“Kronke!” Gwen dashed through the door, heedless of whatever other traps she might set off. She knelt beside the paladin and rolled his face gently to the side. He groaned but didn’t open his eyes. He’d bloodied his nose when he smashed into the stone. It might have been broken, but it was hard to tell with Kronke’s nose. Gwen patted his cheek. “It’ll be alright, big guy. You’ll be alright.” The tremble in her voice belied her confidence.

She reached into the side pouch on his belt where he kept the good cookies—soft sugar, dipped in chocolate and encased in a hard candy coating. Those were the special ones, blessed by the Baker to revive the big guy when he was incapacitated and couldn’t ask for the Baker’s blessings on his own. Gwen broke a piece of one off and stuffed it under Kronke’s tongue. His saliva glands would start to melt the chocolate, and once his body absorbed it, the Baker’s magic would do the rest. She rolled back on her haunches and held one of his big green hands in both of hers.

Cal entered the hallway of animal statues more cautiously, tapping the floor in front of him with his staff in case it’d been a pressure plate setting off those darts. On either side of the doorway, a stone jaguar sat poised with open mouth. That’s where the darts must have shot from. Maybe they’d been triggered by the opening of the door? As Cal considered it, he thought he saw one of the jaguar’s eyes gleam red, but when he looked again, there was no shine to the painted stone. Must have been a trick of light, but Cal didn’t dare walk farther into the room past any of the other statues in case they were all trapped.

“Is he alright?” Cal asked.

Hurricane nosed Kronke’s cheek and licked at the cookie-crumb-filled drool dripping off his chin.

“He’s rousing,” Helga said.

“Croissants … so flaky,” Kronke mumbled.

Gwen relaxed. “It’s the cold butter, big guy. Remember you told me you have to fold it over.”

Kronke chuckled. “Kronke falled over.”

“Indeed,” Helga said. “I’ve never seen the likes of a poison take him down so fast.”

“Me either,” Gwen said. “Where’s that dart?”

Helga found it by Kronke’s foot and handed it to Gwen, both of them careful not to get any of the poison on themselves. Gwen examined it and sniffed it and stared at it quizzically like maybe she could interrogate the inanimate dart with her mind. But she couldn’t. Not to Cal’s knowledge. He’d never seen her Matrix though, and they had all been making improvements, gaining some Apothos with their audits. Anything was possible.

“I can’t tell,” the rogue said. “It’s not anything I’ve seen before.”

“I’ll see what I can glean from a room scan, but my Triple A has been giving some odd data in the dead dungeon.” Cal activated his Advanced Apothos Analysis spell again.

<<<>>>

Triple A Enhanced Initial Results – Room Scan

Room Type: Trap Room

Room Name: Corridor of Stone Critters

Room Purpose: To Poison Raiders Every Step of the Way

Room Description: Those Teeklish do like to carve. I mean, have you seen their claws? They were made for the fine detail work. And this corridor shows off their best pieces over the centuries. Mimi is—er, was—quite the collector.

Makes quite the grand entrance to the Cliff Crypts of Chaos and is designed to keep dungeoneers on their toes!

Minion Description:

* Sadly since the dungeon guardian both kicked the bucket and bought the farm, there are no more minions to roam her halls.

Trap Description:

* The dual Jaguars (Jack and Jake) fire at the first dungeoneer they see. Darts are tipped with HPV poison. Before you go looking for vaccines, HPV stands for Highly Potent Variable poison. The more powerful you are, the more potent the poison. Civilians are going to get a bit of rash, a cough, maybe some pain during urination, but nothing bad. But S-Class Cultivators better act quick, or they’ll start losing body parts.

* The twin Necronic Featherheads … error …

* The Serpents of Surprise … error …

Treasure Description:

* You can take the giant stone statues if you can lift them. They fetch a pretty price on the antiquities black market, but you may risk a Teeklish curse or two for removing their treasured artifacts from Tittikaka. Do you really want to be cursed by a giant cat with claws dense enough to carve stone? That’s on you, buddy.

Apothos Usage Effectiveness: Error...

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Challenge Level Rating: Variable (Poison Based on Cultivation Level)

Manifestation Type: Real stone, real darts, real poison. Only the Apothos minions are missing.

<<<>>>

“Be careful where you step!” Cal said. “The description says the room will poison raiders every step of the way. The whole room could be trapped, and I’m getting an error on everything but the jaguars.”

“Mimi set up a mechanical trap on every statue? That’s old school, like pre-academies old school,” Gwen said. “But this is an A-Class dungeon. I guess they use all the tricks.”

“I don’t know if it’s every one. The description only mentions the toucans and the snakes, but it’s erroring out, so I can’t be sure.”

“I’ll check it out,” Gwen said, already stepping lightly behind the monkey statue next to the jaguar. She examined the room from every angle, nimbly climbing the statues and pressing her cheek to the stone floor tiles. In her element, she moved like a sleek, black jungle cat, ready to pounce and disarm a trap the moment she detected an anomaly. She pointed Spike—her wand of secret door and trap detection—at every inch of the room, but after doing a sweep of the entire corridor, she came up with nothing. “It doesn’t make any sense. I can’t even find the trip mechanism for the darts that shot Kronke.”

“Kronke feel funny.” The troll paladin moaned. He’d managed to roll over onto his back with the help of Helga and Cal, but he hadn’t made a move to get up yet. Usually he shook injuries off pretty quickly. He’d burn away poison with a single heal spell, and his natural trollish regeneration helped. He was their tank. His favorite part of the job was springing traps to try them out.

Cal pulled a hankie from his messenger bag and wiped the sweat from Kronke’s brow. His green skin felt hot to the touch. “It’s the poison. Something called HPV. The more powerful you are, the more it hurts.”

“Kronke no feel power now. Need Baker.” His body glowed with a warm, buttery light, his Aura of Healing. Then he rolled to his side and upchucked the entire contents of his troll-sized belly.

The noxious scent of bile and cookies overwhelmed Cal’s heightened elven sense of smell. He had to turn away and hold his breath to keep his breakfast down. The sound of Hurricane lapping up the vomit behind him almost made him lose it though.

“Do nae eat that!” Helga yelled.

Gwen walked over and stared up into one of the jaguar statues’ eyes. “If the room isn’t mechanically trapped, then how did Kronke get shot? Do you think there’s lingering Apothos here? Could it be the apocalypse itself?”

Cal moved toward Gwen and away from the noise and smell. “I don’t think it’s the Withering Apocalypse. That depletes Apothos, so we should see less of it, not more.” A shiver of panic ran down Cal’s spine. Would less Apothos put the Omega Audit at risk? Was that why his Triple A spell kept throwing an error?

“What is it?” Gwen asked. “You look pastier than usual.”

“Nothing we have time for. We should really get this audit done and get out of here.”

“By me grandad’s stone stepladder, we’re in a mess here.” Helga had tied Hurricane to the monkey statue’s arm and was trying unsuccessfully to help Kronke sit up.

Gwen and Cal went to help her, and between the three of them, they got Kronke on his feet again. He summoned his Pink Reaper, the Live, Love, Laugh scythe, and used it as a walking stick to support his weight as he took a few wobbly steps forward. His friends gently pushed him around the enormous pool of vomit, which had started to flow into the lines of grout on the floor, creating a kind of barf mosaic with the stone tiles.

Cal averted his eyes and held his breath till they made it to the door at the end of the hall, thankfully without setting off any other traps.

Gwen scouted into the next room and gave them the all clear.

Team Six entered a round, dusty room with a low ceiling and walls lined with reed baskets. Shreds of linen and brightly colored threads littered the floor. Cal cast his Mood Lighting spell again so they could all see better here since this room didn’t have any windows out to the crevasse. The soft light illuminated a mess of dismembered skeletons that probably used to be mummies, judging by the strips of linen wrappings mixed in with the bones.

“Shameful desecration,” Helga said. Hurricane must have felt the same way. He didn’t even attempt to chew on anything in the room.

Gwen lifted the lid off one of the baskets and grimaced. “This one’s still intact.”

“In a basket? Isn’t that small for a mummy?” Cal asked.

“Not if you coil it into the fetal position,” Gwen said, setting the lid back in place.

“Kronke hear something,” Kronke announced.

“Is that scythe talking to you again?” Gwen asked.

Kronke shook his head and then realized that was a bad idea in his woozy state. He wobbled backward and nearly fell on Helga, but she tipped him upright enough that he caught himself with his scythe.

“Kronke hear monster.”

“There aren’t any more monsters here,” Gwen said. “There’s no more Apothos—”

“Wait,” Cal interrupted. “I hear something too.”

Team Six stood quietly for a moment. The incessant howl of the wind in the crevasse made it hard to hear anything else, but Cal picked up something like nails scratching across stone. Sounded like the biggest rat he’d ever heard or something much worse.

He swallowed down the panic that wanted to rise up in his throat and pointed toward the middle of the room, where a ladder led down to the next level.

Helga drew her crowbar. The trap in the last room had them all on edge. They should have been able to walk right down to the inner sanctum to conduct the Omega Audit since this dungeon was dead, but after the Howling Chasm and the HPV poison, they couldn’t be sure what they were in for. Mimi hadn’t left her home unprotected, even in her death.

But what came up that ladder, one clawed hand at a time, was nothing of Mimi’s creation.

Two round black eyes, as dark as the night itself, peered over the last rung. Cal stared into their depths and the cold void stared back.

The creature crawled up to stand in the entryway. Pointed teeth and those bulbous black eyes dominated its oversized head. The sickly-looking flesh on its thin body stretched over knobby bones, and a dark mist bubbled out from every pore. Even from the other side of the room, that cold fog seeped into Team Six, chilling them to the core.