it could reach stabbing range.

In seconds, the corridor was quiet again. Only the faint rasp of deeper movement remained. Ludger exhaled through his nose and lowered his hand, pebbles still orbiting, ready. His eyes swept the ruined egg piles, then the bodies, then the webbed walls.

What’s feeding this many monsters?

he thought.

Food, sure, anything that had once lived on the island, everything they’d stripped clean.

But that wouldn’t explain this pace. Not this scale. Not the way the colony had turned architecture into a nursery. His gaze narrowed. The only answer that made sense was the one he hated most because it was invisible and hard to control.

“The mana,” he muttered.

Labyrinth mana.

Dense, constant, saturating everything, enough to accelerate growth, reinforce silk, empower reproduction like the place itself

wanted

an army.

Ludger tightened his jaw and started forward again, deeper into the webbed hall.

The stupid part was that his mana wasn’t dropping.

Not meaningfully.

The labyrinth’s ambient mana was so dense it kept seeping back into him faster than he spent it on pebbles. His circuits still burned from last night, but the core itself… It was refilled. Slow, steady, almost insulting.

If this mana-thick hell had one kindness, it was that it kept him fueled.

And yet… After three hours of walking, killing, and smashing egg clusters like a machine, Ludger realized something that made his jaw tighten.

His pace wasn't good enough. Not if he wanted to do this cleanly and fast.

Not if he wanted to reach the guardian chamber in “a couple of days,” while also keeping the outside safe, harvesting silk, loading the ship, rotating watches, and preventing another coordinated night assault.

He stopped in the middle of a corridor wide enough for ten men and stared into the web-choked distance.

Maybe I shouldn’t rush the guardian chamber,

he thought.

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