Chapter 550

Dinner at home was the strangest kind of battlefield.

No blood. No screaming. Just Elaine’s cooking, Arslan’s presence, and the twins running a long-term siege operation against Ludger’s plate with terrifying patience.

Elle sat to his left like an angel with green eyes and sticky fingers.

Arash sat to his right like a tiny warlord who had discovered the tactical value of distraction.

They didn’t grab his food all at once. That would be obvious. They did it the correct way. A piece at a time.

Ludger had just raised his fork when a small hand slid in like a thief in the night and liberated a bite-sized portion of meat. He looked down. His plate looked…

reduced.

He looked at Elle. Elle stared back with the pure innocence of someone committing crimes as a lifestyle. Arash chewed noisily and smiled.

Ludger exhaled through his nose and decided to pretend he didn’t see it. If he acknowledged it, it became a game. And the twins were better at games than he was. If they lose and he wins, he loses by proxy.

Elaine sat across from him, calm and warm in the way that made you forget she could turn terrifying in half a second. Arslan sat beside her, posture relaxed but eyes sharp, always sharp when Ludger started explaining missions.

“So,” Arslan said, voice even. “Tell us.”

Ludger then started from the beginning. He kept it clean. No drama. Just facts.

The web-covered island. The crows with metallic feathers. The coordinated assault at night. The shield line discipline. The injuries. The new members joining. The silk harvest and the decision to leave before greed turned into funerals.

Arslan listened without interrupting, but Ludger saw the shift in his face when he reached the part that mattered.

“The labyrinth wasn’t normal,” Ludger said, cutting to the ugly center. “Inside it had… a city. Brickwork. Layers. Hybrids. Tool use. Strategy.”

Arslan’s gaze hardened. Elaine’s expression stayed steady.

“And a voice,” Ludger added. “An intelligent one.”

Elaine didn’t gasp. Didn’t flinch. Just watched him like she’d already accepted the world was full of horrors and the only important detail was whether her son was still breathing.

Arslan, on the other hand, wore a complicated expression, the kind people made when they wanted to be angry, proud, and horrified at the same time.

Ludger continued, because if he didn’t, Arslan would fill the silence with his own imagination.

“And we… explored the other side,” Ludger said, carefully.

Arslan’s eyebrows jumped. Ludger’s mouth tightened slightly, because he knew how this sounded.

“We pushed through,” he said. “Mapped what we could. We found Lucius.”

Elaine’s eyes sharpened just a touch. “Alive?”

Ludger nodded. “Alive.”

A breath left Elaine that Ludger hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She didn’t ask for details yet. She just let relief exist for a second, like it was allowed at the table.

Arslan’s expression twisted again, and Ludger could practically see the thought forming:

My kids crossed into the far side of a labyrinth. They have more balls than me… and one of them is a girl…

It was the kind of realization that made a father stare at his plate like it had personally betrayed him.

“That’s…” Arslan started.

“Weird,” Ludger supplied, deadpan.

Arslan stared at him for a moment, then looked away with a quiet cough that wasn’t fooling anyone. “Yes,” he admitted. “Weird.”

Across the table, Elle stole another piece of food. Arash followed immediately, synchronized like they were training a combo skill.

Ludger didn’t stop them. He just continued talking like his plate wasn’t being slowly erased.

“We also found magic water,” Ludger said. “Not just clean. Not just ‘good.’ It had a… pressure to it. Like a mana spring. Useful.”

Arslan’s eyes narrowed. “Healing?”

“Maybe,” Ludger said. “ I can tell that it can restore mana. We didn’t test it enough to be sure of anything else.”

Elaine finally spoke, voice soft but firm, Elaine’s way of cutting through all the “useful” and “valuable” talk like it was fog.

“I don’t care about water,” she said.

Arslan blinked. Ludger paused.

Elaine looked straight at him. “I’m glad you returned safely.”

No lecture. No panic. Just that. The simple, sharp truth. Ludger felt something loosen in his chest that he hadn’t noticed was tight. Arslan exhaled slowly, then nodded, conceding the point with the faintest grim smile.

“Yes,” he agreed. “That part first.”

Then he looked back at Ludger, eyes serious again.

“Now,” Arslan said, “tell me what condition Lucius was in… and tell me why a labyrinth with a

speaking

ruler let you leave with your head still attached.”

Elle chose that moment to steal the last good bite from Ludger’s plate.

Ludger watched it vanish into tiny hands, then met his father’s eyes.

He sighed. Ludger leaned back slightly, letting the chair creak, and stared at the half-empty plate in front of him like it had been robbed by professional criminals.

“The guardian probably can’t leave its chamber,” Ludger said. “Or at least, not easily.”

Arslan’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you think that?”

“Because it didn’t come,” Ludger replied simply. “It sent spiders. It used the labyrinth like an extension of its body. It spoke. It tested. But it didn’t walk out to meet me, even when it wanted me deeper.”

He paused, then added in the same calm tone he used for battle reports.

“Either it’s bound by the labyrinth rules, or it’s physically anchored to something. Core. Throne. Nest. Doesn’t matter which. The point is, it had power, and it still didn’t use the simplest option.”

Elaine reached over and took a piece of food back from Arash’s tiny hands with the casual authority of someone who had ended wars before breakfast. Arash looked offended, then immediately tried again with a different angle.

Ludger continued, unbothered.

“It’s a problem,” he admitted. “But it’s a problem for later.”

Arslan’s expression stayed serious, but he didn’t interrupt.

Ludger gestured faintly, as if pointing at an invisible map.

“Even if those beasts are dangerous,” he said, “they’re on an island in the middle of the ocean. They aren’t marching to Lionfang tomorrow.”

He glanced at the twins, who were already planning their next theft, then back to his parents.

“We have closer problems,” Ludger said. “Real ones. Political ones. Logistics. People trying to stir fear about northerners. Rathen wants healing bracers. The Empire is playing games and pretending it isn’t.”

Arslan nodded slowly, the motion heavy with agreement.

“Yes,” he said. “One disaster at a time.”

He hesitated, then added, “And about that water…”

Ludger’s eyes sharpened slightly. “What about it?”

Arslan’s mouth tightened into something almost amused. “Aronia has been studying the samples you sent for a while.”

Elaine glanced up. “Of course she has.”

Arslan nodded. “She’s been excited. Quietly excited, which is worse, because it means she’s serious.”

Ludger let that sink in. If Aronia was digging into it, then it wasn’t just “interesting.” It was

useful

. Possibly dangerous. Possibly valuable enough to drag attention toward Lionfang like blood in water. He exhaled through his nose.

“Alright,” Ludger said. “Then tomorrow I will talk with Aronia.”

He looked down at his plate again, at what little remained, and then at the twins.

“And tomorrow,” he added dryly, “I will also negotiate with these two before they eat me out of house and home.”

Arslan waited until the twins were temporarily distracted by Elaine sliding them a piece of bread like she was paying off bandits at a checkpoint.

Then he spoke, voice steady, almost casual.

“One more thing,” he said.

Ludger looked up.

“A lot more students showed up in the last two weeks,” Arslan continued. “More than we expected. Word travels. Especially when people hear there’s a guild that actually pays, actually trains, and doesn’t throw them into a grinder for fun.”

Elaine’s mouth twitched faintly. Not quite a smile. More like

of course they did.

Arslan rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Finding housing for them was a pain.”

Ludger already knew where this was going.

“We made do,” Arslan said, “but it’s been tight. And without you around to raise a few more buildings out of the earth, we’ve been… improvising.”

“Tents?” Ludger guessed.

“Converted storage,” Arslan corrected. “Some tents. Some shared rooms. A few very unhappy merchants.”

Ludger’s expression stayed neutral, but his mind was already rearranging priorities like pieces on a board.

Arslan sighed. “So,” he finished, “you’re going to be busy again. For a while.”

Ludger shook his head once.

“No,” he said.

Arslan blinked, caught off guard by the immediate refusal.

“I’ll be busy,” Ludger amended. “But not like before.”

He glanced at the twins as Elle tried, successfully, to steal a piece of food from Arash, which was honestly impressive.

“I’m delegating,” Ludger said.

Arslan’s eyes narrowed, a mix of skepticism and hope. “You?”

“Yes,” Ludger replied flatly. “Me.”

Elaine studied him, quiet, as if trying to see whether he meant it or whether this was just exhaustion talking.

Ludger continued, voice even. “We have new members. We have people who want responsibility. I’m going to split them into groups and assign positions. Training leads. Logistics assistants. Escort captains. Workshop runners.”

Arslan leaned forward slightly. “And you think they’ll accept?”

Ludger’s mouth twitched. “They’ll accept.”

Elaine arched an eyebrow. “Because you’ll ask nicely?”

“I won’t be

that

harsh,” Ludger said, deadpan.

Arslan huffed a laugh. “That’s what you call reassurance?”

Ludger looked at his father. “I’ll be pretty convincing.”

That earned him a look from Elaine, half warning, half amusement.

But Arslan nodded slowly. “Good,” he said. “The guild needs to learn to stand without you holding every beam.”

Ludger didn’t respond. He didn’t need to. They all knew the truth: if he didn’t learn to delegate, he’d become the single point of failure. And enemies loved single points.

The next day, Ludger kept his promise.

He left early, before the town fully woke up, before people could line up with fresh problems and bright eyes and the phrase

just one quick question, Vice Guildmaster.

He headed toward Aronia’s place.

Her house sat where the soil was better and the air carried more green than dust, close enough to Lionfang to be protected, far enough that plants could breathe without tasting forge smoke. It wasn’t big. It didn’t need to be. Aronia made the world around her grow, and that was more effective than walls.

When Ludger arrived, he found her outside.

She was crouched among her plants, hands stained with soil, hair pulled back in a practical knot. Leaves and stems were arranged with careful intent, some medicinal, some experimental, some simply alive because Aronia refused to let things die if she could help it.

She looked up when she sensed him. Tired eyes.

The kind of tired you got when you’d slept, technically, but your mind hadn’t stopped working long enough to count it.

She blinked once, then gave him a small nod.

“Ludger,” she said.

“You look like you haven’t slept,” Ludger replied.

Aronia’s mouth twitched in the faintest hint of a smile. “I slept.”

“That was not an answer.”

“It was the closest truthful one,” she said, then glanced back at her plants like they were witnesses. “The water is… distracting.”

Ludger’s gaze sharpened. He stepped closer, careful not to crush anything underfoot.

“Show me,” he said. “And tell me what you found.”

Aronia exhaled, the tiredness in her face shifting into focus, the kind of focus that meant whatever came next would not be simple.

Thank you for reading!

Don't forget to follow, favorite, and rate. If you want to read 400 chapters ahead, you can check my patreon: /Comedian0