I'm seriously getting tired of being trapped in here. There has got to be a way out! I refuse to rot away down here!

Astoria continued examining her small confines with a fine toothed comb, but nothing jumped out at her. There were no levers or buttons anywhere to be found. She even pressed against the walls in various places hoping that maybe there was some sort of false wall that she could find, but everything appeared to be solid. On the bright side, she hadn’t run into any more traps either, so there was that.

She glanced over at her torch, it was starting to grow dimmer. She hoped that the room wasn’t air tight and that the thing wasn’t burning away the oxygen. The last thing I need right now is to run out of air on top of everything else.

The bookshelf still seemed to stand out to her like a sore thumb for some reason. She just had a feeling that there was something else to the thing. Astoria warily looked over the shelf once more before pulling dusty tomes off the shelf and setting them on the floor in stacks.

A few moments and a cloud of dust later, the shelves stood empty and she still hadn’t found any hidden buttons. She went back over to the wall that was trapping her in this place and slumped down against it. Searching for a way out was exhausting.

"I still haven't found anything. I'm not gonna lie, it’s starting to look pretty bad for me. You guys have any more ideas?" she said to the others through the wall.

"We don't really have any ideas. Garland and Ladriel went to check the room next door, maybe there’s something in there that can get you out. It’s a long shot, though.“ Tilly replied.

That's it! There’s a room right up against this one. I have an idea!

Her friend had inadvertently given her an idea and she hopped up excitedly and went back over to the now empty bookshelf once more. She went to the side of the thing and hoped she was right, because if she wasn’t, then she really didn’t see any way out of this.

She began to shove the empty bookshelf in the direction where the mimic and the wraith statues had been along the wall. There was just enough room so that she could shove the thing all the way to the far wall.

The thing was heavy and she was really glad that she had taken all the books off before trying this. It moved an inch and then another. She strained to push the heavy thing until she saw exactly what she had hoped hidden behind where the shelf had been; a hole.

Seeing the crack widen gave her encouragement to keep pushing, and in no time she had revealed a hidden doorway. The shelf let out an audible click once it touched the wall she had been shoving it towards and it made her jump back in fear for a moment.

After her heart stopped pounding and she saw that nothing was going to happen, she grabbed the torch and went back over to the open doorway. The passage wasn’t very long, but she saw what she had hoped for at the end of the small opening and a sigh of relief exited her mouth.

A wooden lever stuck out of the wall next to where she hoped an exit was. She had learned her lesson about touching things in this place, and so she approached it with caution. There wasn’t any sign of green or red light emanating from the thing, so it was probably safe.

With a shaky hand, she reached out and tentatively touched the cool wood.

You can do this. It’s just a lever. Please don't drop me into a pit of spikes. I just want to get out of here in one piece!

She took a deep breath and pulled the lever down. A loud grinding sound could be heard somewhere in the wall and to her horror the bookshelf slammed back into its original position behind her.

Astoria began to panic and hyperventilate. Had she just traded one box for a smaller one? Just as she was about to start screaming, the wall to the right of the lever slid down and revealed a dark room where a stunned looking Ladriel and Garland stared back at her with wide eyes. Thank god!

"You're okay!" Ladriel exclaimed.

"Just barely! That was definitely no picnic. I got the coin though, so there's that at least." She felt better already.

Claustrophobia be gone!

Astoria glanced around the new room briefly before she took any steps, and she was happy to see that there were no traps that she could see here. It was just an empty room. There wasn’t anything interesting to see at all here.

The three of them left the empty space and went back to where Tilly was. When they entered the room, Tilly was kneeling down next to the corpse of the mimic and jumped a little when she heard them walking up behind her.

Astoria could see the relief that washed over her friend when she saw that Astoria was with Ladriel and Garland.

"You made it out! Everything just started moving on its own and you were gone. I was seriously freaking out!" She ran over and gave Astoria a big hug.

"Thanks! That was way too close. I definitely need to be more careful. The good news is that I got a good amount of practice disarming and detecting traps." Astoria stepped back from her friend's embrace and couldn't help but smile with pride over what she had been able to accomplish in such a dire situation. Don’t let it be said that I crack under pressure!

"Maybe we should rest for a while. We've been at this for hours and hours now. None of us are going to be in top condition if another fight breaks out," Garland suggested.

Astoria couldn't deny the fact that she was really tired. Will it really be safe enough to sleep in a place like this, though?

They would need to venture to the lower level next and she did not look forward to that at all. She had a feeling that what they had gone through so far was probably a walk in the park compared to what lie ahead of them.

The decision was obvious, they needed to rest. "Okay. Let's rest in the room where I came out. I didn't detect any traps in there and we can have one person stay up and watch the exit. I also want to go back through the other rooms we’ve been in and disarm the traps for practice. Can one of you keep watch, while the other two sleep?"

"I'm not really tired. I can take the first watch, but are you sure that you want to go off alone after what just happened?." Tilly said.

"It’ll be okay. We cleared out all the zombies before, so unless something comes up from below, then there isn’t much to worry about. If anything happens, I’ll scream and run back here."

"All right. Be careful, Astoria."

"I will. See you in a little while."

Astoria left the others and went off into the darkness holding one of the torches. The catacombs were eerily quiet and it was strange travelling alone through the empty place.

It's like in a horror movie where some idiot separates from the group, only this time I'm the idiot. Hopefully, this doesn't turn out the same way it usually does in the movies, though.

Astoria’s perception had definitely gotten better thanks to her skill, and as soon as she entered the large room, she saw the familiar red glow of traps in several places around the room.

Time to get to work!

She made her way over to the first of the trip wire type trap and got to work on disabling it. Now that she had the hang of how these worked, disarming them went much more smoothly. In just a short time she had disarmed a half dozen of the traps and the room was clear. She managed to retrieve another pressure plate type of trap called a Corrosive Acid Trap.

I'm sure this will come in handy should I need to melt someone.

She grinned to herself and placed the trap carefully into her bag, making sure that the vial of deadly acid was wrapped up in cloth to prevent breakage. She couldn’t help but wish that she had a magical inventory or something similar when she thought about the real possibility of the vial breaking during a fight.

She shrugged off the thought, there wasn’t anything to be done about that now, anyway, and moved on to the next room. This one was where they had fought the zombies and she saw several more traps in this room.

They were all the same types as before, and so she quickly got started disarming them. She glanced over at the side room where the zombies had come out of several times while she worked.

I hope there aren't more in there that didn't come out earlier. She looked around at the corpses that littered the floor of the room as well a bit warily. Just don't come back to life and attack me while I'm here alone. That's not too much to ask, is it?

Astoria forced herself to concentrate and efficiently disarmed the traps one by one. These were all just the trip wire variety, and she saw places in the ceiling and walls where poison darts would have shot out from if they had been triggered.

She hadn't found a good way to retrieve any of the darts from those traps, but it was good to know that if they had to retreat to this area in a fight, they wouldn’t have to worry about tripping some sort of trap.

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In just a short while, she was done with this room as well. Astoria felt confident about herself now. I'm really getting the hang of doing these trip wire traps, disarming them is a piece of cake.

Astoria didn’t let herself get too big of a head, though, as she figured that since this was the equivalent of a beginner dungeon, she would probably still be unable to detect better traps if they were to show up in the lower levels.

For some reason, she had the feeling that she should revisit the room where the zombies came from. It was terrifying, but there might be something good hidden there that they had missed before.

In the end, her desire to grind her disarm and detect traps skill outweighed her fear of running into more zombies that hadn’t activated before. Besides, if she got trapped again, the others would come to look for her sooner or later.

After taking a deep breath to calm her nerves, she went over to the room while holding her torch out in front of her. She cautiously poked her head into the doorway and looked inside.

Just inside the room the empty holes where the zombies had crawled out of loomed in the flickering light. She gulped nervously and forced herself to look away from them and examine the rest of the room.

Empty sarcophagi were scattered around the room and she didn't see any signs of more bodies. At the back of the room she noted something odd about the configuration of some sarcophagi. Why would all those zombie things be in here if not to guard something. That area is really suspicious.

Astoria stepped the rest of the way into the room and made her way towards the back. There was something off about the floor where she had noted the odd configuration of coffins. She couldn’t say for sure what made her think something was off, but she just had a bad feeling.

It was just a sort of wrongness. That was the only way she could put the feeling into words in her mind. She saw two sarcophagi to either side of the space and she got a little closer, hoping to see the telltale red glow of a trap, but there wasn’t one.

It almost looked like the tiles were slightly offset on the other side of the two coffins and she reached down to grab one of the many pieces of crumbling stone that lie at her feet.

Let's see what this does.

She stepped back to the doorway and tossed the heavy stone directly between the two sarcophagi before quickly jumping back. She heard the stone land and then looked back inside. A trap had just revealed itself.

The floor had been some sort of finely crafted cloth that had been covering a pit. It was amazing how real the false ground had appeared. She walked over to the pit and looked down.

There was nothing to see except a gaping hole that led into eternal darkness. She listened for a long while and finally heard the sound of her large rock hitting the bottom with a crash.

Well... that would have been bad. Crisis averted!

In order to get to the far end of the room, she would have to climb over one of the empty sarcophagi. With the zombies here earlier, she really hadn’t had time to examine the room closely last time. She was more sure than ever that she had made a mistake before by not coming back to investigate this room.

There wasn't a lot of space at the back of the room but there was just enough room for her to see that there could be something hidden behind the empty sarcophagus that stretched across the room horizontally by the far wall.

I just hope this will all be worth it.

Astoria stepped carefully into the sarcophagus to the right and kept her back to the wall as she side stepped across it towards her destination. Before getting out on the other side she made sure to look down to check for additional traps.

She wasn't disappointed as now that she had reached the other side, she could see that either tile right on the other side of the coffins had tiles that glowed with the faint red glow.

The view had been obscured for the most part before and she hadn’t been able to be sure that there was something there. Her intuition had paid off it seemed.

The game devs sure are some evil bastards. This is a messed up trap for sure. I can just imagine someone carelessly thinking they had avoided the pit to step onto one of these tiles just to die horribly anyway.

Astoria knelt down inside the sarcophagus she stood in and leaned over the side ever so carefully. Following the procedure she had done before she used her dagger to lift the tile and reveal the trap below.

This plate was attached to a cord that led off into the wall to the right side of her. She looked up the wall and saw that there were several pin sized holes spaced about six inches apart from one another going up to a total height of about six feet. Whoever stepped on these would likely have been skewered by some sort of dart trap it looked like. Carefully as ever, she disarmed the trap and let out a breath that she hadn’t realized she had been holding in.

She had little doubt that the trap on the other side of the room was identical. It wouldn’t have been hard to avoid the other trap as she could always just go back the way she came, but she wanted that sweet skill experience, so she got out of the sarcophagus and went over to disarm the second of the traps.

That just about takes care of all the traps as far as I can tell at least. Now what could be hiding back here?

She moved a couple steps closer to the horizontal sarcophagus that had no lid, just like the others hadn’t and didn’t see anything of note in it. She wasn’t about to give up so easily after all this work, and so she carefully looked around the sides and the back of the thing.

There.

A book was wedged into the crack between the sarcophagus and the wall, beneath some cobwebs. She made herself be brave and reached down to yank the thing out.

The tome was thick and ancient looking. She honestly couldn't believe how it had not rotted away down there. Astoria carefully wiped off the dust that had been caked onto the cover and read the title: Fire bolt.

Awesome! It's a magic book! Fire bolt! That’s going to be awesome! Undead are usually weak against fire, too, right?

Astoria considered for just a moment if she was the best one of her party to have this magic, but after a few moments of deliberation she decided that she wanted the power to herself. She had always dreamed of wielding magic and this was her big chance.

She flipped open the book, hoping that it wouldn’t crumble away from age, and the same type of prompt that had appeared with the spellbooks popped up once more.

She selected yes immediately and the book floated into the air before her, emitting a faint red light as it flipped through the pages at an incredible rate. The tome crumbled to dust just as the skill books had and her head was now filled with the arcane knowledge of how to cast the fire bolt spell. She opened her skills screen and focused on the spell to read its description.

Fire Bolt

Conjure a small, but concentrated ball of flame, that you can cast towards enemies. The ball will explode upon impact. The area of effect for the explosion is 3 feet at level 1 and the blast radius will increase by 6 inches every 10 levels. This spell's potency and will increase respective to the users magic stat and the levels earned as will its cost.

Cost: 50 MP

Cooldown: 30 seconds

Wow! I really scored with this one. That reminds me, I haven't checked my status after the fight with the wraiths and mimic. I'm sure I must've leveled up. I really need to stay on top of this stuff better.

She looked at her notifications and she had in fact leveled up. Astoria had gained 350 EXP for killing the mimic and 1000 EXP from the wraiths. This place may be horrible and she almost died more than once, but at least she was getting a lot out of it.

She was more than a little happy with all the progress her new skills gained from disarming all the traps. Grinding had really paid off in a big way as her Detect Traps skill was already level 3 and Disarm Traps had already risen to level 5.

Astoria knew that she had been neglecting her magic stats until now, and for good reason as until now she hadn’t really had a good reason to raise them. She placed 3 points into Magic and 2 points into Magic Resistance and as always, one into Luck. She had a feeling that the luck stat had really helped her out in here, but one could never really tell for sure.

Now that that’s all done, I think that I can handle whatever this place throws at me. I should really get back to the others and get some rest. How long have I been gone, I wonder? It’s so hard to tell time here, but I know that I’m freakin’ beat.

Once she got some rest, it would be time to head down to the next level. The prospect was a bit daunting to say the least, but with her party, she didn’t think it wouldn’t be something they couldn’t handle. For all she knew, there wouldn't even be any worse traps than she had already encountered, but her recent experiences had taught her the importance of being cautious. As such, she intended to take further exploration of the catacombs nice and slow.

She now had enough mana to cast regeneration on herself again to bring her HP to maximum once more, so she cast the spell as she climbed back over the sarcophagus and headed for the door. The last of her pain from earlier washed away on her walk back to the others.

Hopefully, with some extra points in her Magic stat, she would regain her lost mana faster. When she arrived at her destination, Tilly was standing watch just outside the door leading into the room. Astoria waved to her friend as she closed the distance between them.

Tilly returned her wave. "How'd it go? All the traps taken care of? It looks like you’re in one piece. I was starting to get a little worried, you know? I’ve been pacing around out here."

"Sorry. It took longer than I thought, but I’ve managed to get a lot better at detecting and disabling the traps. I found a spellbook hidden in the room that the zombies came out of. I know how to cast fire bolt now!” Astoria couldn’t hide her excitement over her new magic.

"Wow! That's great! That’s an amazing find! It's been quiet and boring here. How are you holding up? You look really tired."

"I am feeling a bit tired, do you mind if I go get some rest? Were you going to wake one of the others soon?"

"In a bit, I don’t really know how I’m going to sleep in this place to be honest. The whole place gives me the creeps big time. I’ll try to sleep some soon though."

"All right. I’m with you on that, but I think I could fall asleep standing if I stay up much longer, so I’m going to try to make the best of it. Good night."

“Good night.”

Astoria walked past her friend and into the room, yawning as she cleared the threshold. Tilly was right about the place being creepy, but it didn’t matter. She felt so exhausted.

Garland was snoring softly on the ground near the entrance and Ladriel was leaned into a corner in the back of the room asleep in a sitting position. Astoria didn’t want to be right by the entrance in case something happened.

She took a few moments to arrange a small spot for herself in the corner opposite Ladriel and curled up on the ground, using her cloak as a blanket and the sun dress from Rodia as her pillow. After wiggling around for a short while to get comfortable, she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Spoiler: Astoria's Stats

Name Astoria Level 009 (7,697/10,569 EXP to next Level) Class None HP 210/210 MP 19/165   AP 0 Attributes Vitality 14 Magic 13 Endurance 15 Magic Resistance 12 Strength 16 Luck 15 Agility 22   Dexterity 14 Abilities • Kleptomancy

Skills • Archery - Level 5 (13% toward next level)

• Stealth - Level 6 (19% toward next level)

• Swords - Level 1 (0% toward next level)

• Daggers - Level 6 (32% toward next level)

• Regeneration - Level 1 (20% toward next level)

• Fishing - Level 2 (71% toward next level)

• Detect Traps - Level 3 (58% toward next level)

• Disarm Traps - Level 5 (4% toward next level)

Magic • Fire Bolt - Level 1 (0% toward next level)