Chapter 242
Veronica huddled in the rain and waited, as she had been doing for longer than she cared to admit by that point. Waiting for prey to spring a trap was exhausting.
Her name wasn't actually Veronica – or at least it hadn't been originally. Born to a completely normal set of parents, they had given her a cute, adorable name. Summer.
She hated that name. It was bright and cheery and all of the things that she felt that she was not. So she had waited until she was old enough and petitioned to have her name changed – to Veronica.
She had thought that Veronica was a much more mature and grown up sounding name. A person named Veronica was treated with respect. No one had taken her seriously when she had been named Summer, or so she had thought.
Veronica had always felt that she was different from other people. She hated being around others for the most part. Part of it was that she didn't worry about who was in charge or what the rules might be because Veronica made up her own rules as she went.
This had landed her in trouble numerous times before.
She had tried her hand at the usual options. She had tried working a job, but that hadn't panned out as she had been fired for telling a customer what she really thought. Then she'd tried her hand at field work and found that it wasn't for her. It was too much... work.
Things had changed for her when she managed to steal an upgrade stone from a foolish and drunk adventurer who had left it unguarded at his table in a tavern she had been drinking at. It had been child's play for Veronica to swipe the stone and secrete it on her person.
Veronica had used the stone and picked Scout. She only had a single Class Ability and at first she thought that it wasn't the best.
Her options had been an ability that let her create water sources, an ability that allowed her to summon a red light to see by, and a third ability, which she had chosen as the others weren't all that great.
Her ability let her create pit traps. In the ground. Small pits perfect for capturing a single person, or large pits, deep enough to trap a group. When she used her ability it would create a pit trap wherever she chose. It was large too and difficult to climb out of. It was also concealed and was magically covered with a thin layer of leaves. The larger the pit she made, the more people it would take to trigger it.
It was an excellent trap ability, and she had used it often to trap unwary travelers. She would make them throw up their valuables after which she would throw them a rope – and then run. Over time she had come to appreciate the ability as well as the amount of money it had made her over the years.
Today, however, was different.
She had taken some of her money and bribed an official in the Adventurer's Guild for information on the graduation exercises. Veronica knew that most of the students would be sent on regular missions to regular dungeons. Those that excelled, however, were often given real missions, hard missions, the kind of tasks with valuable rewards.
Veronica wanted those rewards. A girl had to eat, she told herself.
So she'd bribed the minor administration official for the location of one of the groups. She'd waited for them to finish their dungeon and now here they were, ripe for the pickings.
Veronica had to wait of course until she was sure of their direction of travel, then she had run ahead to find a suitable spot for her trap.
Natural bottlenecks were the best, she had discovered, as there were often places where it was just easier to walk a certain path than go all the way around. Veronica found a spot where the surrounding trees created a natural path between them and followed it until it opened up in to a clearing.
She triggered her ability and an orange overlay appeared on the ground in front of her. She mentally moved the overlay to the spot she wanted and then made it big enough to capture an entire group of five people. Making sure she'd gotten the placement right she'd finalized her selections and a rustling could immediately be heard.
She often wondered where the displaced dirt went. It just disappeared as far as she could tell. It took roughly a minute for the pit to appear before it was covered in a thin carpet of leaves. The carpet would support the weight of the group until they had all stepped on to it. Then, whoosh – they'd all fall in.
Veronica wanted to hide nearby so that she could watch it happen but she had learned that some adventurers could detect people nearby. So she moved away from the area for a minute or two and then hid herself. After all, they weren't the only things hunting in the jungle. Best to be safe, she thought to herself.
Now all she had to do was wait.
-----
The group was soaked, again, but that was preferable to being hot, sweaty, and on fire. Everyone was too tired even to complain and the group kept quiet as they carefully made their way through the jungle.
Jay frowned. He felt gross. The entire group needed a bath badly, but the rain would have to do for now. They didn't need rain though, they needed a good scrubbing. Jay scratched at his neck where his leather armor's collar chafed.
The foliage and trees ahead became thicker and M'redith picked the path of least resistance, a path that went right down the middle, through the trees, before it opened up in to a bit of a clearing.
The sound of rain was all around them as they stepped off the path and in to the wide open space. They filed in one by one with Carly taking up the rear a ways back from the rest of the group. She wasn't walking quite as fast as the rest and kept having to catch up, only to fall behind once again.
“Can we stop for a quick break?” Carly asked quietly and M'redith could barely hear her over the rain.
M'redith had turned to explain to Carly why now wasn't a great time for a break. As she did so two things happened.
One, Carly finally stepped off of the path and in to the clearing, on to a patch of leaves that obscured the ground.
Two, the leaves under the group disappeared and what had seemed like solid ground only a moment ago turned in to thin air and the group plummeted downward in to what they could now plainly see was a pit.
Thankfully, it was a muddy pit, and the group all hit with a bit of a splash. If they had been dirty before they were now filthy and covered in mud.
They had all made various screams as they fell and if there was anything in the area nearby then it would have definitely heard them.
“Goddess,” M'redith said as she pushed herself up with one arm with a wince while she held the other close to her body, “I feel like I broke my shoulder.”
The others were all getting themselves sorted out as Aiden waded over to M'redith and quickly checked on her.
“Good news, bad news,” Aiden said quickly as the others finally got to their feet. He held her arm in both hands but looked her in the eyes which forced her to look at him and not her arm. “It's not broken, it's dislocated,” he said, and as he spoke he wrenched the arm back in to place.
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M'redith screamed. She cut it off by biting her lip but it had been plenty loud. M'redith knew that they had to get out of the pit, fast, before something found them.
Something already had.
“Hello in the pit?” called down a young sounding female voice. “Need some help?”
Jay looked up and used one hand to shade his eyes from the falling rain, not that it helped, the rain got in his eyes anyway and he was forced to blink furiously to clear his vision. He still saw no one however. Whoever was calling down to them was standing back and away from the edge so as to remain concealed.
“Sure,” Jay called back, “throw us a line?” he said as he turned to shrug at M'redith, who was frowning at the exchange.
There was some rustling from overhead and a rope was lowered in to the pit.
About four feet of rope. Then it stopped and dangled in the air, out of reach over their heads.
The voice from above called down once again, “Is there a reward? I don't want to get involved if I'm not going to be compensated for my time. That's reasonable, right?”
M'redith was scowling by that point and yelled back, “And you're the one that put us here I'm assuming?”
The voice didn't hesitate, “That's me! Doesn't mean I can't rescue you from there too though! Up to you! If you'd rather I leave...” called the voice in a wry tone.
M'redith looked at the faces around her, they were all furious.
“So what's your plan? Just leave us here?” M'redith asked.
“Yup. Unless you can toss up something valuable. Maybe something you got in that dungeon? I'd happily trade another few feet of rope for that,” the voice said in an amused tone.
M'redith had opened her mouth to reply when the voice continued, “But if not that's fine too. I'll leave you here, but I'll yell, real loud, right before I leave. Sure, you might eventually get out of that pit – but will you get out before something else gets you?”
Veronica had never had to leave a group in a pit before and no matter what she said she wasn't entirely sure that she could. Thankfully, they had always paid up before she would drop the rope down and run and hide. It had worked every time so far.
Jay felt helpless. It sounded like they would have little choice but to hand over the item they had won. Was the item worth their lives? Was there even a way out of the pit? Jay wondered at that – they hadn't really even tried yet.
Jay looked about at the tall walls of dirt and mud around them. They did not look climbable, especially while wearing armor, carrying weapons, and wearing packs.
They could stand on each other's shoulders perhaps, that might work, as long as the person on the bottom didn't sink in to the mud. What they needed was something to dig their way out and they had neither shovels nor items that would serve as shovels.
M'redith however shook her head. “There's no way you're taking our items, especially that one. It belongs to the Adventurer's Guild.” Besides, M'redith thought to herself, the item was far too powerful to give to someone who trapped people in pits.
Veronica paused. Stealing from adventurers was one thing, but stealing from the Adventurer's Guild was another. The last thing she wanted was some power squad hunting her down for taking something the Guild refused to part with. Perhaps she hadn't thought this entire enterprise through very well. Still – no one knew who she was and the group hadn't seen her face. There would be no way to trace it back to her, she was sure.
“I don't think it belongs to anyone just yet. Come on, I'll sell you a few more feet of rope in exchange for the item. In this weather,” she said as the rain came down in sheets around them, “it's a bargain!”
Norri growled in the back of her throat. “I'm really starting to hate that woman.”
Aiden cracked a smile for a brief moment but it quickly faded due to their circumstances. He frowned as water sloshed in to one of his boots. He hated it when his socks and feet got wet. It added an entirely new layer of discomfort on top of an already significant amount of it.
M'redith went quiet as she ran through some mental checklist. Jay could see it happen – he'd grown to recognize the look she got when she started calculating. She was searching for a way out. The group went quiet as they, too, tried to find a way out of the pit.
What M'redith was doing was quickly but calmly taking a mental inventory. She was going over each member of the group, one by one, and taking note of their abilities and items. She was searching for something, anything, that would get them out.
Halfway through her list she found what she was looking for.
“I have a counter-offer,” M'redith yelled with a furious looking face as she shouted in to the rain. “Pull us up now and no one gets hurt.”
The voice laughed from above them, “I think the only people who are about to get hurt are you folks. Just pay the gold and you're out of here. Like you said, it isn't even yours, what do you care?”
M'redith looked around her until she had found Norri.
“Norri,” she said, “I want you to do two things for me. Make a path out of this pit, and don't let that woman run away from us.”
Norri looked momentarily confused but then got the same idea that M'redith had and nodded with a predatory grin. M'redith quickly motioned the rest of the group to step back.
“What are you doing down there? What's your answer, I don't want to stand in the rain all day!” the voice yelled down, taking no care for the volume.
-----
Veronica had already tied the rope off to a nearby tree in anticipation of the group accepting her offer and stood a foot or two away from the pit's edge with it dangling in to the pit just a few feet. The group had taken a bit of time to answer her last question though and she was beginning to get a bit nervous.
There were always monsters in jungles like this. There were monsters everywhere on Eden it sometimes seemed like, but Veronica spent a lot of time out in nature, so she probably got to see a lot more of them than most. She didn't fight them really, she ran or hid from them. Her specialty was pits and robbery, not toe to toe battles with monstrous creatures.
The group was taking a long time. Maybe she should check in on them again, Veronica wondered as the earth around her suddenly shuddered and she was knocked off of her feet.
A roar so loud Veronica could feel it, in her chest and lungs, sounded from below her, and one entire wall of the pit exploded in to a fountain of dirt and mud that was thrown every which way. The roar was terrifying and something deep in her brain screamed run! The roars continued as a massive mud covered shape scrambled madly and crested the edge of the pit and climbed out.
A massive bear, taller than it had any right to be, stood on four legs and covered in hair across the clearing from where Veronica sat on the ground.
Steam rose off of its coarse and thick coat as the rain ran off of it in rivulets. You could see its breath as it breathed in and out in huge plumes. Mud and dirt caked its fur and stuck to it in clumps. Two giant white eyes were wide with rage and glared directly at her, the creature's jaw wide as steaming saliva mingled with the rain and fell to the ground.
Others from the group began to climb out of the pit now that one wall had collapsed and formed a pathway out. It was muddy and tough going but they scrambled as fast as they could up and out of the pit.
Veronica stumbled to her feet and ran. The beast behind her suddenly sprang in to motion and the impossibly large bear streaked through the jungle after her.
She didn't have a chance, and Norri let out a ferocious roar as she caught up to Veronica and swatted at her with one giant paw. Veronica was thrown through the air and in to a nearby tree which she struck with a strangled gasp as the air was driven out of her lungs.
Scrambling to her feet she quickly tried to escape and ran further in to the jungle. Somehow she had gotten turned around though and ran back in to the clearing where others from the group were gathering together. Veronica tried to turn and head back in to the jungle when a wide and dark shape struck her.
A monster completely unlike a bear had attacked her and bore her down to the ground as it wrapped its wings about her and trapped her arms. It had heard all of the commotion and come to join in on the hunt. The creature had a long sinuous neck that was about to take a bite out of her when Norri the bear burst in to the clearing.
She took one look at the monster and roared as if to say, “MINE.”
Norri charged at the creature and it barely had time to register her presence before she took it's long neck in her jaws and crunched. Whatever the beast was, it was completely unprepared for Norri's assault, and it's neck was broken with one bite.
Veronica got to her feet and tried to run yet again.
Norri had reached the point where she'd had enough of chasing. She charged after Veronica, knocked her to the ground, and then bit one leg until it made a snap sound.
Veronica was overcome by nausea, screamed once, and passed out.