Then Ludger turned and moved into the second section. And this time, he did not keep the slow infiltration pace. He ran. The shift was immediate. One step measured the ground. The next turned into speed.

The fireball ahead shot forward with him, casting wild orange light over the corridor as his boots struck damp stone in a rhythm far sharper than before. The second section stretched out in long curving lines of worked stone and natural breaks, the passage broader in some parts, lower in others, twisting just enough to prevent clean long-range sight but not enough to break his momentum.

The moss had changed. That was the first thing he noticed as he accelerated deeper.

It was still thick, still clinging to the walls, ceiling, and the seams between stone blocks, but the colors were no longer limited to dark green and wet earth tones. Here, the growth had begun to shift into stranger shades. Deep emerald bled into pale blue. Sickly yellow threaded through darker masses. Patches of muted violet spread across cracks near the floor, while some hanging strands carried a faint silver sheen when the firelight passed over them at the right angle.

Worse, they looked almost alive. Not merely wet. Not merely organic.

The surface of some patches seemed to tighten faintly as the heat from the fireball neared them. Other sections reflected light in a way that made them seem to pulse, as if slow thought moved through the growth without needing nerves or blood. It was subtle enough that a less careful eye might dismiss it as shifting flame and shadow.

Ludger did not dismiss it. It reminded him too much of the marbles he had obtained before.

Those strange condensed cores, unnatural little things that carried too much implication inside too little space. The memory surfaced quickly and unpleasantly as he ran, because the moss here had that same quiet wrongness to it. The same sense of mana and life and function being pushed too close together until the result stopped feeling natural and started feeling made.

Or cultivated. Which meant he liked it even less than before. He kept moving. Past walls layered in living color. Past ceiling roots wet with gathered droplets. Past stretches of slick corridor where the stone beneath the moss bore scrape marks from long-term passage.

After running for a while, Ludger flicked a glance over his shoulder. The others were right there. Close.

Not struggling far behind. Not breaking formation or gasping for breath. They were chasing him through the second section with surprising stability, maintaining the kind of pace that would have shredded ordinary stamina in short order.

Viola was fastest among them in terms of raw aggression, driving forward with that same refusal to accept being left behind that infected almost everything she did. Luna moved more economically, each step placed with minimal waste, her control sharp enough to keep her speed steady without visible strain. Eclaire kept a cleaner rhythm but adapted well enough not to lose ground. Jennifer and Rowan were not as naturally explosive, but both of them were holding the pace far better than most trained youths had any right to.

Because they were using the monk techniques. Ludger noticed it immediately in their breathing, posture, and breathing flow.

Their bodies were not simply enduring the run. They were regulating themselves through it. Breath control. Muscle efficiency. Internal pacing. The small, practical discipline methods that let a fighter extend performance, reduce wasted strain, and keep the body from turning stupid under pressure.

He had taught those techniques to some people directly. For others, he had written manuals.

Clear ones too, because unlike most idiots who hoarded useful methods behind performative mystery, Ludger actually liked it when competent people around him became more competent. Lionsguard could not afford a culture of “only three masters know the real breathing trick” nonsense. If something worked, it got systematized, taught, drilled, and spread.

So everyone learned it. Or, more accurately, everyone in Lionsguard had to learn it. That was simply the standard now. Which was why it was no surprise that the others had mastered it too. He had made sure of it.

Even Viola, who would probably rather headbutt a wall than admit Ludger’s boring practical training methods were useful, was clearly benefiting from them. Her pace stayed hard without becoming sloppy. Luna looked almost insultingly smooth. Jennifer and Rowan had the controlled breathing of people who had actually done the work instead of just claiming they understood it.

A slight grin touched Ludger’s mouth beneath the mask, invisible to the others and made more unsettling by the sound of his altered breathing.

The team had wanted to keep up. So now they would. He turned his head forward again and increased the pace.

Viola’s voice came from behind him between controlled breaths. “See? Not dead yet.”

Ludger didn’t slow. “A very high standard.”

“It should be.”

“You say that before meeting whatever actually lives down here.”

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

“That sounds like a future problem.”

Ludger said nothing after that.

The deeper they pushed into the second section, the stranger the walls became. The moss kept changing.

What had started as heavy green growth near the entrance now turned increasingly vivid the farther they ran, as though the labyrinth had decided subtlety was no longer worth pretending. Bright emerald gave way to bands of blue-green and pale silver. Threadlike veins of violet spread through thicker mats. Some patches had warm amber tones buried beneath the surface, while others reflected the fireball’s glow with a damp red-gold sheen that looked far too rich for something that was supposed to be ordinary moss clinging to stone.

It made the whole corridor feel wrong in a new way.

Not just damp. Not just watched. Cultivated. The colors weren’t random. Neither were the harvesting marks. They found more of those too. A lot more.

Entire stretches of wall had been cut back in irregular sections, exposing damp stone and torn rootlike threads beneath. Some patches had been scraped with tools. Others looked as though whole clumps had been twisted free by practiced hands. The closer they got to the next threshold, the more obvious it became that this wasn’t opportunistic gathering.

Whoever used this place had been working the moss repeatedly, and not in small amounts.

Even while running, Viola glanced toward one of the brighter wall patches and asked, “What is moss even supposed to be used for?”

Ludger did not look back.

“Don’t talk while running,” he said. “You’ll bite your tongue.”

Despite that, he answered her.

Because if she was asking, Jennifer and Rowan were probably wondering too, and Eclaire looked interested enough that pretending otherwise would have been pointless.

“Moss has a lot of uses in alchemy,” Ludger said as he kept the pace steady. “Depends on the type. Some absorb moisture and impurities. Some hold mana better than powdered herbs. Some can be used to stabilize liquid mixtures that would otherwise separate. Some are good for salves and wound pastes. Some help with burns, fever, toxin filtration, or preserving volatile ingredients.”

Viola ran a little closer behind him, her breathing still controlled through the monk techniques. “So people are farming medicine off the walls.”

“Medicine,” Ludger said, “alchemy ingredients, mana-reactive compounds, filter material, binding paste. Maybe ritual components too.”

Luna’s voice came from the side, even while keeping pace. “That last category seems broad.”

“It should be broad,” Ludger said. “Broad keeps options open.”

Eclaire’s gaze slid over another brightly colored harvested strip. “The more valuable the ingredient, the more carefully it gets hidden.”

“Exactly.”

Viola was quiet for about three seconds, which was nearly a miracle.

Then she asked, “Can you use it?”

Ludger’s eyes stayed forward, but the question caught more of his attention than he expected.

“My alchemy skills need practice,” he admitted.

That was the annoying truth.

He knew enough to identify uses, enough to process some materials, enough not to poison himself immediately by mixing stupid things together. Aronia had given him good foundational knowledge, and his own experience had filled in some rough edges. But knowing what an ingredient could do and being able to consistently turn it into something useful under pressure were two different things.

He could improve it. The thought lingered. Actually, no. More than lingered. It connected to something else.

If he trained his Alchemy class properly, really trained it instead of treating it as a side discipline he would “get to later” then maybe he could bridge a missing piece. His mind turned over the idea while he ran, fireball gliding ahead, colored moss flashing by in vivid streaks across damp walls.

Magic ink. The kind needed for his special skill books.

That wasn’t a casual craft problem. Those books required material precision, mana stability, and a written medium capable of carrying more than ordinary information. If alchemy and inscription were pushed together correctly, then making the ink himself might become possible instead of depending on chance, scavenged resources, or half-complete substitutes.

His eyes narrowed slightly behind the mask. That was worth trying. Very worth trying. Lionsguard would benefit from it. He would benefit from it.

Eventually, the corridor opened into the threshold of the third section.

There was no dramatic gate waiting for them. No giant engraved warning about ancient doom and noble authority. Just a noticeable structural shift. The stonework changed again, the floor sloping into another long run where the walls were thicker, the moss richer in color, and the mana pressure subtly heavier.

Ludger sensed the transition immediately.

“Third section,” he said.

No one slowed. They crossed into it at speed and kept going, boots striking damp stone in a hard rhythm while the fireball raced ahead and painted the tunnel in orange, red, green, violet, silver, and wet gold.

Still no monsters. Still no defenders. Still only the harvested moss, the dripping water, the layered mana, and the crawling certainty that the labyrinth knew they were here and was choosing not to show its hand yet.

The air changed near the end of the third section.

It was subtle at first.

Not enough for the others to catch immediately, not while they were still focused on pace, footing, and the increasingly oppressive wrongness of the labyrinth around them. But Ludger felt it. The temperature shifted just slightly. The dampness thickened, then steadied. The corridor ahead seemed to hold its own breath.

That was usually a bad sign.

Ludger narrowed his eyes and pushed Seismic Sense farther ahead while he ran. The corridor still curved gently, the moss-laden walls flashing by in streaks of color under the fireball’s light, but the earth beneath the path had changed. It felt like space.

A large one. He found the chamber before he could see it. Not with his eyes. With the ground.

The vibrations shifted where the corridor widened and then dropped into a broad hollow beyond the last stretch of worked stone. The support layers were thicker around the edges, older beneath, as if a natural cavern had once existed there and later been forced into a more deliberate shape. He could feel the breadth of it through the earth. He could feel the stillness too.

Guardian chamber.