Max didn't even know how many times he'd spied on the giants' encampment from his familiar hiding place in the rocks. Hopefully, after today, he’d never need to watch this group of enemies again. His elaborate trap he’d put together was finally in motion.

They're taking the right one, said Lavinia mentally.

I thought so, said Max. Finally. Equal parts relief and nervousness vied for dominance as he watched the scene unfolding before him. Lavinia was absolutely correct. Especially with the action being closer now, Max didn't even need her spirits to double check it for him. After all, he could feel the presence of his beads seated in the body of the giant corpse that the two camp guards were dragging back.

The last few months had all been leading up to this moment. It had taken Max a while to come up with a plan that would actually have a good chance of succeeding. If it'd taken longer, he would have been in trouble, since in addition to the dungeon closure looming, he was running low on resources. In addition to the enormous stash he’d come to the dungeon with, he’d also earned thousands from all the monsters he’d killed, and the clear bonus from beating the dungeon. Now mere months after he'd met the initial clear conditions for the dungeon, he only had a few hundred mana units left.

Despite all the resources he’d burned, he was still barely over halfway to a three-star mana body. It was possible he could have achieved three stars if he'd used the mana from the mana vault for his body instead of making imprinted beads stronger. Probably not. Gotta spend mana to make mana, he thought. His lips curved up in a wry smile as he thought about his efforts over the last few weeks.

The next hour would be critical. Max had watched the giant guards bring back their brethren’s bodies before. But he needed them to bring back the bodies that Max had laced with beads, and they had before. The problem was that they’d mostly eaten the parts without beads in the flesh.

He’d learned that he’d made other mistakes too.

In the first body the giants had taken, he’d also made the mistake of using plastic beads from Earth. The giants roasted meat over their fire. After contact with the fire, the beads had melted before they could be effective and all of the mana he'd stored inside had harmlessly dissipated. That had been a costly and frustrating learning experience. Now, he only used glass beads or beads he'd made himself out of stone. There were even beads he’d made from giant bones that Saliron had helped him with, but he mainly saved those for backups.

So he'd begun using stronger beads and seeding the entire bait corpse, even though it’d taken more time and effort.

It was a grisly business.

As Max watched his improved trap finally unfolding, he double checked his preparations. First he nervously extended his senses, feeling the location of every bead placed around the area, all of which had mental triggers woven into their magic. Max could pop any of them at any time. But his plan wouldn't work unless every moving part came together just right.

For months now, Max had been carefully preparing this entire camp area with traps–the most important of which were improvised claymore mines made inside hollowed-out logs–using a combination of explosion beads and razor-sharp caltrops and spears of bones. The bone projectiles had been made with Saliron’s power. He’d also been able to strengthen them to a certain degree. Giant bones were strong to begin with, so they would hopefully be good shrapnel.

Making them hadn’t been too difficult. Each had explosive beads and even some homemade gunpowder that Max had made. He’d figured out ways to reinforce the “barrel,” without too much difficulty, too. Getting all the improvised mines in place had been a bit more tricky.

After plenty of experimentation, Max had verified that the giant shaman’s wards and alarms around the campsite were not triggered by spirits. They didn’t extend underground either, but that still stopped Max from placing traps himself.

Instead, he’d used Lavinia’s spirits.

It turned out that the slower they moved, the more they could lift. So slowly, agonizingly slowly, Lavinia's spirits had suppressed any possible light they could have generated and had moved everything in, then properly positioned the improvised weapons where Max had directed.

There were a few other surprises for the giants too, but the main plan for the guards was a combination of them swallowing hemophilia beads before being hit by a hail of bone projectiles. With luck, the weapons would cut them to pieces, causing bleeding and death. Of course, all of that would be pointless if the shaman's near perpetual magic buff was still on the entire group. But the cannibalistic feast all the giants would partake in soon would hopefully solve that problem.

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Max stood completely still as he watched the events unfold and he silently willed all the giants to act as they had every time before. When he saw the five of them choose and prepare an arm and leg of the giant they’d brought back, then cook the pieces, and finally begin eating, he had to restrain himself from fist-pumping or exclaiming in excitement. This was it. This was the first time he'd successfully gotten the giants to swallow his trap beads.

His hands nimbly checked all of the myriad imprinted beads on his wrist he had prepped, as well as the two dozen or so crucial imprinted beads he kept in a small pouch. Throwing a handful of explosives at these giants would definitely not be enough to kill them, but he had other plans.

One major advantage of Bead Sorcery was its versatility.

Finally, after the five giants had eaten their fill and lethargically bellowed at each other, Max began to move. In the camp, the giant chief and the shaman lazily headed towards their cave.

Max faded back behind the raised rocky area he'd been watching from and dropped into the camouflaged hole that he'd stealthily dug some time ago with the help of his spirits. It was a little claustrophobic but Max let his mind wander as he low-crawled forward through the dark.

The most disturbing thing about the tunnel was that at this point was the minute possibility he might not be alone. By this point, he’d confirmed that the one cave system he had not explored was absolutely infested with colossal centipedes. If he were to meet one of them head-on in this tunnel, it would be very, very bad. Luckily, he still had Lavinia's spirits to range ahead. They all knew to be on the lookout for the dangerous many-legged creatures.

Back when Max had been digging this tunnel, Lavinia's spirits had been easily able to tell him exactly where he was in relation to the camp since they could pass through solid matter.

He realized his mind was wandering a bit too far as he shimmied forward in the dark. The air was thick and loamy, but he ignored feelings of extreme discomfort and fear. This had to be done. Finally, when he reached the end, Max stood to his full height.

Like the entrance to the tunnel, he was standing in simple upward access. But on this side, he hadn't completed it yet. It wasn’t finished at the top so the giants hadn’t discovered it. Right now, separated by only two or three feet of dirt, Max was standing inside the giant's compound directly outside the cave that the shaman and the chief were currently fornicating in.

He made a disgusted face as he thought about what was taking place above him.

Over the course of his recon, the second thing Max had discovered about the shaman’s wards was that she dropped them right after eating another giant, and when she was getting down and dirty with the chief. This was the perfect time to strike–perhaps the only good time to strike.

With an air of finality, Max mentally activated all of the hemophilia beads in all five giants' stomachs. He’d wanted to wait until the last minute to do this, just in case they would feel anything different, be alerted. Then, using a combination of Slick's powers and Lavinia's spirits formed as digging claws on his hands, he hopped up and dug the last few feet until he could wedge his head and shoulders through the hole.

Then he climbed up far enough to use his arms, basically just past his armpits, all while ignoring the sounds and motion coming from within the cave. He reached into his little bag and withdrew a handful of the most important beads for this step of the plan. This step could not take place until everything else was in place, and had been the reason he’d dug the tunnel. The critical beads in his hand were two dozen supercharged stone growth beads–imprinted to be as powerful as they could possibly be. He didn't think that they would grow stalagmites tall enough to actually seal the mouth of the cave, but there would be a lot of them. They’d all end in a point, too.

Max did not turn to look at the bickering giant soldiers. Instead, he centered himself, took a breath, and threw all of the beads in an arc at the entrance to the Chief's Cave. None of the giants heard the sounds of the beads landing over all the other camp noises, which was lucky. By this point, it probably wouldn’t matter, though. Max waited to see that the beads had landed where he needed them to and that they were growing at a good clip before he tucked his arms in and fell down the hole.

There was no finesse to his fall. Now was the time for speed.

Once he was back down, he even crawled himself feet-first into the horizontal part of the tunnel and instructed Lavinia's spirits that were not scouting to form a protective cylinder around his body. A cave in wasn’t likely, but it would be a dumb way to die if he didn’t try to prepare just in case.

Then he activated every one of the twenty improvised claymores around the perimeter of the camp.

The ground lurched.