The giants weren’t roaming randomly.
Once Ludger mapped the tremors again and followed the lingering pressure in the air, a pattern formed: their “camp” if you could call it that, sat on the far side of the island, but close to the coast.
Not right on the sand, not exposed, but near enough that the ocean was always a presence. The air tasted of salt when the wind shifted. The ground held that damp heaviness coastal soil always had.
It raised an immediate question. Why settle near the water?
Maybe they were aware of the giant sea monster. Maybe even avoiding it, keeping to a coastline where they could see the ocean and react if that shadow rose again. Or maybe it was something else entirely: the labyrinth pressure itself could be anchored there, or the terrain was simply easier to strip bare and defend. Or they needed the coast for some reason, food, resources, rituals, a “pull” that had nothing to do with logic.
Whatever the reason, it was useful. Because it shaped how they watched for threats.
If you lived near the coast, your danger sense pointed inland. Your eyes tracked the tree line, the jungle paths, the routes that predators and enemies used.
You didn’t expect an attack from the sea side, not when a sea monster that could flip ships patrolled those waters.
You wouldn’t build your entire defensive instinct around that direction. Which meant Ludger and Luna had an angle. They weren’t approaching from the village side.
They weren’t coming down the same forest corridors the snake-people likely used when they fought and retreated.
They were coming from the opposite direction, through the darker, quieter stretch of island that the giants probably treated as low priority.
A blind side, or at least a weaker side. So they headed there.
Luna moved like she belonged to the night, her earth daggers catching only faint starlight when she shifted them. Ludger carried his bundles of short spears with practiced stubbornness, the weight annoying but manageable, his mind already breaking the coming fight into distances and timing windows.
On the way, the island felt different than it had during the day. Less like a jungle. More like a boundary.
Every so often, Ludger felt the faint tug of that labyrinth pressure again, subtle, persistent, like the world itself had a heartbeat that didn’t match his.
And as they crossed a ridge of thicker roots, he found himself wondering something he didn’t like.
Why were the snake-people on this island in the first place? It didn’t feel like an accident. A whole village didn’t “wash up.” They’d built platforms. Bridges. Ramps. This was a settlement with routine and structure.
So were they native? Or were they… placed here too? His thoughts tightened.
It wasn’t like a labyrinth could follow people, right?
Not in the way normal land followed you. Not in the way politics followed you.
Labyrinths were locations. Anchors. Gates. You went into them. You came out of them. They didn’t migrate like animals. Right? Ludger didn’t ask it out loud.
Because he could already imagine Luna’s answer: How would I know?
And worse, he could imagine the answer the world might give him if he did ask it out loud. A sigh-worthy answer that he wouldn’t like.
Labyrinths on his side had patterns. Limits. Behaviors they’d learned through blood and study and hard experience. But this place had different stars.
Different people. Different doors. Different… assumptions.
And if the rules weren’t the same, then the question wasn’t “can labyrinths follow people.”
It was “what else can they do that we’ve never had to deal with before.” Ludger kept that thought locked behind his teeth, eyes forward in the dark. Because the last thing he needed right now was to say something that made the universe prove him wrong.
They reached the far side of the giants’ territory just before midnight.
The forest thinned into broken patches again, the ground turning rough underfoot, more exposed earth, fewer roots, the kind of terrain that had been trampled until it stopped trying to grow. Ludger slowed, lowering his mana output to a whisper, and Luna matched him instinctively, sliding into shadow behind a splintered trunk.
From here, they weren’t looking into a simple clearing.
They were looking into a scarred perimeter, flattened vegetation, torn stumps, and dragged trunks thrown aside like discarded tools. Beyond it lay the giants’ “camp”: uneven stretches of disturbed ground, crude piles of uprooted trees, and a few massive shapes moving in the distance with that same wrong, puppet-like rhythm.
But Ludger’s attention snapped to the far end of the open ground. Because he could see it now. The labyrinth entrance. It didn’t look like a cave mouth or a crack in the earth. It wasn’t a hole you stumbled into by accident. It was a gate.
A monumental structure embedded into the ground like the exposed face of something buried, like the entrance to an underground city that had been waiting centuries for someone to remember it existed.
Two towering stone pillars rose from the earth, dark and slick with age, their surfaces carved with worn reliefs that didn’t resemble any imperial script he knew. The lines weren’t just decorative, they had rhythm to them, repeating patterns that made his eyes slide away if he stared too long. Between the pillars was a wide archway, deep enough that it looked like it swallowed light. The inside wasn’t pitch-black the way a normal tunnel was. It was darker than darkness, a depth that made the air feel colder just by existing.
Above the arch, the stone formed a partial facade, broken steps and layered ledges like the remains of a grand entryway. It truly did resemble the mouth of an underground metropolis, a place where caravans and armies could once have marched in under banners.
Now there were no banners. Just silence, and that faint pressure in the air that made the skin behind Ludger’s ears tighten. Luna swallowed quietly beside him, eyes fixed on the gate.
“…That’s a labyrinth,” she breathed.
Ludger didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. The problem was something else. There were no guards.
No sentries posted on the pillars. No patrol pacing near the arch. No watchfires. No warning chimes. No barricades. Not even the crude kind of “keep out” signs bandits made with spikes and bone.
Nothing.
The entrance to the giants’ labyrinth stood open and unguarded, like it didn’t need protection.
Like whatever came out of it, or went into it, didn’t require permission. Ludger’s eyes narrowed. Either the giants were so confident they didn’t think anyone could challenge them… Or the gate itself was the guard.
Ludger kept his voice low, barely more than breath.
“I’ll be the diversion.”
Luna’s eyes flicked to him sharply. “Ludger—”
He cut her off with a small hand motion, already laying the plan out like it was a routine patrol.
“I hit them first. Loud enough that they lock onto me.” His gaze stayed on the distant giants, measuring their spacing and the open routes between uprooted trunks. “I make them commit. I keep them coming until the end.”
Luna’s jaw tightened, but she didn’t interrupt again.
“You,” Ludger continued, “stay in the shadows. You don’t engage unless you have an opening you can finish.”
He reached back and tapped one of the bundled short spears on his shoulder. “Once they focus on me, they’ll show their backs, their necks, their blind angles. That’s your job. Remove them.”
Luna’s grip tightened on her earth daggers. “And if they don’t chase? If they just… stand there?”
“Then we learn that fast,” Ludger said. “And we adjust.”
He looked at her directly for a moment, serious, sharp, not joking.
“Don’t look at them directly,” he said.
Luna blinked. “What?”
“Their aura,” Ludger said. “If it works like I think it does, attention feeds it. Eye contact, focus, trying to ‘understand’ what you’re seeing.” His voice hardened slightly. “Use peripheral vision. Track movement. Don’t stare at their faces.”
Luna hesitated, then nodded once. “That would decrease the effect.”
“That’s the idea,” Ludger confirmed.
She exhaled slowly, forcing her breathing steady, like she was already rehearsing how not to panic.
Ludger watched her for a heartbeat, then added, quieter, “If you feel it building, you retreat. No shame. We don’t let it drag you down again.”
Luna’s expression tightened, but she nodded again, more firmly.
“I’m better suited for that anyway,” she said, voice controlled. “Shadow work. Not open battles.”
Ludger’s mouth twitched, approval, not humor.
“Good,” he said. “Then do what you do best.”
He shifted his stance, eyes returning to the open ground and the unguarded gate beyond it.
“One clean distraction,” he murmured. “One clean execution.”
Then he looked at Luna one last time.
“Ready?”
She didn’t smile. But her daggers angled forward, and her posture lowered into something predatory.
“Ready.”
Ludger reached down and unclasped his shin guards.
Luna frowned as he shoved them into her hands. “What—?”
“Wear them,” Ludger said. “Just in case.”
She turned the metal pieces over, eyes narrowing at the faint etched patterns along the inner plates.
“Wind Overdrive runes,” he explained. “They won’t last long, and they’ll burn out faster if you spam them. But they’ll give you a speed boost when you need to reposition.”
Luna hesitated. “You need them more.”
“I’m the loud one,” Ludger replied. “I’m already going to be noticed. You aren’t.”
He leaned closer, voice dropping lower. “And I don’t want to bring you back home wounded and make Viola hate me forever.”
Luna stared at him, then snorted quietly. “She wouldn’t go that far.”
Ludger’s expression didn’t change. “I’m not taking chances.”
For a heartbeat, Luna looked like she wanted to argue again, pride, practicality, habit. Then she did something rarer. She accepted.
She strapped the guards on quickly, tightening the bindings with practiced efficiency. The metal sat snug against her legs, light enough not to hinder her movement, runes dim and waiting.
“Thank you.”
Ludger nodded once.
“Now,” he murmured, eyes shifting toward the clearing and the wrong-moving giants. “It’s time to go.”
Luna nodded back. And then she vanished.
Not literally, no magic shimmer, no teleport.
She simply disappeared the way skilled killers did, folding into the darkness and the trunks and the uneven terrain until Ludger couldn’t see her at all. One moment she was beside him; the next she was part of the forest.
Ludger took a slow breath. In. Out. He let the air settle in his lungs, let the calm lock into place. Then he stepped out.
He walked toward the clearing like a man heading into a job he didn’t enjoy but intended to finish. The giants were ahead, huge silhouettes moving in that open scar of earth, heads twitching, posture wrong, presence heavy. None of them looked toward him yet.
Good.
Ludger’s mana stirred. The earth responded.
One spear rose, then another, then another, short, thick javelins of hardened earth lifting soundlessly from the ground around him. They didn’t clatter. They didn’t scrape. They floated in a slow orbit, point-first, suspended at shoulder height like a predatory halo.
More rose behind him. Then more. Dozens.
Then hundreds, packed tight in controlled clusters, some hovering over his shoulders, some fanning behind him in layered rows, all held by invisible pressure. The runes on their shafts stayed dark in the night, but Ludger could feel them, tight, ready, hungry to interrupt whatever labyrinth nonsense tried to flow.
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