The first day passed quietly. Ludger stayed inside the empty guild hall, the creak of old wood and distant wind the only things breaking the silence. He was grateful, in a way, for his own habit of overpreparing—leaving Lionfang a full month ahead of schedule had been a smart move. If he’d timed his departure closer to the escort job, this waiting game would’ve been a disaster.

At first, he didn’t mind it. The solitude gave him time to practice his magic, refine his rune strokes, and adjust the balance of mana in his body. He treated the day like a reset—recovering, sharpening, making sure he could unleash full strength at a moment’s notice if things went south.

But by nightfall, the quiet started to grate on him. There were only so many circles he could draw in the air before they all blurred together.

Doing nothing had never felt this unnerving. Especially for someone who used to pride himself on being a professional slacker before dying. Back then, wasting time was practically a skill. Now, with a system that rewarded every bit of progress and a guild depending on him, idleness felt like rust crawling up his bones.

He sighed, leaning back in one of Gaius’s old chairs, eyes half-lidded as he muttered, “Never thought I’d miss paperwork.”

The empty guild didn’t answer. Only the echo of his own voice bounced back through the hall.

When the night grew too quiet, Ludger’s patience finally cracked. Sitting around was one thing—listening to silence thick enough to drown in was another. He stood, rolled his shoulders, and decided to stretch his legs.

The streets of Meira were deserted, the moonlight casting pale lines along the buildings. Most of the wells scattered through town had long since run dry; some were half-collapsed, others just abandoned. Ludger stopped by one and peered into the darkness below.

“Well,” he muttered dryly, “might as well make some use of you.”

He took a step back, lifted his hand, and let mana pulse through his fingertips. The air shimmered faintly as a sphere of condensed moisture formed above his palm. With a short exhale, he whispered—

“Splash.”

Water burst forth in a smooth arc, descending into the well with a muted sound. Ludger adjusted the flow carefully, manipulating the speed and volume of the spell to keep the noise down. The last thing he needed was someone waking up and asking questions about why a hooded kid was filling the wells at midnight.

Each cast drew on more ambient humidity than the last, but with his high intelligence, the output was impressive. Even a restrained use of mana produced several liters at a time—enough to fill buckets in seconds.

He moved from one well to another, repeating the process, keeping the rhythm steady. Each cast refined his control, tightening his understanding of how mana pressure and moisture density affected the spell’s consistency.

It wasn’t glamorous training, but every skill had its use someday. In his experience, the difference between dying and walking away usually came down to having the right card at the right time.

By the time he stopped, the wells of Meira were full again, and the air around him hung damp and heavy with mist. Ludger stared at the faint ripples inside one of them and allowed himself a tired smirk.

“Guess that’s one way to irrigate a ghost town,” he muttered, before vanishing back into the dark streets.

After three days of waiting, Ludger’s food supply finally ran out. Dried meat, bread, and travel rations—all gone. His stomach gave an annoyed growl as he sat in the empty guild hall, and he sighed. “So much for planning ahead,” he muttered.

He pulled on his hood and made his way to one of Meira’s working taverns, a squat building near the old market that smelled faintly of ale and damp wood. The place was half-empty—just a few early drinkers and a pair of old men arguing about fish that probably didn’t exist anymore. Ludger ordered a plate of stew, sat by the window, and began scrolling through the interface for his Rain Sorcerer class. But before he could focus, voices from the next table caught his attention.

“—I’m telling you, it’s a miracle. Every well in town filled up overnight!” one man said, slapping his mug down for emphasis.

“First time in years we’ve had water that clean. Must be the gods finally smiling again,” another replied, nodding reverently.

Ludger froze, spoon halfway to his mouth. His expression stayed flat, but a vein twitched on his temple.

He hadn’t meant to start a cult.

He stirred his stew slowly, trying not to look like someone who had accidentally reenacted magic intervention. Yeah, maybe I should’ve been quieter about that… He felt a tiny pang of guilt but decided there wasn’t much harm done. The people had water; faith or not, that counted as a net positive.

When the bowl was empty, he leaned back in his seat, reopened his interface, and studied the new entry glowing faintly in the corner of his vision.

[Mist Shroud Lv. 1]

Condenses ambient moisture to create localized fog. Reduces visibility within a controlled radius which increases according to the level of the skill. Can be maintained or shaped depending on mana control. Cost: 60 mana per minute.

A small grin tugged at his lips. “Now that’s useful,” he said, quietly satisfied.

It wasn’t the kind of miracle the townsfolk had prayed for, but it was definitely the kind he preferred.

Before long, Ludger finished his meal and stood to leave, but something in the tavern caught his attention. A few tables over, a group of locals had started trading stories—half rumors, half drunken speculation.

He paused mid-step when he heard one phrase:

“—and the ground shook, I’m telling you. Pillars of earth just shot up out of the mountains, northeast of Meira!”

Ludger frowned and turned slightly, pretending to adjust his cloak as he listened in.

Another man chimed in, voice rough with ale.

“Happened two nights ago. Sounded like boulders rolling down from the peaks. Couple of miners said they found rocks the size of carriages piled at the mountain’s base yesterday.”

A younger one scoffed, “Probably just a quake. Those mountains have been cracking since the old mines gave out.”

The first man shook his head. “Nah. Not this time. The stones looked too round and placed, not fallen. Like some giant built them overnight.”

Ludger’s brow tightened. Earth pillars. Night tremors. Boulders piled cleanly at the base.

That wasn’t random collapse—that sounded intentional.

He sat back down, keeping to the corner as the chatter grew. Most of it devolved into superstition soon after—talk of buried ruins, old spirits, or the gods reshaping the land. Ludger barely heard them. His mind was already turning the pieces over like puzzle stones.

He hadn’t sensed anything from the guild hall during those nights, but if someone—or something—was moving the terrain that far northeast, it wasn’t ordinary.

Maybe Gaius hadn’t gone missing after all. Maybe he was working.

Ludger leaned back, arms crossed, eyes distant. “Well,” he muttered under his breath, “guess I just found my lead.”

Ludger slid a few coins across the counter, nodded to the tavern keeper, and stepped back out into the cold. The streets of Meira were empty again—shutters drawn, lanterns dim, and only the faint whistle of wind moving between the alleys. Perfect conditions for disappearing.

He pulled his hood up tighter and moved fast, his boots silent on the dirt road as he made for the northeast pass. The rumors had all pointed that way—earth pillars, falling boulders, the kind of noise only geomancy could make.

If Gaius was involved, then the old man was working on something big.

The moon hung high as Ludger ran through the dark countryside, his breath steady and even. The world blurred around him as his stride lengthened, stamina reinforcing every muscle and joint. He’d grown used to the rhythm of long-distance movement—his body moved automatically while his mind kept turning.

If Gaius really caused that mess… was it tied to the bridge job in the south?

He frowned. The connection didn’t feel right. Gaius wasn’t the type to travel halfway across the continent for noble contracts—especially ones that reeked of politics. Still, Ludger couldn’t rule it out. Gaius had trained half the continent’s earth mages at some point; it wouldn’t be strange if someone dragged his name into it.

“Doesn’t fit,” Ludger muttered, his voice swallowed by the wind. “But it’s still possible.”

He tightened the strap on his pack and picked up speed. Whatever was happening northeast of Meira, it wasn’t natural—and if Gaius was behind it, Ludger wanted to know why.

As Ludger ran, the wind sharp in his ears, old memories surfaced—memories he’d rather have left buried.

Two years ago, he, Viola, and Luna had been ambushed deep inside the Iron Golems Labyrinth. The attackers weren’t simple thieves or stray delvers; they were too organized, too coordinated, and far too quiet. Gaius had heard of the aftermath, and after hearing about it, he’d said he would look into it personally.

The old geomancer had promised two things that day: he’d find whoever orchestrated the ambush, and he’d send word to Lord Torvares the moment he uncovered anything.

But two years had passed since then. No message, no clue, no movement. Just silence.

At first, Ludger assumed Gaius had hit a dead end, or that the assassins had simply vanished after their failure. Attacking the Torvares heir and killing several of their own in the process wasn’t exactly the kind of job one could brag about surviving.

Ludger had figured they’d stopped operating altogether, their failure too big, too public among the right circles.

But now, with the earth trembling and pillars rising northeast of Meira, he wasn’t so sure anymore.

If Gaius had resumed that investigation—or found something that needed burying, literally—then maybe the old man had been chasing ghosts that refused to stay dead.

Ludger clenched his fists as he pushed forward into the night. “If that’s what this is about, then it’s way past time I found out.”

Ludger slowed to a halt as his Seismic Sense rippled outward like a pulse through the ground.

Something felt wrong. Not just one anomaly—dozens.

He closed his eyes, letting the vibrations paint a picture in his mind. Shapes, weights, densities—each signature distinct, each out of place. Massive, irregular masses scattered through the foothills ahead, far too clustered to be natural.

He followed the trail silently, boots crunching on gravel until the shadows of the mountains loomed over him. That’s when he saw them.

Boulders. Hundreds of them.

Some were small enough to fit in a wagon; others looked like someone had torn chunks of the mountain itself and dropped them carelessly across the valley. They were half-buried in dirt, freshly scarred, edges still sharp. From a distance, it might’ve looked like a landslide—but Ludger knew better.

There were too many, and the ground told a different story. No collapsing slopes, no ripple of impact patterns from above. These hadn’t fallen.

They had appeared.

Ludger crouched beside one of the nearest stones and pressed his palm to its surface. Cold, heavy, humming faintly with residue mana. The same signature he’d felt hundreds of times before.

“...You’ve been busy, old man,” he muttered.

Most people wouldn’t have noticed anything strange—would’ve written it off as a freak of nature or bad weather or even a paranormal event—but Ludger recognized the pattern immediately. Gaius’s magic.

The old geomancer didn’t just move earth; he created it. He could turn pure mana into stone, condense it into matter, and reshape it until it looked like it had always been there.

Ludger stood, scanning the mountain’s face again. Whatever Gaius was doing, it wasn’t simple training. This much mana meant purpose—and a hell of a lot of strain.

He adjusted his scarf, eyes narrowing. “So… what are you doing, old man?”

Ludger inspected each of the boulders carefully, running his hand over the rough, freshly formed surfaces. He didn’t sense anything wrong with them—no embedded runes, no residual spellwork—but the air around them felt off.

The mana flow of the entire valley had been distorted. What should’ve been a steady, natural current now swirled in uneven eddies, like water forced through jagged rocks.

“Creating this much earth must’ve enhanced half the mountain’s mana,” he muttered, straightening. “You really don’t do things halfway, do you, old man?”

He kept moving, careful to stay quiet. If someone else was involved in whatever this was, they might still be nearby. The slopes were steep but familiar terrain to him—enough cracks, ledges, and fault lines to hide a company of soldiers if you knew where to look.

But there were no footsteps, no lingering heat signatures in the ground. No life.

Ludger climbed higher, using his earth sense to scan for tunnels or artificial cavities. He expected to find an entrance—a mine, a training pit, maybe an excavation—but what he actually found stopped him cold.

He froze halfway up the slope, one hand pressed to the stone. The ground beneath his palm… wasn’t just soil. It was soft. Looser, thinner, with shapes—irregular, organic shapes—buried shallowly below.

He focused, letting Seismic Sense map the layers beneath. His jaw clenched.  Not rocks. Not ore. Bodies.

A lot of them.

They weren’t buried deep—barely a meter under in some spots, as if whoever had done it didn’t care about hiding them properly.

Ludger’s voice came out low, sharp, almost involuntary.

“...Fuck.”

He crouched down, eyes narrowing as he scanned the hillside. The pattern wasn’t random; the bodies were clustered, stacked in sections like some methodical disposal site.

Dozens, maybe more.

Someone had been using this mountain to dump corpses, and recently.

The faint residue of mana in the soil told him enough—these weren’t the slow, silent dead of time. The earth still remembered them being forced in.

Whatever Gaius was doing here… it wasn’t just about stone anymore.

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