DUNGEON TRAPS GALORE

The moment Tristan jumped down, the hole sealed up behind him.

"Looks like I can only move forward."

Tristan decided to rest for sometime to recharge his batteries. He had the nourishment drink he had made as well as healed off the scrapes and muscle aches he was feeling because of the mad bull's attack. Within the span of a few days he had two brushes with death and was going through an emotional turmoil. 

He was worried about his mother and his sibling. He wondered how Diane was doing. She too must be 12 years old now. He tried to imagine how she might appear now. Rudi, did he become the muscular brute that Tristan always imagined him growing up? And did Miza's world still revolve around that brute? He was puzzled about why aunt Mel didn't tell him anything about them. Deep in his heart he was afraid of the worst happening. He had to atleast take responsibility for his dad's last wish.

Now revitalised, he decided to march on. There were no diverging paths. The labyrinthine maze he had sensed lasted only till the territory of those monstrous bulls and were devoid of life. But now he had a straight path that he cautiously followed. The path then ended. He had come face to face with a spiral staircase. The construction of which made it impossible to know how far up it went. With all other paths blocked he could only move forward. However..

"Aah!!"

Tristan shrieked and howled madly in pain. The moment he stepped on the first stair sharp spikes pierced his right foot and as he reactionarily pulled his foot out in fear he was bleeding profusely. 

"Neurotoxin!..."

Tristan grew increasingly laggard as he struggled to search for the antidote in his bag. His face was becoming increasingly blue and he wasn't being able to breathe. He finally found a purple vial and thrust it directly into his bloodstream through his right vein. He had no time to consume it orally right now. 

A few minutes past. Tristan began feeling better. After a few more minutes he vomitted out a green slime and immediately burnt it with a flame. He then sealed his legs with bandages and applied healing magic and consumed restoration potions. That was a very deadly poison. Traps! Tristan wasn't the only one who could think underhandedly after all. He had to be very wary now.

He tapped the stair with a knife and in response a large number of spikes came out, a few bloodied from the previous exposure to Tristan's foot.tristant decided to use the walls to fashion metallic slippers to protect him from such spikes. After a few trial and error arrays he was able to create a fairly comfortable pair of slippers with extremely thick soles. Now he could be safe of spikes surprising him, but there would be other traps and so he had to be vigilant.

He began slowly climbing up the spiral staircase, checking each stair with his dagger before climbing. Sometimes trapping the next stair caused spikes to appear on the one he was standing while other whiles stairs had traps only in a certain fraction of the surface area. He had climbed atleast 3500 stairs in this manner but there seemed to be no end to it. 

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Once when he rested on a stair for too long eating food, spikes from all corners attacked him in an attempt to impale him. If it weren't for reinforcement magic of the orcs he wouldn't have been able to realise and escape from certain death. He thus found out that he couldn't stay on a stair for too long.

"If there is a gateway to hell, this is probably it."

Tristan was mentally and physically tired. The constant concentration he needed to fend of traps as well as the exhaustion of constantly climbing with rest while not knowing when it ended frustrated him to no end. But in this life or death situation, he had to keep moving forward.

After a couple of thousand more steps, Tristan began panting. He had never been the athletic kid in the village. He preferred more mentally stimulating pursuits, but right now he wished he had more endurance. He was constantly wondering when the stairway would end. At that moment of lapse in concentration, Tristan carelessly stepped on the next stairwhich caved in and suddenly large whirring noises could be heard. The entire column containing the spiral staircase began revolving a layer of brick at a time until a certain pattern appeared om the wall.

"Water drains! Oh shit!"

Just as he exclaimed thousands of pores began leaking a tremendous amount of water in. The stair suddenly transformed into an inclined spiral plane as water quickly began enveloping the height that Tristan had climbed till now. Swearing in his breath, he quickly changed his slippers to running boots, applied reinforcement, drank energy and stamina supplements and invigorate his manna and alleviate the tiredness, and ran like there was not tomorrow.

As he ran he kept initiating traps which he tried his best to avoid, but couldn't help getting scraped, hit or pierced by arrows or shape changing walls trying to trap him. He kept running without looking back, but he could hear the gushing water reaching ever closer to him. His speed was remarkable thanks to using wind magic and reinforcement magic to strengthen his muscles and bones. He punched through walls that came in his path until he found an opening in the wall big enough to be called an exit door. 

He jumped out but realised his folly the very next minute as it was the ice cap of the tallest mountain in the Urek range - Trapeze mountain. He began sliding down the mountain at a tremendous pace and used his daggers to stall his fall. At the last moment when he was about to fall into a crevasse he used his glove to transmute an ice basement to stall the fall completely. A huge water fall passed over his body head and flew down with incredible force right in front of him. 

Calming down, he used his glove to manipulate the ice block to move upwards again. Slowly pouring in his manna to make it move using a manipulation array on ice.

Twenty minutes later he had arrived at the jumping spot - water was gushing out at an unprecedented rate. He couldn't dare to go in from there. His only choice seemed to be going upwards from the outside. As he climbed he discovered a walking trail that treacherously winded around the mountain towards the peak. Unable to sustain the magic to carry him up any longer, Tristan decided to walk along the path.

The air was bone chillingly cold. It was also becoming extremely difficult to breathe. Tristan's manna was recovering very slowly. Soon heavy snow pounded on him as he carefully climbed along the small winding path. A fall here meant instant death. 

Tristan suddenly looked above. A badger like creature with white fur made clicking sounds before it suddenly attacked him. It's speed was incredible and it seemed to be adapted to the cold. Tristan struggled to fend it off with his dagger which he laced with a paralysing toxin, because of his disadvantageous location and lack of manna.

After a long battle of attrition where Tristan received a lot of bruises, he managed to hit the enemy and paralyse it. He then killed it and roasted it with a low flame to eat it. He drank a recovery potion to heal himself. He noticed that his potions were exhausting at a tremendous rate. On that thin treacherous path overlooking a fall of thousands of meters, a tired Tristan created an igloo from his books using a transformation array and fell asleep from tiredness.