Sofia’s first instinct was to see if her dagger could damage any of the walls, the ground or the ceiling. Since her right arm was stuck, she had to make a third arm out of bones and control it from where she was.

Of course that did not work… What’s next…

Next she focused on her mana senses. There was clearly some kind of magic powering the walls.

Rituals. What is sustaining them?

It was not a static source but a constant mana flow. Following the thin streams of mana beyond the wall, Sofia’s mana senses eventually bumped with the black fog, which completely prevented her from looking any further.

If I could cut that… I can use my ring to drain all the mana but that would only deactivate the rituals for a few seconds at most. If the side walls locking us in do not come down then we still won’t be able to get out. Still, disabling the crushing walls would be a start.

The best way is probably to destroy the ritual circles somehow. I could just teleport to the other side if not for the dungeon’s restrictions…

Trying to find a way to the mechanisms powering the walls, Sofia, Pareth and Bookie looked around for an opening. Bookie noticed a gap between the closing walls and the crushing walls. A tiny gap of just a few millimeters.

That’s a start! I could use that opening to summon rot on the other side but there isn’t enough free space to use the Heal Undead light… I should at least take a look directly to the other side. Free ritual circle schematics.

I just need to slide a token through the…

Crap… I forgot to take out any vision token when the dungeon started.

Since Sofia still had the ten 100kg bone slates just floating behind Bookie, she could just make more tokens, it was just not the ideal environment. She had made plenty of vision sharing tokens so she knew the ritual circle well enough to be able to draw it with her eyes closed. With [Bone dominus] it even carved itself. Since she was making one anyway she made a batch of ten. She sent nine flying straight into Bookie’s backpack while the tenth one flew to the corner and slid through the thin gap. When Sofia felt that it was on the other side, she used the shared vision. She had expected there to be no light but the ritual circles were actually glowing softly, enough to see.

Gears? The walls are mechanical traps powered by a spinning enchantment. That’s clever. And the gears are made of ‘wall’. No wonder we can’t push back at all. That looks like a relatively simple mechanism, I think? Destroying is out but can’t we just dismantle it?

Sofia cut the vision and turned to Bookie.

“Can you get a summon on the other side of the wall through the gap?”

Bookie nodded as if it was obvious that a three millimeter gap was enough to let the mist through, which, now that Sofia thought about it, made a lot of sense. Especially since she knew from building the Kidjikkik infiltrators that a fist-sized hole was no issue.

“Just get the Engineer in there, he’ll know what to do.”

Bookie gave a thumbs up and ripped the page off himself, controlling his mist to have it flow to the other side before it formed into the Engineer skeleton.

Sofia reconnected with the token and watched the skeleton rise from the mist.

You got the situation from Bookie? Can you do something about the wall? Removing a gear should do the trick, right?

The engineer skeleton shrugged and walked up to the mechanism, observing it from a few angles before starting to try to unscrew some kind of big hexagonal thing. He gave up after a few seconds and turned to the floating token, before starting to mimic using tools like a shovel or a pickaxe, then pointing at himself.

Sofia realized that he needed materials to make tools, so she cut some more out from the bone slates and had it squeeze through the gap until it made it to the other side. The Engineer skeleton used his skills to reshape them into weird tools and promptly got to work moving things around in the mechanism.

First the pressure on Sofia’s arm from the front stopped, the wall the Engineer was working on no longer tried to crush them, but it still did not move back, and since the wall behind was still pushing, the situation had not changed much. Finally the skeleton managed to take out the enchanted gear and place it back after flipping it around. The wall started to retract.

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Again, the wall behind was still pushing, so all this accomplished at first was having the group slide over a few dozen centimeters, but the pushing wall stopped as it was fully extended, and the retracting wall finally gave them some breathing room, freeing Sofia’s arm.

That’s a good start. Now we just need to lower the side walls. Think you can manage that?

The exterior of this section of corridor was completely hollowed out to make space for the machinery, so the Skeleton could just walk to the other side from below the corridor and do the other wall if wanted but instead he stayed below and managed to convey to Sofia that yes, he could lower the walls. Yet, he did not do it right away, and instead kept looking around the machinery. Eventually he found what he was looking for and grabbed the token to show Sofia.

Another ritual, beneath the corridor. That’s right below me…

The ritual circle looked relatively simple so Sofia tried to understand what it was.

It looks like it just takes in mana to send an impulse of some sort? What’s the power source?

This ritual circle was rather subtle, as it only ever activated for a fraction of a second as it sent an impulse into the mechanism. Sofia had not even felt it when she was probing around with her mana senses before.

Sofia observed it for a bit, watching it be triggered a few times before she connected everything. It’s my mana! It’s a mana sensor! This is what triggered the trap!

Engineer you’re a genius!

What are you being all bashful for? Stop hiding your skull and lower the walls. We can’t get you out so you’ll be dismissed right after but I feel like we’ll need you again soon… Thank you for the good work!

Finally the side walls were lowered and the group could escape the crushing corridor.

So much trouble for a single trap.

The group started advancing again, but as a safety measure, Sofia sent out waves of mana along the walls, ceiling and floor every so often to trigger any potential trap using a similar trigger system.

But for now, there were no other traps, in fact, the group advanced through the corridor as the black fog moved with them, and there were no more Sunless drones either. They were slow and careful, on the lookout for more traps. The corridor ended in a small square room. There were no other doors, so sadly the group had hit a dead end, but they won a little something for their trouble. In the middle of the otherwise empty room was a big treasure chest.

A dead end already? I should have turned left…

Sofia did not even enter the room.

“What do you guys think this is going to be? Explosion? Poison gas? A Fireball, maybe? A Sunless Amalgam squished down and hiding in the box?”

From Bookie’s gestures, he was betting on the explosion. Pareth seemed a little less certain, but neither of them doubted the notion that the conspicuous chest was trapped in some way.

It’s hell difficulty. I’m not expecting any free handouts.

But…

I can’t just not open it, right?

Sofia weighed the options, trying her best to take into account what she had learned about cutting one’s losses and not falling for sunk cost fallacy. The safest thing to do was just to walk back and try the other path.

That just doesn’t feel right.

Sofia identified the chest, getting absolutely no answer from the magic. It was a painfully obvious red flag, but Sofia’s curiosity pushed her to keep probing, hiding safely behind Pareth’s shield.

There’s quite a bit of mana in there. Like a big lump. It’s not really moving. Did Everelle really stuff a Sunless inside?!

Could also just be a large magic item…

It’s a big chest so it’s not impossible to hide a few drones in there. The mana seems a coherent whole though so it would be only one creature. I’ll be damned, I might have been right from the start, this could be an Amalgam. A small one but an amalgam still. If so, this could be disastrous. The corridor is still too narrow, I can’t possibly dodge an Amalgam’s dark lances with so little space to move around.

In the end, Sofia felt like her options had changed, she could try to open the chest; if it was a magic item, she won her bet, if not, she was in deep shit. The safer option was to destroy the chest, giving it the bolt treatment for as far as the black fog would allow. But this made the chance of getting a magic item out of it almost zero.

And if I have no chance of getting an item, isn’t it just as bad as not opening the chest?

Oh, hey, wait… I have another way to check! I’ll know if it’s a monster with 100% certainty as well! Praised be the Lords.

Guys, in case this triggers something… Prepare to run.

Walking as far from the chest as the black fog would allow, Sofia activated the ring of Zar.

Mana collapsed unto her as the cursed black fog got sucked in, but to Sofia’s relief, there were no movements from the chest.

It was also still full of mana.

So it was a fucking monster after all!

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