I hesitate, but only for a moment, before placing my hands on the door. Lauren and Lorian accompany me. Lauren, because traps are terrifying and she’s a rogue… which maybe means she can spot traps better? Either way, I feel safer with her along. I could probably check for traps with Kaythe, considering he’s supposed to be immortal now, but that seems shitty. He may come back afterwards, but he’d still feel the pain, which I’m not going to subject him to. Not if there’s any other option. Lorian, of course, because she’s also an Energy user, and I probably should have brought her with the first time… woops. Anyway, she’ll probably find something in there that will help her stay alive better, so I’m sure she’ll forgive me.

I take a deep breath, and push almost every bit of Energy I have into the door. The process takes several minutes, just to deal with the sheer volume of strands flowing out of me, but my rate of progress speeds of slightly when I let River’s Source assist me with the process. I try to keep it at a reasonable level, however, because I don’t want to deal with the backlash right now.

The door glows brightly, almost beginning to flow, like a liquid, but it doesn’t do anything more. Confused, I start to take my hands off the wall to see if that’s somehow stopping it, but I lurch as my hands fail to move off the surface. I start to panic, violently pulling on my arms, even burning some of the little Energy I have left to pull even harder. My joints pop agonizingly, but I don’t budge them at all. Then the wall starts to creep over my hands, and I lose any remaining cool. Lauren suddenly appears next to me, and I start to warn her not to touch me, for fear of her being pulled in too, but then her sword embeds in my arms, and I realize: she’s trying to separate me from the wall. Forcibly. Her mouth set in grim determination, she raises the sword for another blow, and I’m violently jerked into the wall-turned-liquid.

Terrifying seconds follow as I realize I can’t breathe or move amidst the churning stone. I close my eyes, praying to whatever asshole god governs this world that it doesn’t hurt too much when the end comes. Just let it kill me, whatever it is, because if it leaves me in this wall to suffocate… I don’t even want to think about it. My mind is a mess of pain and fear, when I’m suddenly struck hard by something solid, right in the head. I stiffen up and hope I can withstand whatever is happening to me. Seconds crawl by, the only sounds coming from my labored breathing… wait.

I open my eyes. I’m in a well lit hallway, that extends forward into the distance a bit, before seemingly opening up into a room of some sort. Behind me, the wall I came through undulates slightly and stills. I press my hand against it, experimentally, and it starts to wobble again. I quickly snatch my hand away, before it sends me on another horrifying adventure.

Fuck this, I’m only doing that one more time, max, and that’s on the way out. Guess I’m flying solo. “Predator? What was that?”

Oh, Kaythe is still here! “I think we were eaten by a wall.”

Kaythe wiggles unhappily. “Predators are not eaten! It is wrong! How can we escape?”

I laugh. “Sorry Kaythe, it was only a joke. I can get us back out, but only after we get what we came for.”

“What’s that?”

“Wish I knew.”

With that, I regard the tunnel in front of me. The floor, at least for the first few feet, is fairly normal, but beyond that, it becomes much more… intricate. Large, swooping symbols, that themselves seem to be made of smaller, interlocking symbols, litter the floor. The walls and ceiling are also full of runes, though the larger runes seem to be different for those. The bad news is, I have no idea what they do. The worse news is that I can’t see a way around them. Unlike the main area, which had light coming from specific structures, this area is illuminated by a series of stones along the ceiling that emanate light. I’m sure they’re covered in Light runes.

Well, maybe I can limit the number of runes I have to touch? But… the floor ones are the most likely to be dangerous. There are far too many to just jump over, and I don’t think Kaythe could crawl along the ceiling with my full weight hanging down on him, but the walls are close enough together that I could place my hands on one side and my feet on the other and just… inch my way through the air. Not exactly the most elegant solution, but it isn’t like there’s anyone around to judge me.

I practice the motion a few times, then move as close as I dare to the runes and suspend myself. I carefully place my hand against the run covered wall, and then a foot, and shift my weight. The wall, suddenly devoid of any friction, lets my hand and foot slide freely, and I curse wildly as I fall to the floor in a pained heap.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

I groan, and struggle to my feet. Thank god I didn’t land on the… I landed on the runes. I immediately attempt to hop back off them, preemptively dodging any explosions, but instead of my feet leaving the ground at all, they merely slide along the surface of the ground until I fall back into the unruned area.

Ok, this is some serious bullshit. The traps are non-optional, I guess I can go fuck myself. “Kaythe, I hate to ask this, but can you lead the way? If one of these things just instantly kills anything on it, at least I can bring you back.”

“Of course! Anything to help, Predator!” And now I feel bad, but not nearly bad enough to stop him. He emphatically crawls forward, only stopping twenty odd feet in to check if I’m still following. Of course, I’m not, on account of being entirely uncertain why the fuck nothing happened. No spark, no slowing down, no glowing nonsense, nothing. Is it… safe?

I take a careful step into the runes again, and nothing explodes. I feel… slightly bad, like I’m on the border of Energy starvation, which is weird because it should have recovered, and I didn’t feel this way before. I check my status to find my Energy is not regenerating beyond 6. 6/106. It’s enforcing the Energy requirement… which makes sense. If this place didn’t protect against unqualified people walking in, the system would have wormed its way in a long time ago. I press onward.

The next rune glows slightly as I step on it, and I’m suddenly aware of something. Other: 32%... Inconclusive. Testing.

The awareness vanishes suddenly, and I feel a strange stretching in my chest for a moment, before a Lieutenant and some Carnines appear in front of me. The Carnines snarl immediately, but the Lieutenant growls quietly, and the snarling stops. The large monster eyes me, but ultimately inclines its head, and vanishes. The others follow suit almost immediately.

Pass.

I needed their permission? Or was it that I needed to prove who was in control? Fight them and win, proving I was still me? Good thing I didn’t run here right after getting the required Energy. I move to the next rune, which doesn’t stop me or convey any information, and neither does the next one. On a whim, I try jumping, but it seems that any attempt to leave the floor is met with an incredible down force that completely counters it. I can walk normally, but if I try to hop, nah. They’re less traps and more security measures… and if it’s this bad for just the armory, I can only imagine what the Library and… the weapon require.

Contamination: 0%. Pass.

Well that’s good. One more…

Energy sampled. Adding to archive. Cool… whatever that means.

With that final rune, I step into the room where Kaythe has been patiently waiting. He had no trouble, of course.

The room is… almost completely empty. It’s a medium sized, empty room, except for one small podium near the center. There are no other exits aside from the way I just came through. This… is underwhelming. With a literal secret underground bunker, I expected more. Walls lined with Shield covered in arcane symbols, swords, or even guns designed to shoot lasers powered by Energy. I expected an arsenal. I get a podium. Honestly, I shouldn’t be surprised at this point.

I approach and touch the panel. I feel a small amount of Energy get sucked out, just like with the floor earlier, but then the ground on the other side of the podium starts to shift and warp, just like it did before the wall grabbed me and threw me in here.

A large column rises several feet out of this swirling mass of stone, stopping at around chest height. On the podium, rests a golden… pocket watch. I move to examine it, and… yeah, it’s a pocket watch. Exactly like I would have seen in a shop window. It’s really ornate and beautiful, and I don’t think there’s a cover for the clock face, nor are there any numerals with which to tell time, but… it’s a watch. My secret Energy arsenal is a fucking pocket watch. I sigh, deeply. Even things that are designed to subvert the system still disappoint me. Why hide this? Were they afraid that the system would learn the concept of time? How horrifying. The system information on the thing:

[???]

Thanks system.

I experimentally push some Energy into it, and find that it flows in extremely easily. So it’s easily bound, which is nice. Couldn’t it have been… I dunno, sharper? Even a letter opener would have been preferable. Energy does awesome stuff to bound things, as long as I use them a lot, and this thing probably gets to a ‘Soulbound’ status really quickly… but why? What can I possibly use it fo-

In my hand sits a pocket watch with a knife sticking out of it. As though someone decided to perfectly meld a small blade and a watch. There is no seam, no weld, nothing that indicates that the blade wasn’t always there, even though it most certainly wasn’t. I imagine the letter opener again, continuing to let Energy flow in, and, ever so slowly, the pocket watch completely transforms into exactly the letter opener I was imagining. It even has someone else’s initials on there, because I was thinking of a generic, fancy letter opener. With a moment’s effort, and a tiny amount of Energy, the letters swap to my own initials.

Critique rescinded, this is fucking awesome.