Ludger needed to see the inside cleanly. Needed to test the structure, the routes, the resistance, the pace of response, and the quality of the people hidden there without also having to protect someone who did not move the way he did.

If things worked, then later he could bring others. Once the shape was clearer. Once the risk was measured better. Once he knew whether the labyrinth should be infiltrated, raided, burned, or collapsed on principle.

Ludger closed the box and looked at Raukor.

“I’ll manage.”

Raukor’s expression did not improve.

“That sounds like your usual answer.”

“Yes.”

The beastmen clicked his tongue, clearly unimpressed with accuracy as a substitute for reassurance. Still, he didn’t press harder. Probably because he knew pressing harder at this point would only make Ludger dig his heels in deeper out of irritation.

Instead, Raukor said, “Then test the boots properly.”

Ludger nodded once.

Ludger picked up the finished lower half again, the weight of the full suit now feeling real in a way it hadn’t before. Tomorrow night. A few tests. Final adjustments. Then the labyrinth.

Raukor watched him with the same grim practicality as always and said, “If you’re going to do something stupid, at least do it in equipment good enough that I don’t have to be insulted by the result.”

Ludger looked at him flatly.

“Definetely.”

Ludger left the workshop with the suit in hand and the plan already hardening. Tomorrow night. Alone. And if the sealed labyrinth decided to bite, then he would tear its teeth out on the way back.

He returned home with the suit in a box balanced under one arm, his mind still half on the labyrinth, half on the boots, and half on whether he could squeeze one more useful rune into the lower layers before nightfall.

Then he stopped. And almost immediately dropped the box on the ground. Because there were two unexpected visitors in front of his house. Viola and Luna.

They were not standing there like proper noble girl and bodyguard. They were crouched low in the dirt and grass in front of the house, focused in the deeply serious way only people doing something very stupid or very educational could look.

And in front of them… The twins. Elle and Arash. Only four years old. Each with a stick in hand. Trying to hit Viola and Luna with all the tiny murderous intent their little bodies could manage.

Ludger stared for a second. Because although the scene looked almost playful at first glance, it was not really play.

Not exactly. It was basically training.

The twins lunged, swung, stumbled, recovered, and came again, little feet pounding the ground with total commitment while Viola and Luna shifted around them just enough to avoid the wild strikes without crushing their enthusiasm. Viola had a longer branch in hand, tapping away bad angles, redirecting swings, correcting spacing without saying much. Luna was gentler about it, but she was also clearly feeding them openings on purpose so they could feel what it was like to “almost land one” and keep trying harder.

It was… competent. That was part of the problem. Because Ludger knew exactly what this was. He had been doing that sort of thing since he was three.

Strikes. Footwork. Distance. Timing. Getting corrected by people older than him while learning how not to eat dirt every five seconds. So none of this was wrong in principle. But it felt very different when it was his siblings doing it at their age.

Elle charged first, shrieking with the kind of high-pitched battle cry only a very small child could make sound both ridiculous and sincere, and smacked her stick down toward Viola’s leg. Viola stepped aside neatly, tapped Elle’s shoulder with her own branch, then let the girl spin around and come back again with even more outrage.

Arash tried the smarter route. He circled toward Luna and went for her hand instead of her leg. Luna blinked once, clearly not expecting actual targeting logic from someone his size, then lifted her wrist just in time for the stick to miss by a finger-width.

“Almost,” she said.

That was apparently the greatest encouragement Arash had ever received in his life.

He immediately attacked again with the expression of a tiny war criminal realizing talent had been acknowledged. Ludger looked at the whole scene in silence.

The box thumped against the ground beside him. Viola noticed first. Of course she did.

She glanced over, saw him, and then grinned with all the guiltless confidence of someone who knew perfectly well how this looked and had no intention of apologizing before being accused.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“Ah,” she said. “You’re back.”

Ludger’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“Yes.”

Elle spotted him next.

“Luddy!”

That shout broke her concentration completely, which let Viola tap her on the head with the stick.

“Dead,” Viola declared.

Elle gasped in outrage, then immediately forgot being dead and ran toward Ludger with the branch still in her hand like she was reporting from the front.

Arash, not wanting to be left out, ran after her. Ludger crouched automatically before they could crash into his legs at full speed, one hand catching Elle’s shoulder, the other steadying Arash before he tripped over his own weapon.

He looked at the stick in Elle’s hand. Then at the one in Arash’s. Then up at Viola and Luna. Neither looked remotely ashamed. That was not reassuring.

Ludger had expected many things when returning home with a finished infiltration suit and plans for a sealed labyrinth.

He had not expected to find his four-year-old siblings in the middle of early combat drills under the guidance of his sister and Luna. And that bothered him more than it probably should have.

Because again, in principle, he knew there was nothing truly wrong with it.

The frontier was the frontier. Children learned early. They had to. A stick in the hand and some sense in the feet was better than softness and surprise when the world eventually stopped being kind.

He knew that. He had lived that. Still, it felt different when the small hands clutching the sticks belonged to Elle and Arash.

Ludger looked at Elle’s grip first. Wrong. Then Arash’s stance. Worse, but more ambitious. He clicked his tongue softly.

Viola, watching his face with visible interest, said, “Don’t look at me like that.”

Ludger stood slowly, the twins clinging to him for a moment before wriggling loose again and turning back toward their “opponents” with clear intent to resume the war.

“You gave the twins sticks,” he said.

Viola crossed her arms.

“Yes.”

“They’re four.”

“Yes.”

“You’re saying that like it answers itself.”

“It does answer itself,” Viola said. “They’re four, not glass. They have too much energy anyway. They said that they want to defeat you, so I am giving them a hand.”

Luna, who at least had the decency to look slightly more cautious about the argument, added, “They wanted to imitate the older kids training.”

That made sense too. Annoyingly. Elle immediately proved the point by lifting her stick again and saying, with absolute seriousness, “Fight.”

Arash nodded beside her like this was a matter of family honor. Ludger looked down at them. Then back at Viola and Luna. The worry didn’t leave. Not really.

Because he knew too well how early training could stop being “harmless practice” and start quietly shaping what a child believed they were supposed to become.

And he also knew that once children started finding joy in the rhythm of sticks, footwork, and hitting things that moved, it was very hard to convince them later that maybe they should develop a peaceful hobby instead.

He had no intention of pretending he was any kind of balanced role model on that front.

Which meant he was now stuck with the deeply unfair experience of recognizing his own childhood habits in his siblings and being mildly horrified by them.

Viola, unfortunately, seemed to read enough of that off his face to enjoy it. Her grin sharpened.

“You were doing this at three,” she said.

Ludger looked at her flatly.

“That doesn’t mean I have to approve of it.”

That made Luna lower her gaze slightly, very probably to hide the beginning of a smile. Viola, on the other hand, had no such restraint.

“That,” she said, “is the funniest thing you’ve said in a while.”

Ludger ignored her and crouched again to adjust Elle’s hands on the stick properly.

“If you’re going to hold it,” he said to the twins, “hold it like this.”

Viola went still for half a second. Then her grin widened in pure victory. Luna finally did smile. Because yes.

For all his concern, Ludger had just crossed the line from “questioning the lesson” into “correcting the lesson.”

Which meant he had already lost the argument in the most Ludger way possible. He realized it immediately. And clicked his tongue in annoyance.

Elle, oblivious to the deeper tactical consequences, tightened her grip like he showed her. Arash immediately shoved his own stick up toward Ludger in silent demand for the same treatment.

Ludger adjusted that too.

Then stood again and looked at Viola with the expression of someone who knew he had stepped into a trap and would remember this later with resentment.

Viola looked entirely too pleased with herself.

“See?” she said.

Ludger stared at her.

“This proves nothing.”

“It proves you agree.”

“It proves that if they’re already doing it, I’d rather they do it correctly.”

“That is still agreement.”

Luna, mercifully, chose that moment to redirect the twins before the argument got worse.

“Again,” she told them, lifting her own stick.

Elle and Arash immediately turned and charged back into the world’s smallest practice match. Ludger exhaled slowly through his nose and bent to pick up the box again.

The suit inside suddenly felt a lot less strange than the sight of his siblings trying to duel his sister in the yard. Which, now that he thought about it, was probably its own problem.

Ludger set the box down more carefully this time and looked at Viola.

“You should go home.”

Viola blinked once. Then her expression flattened.

“Hello to you too.”

Ludger ignored that.

“This time, you can’t join in,” he said. “It would only make things more complicated.”

Viola crossed her arms immediately. She had very obviously not come here by accident. The timing was too neat, her posture too ready, Luna too calm beside her, and the twins far too conveniently occupied by stick warfare for this to be a casual social visit.

She said, “We came prepared for action.”

That made his eyes narrow.

Viola continued before he could cut in.

“If you go alone, you might cause a labyrinth breach,” she said. “Or you might end up on the other side of a labyrinth.” Her voice stayed frustratingly matter-of-fact. “Or something else stupid might happen because you’re you.”