Ludger barely glanced back. The revenants had been hard. Truly hard. But not hard enough. Elira stared at the wreckage for a moment longer before looking back at Ludger.
“You really do fight like the rumors,” she said.
Ludger gave no visible reaction to that.
Then Elira tilted her head slightly and added, “Though… I was expecting something more.”
That made him glance at her.
“What part?”
She gestured vaguely at the shattered revenants around them. “I don’t know. Something flashier.” Her eyes brightened behind her glasses again. “What happened to the attacks faster than the wind? Or the kind where people only realize what happened after bodies start dropping?”
Ludger raised his eyebrows faintly.
“One doesn’t need to be faster than the wind to avoid those guys,” he said.
Elira blinked once.
Ludger looked ahead into the corridor again as he continued. “And I’m planning to reach the guardian chamber.”
That made her expression sharpen slightly.
“So I need to pace myself.”
Elira studied him for a moment after that, clearly weighing his answer against all the noise she had heard before. “I’ve heard rumors that you’re as methodical as a person can be,” she said. “But that feels strange, considering the rest of the rumors.”
Ludger’s mouth moved just slightly, not quite amusement.
“Some of those are probably exaggerated,” he said, “by people who benefited from them in one way or another.”
Elira frowned thoughtfully. “Benefited?”
“Yes.”
He stepped past a broken revenant arm and continued deeper into the labyrinth, forcing her to walk alongside him if she wanted the explanation.
“If someone survives because you crushed something dangerous for them,” he said, “they usually tell the story in a way that makes the moment sound bigger.” His tone remained calm and matter-of-fact. “If someone gains prestige by being associated with an event, they do the same. If they were scared, they exaggerate. If they were impressed, they exaggerate. If they want others to leave them alone because they were near something dangerous, they exaggerate too.”
Elira listened closely.
“So the rumors grow on their own,” she said.
Ludger nodded once. “Usually.”
She adjusted her glasses lightly. “And you don’t try to stop them?”
“There’s no point in chasing every story.”
That answer made sense. Still, Elira seemed only more curious now.
“So,” she said, “the truth is that you’re not actually reckless. You just… look reckless from the outside.”
Ludger considered that for half a second. “That’s close enough. Well, my parents probably have something to say about that.”
Elira let out a small hum, eyes moving once more toward the shattered stone bodies behind them. That explained a lot, actually.
The stories made him sound like some wild force of destruction that happened to wear a child’s face. But the person walking beside her now didn’t feel like that at all. Dangerous, yes. Ridiculously so. But his danger had shape to it. Restraint. Deliberate choice.
The destruction wasn’t random. It was measured. Which, in some ways, was probably worse. Ludger fought a few more groups as they moved deeper. Nothing especially complicated.
More stone revenants, a few larger variants mixed in, one archer perched between broken columns, and a pair of spear-wielders that tried to pin him from both sides while a heavier one closed from the front. He dealt with all of them the same way he dealt with most things that relied too much on durability and not enough on thought, by reading the timing, stepping where they expected him least, and breaking whatever part of them mattered most before finishing the rest.
By the time the last one collapsed into cracked stone, the corridor had grown quieter again.
Ludger flexed his fingers once, then turned his head slightly toward Elira.
“When are you going home?”
Elira blinked at him. “Home?”
“Yes.”
She adjusted her glasses and answered like the matter was obvious. “I’m your guide. So for as long as necessary.”
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Ludger sighed. A real one this time.
“Elira,” he said, “your mother is probably already worried.”
She opened her mouth, but he continued before she could answer.
“And since she already despises my father,” he added, “and likely hates me by association, I’d rather not give her another reason to kill both of us.”
Elira stared at him for a second. Then she snorted.
“Don’t exaggerate.”
Ludger gave her a flat look. Given the whisper Maris had delivered to him earlier, he did not consider that an exaggeration at all. Elira, however, seemed completely unconcerned.
She folded her hands behind her back for a moment, rocking lightly on her heels in a way that made her look far younger than she had when buried under papers in the guild hall. Then she smiled.
“Tell you what,” she said. “Show me something interesting, and I’ll leave.”
Ludger narrowed his eyes slightly.
“That’s vague.”
Elira’s smile widened a little. “You’re the infamous Ludger. I’m sure you can think of something.”
He looked at her for a long second. Then ahead, deeper into the buried corridor where more old stone and older danger waited. Interesting, apparently. He had come here to train, inspect the labyrinth, and judge the guild that held it.
Now he also had to satisfy the curiosity of a guildmaster’s daughter who clearly had no instinct for self-preservation where unusual people were concerned.
Annoying.
Still, if showing her something worthwhile got her to leave, that was probably faster than arguing. And a quieter return to the guild would save him from another unnecessary layer of suspicion.
So Ludger finally said, “Fine.”
Elira straightened immediately.
“But when I do,” he added, voice flat, “you go back.”
She raised one hand as if swearing an oath. “Agreed.”
Ludger didn’t fully trust that. Not even slightly. But it was enough to continue. Ludger didn’t particularly like showing off. At least, not in the way most people meant it.
He had no interest in wasting effort just to impress someone. No interest in flashy movements for their own sake, or in turning a fight into a stage performance just because someone happened to be watching.
But he did want to go all out in this place. That part was real.
The labyrinth was solid enough, dangerous enough, and strange enough to let him push properly without worrying too much about scaring weaker people or wrecking something fragile that mattered. And if doing that also happened to satisfy Elira’s demand for “something interesting,” then fine. He could solve both things at once.
So he stopped walking. Elira noticed immediately and looked at him with bright anticipation. Ludger rolled his shoulders once, then let his mana rise. Not gently. Not carefully.
A current of force spread through his body as he activated Wind Overdrive, and the shift was immediate. Air began to coil around him in tightening layers, at first subtle, then sharper, until his clothes and hair started to move from the pressure alone. The atmosphere inside the corridor changed with him. Dust lifted off the ground. Tiny grains of stone skittered across the floor. The loose edges of broken cloth on the revenants nearby fluttered like they were caught in a storm trying to be born.
Then he pushed more mana into it. More. And more.
His output climbed until the air around his body began to lose its normal feel entirely. The mana no longer flowed like simple wind. It crackled. Snapped. Thin arcs of pale force danced along his arms and shoulders, jumping between the edges of his bracers and forearm guards, flickering over his skin in restless lines that looked uncomfortably close to electricity. Wind and power twisted together until even standing still started to feel violent.
Elira’s eyes widened behind her glasses. Ludger bent slightly at the knees.
Ahead of them, farther down the buried corridor, another group of stone revenants was closing in. More than a handful this time. Soldiers, archers, a thicker shield-bearing variant, and something taller in the back with a halberd-like weapon fused to one arm.
He exhaled once. And charged. The floor cracked under the force of his first step. Then he was gone. Not literally. Just too fast for ordinary sight to hold him properly.
A roar of wind ripped through the corridor as Ludger shot forward faster than the pressure around him could settle. He slammed into the first revenant before Elira’s mind had fully caught up to the motion. One moment it was raising a spear.
The next, its upper body exploded sideways in a burst of shattered stone.
Ludger twisted through the fragments without slowing. His fist crashed into a second creature’s shield hard enough to punch through it and the torso behind it in one continuous motion. He pivoted on the broken ground, air screaming around his body, and his elbow caved in an archer’s head before the thing could even draw.
The others tried to react. Tried. But he was already somewhere else.
A blur. A pressure wave. A streak of crackling force and impossible acceleration moving from target to target with no wasted motion. Every impact came with a deep, ugly sound, stone breaking under speed, under mass, under precision far beyond what those monsters could answer. Arms burst apart before weapons could finish swinging. Legs shattered at the knee before a stance could settle. Heads imploded under compact strikes that landed and vanished faster than Elira’s eyes could track.
One revenant turned toward him too slowly. Its torso folded inward from a body blow and then burst apart when Ludger passed through it. Another raised a halberd.
Ludger appeared at its side, drove a punch into its ribs, and the whole creature spun off its feet, crashed through a pillar, and broke into chunks against the wall.
The corridor became chaos.
Wind hammered through the ancient underground structure in violent pulses, whipping dust, broken gravel, and old fragments of the dead city into swirling clouds. Statues trembled in their alcoves. Fallen pieces of masonry rolled and bounced under the force of his movement. Every time Elira thought she had found him, he was already somewhere else, another detonation of speed and stone farther ahead.
He was not fighting the revenants. He was erasing them. Not with the careless excess of someone out of control. But with the terrifying efficiency of someone who could go this fast and still decide exactly where every strike belonged.
Elira stood frozen for half a second, glasses catching flashes of moving light, her brain trying and failing to keep up as one monster after another simply ceased to function in front of her.
Then Ludger surged deeper. Past the broken remains. Past the latest cloud of stone fragments. Past the line where her vision could meaningfully follow.
He became a fading streak in the distance, the crackling around his body flashing once, twice, then vanishing behind pillars and ancient ruin as the sound of successive impacts rolled down the corridor after him. The last thing he heard from her was her voice behind him.
“Hey, wait up—!”
It grew dim quickly. Swallowed by distance, wind, and the echo of destruction as Ludger disappeared deeper into the labyrinth.