Ludger hated the entire list.
Not because it was dramatic, but because it was practical. Because each one could turn his usual advantages, planning, calm, control, into liabilities.
And he already had enough to manage.
He already had enemies back home. Politics. Responsibilities. People relying on him to be the one who didn’t crack when everything went wrong.
If this aura could force modern-style afflictions onto him long enough, it didn’t matter how strong his mana was. It could make him do something worse than lose. It could make him make the wrong choice while believing it was the right one.
Ludger exhaled slowly, fingers tightening once into a fist. He’d fought monsters that wanted his flesh. These things felt like they wanted something else. Something quieter. Something that didn’t leave a clean scar.
“We go back tonight,” Ludger said, breaking the silence as the day started to bleed toward evening again.
Luna looked up from where she’d been sitting, expression still tight around the edges. “Back to them?”
Ludger nodded. “We can’t let their effect work on us for long. If it builds like I think it does, then the solution is simple.”
“Simple,” Luna echoed skeptically.
“Not easy,” Ludger corrected. “Simple.”
He tapped two fingers against his own temple. “We kill them fast.”
Luna’s jaw tightened. “We don’t even know what they are.”
“Then we do what works on most things that pretend to be alive,” Ludger said, tone flat and practical. “Head. Heart. Throat. Spine. Anything that ends function immediately.”
He listed it like a checklist, not a threat. “Sever the neck. Crush the skull. Punch through the chest. Take the airway. Don’t give them time to radiate whatever that is.”
Luna’s grip tightened on one of the earth daggers. She didn’t look thrilled, but she didn’t argue the logic either. After a moment, she asked the question Ludger had been avoiding in his head because he didn’t like the answer.
“What if there’s a guardian?”
Ludger’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“If they came from a labyrinth,” Luna continued, voice low, “there should be a guardian around as well. Or something like it.”
Ludger nodded once. Silently. Because she was right. Labyrinth rules had patterns. They always had patterns. And the moment you started assuming you were the exception, you got humbled. He held his chin for a second, staring out at the treeline like he could see the clearing through the trees.
Then he said, calmly, “If a guardian appears… I’ll handle it.”
Luna studied him. “Even with the mental effect?”
“I’ll deal with it,” Ludger repeated.
He didn’t sound arrogant. Just… resigned. Like that was his job.
Luna hesitated, then asked, “And if it’s worse than you think?”
Ludger’s mouth twitched. “It shouldn’t be as hard as the giant sea monster.”
A beat of silence.
Then Ludger sighed, eyes closing briefly. “…I guess I just jinxed us.”
Luna snorted once, sharp and humorless. “Yeah. You did.”
Ludger stood, rolling his shoulders as if preparing to pay for his own words. “Get some food for you. Rest while we still can.”
His gaze flicked toward the forest again, and the calm in his face settled into something colder.
“Tonight,” he repeated. “Fast and clean. No lingering.”
Ludger walked down to the waterline again, letting the surf lick at the sand near his boots while he thought. The ocean was calmer tonight, but he didn’t trust calm anymore. Not from this sea. Not from anything that lived in it.
He stared out at the dark water and tried to build a plan that didn’t rely on luck. Option one was simple. Go all out.
Hit the clearing like a falling wall. Overdrive. Earth spikes. Wind blades. Whatever it took to erase the giants before their presence could dig into Luna’s nerves again, or his. A brutal strike, fast enough that the aura didn’t have time to build, loud enough that nothing could pretend it didn’t happen.
It would work. Probably. And it would also light him up like a beacon. In a place that already had too many doors.
Option two was harder. Tactical. Observe from the edges. Pick off stragglers. Lure them away from the clearing. Kill them where there were no witnesses. No obvious battlefield. No clean story for anyone to follow back to an island and an ocean and a labyrinth route.
That second option was better for what he actually wanted. Maintain the knowledge of his planet hidden. Maintain the idea that outsiders didn’t exist. Maintain the boundary.
But even as he considered it, Ludger felt the weight of the truth pressing against the back of his skull. It wouldn’t last. Not forever.
If labyrinths were linked, if doors existed, if threats could cross worlds, then secrecy was a delaying tactic, not a solution. The longer this place ran, the more likely someone on this side would stumble onto the path. And if they did, it wouldn’t matter whether Ludger was careful tonight or not.
It would matter that he got home fast enough to prepare. He exhaled slowly, the surf hissing at the shore like a patient reminder that time didn’t negotiate. Behind him, Luna sat a little ways up the beach near the palms, quiet and still, not watching the ocean so much as watching her own thoughts.
She was thinking too.
Ludger could tell by the stiffness in her posture, the way her hands kept adjusting on the earth daggers as if she needed the weight to anchor her. It was the first time he’d seen Luna like this.
Not planning around Viola. Not calibrating risk for someone else’s safety. Not measuring her actions by how they would affect a noble heir and an entire political alliance.
Just… survival. Her survival. And his.
It changed the way she held herself. It made her look a fraction younger and a fraction harsher at the same time, like she’d been forced back into an older instinct she hadn’t used since before she became “Luna who protected Viola,” back when there was only Luna who endured.
She glanced toward the forest once, then looked away quickly, jaw tight. Those memories from last night were still hooked on her. The cold. The sudden helplessness. The humiliating reality that her body could betray her without permission.
She couldn’t imagine Ludger struggling. Not really. He was the one who always had a plan, always had another trick, always had enough control to make chaos look manageable. So she did what she’d always done when she feared she might fail someone stronger than her. She turned that fear inward and sharpened it into discipline.
Don’t be a burden.
The thought sat behind her eyes like a brand. She flexed her fingers around the dagger handles again, testing her grip, testing herself. Like if she could prove to her own body that she was steady, then she could erase the moment she collapsed.
But it didn’t erase it. It just made her quieter. More careful. More determined not to repeat it. Ludger watched her for a moment, then turned back to the ocean, mind grinding between speed and secrecy.
He didn’t have the luxury of a perfect plan. He needed the best one he could execute tonight, one that killed the threat quickly, kept Luna functional, and didn’t leave a trail back to his world any brighter than it already was.
The surf rolled in, cold and steady. Ludger narrowed his eyes. And finally, he made his decision. Ludger didn’t waste the rest of the daylight arguing with himself.
If he couldn’t afford a perfect plan, he could at least afford preparation.
He went to the harder-packed sand near the tree line and sank his senses into the earth, pulling up material that held shape better than loose beach grit. Soil rose in tight streams, compacting as it moved, dense, dark, and obedient under his control.
He started shaping.
Short spears, more like heavy javelins than anything elegant. Thick enough to survive impact. Short enough to throw fast and carry in quantity. A brutal, practical design meant for one purpose: end things quickly.
One after another, they formed in midair and dropped into neat rows.
Then he began engraving runes. Not the expensive ones. Not the flashy ones that demanded a huge mana injection and left glowing trails.
He added a rune to each spear, smaller, tighter, lower-cost. But the effect was far better for what he needed.
A freezing rune.
A hit wouldn’t just puncture flesh. It would seal it in ice or turn everything into nothing aside from ice.
Stop a target from reinforcing, healing, phasing, or whatever twisted trick those giants might rely on,especially if their aura was tied to constant mana emission. The rune wouldn’t last long. It didn’t need to.
It only needed to buy seconds. Seconds were enough to finish something’s head, heart, or throat.
It cost less mana than his old explosive rune , and it served his goal better. He didn’t need to blow the forest apart. He needed to cut the threat off from doing weird labyrinth nonsense and kill cleanly.
He worked until his arms ached and his mana circulation warmed his whole body into a steady burn. He didn’t stop. He didn’t slow. Carrying all of it would be a burden. He didn’t care.
By the time the sun was sinking and shadows were stretching long across the beach, the pile looked absurd, hundreds of short earth spears stacked and bundled in tight packs, ready to be slung and dumped and thrown in waves.
When night finally fell, Ludger stood with his load strapped and balanced, the weight digging into his shoulders.
Luna stared at him, eyebrows rising in disbelief.
“That’s… a lot of weapons,” she said.
Ludger adjusted a strap with a grunt. “Yes.”
Luna pointed at the bundles like they were a personal insult to mobility. “How are you even going to run with that?”
“If I need to run,” Ludger said dryly, “I’ll drop some.”
Luna’s eyes narrowed. “And you think you’ll have time to do that?”
“Probably not,” he admitted, then added, “Which is why I’m bringing more than I think I need.”
Luna pinched the bridge of her nose. “Of course you are.”
Ludger shifted the weight again and said, with the confidence of a man quoting ancient wisdom he only half-remembered, “There’s a saying. Something, something… preparation… something.”
Luna stared at him in silence for a beat. Then her mouth twitched.
“It’s ‘By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail,’” she corrected.
Ludger nodded like he’d known that all along. “Yeah. That one.”
Luna exhaled, shaking her head. “You’re something else...”
Ludger smirked once, then turned toward the dark forest, the bundles of rune-marked spears heavy on his back.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go solve the island’s problem fast, before it becomes ours forever.”
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