Chapter 634

Varik stared at the map for a long moment, eyes tracing the streets of Rokram as if paper could reveal what was hiding under stone.

When he finally spoke, his voice carried the kind of controlled urgency that made people stop arguing and start listening.

“The guardian,” Varik said. “Whatever’s at the core of that… unknown labyrinth.”

He emphasized the phrase like it was just a technical detail.

“It’s probably leading them,” he continued. “This isn’t random behavior. It’s command. It’s territory control. It’s patrols. Now ranged variants.” His jaw tightened. “That’s an army.”

The captain swallowed and nodded.

Varik tapped the city marker with two fingers. “We surround it and we hunt them down. Immediately.”

Selene’s eyes lit up again, bright and predatory. Harold’s grin returned, grim, approving. Aleia’s expression stayed cold, but her posture sharpened as if her body was already preparing for the first shot. Cor didn’t move, but the air around him felt heavier.

Ludger listened, and caught the deliberate wording.

Unknown labyrinth.

Varik wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t ignorant. He was careful.

He’d chosen those words because he didn’t want the existence of the sealed labyrinths floating around camp gossip and turning into panic and politics. If the public learned there were sealed furnaces beneath noble manors, barely held shut by “maintenance,” people would start asking why they’d been kept in the dark.

They’d start asking who was responsible. They’d start asking who else was hiding one. Ludger’s eyes narrowed slightly.

Waste of time,

he thought.

Rokram had fallen. Refugees had seen monsters pour out from under the manor. Half the region was already moving. People didn’t need a document stamped “sealed labyrinth” to start putting questions together. This incident was going to drag secrets into daylight whether Varik liked it or not.

Varik turned to the captain. “Send messages to the other camps.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now,” Varik said, voice hardening. “Tell them we keep advancing. Tighten the cordon. Push patrol lines closer. No gaps. No drift.”

He looked around the tent, officers, runners, the men who were trying to pretend paper could hold a city shut.

“Tomorrow morning,” Varik said, “we will launch a total attack.”

A ripple moved through the command tent, tension, excitement, fear, all at once. Varik stabbed a finger at the map again.

“All sides attack,” he said. “West, north, east, south. We hit them at the same time and overwhelm them before more variants emerge.”

He didn’t say

before they adapt further

.

He didn’t have to. Ludger’s gaze flicked across the officers’ faces. Some looked relieved, finally a plan. Some looked pale, because the plan was a knife fight with a swarm inside a city. Varik straightened, shoulders squared.

“Everyone gets one night to sharpen steel,” he said. “Then we cut this out.”

Ludger didn’t cheer. He didn’t nod enthusiastically. He just accepted the shape of what was coming. A coordinated assault. Urban terrain. Ranged variants. A guardian at the center.

And a secret that wasn’t going to stay secret once the first wave of soldiers died in streets full of chitin. He looked at the map one more time and silently marked the real problem: If the guardian could create variants that quickly, then “tomorrow morning” wasn’t a deadline. It was a race.

The camp didn’t “pack up.”

It

moved

.

Orders rippled outward from Varik’s tent, and the western containment group shifted like a living thing, tents collapsing, wagons turning, supply lines re-knotting themselves into motion. Adventurers argued, then fell into step when they realized soldiers would leave them behind if they kept talking. Spear bundles became marching columns. Fire pits were drowned and stamped out. Runners vanished toward the other cardinal camps with sealed notes pressed into their hands.

By the time the sun started sinking, the western line was advancing.

Not fast, too many people, too much weight, but steady, disciplined, the kind of forward pressure that mattered more than speed. The perimeter tightened. Patrols moved ahead and to the flanks, eyes sweeping for hunting parties. Everyone walked with the knowledge that the city was ahead and the enemy was inside it, watching.

They kept going as the light bled out of the sky. Kept going as the wind got colder. Kept going as exhaustion tried to crawl into boots and convince men to sit down and die politely.

At some point, lanterns came out. The column became a long, flickering snake across the dark plains, shadows stretching and collapsing with every step. Then, after the message of the attack spread, the Lionsguard recruits joined them.

Not all of them, some were still assigned to village checks, but enough to be noticeable. Young faces in worn gear, bracers clinking, eyes bright with that mix of fear and pride that only came from being told,

You’re needed for something real.

They arrived in clusters, guided by branch members and veteran escorts. The moment they slotted into the moving column, the mood shifted slightly, like the line had gained a spine it hadn’t known it was missing.

Even the non-guild adventurers noticed. Some stared at the kids like they were a joke. Then they saw the Lionsguard bracers. Then they saw Ludger walking with Harold and Selene and Cor like he belonged at the front. The staring turned into silence.

Hours ground past. Only close to midnight did the western group finally slow, because the terrain opened and the horizon changed. There, in the distance, a jagged silhouette rose against the night.

Rokram.

Even from far away, it looked wrong. Not because of flames, there weren’t any visible now. Because the city had a shape that said

occupied

. Too still. Too quiet. Like a mouth that had finished chewing and was waiting for the next bite.

The column came to a stop in the empty dark.

Men sat down immediately, backs hitting packs like they’d been waiting to collapse for hours. Officers began organizing pickets and watch rotations. Adventurers wandered off to find “good spots” as if the ground had preferences.

Ludger didn’t sit. He scanned the field, the angles, the lines of approach, then moved a short distance away from the densest cluster and lifted his hands. Earth answered him.

He raised a building out of the earth in minutes, simple, solid, squared walls and a low roof, big enough for his guild’s command and rest, with reinforced corners and a single entrance that could be defended without drama.

A shelter in the middle of nowhere. Practical. Fast. And the moment it stood, you could feel eyes on it. Jealous eyes.

Soldiers who had spent their whole careers sleeping in mud and canvas stared at the stone structure like it was an insult. Adventurers muttered under their breath. A few officers looked like they wanted to requisition the building on principle.

Harold noticed and grinned. Selene smirked. Aleia didn’t care. Cor looked faintly amused in that old-man way, like he’d seen enough to know envy was inevitable. Ludger walked into the building, set down his pouch, and for the first time all day allowed himself to think:

Maybe I can sleep.

He didn’t get the chance.

A runner appeared at the entrance, breathing hard, eyes flicking past Ludger like he expected to be stabbed for delivering the message.

“Vice Guildmaster Ludger,” the runner said, voice tight. “Commander Varik requests your presence at his tent.”

Ludger’s eyes narrowed. Called to Varik’s tent at midnight, after a forced march, on the eve of a coordinated assault. That couldn’t be a good thing.

He picked up his gear, slid it back on, and headed into the night without a word, already tasting the shape of the next problem before he even heard it spoken.

Varik’s command tent was already starting to smell like ink, sweat, and the kind of nervous energy men pretended they didn’t have.

Maps covered the central table, Rokram sketched in crude lines, the four containment arcs marked with colored wax, patrol paths scribbled and crossed out and re-scribbled like the paper itself was being wounded. Lantern light threw hard shadows over everything, turning faces into carved stone.

Varik didn’t waste time when Ludger stepped in. No greeting. No games. Straight to the throat.

“I want you to go straight into the enemy’s base,” Varik said, voice low. “And kill their leader.”

The words hung there for a heartbeat. Then Selene, who’d followed Ludger in with the casual menace of a knife in human form, let out a soft, pleased sound. Harold’s brows lifted slightly. Cor’s eyes narrowed, not surprised, but alert. Ludger just shrugged.

“That’s a great plan,” he said, deadpan. “I was worried we’d waste our time fighting all the small fries first.”

Varik stared at him for a second, then exhaled through his nose like he’d just remembered why talking to Ludger was exhausting.

“The strategy is obvious,” Varik said. “That’s not the issue.”

He leaned forward and tapped the map, hard, at the center of Rokram.

“I’m saying it because I want you to make it possible,” Varik continued. “An underground route. Directly to the city.”

Ludger’s eyes sharpened. “You want a tunnel.”

Varik nodded. “Yes.”

The lantern flame flickered, and for a moment the shadows made Rokram’s ink lines look like a wound opening.

“You use the chaos,” Varik said, “and you go in with a small team. Not an army. Not a column. A blade.”

He pointed to the map again, then to the containment arcs.

“While all four sides attack tomorrow morning, while the swarm is focused on holding streets and rooftops and breaking our lines…” Varik’s voice tightened, urgency sharpening into something close to a plea, “…you cut to the heart.”

Ludger’s expression remained flat, but his mind was already building the route, soil composition, stone depth, likely sewer lines, old foundations, the manor’s substructure.

“Kill the leader,” Varik said. “Queen, guardian, whatever it is.”

Selene’s grin widened. “Now we’re talking.”

Varik ignored her and looked directly at Ludger.

“Once they lose their chain of command,” he said, “the rest becomes easy. They scatter, they panic, they become animals. Our lines hold. The city gets reclaimed.”

He paused, then added more quietly, as if admitting something he didn’t want to.

“We can’t afford to grind through them in street fighting if they keep adapting. We can’t afford to give them days. We need this done fast.”

Cor tilted his head a fraction. “You’re assuming they need a leader.”

Varik’s jaw tightened. “They’re acting like they do.”

Cor stepped closer to the map, staff tapping once. “If there’s a queen, killing it could break cohesion,” he murmured. “If it’s a sapient guardian… it might be the one directing variants.”

Harold crossed his arms. “And if it doesn’t work?”

Varik’s eyes hardened. “Then we still needed to try. Because the alternative is months of containment and a city that becomes a breeding pit.”

Ludger stared at the map for a long moment. Then he shrugged again, small, controlled.

“Fine,” he said.

Varik’s shoulders eased, just a little.

Ludger continued, tone dry as dust. “I’ll make you your tunnel. We’ll go in as a blade.”

His eyes narrowed, the humor draining out as the plan clicked into place.

“But if we’re doing this,” Ludger said, “we do it clean. Small team. No panicking recruits. People who can move in the dark and kill something that might talk.”

Varik nodded immediately. “Agreed.”

Ludger tapped the map near the manor’s location with one finger.

“And you’ll give me the one thing you actually have,” Ludger said.

Varik blinked. “Which is?”

“Influence,” Ludger said. “Without us with the recruits, they won’t fight at their best, so you will keep our recruits at the backline and use them as a healing force.”

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