Ludger sat instead of lying down, back straight, hands resting on his knees. He let his breathing slow until it was almost silent. He sank inward, into the familiar depth of his mana pool, into the Vitality Well’s steady reservoir, into the quiet place where panic couldn’t reach unless you invited it.
ditation wasn’t comfort. It was maintenance.
He felt the last threads of drained mana return. Felt the dull ache in his channels soften. Felt the aftertaste of potions fade as natural recovery took over, filling him in cleaner, steadier waves.
One breath in. One breath out.
His mind tried to wander anyway, because it always did when you gave it space.
After this… what?
If they succeeded, Rokram would be reclaid, or at least broken enough to stop being a breeding pit. The Regent would owe them sothing even if he didn’t want to admit it. Other guilds would look at the Lionsguard differently. Enemies would stop treating them like a frontier curiosity and start treating them like a piece on the board that could flip the table.
And if they failed… He didn’t let that thought finish. Not because he was afraid. Because fear was a waste of mana. He pushed the future aside and focused on what was real: breath, body, the slow return of power.
Still, the feeling remained. Not a prophecy. Not an on. A simple certainty, heavy as stone. This wasn’t just another job. It wasn’t just another fight.
Sothing about this, Rokram, the sealed labyrinth breach, the organized swarm, the four-sided assault, the plan to cut the brain out of a city full of monsters, felt like the world had shifted slightly under his feet.
A turning point.
Like the mont where a boy who had been building walls and rails and training wolves stepped onto a path that didn’t let you go back to being “just” a vice guildmaster of a border town. Ludger inhaled. Mana flowed. He exhaled. His eyes stayed closed.
And in the darkness behind his eyelids, he could already see the city’s silhouette again, black against dawn, waiting for them to step into its mouth.
When the last thread of emptiness in his mana pool finally sealed shut, Ludger opened his eyes.
No lingering fog. No drowsy hesitation. Just clarity and the familiar pressure of power sitting ready beneath his skin. He stood, rolled his shoulders once, and went to work.
From the stone shelter he’d erected in the middle of nowhere, he placed his palm against the floor and let his senses drop into the earth. The world beneath the surface unfolded for him in layers, packed soil, stone veins, pockets of damp, old roots, the occasional hollow that might’ve once been an animal burrow.
He chose a line. Straight as possible. Deep enough to avoid surface patrols. Shallow enough that he wouldn’t be chewing through pure bedrock for five kiloters.
Then he pushed. The ground didn’t “break.”
It yielded.
Stone and soil parted in front of his will like curtains being drawn aside, and a tunnel began to exist where there had been nothing but dirt and dark. As the first stretch ford, Ludger almost cursed himself.
If I’d connected tunnels to every village and town already…
If he’d spent the last year turning the realm into a web of underground routes, this wouldn’t be a midnight gamble. It would be a simple march underground, a clean insertion point wherever he wanted.
He imagined it for half a second, rails above ground, tunnels below, Lionsguard responding to threats faster than ssengers could even describe them. Then reality slapped the fantasy back into its box. He was one person. And so things couldn’t be avoided just because you wanted them not to exist.
Ludger exhaled slowly and moved on.
He didn’t try to carve the tunnel with one constant flow. That was how you burned out, how you turned a full mana pool into nothing and a cautionary tale. Instead, he worked in controlled bursts.
Terra Burst first, short, concentrated pulses that fractured and loosened the earth ahead, turning solid resistance into manageable debris. It wasn’t elegant. It was brute acceleration, the geomancer equivalent of punching a wall until it rembered it could be a door.
Then Stone Flow, a guided movent, pushing the loosened material aside and smoothing the tunnel walls into sothing stable enough to sprint through without collapsing. Stone flowed like thick water under his command, forming arches, reinforcing corners, locking the ceiling into a shape that distributed weight properly.
Burst. Flow. Burst. Flow.
The tunnel extended forward like a growing vein, swallowing distance one segnt at a ti.
It worked. But Ludger could feel the inefficiency in it like grit in his teeth. Terra Burst was ant for combat disruption, for cracking terrain under enemies or opening space fast in a fight, not for precision excavation over kiloters.
Stone Flow was good for shaping and reinforcing, but it wasn’t a true digging art either. It was more like sculpting after the fact. They weren’t the best skills for the job.
He could’ve done this easier with a specialized earthcraft technique, sothing ant for tunneling, sothing with less waste, less mana loss, less micro-collapse cleanup.
Every controlled pulse, every reinforcent pass, every micro-adjustnt of angle and load-bearing geotry, he did it while paying attention to the System’s feedback, to the subtle improvent in his control, to the way his skills responded when he pushed them toward a purpose they hadn’t been designed for.
Because this wasn’t just about reaching Rokram. This was about finishing sothing he’d been circling for months. He wanted the Geomancer class complete. Not “strong enough.” Mastered. He wanted to see what happened when the last of its skills stopped being tools he borrowed and beca tools he owned.
So he carved.
Sweat gathered at his brow despite the cool air underground. Dust clung to his cloak. Mana pulsed through his limbs in asured surges, controlled not by desperation but by discipline.
The tunnel grew longer. And deeper inside his chest, beneath the steady rhythm of Terra Burst and Stone Flow, the turning-point feeling returned, quiet and insistent. He wasn’t just digging through earth. He was digging through the realm’s old assumptions. One kiloter at a ti.
When the others woke from their brief rest, the stone shelter felt colder than before,like the night had decided to squeeze what little warmth remained out of the world.
Harold rolled off the floor first, cracking his neck like it was a ritual. Selene sat up with a yawn that looked more like a predator showing teeth. Aleia opened her eyes already alert. Cor rose smoothly, as if he’d never really slept at all.
And Ludger was there. Not collapsed. Not panting. Not drained and shaking the way most people would be after forcing earth to obey for kiloters. He was already back, dusted with grit, cloak marked with soil, expression calm.
“Tunnel?” Harold asked imdiately, voice rough.
“Mostly done,” Ludger said. “ Only the final stretch remains.”
Selene blinked. “Mostly done,” she repeated, like the words offended her understanding of ti. “You dug five kiloters while we napped.”
Ludger shrugged. “Four and a bit. The rest is easier.”
Cor’s eyes lingered on him, asuring not the result but the restraint. “Then why stop short?”
Ludger’s gaze flicked toward the tent wall, toward the dark horizon where Rokram waited, toward the unseen threat inside it.
“I’m waiting for the battle,” Ludger said. “I don’t want my magic detected.”
Harold’s brows lifted. “Detected how?”
“I don’t know what the enemy can do,” Ludger replied. “Aside from foot soldiers. We’ve heard ranged variants. We’ve seen coordination, but nothing else.”
He tightened one strap on his pouch, as if the gesture could anchor the logic.
“If there’s a sapient leader,” Ludger continued, “it should have senses. Sothing that notices disturbances underground. If I finish the last stretch now, it’s a clean signal pointing right at us.”
Selene’s grin returned, thin. “So you want to dig the last few ters while the city is screaming.”
“Yes,” Ludger said.
Harold grunted approval. “Smart. Wicked.”
Outside, the camp was waking too, lanterns dimming as dawn crept in, boots shuffling, voices low and tense. Sowhere far off, a horn sounded once, then again, the notes carrying like a warning that couldn’t be taken back.
The recruits began to stir inside the shelter, young Lionsguard mbers packed in where they could fit, blinking sleep from their eyes, checking bracers, tightening straps. They looked tired in that brittle way only the young could be: exhausted but still buzzing with adrenaline because they didn’t know how to turn it off yet.
Harold stepped forward and beca a wall.
“All right,” he said, voice cutting through the room. “Listen up.”
The recruits straightened instantly. Harold didn’t waste ti with comfort.
“You’re support today,” he said. “You will not charge. You will not chase. You will not try to be heroes.”
A few swallowed hard.
“You keep the line stable,” Harold continued. “Healing Touch stays ready. Water magic stays ready. If soone bleeds, you stop it. If soone drops, you move them back. If a flank wavers, you reinforce it and you hold with magic.”
He pointed at them one by one as if assigning responsibility with his finger.
“You do your job,” Harold said. “And you survive.”
Selene leaned against the wall, arms crossed, smirking like she enjoyed watching discipline settle into young bones.
Aleia checked her bowstring in silence. Cor’s staff tapped once, like punctuation. Harold’s eyes flicked toward Ludger, then back to the recruits.
“And while you do that,” he said, voice steady, “we’ll be doing sothing else.”
The recruits’ faces lit with curiosity imdiately, wide eyes, sharpened attention, the hunger to know what the veterans were planning.
But none of them asked. Not because they didn’t want to. Because they’d learned sothing over the last days: when Ludger and the old masters moved like this, quiet, focused, unsmiling, you didn’t ask questions.
You followed orders. Because the questions would be answered the hard way if you didn’t. Ludger watched them with a faint, unreadable expression. Good.
If they could keep that discipline under pressure, they might live long enough to beco dangerous. He looked toward the horizon again, feeling the distant tremor of a city full of chitin and hunger.
Soon the battlefield would beco loud enough to hide his last stretch of digging. Soon, the earth would open. Soon, they would go under Rokram like a blade sliding beneath armor. And then it wouldn’t matter how brave the recruits felt. It would matter whether the queen bled.
“Assu your positions,” Harold declared.
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