Chapter 667

Raukor’s tail flicked once, sharp. He didn’t argue. He didn’t throw a fit. But he also didn’t look like a man who had given up. He looked like a beastman already planning ten workarounds.

Then Raukor’s head angled slightly, as if catching a scent that didn’t belong, and his eyes narrowed toward the open forge doors. He changed the topic abruptly.

“There’s something going on,” Raukor said. “In the northerners’ camp.”

Ludger blinked. That was a hard pivot.

He turned his head toward the direction Raukor was looking, out past the forge yard, past Lionfang’s edge, toward the newer rows and the spread of tents and structures that marked the northerners’ presence.

He narrowed his eyes. He couldn’t see anything.

Not at that distance. Not through buildings and smoke and people moving. To Ludger, the far camp was just… a suggestion on the horizon. He looked back at Raukor.

“You can tell from here?”

Raukor grunted again, the sound carrying a hint of annoyance at having to explain what felt obvious to him.

“New smells,” he said simply. Then, after a brief pause, “And… trouble.”

Ludger’s mouth tightened.

He’d met enough beastmen to respect senses that didn’t fit neatly into human categories. Some smelled lies. Some heard intent in breathing. Some just had a sixth sense for when something was about to go wrong and couldn’t explain it without sounding superstitious.

Raukor’s gaze stayed fixed toward the horizon, ears angled like he was listening to a frequency Ludger couldn’t hear.

Whatever it was, it had his attention. Ludger stood up from the table, hands sliding into his pockets, already shifting gears.

“I’ll check it out,” he said.

Raukor glanced back, eyes narrowing.

“Don’t go alone,” the lion beastman rumbled.

Ludger paused, then gave him a look that said

you know who you’re talking to, right?

Raukor’s stare didn’t budge. Ludger sighed, short, resigned.

“…Fine,” he said. “I’ll at least bring someone who can shout in FULL CAPS if I need backup.”

Raukor’s tail flicked again, unimpressed. Ludger turned and headed out of the forge, leaving the silver swords on the table like quiet promises. Whatever was happening in the northerners’ camp, smell, trouble, instinct. It was close enough to matter. And Lionfang had just started to breathe. Ludger wasn’t about to let it choke again.

Ludger left the forge and headed toward the northerners’ township at a steady pace, boots crunching over packed dirt and stray gravel.

The air outside felt different, cleaner, colder, carrying that sharp edge that always seemed to follow the northerners like a personal weather system. He kept walking.

And then his mind did what it always did when he tried to focus on one problem. It found another. Alien metal. Raukor’s conclusion had been simple: if the swords existed, the source existed. And if the source existed, it was probably on the other side of the ants labyrinth.

Ludger’s jaw tightened slightly. Because that didn’t just mean

he

wanted it. It meant the Empire would want it too. He slowed for half a step, eyes narrowing at nothing in particular as the thought sharpened.

The capital didn’t know what the swords could do. Not yet. They’d seen silver blades. They’d likely catalogued them as “unusual spoils,” maybe “unknown alloy,” maybe “potential artifact.”

But the

metal

? A resource vein on the far side of a sealed labyrinth? That was the kind of thing empires built entire wars around. Even if the swords’ techniques were unknown, mana conductivity, structural resilience, summoning behavior, the mere possibility of a new strategic material would make the capital salivate.

If they were already excavating. If they were already re-sealing and controlling information.

It wasn’t hard to imagine them doing what the Empire always did best: taking something wild and turning it into an imperial asset.

They might try to farm it. Not “one expedition.” Not “a brave delver team.”

Farm.

A controlled pipeline. Rotations. Guards. Logistics. A slow, grinding machine turning the other side of the labyrinth into a mine.

Ludger’s eyes flicked toward the distant wall line, as if he could see Rokram through it. Would they already be reaching the other side? Maybe. Or maybe they were still stuck at the entrance, poking at it with scholarly caution while pretending nothing happened.

Still, the idea came with a catch. The ant labyrinth breach hadn’t happened because someone opened a door wrong. It had happened because the monster count inside increased until the seal became a joke. Pressure building behind a lid until the lid finally popped.

If the capital tried to “farm” the other side, if they disturbed the balance, increased spawns, provoked whatever system regulated the labyrinth, they could trigger another buildup.

A bigger one. And the next breach wouldn’t spill out into Rokram, a city already devastated and politically convenient to bury. It could spill somewhere worse. It could spill toward the frontier.

Toward Lionfang. Ludger rubbed his chin slowly as he walked, the motion automatic, his body’s tell that his mind was already spiraling into planning mode.

If the Empire wanted to convert labyrinths into supply lines, then the real danger wasn’t the metal. It was a misunderstanding. Humans treated resources like mines. Labyrinths weren’t mines. They were ecosystems under pressure, connected to places that didn’t care if humans got greedy.

He exhaled through his nose. Maybe he should check more labyrinths.

Not because he needed more immediate profit, Lionfang had enough moving parts right now, but because it was intelligence. Pattern recognition. Early warning.

If “the other side” kept producing resources, magic water, alien metal, who knew what else, then it wasn’t an accident. It was a rule. And if it was a rule, then the smartest move wasn’t to fight over one labyrinth.

It was to understand the system behind them all. Ludger’s eyes narrowed, already rearranging his priorities.

Check more labyrinths for resources on the other sides.

Map them. Catalog them. Figure out which ones could be tapped safely… and which ones would explode the moment someone got greedy.

He kept walking toward the northerners’ camp, but his mind was already half a continent away, staring at sealed doors and imagining what the Empire would do if it found a way to open them without consequences.

And, more importantly, what Ludger would have to do when they inevitably tried. By the time Ludger reached the northerners’ township, the air had shifted.

Not in the way it did before a storm, more like the way it shifted when a crowd decided something was worth watching. He saw it immediately.

A knot of bodies near the center of their camp, broad backs and fur-lined cloaks packed tight, voices low and overlapping in that northern cadence that somehow sounded like an argument even when it wasn’t. Spears rested against shoulders. Arms were crossed. A few of the younger warriors stood on crates and half-built platforms to see over the heads in front of them.

Something had them gathered.

Ludger slipped closer without announcing himself, weaving through the edges of the crowd the way he moved through a market, quiet, efficient, eyes already reading the situation.

A few northerners noticed him and shifted aside automatically. Not out of fear, exactly. Out of instinct. You didn’t block the path of someone who could reshape the ground under your feet when annoyed.

He passed one shoulder, then another, and the murmurs thickened around him. He caught fragments.

“…back already…”

“…no warning…”

“…why here…”

Then the crowd thinned, and Ludger saw the cause. Or rather… The

causes

.

Two figures stood at the center of the ring, and the moment Ludger’s eyes landed on them, the tightness in his chest loosened by a hair. Not relief. Recognition.

The first was Valk. Valk the monk-hermit of the northerners.

He looked exactly like he always did, too calm for someone who was among loud people. Bare forearms wrapped in simple cloth bands, posture straight without being rigid, feet planted like roots. His head covered by a fur hat that seemed alive, and his expression carried that same quiet patience that had once made Ludger feel like an impatient child grinding his teeth.

Valk had taught him how to control his stamina.

Not “run farther” stamina.

Real stamina. Breath control. Pacing. The difference between burning yourself out like a torch and turning your body into a furnace that could run all day. Valk’s lessons had been painful in a quiet way, hours of repetition, silence, and correction until Ludger learned that strength wasn’t only about force.

It was about not wasting it. The second figure made Ludger’s eyes narrow slightly, not from suspicion, but from attention.

Shera. A summoner. A tamer.

And the closest thing the northerners had to someone who spoke to beasts the way others spoke to people. Her hair was braided tight, charms hanging from her belt, and her gaze was sharp in that unsettling way of someone who watched the world through more than just sight.

Shera had taught Ludger how to understand other creatures by reading their mana.

Not the crude “this one is strong” sense. The deeper language. The flicker of intent in a flow. The way fear distorted patterns. The way hunger changed rhythm. The way loyalty sat in the body like a steady pulse instead of a frantic spike.

It was the kind of knowledge that made tamers terrifying. And made monsters less mysterious. Ludger stepped fully into the circle, and the crowd’s noise dropped by instinct, like everyone could feel that whatever this was, it mattered more now that

he

was here.

Valk’s eyes met his first.

The monk’s expression didn’t change, but there was a faint warmth in it, approval without theatrics.

Shera’s gaze slid over Ludger next, quick and assessing, like she was reading his mana the way most people read facial expressions. And Ludger, standing there between them, felt the shape of the problem shift again.

Raukor had smelled “trouble.”

But Valk and Shera weren’t random trouble.

They were the kind of people you didn’t see unless something important had moved on the board. Not because someone pointed him out, though a few northerners did shift aside and murmur his name, but because Valk and Shera had that kind of awareness. The kind that didn’t rely on noise.

Valk’s eyes met his first. Calm. Heavy. Like a mountain acknowledging a river. Shera’s gaze landed a heartbeat later, sharp and strange, as if she were reading the shape of Ludger’s mana before she bothered to read his face.

Ludger exhaled once and let his posture loosen a fraction. Not “relaxed,” exactly. Just… less ready to fight.

“Valk. Shera,” he said, and there was a hint of respect in his voice that he didn’t waste on most people. “Welcome.”

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