For the next three days, Meronia remained stubbornly uneventful, eerily so. Ludger swept through the city like an underground current, extending Seismic Sense through every stone foundation, every cobbled road, every brick wall. He searched for even the smallest irregularity: mismatched footsteps, cloaked mana signatures, disguised blades, nervous pacing, coded handoffs. But the city felt strangely clean. Almost too clean. No assassins lurking on rooftops. No smugglers slipping through alleys. No shady merchants exchanging marked crates at odd hours.

  This was the Empire, an empire with an entire ecosystem of underworld guilds, thieves, killers, and informants. For Meronia to be this quiet, this free of suspicious movement, was unnatural. It felt less like peace and more like everyone was holding their breath, waiting for the right moment to make a move. Either the criminals had gone into hiding after the Roderick incident, or someone smarter was coordinating the shadows. Ludger didn’t like either option. Still, without a lead or a ripple to follow, he had no reason to intervene yet.

  By the morning of the third day, the two spies, whom Ludger privately labeled “dumb and dumber” finally began to move. Their behavior almost made him sigh. If they had been any more cautious, they would’ve walked backward the entire way to ensure no one was behind them. Every few steps, they glanced over their shoulders, examining empty streets as though expecting Ludger to descend from the sky like a demon. They walked in stiff, jerky motions, the tension in their bodies so exaggerated they may as well have been waving flags that read We Are Very Obedient Right Now, Please Don’t Kill Us.

  They wanted him to see they were doing what he ordered. He did. And he remained unimpressed.

  They exited Meronia through the south gate, visibly flinching whenever a guard so much as greeted them. Ludger followed at a distance of about five hundred meters, far enough to ensure he’d never be spotted, close enough that their footsteps remained clear through the earth. In truth, he could have doubled or tripled that distance and still tracked them perfectly well by funneling all his focus into their direction. But Ludger disliked tunnel vision. Trouble rarely came from the obvious path. A wider sensory net kept him aware of everything moving along the countryside, not just the two terrified fools stumbling ahead of him.

  As they continued deeper into the southern farmland, the spies stopped repeatedly, once beside a sagging wooden fence, again near a patch of tall grass, then next to an abandoned field where the wind alone moved the weeds. Each time, they checked their surroundings with wide, frantic eyes. They saw nothing. They heard nothing. They sensed nothing.

  And yet they shivered. Because something unseen, something cold, still pressed against the back of their necks. That was Ludger. Or rather, the awareness of his mana threads coiled through the ground. A predator’s presence without ever showing fangs.

  Even from hundreds of meters away, Ludger felt the spikes in their heartbeats. The stuttered breaths. The frantic tremors in their calves as fear made their knees weak. They were so frightened that their footsteps stuttered off rhythm, leaving jagged vibrations in the earth. It was practically a confession written in tremors: We know he’s watching. We know he could kill us anytime.

  By the time they approached the city where the warehouse supposedly waited, both men were drenched in sweat despite the cool breeze. Their nerves were so shredded that even birds taking flight made them jump. They whispered urgently to each other, glancing around like cornered animals. Ludger didn’t hear the words, but he didn’t need to. The panic translated clearly through every uneven step they took.

  He continued trailing behind them without rushing, hands in his pockets, face calm, footsteps silent. To them, he was nowhere. To him, they were unmistakable ink blots on a canvas, impossible to lose track of. The warehouse was close now. And once the spies delivered their report… Ludger would be waiting for the Iron Moth Brotherhood’s next move. And he would not be patient.

  The town sitting on the border between Torvares’ territory and the neighboring noble family should have been unremarkable, another half-forgotten checkpoint settlement built around trade routes and tax posts. But when Ludger approached it through the earth, following the trembling footsteps of dumb and dumber, he immediately understood why the air felt wrong.

  It was midnight. Darkness draped over the town like a suffocating shroud, but the unease wasn’t caused by the hour alone. Something else slithered beneath the surface, something off. The streets were almost silent, but not in the peaceful “everyone is asleep” way. People moved here and there, but they did so with their heads bowed, hoods drawn low, shoulders hunched inward like prey that didn’t want to be noticed. Each figure moved quickly, mechanically, avoiding lantern light. No one spoke. No footsteps overlapped. No murmured conversations drifted from windows.

  It felt choreographed. Like the entire town was acting under an unspoken, oppressive rule. From beneath the dirt, Ludger felt their steps: light, cautious, every stride chosen with the care of someone who feared being overheard. The stillness wasn’t natural. It was the stillness of a place where someone had made it clear that noise was dangerous.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Dumb and dumber clung to each other like frightened rodents as they moved deeper into the slums. The town became worse the farther south they went, lanterns vanished, replaced by rotting posts and leaning shacks. The roads weren’t paved; they were mud and filth soaked into the earth, slick from recent rain. The stench hit them like a physical force: piss, shit, rotted wood, and the sour mold of abandoned buildings.

  Even Ludger, following from afar through the ground, noted how the vibrations shifted. The soil here was uneven, cratered from neglect, littered with broken glass and discarded wood. The place wasn’t simply poor. It had been allowed to decay. Or forced to.

  The two spies hesitated as they stepped into the heart of the slums. A narrow, filthy passage, half alley, half drainage ditch, led toward a dark building isolated from its neighbors. The wooden planks covering its windows were cracked. The door hung crooked. The air felt colder around it, heavier, like the warehouse itself soaked up the misery of the place.

  “There,” one whispered, voice trembling so badly Ludger felt it through the earth.

  The warehouse. The same one they’d visited before. A forgotten building in a forgotten corner of a forgotten town. The perfect place for the Iron Moth Brotherhood to use as a dead drop. The ground beneath the spies was wet and uneven, and Ludger could feel them slipping slightly in the mud with each step. Their fear radiated downward as clearly as their footsteps, the two men knew exactly how deep they were diving into danger. And yet, they also knew they had no choice.

  Ludger followed silently, a shadow beneath their feet, and the closer they came to the warehouse, the more certain he became:

  This place wasn’t abandoned. It was controlled. Owned by something, or someone, using the slums as camouflage. The two spies finally reached the shattered door. They exchanged one last terrified glance. Ludger felt it. They weren’t scared of the Brotherhood anymore. They were scared of him. And they stepped inside.

  Ludger slipped into the shadow of a narrow alleyway, letting the darkness swallow him whole as he stilled his breath and sank deeper into the earth with his senses. The mud-soaked slums were quiet enough that every vibration traveled cleanly through the ground. Under the surface, the world unfolded for him like a map made of tremors.

  Dumb and dumber’s footsteps were sharp little shivers, nervous, uneven, trembling in a way that made the entire warehouse feel like it was vibrating from their fear alone. Ludger followed their movements mentally, watching the layout of the building form in his mind. The warehouse was a single wide chamber, collapsed beams piled in corners, rotting crates stacked against walls, a long central table warped by moisture. Every footstep the spies took painted another line in the blueprint Seismic Sense gave him.

  They reached the middle of the warehouse and stopped, frozen for several seconds like badly programmed puppets. Ludger felt their weight shifting between their feet, their jerked breaths, the panicked twitching of their hands. Those two couldn’t act to save their lives, not that they had lives worth saving to begin with.

  Then, finally, the moment came. One of them extended a shaky hand and placed the folded parchment, a crude report on Torvares estate patrols, inside an empty bottle lying on its side on the table. They nudged it toward the center, as if the table itself might swallow it. Then they looked around the room with all the subtlety of terrified chickens and hurried out the way they came. Good grief. Even Ludger rolled his eyes underground.

  Their acting needed work. Trembling that hard practically advertised fear. But they had done their job, and for now, that was enough. Now came the part Ludger expected to be tedious: waiting.

  He shifted against the alley wall, extending his awareness wider. The warehouse sat like a dead heart in the slums, no movement inside, no vibrations except those dripping from the roof. The sky above rumbled quietly, heavy with clouds ready to burst. Rain would drown the scents and footsteps soon, making tracking harder. He preferred to act before then.

  As he focused deeper, letting the outside world blur, a faint change prickled through the soil. A vibration. A shift. A small but deliberate disturbance beneath the warehouse floor. Ludger sharpened his senses instantly. Another tremor followed, heavier this time, confirming the first. Someone was approaching. Underground.

  A hidden mechanism slid open below the warehouse, stone scraping against stone, wood shifting against earth. A secret passage, one the spies had no idea existed. Ludger felt the earth hollowing slightly as the trapdoor opened, sensed the faint tapping of careful footsteps rising from the depths.

  A single figure ascended. Someone calm. Someone practiced. Someone who didn’t hesitate the way nervous underlings did. They stepped into the warehouse from below, weight light but deliberate, each step measured, controlled.

  Ludger felt their hand pick up the bottle from the table.A handler. A collector. A real member of the Iron Moth Brotherhood.

  Perfect. Ludger’s heartbeat didn’t change, but a cold smile touched his lips. He had been waiting for this.

  Wind mana surged into Ludger’s legs with the sharp hiss of a drawn blade. His veins buzzed as Overdrive flowed, compressing the air around his calves and ankles until the pressure felt like it might peel the skin off. The next step he took wasn’t a step, he simply disappeared from the alley, the world blurring into streaks of shadow and wet stone.

  He shot forward faster than the wind itself. The slums flashed beneath him: broken rooftops, crooked chimneys, abandoned carts. Mud splattered in his wake but couldn’t catch him. Rain-heavy clouds churned overhead as if pulled by his momentum. In less than a heartbeat, Ludger crossed the entire district.

  By the time he reached the warehouse, the secret passage beneath it had already closed, he felt the stone locking back into place through the earth like a heartbeat going still. But he wasn’t worried. He didn’t need to see the passage open to know exactly where it was.

  His Overdrive didn’t screech to a halt. It smoothed to a halt, unnaturally so.