They stepped into another room, this one with a deep pit filling almost the entire space.
“Detour or trap?” Levi peered down into the darkness masking the distant floor. A week ago, he'd have jumped in without pause, trusting his armor to protect him. Now... he had no such faith. And he vividly remembered his early pitfall, getting hurt hopping down from a simple tree because he didn't have enough stamina to absorb the impact.
Skarm pointed at the pit, then at Two, pointy teeth bared in a smirk.
Two drew his dagger, chin raised defiantly, and stepped forward.
“No, no,” Levi caught him and held him back. “Skarm, if anyone needs to jump in there, it's you. After all, you're underleveled compared to Two here.”
The gremlin narrowed his eyes, while Two laughed his high squeaky laugh, delighted with the turnabout.
“But no one is jumping down there just yet. I don't trust it.”
“I think there's a way to get across.” Gordon pointed. “If we go along the edge on the right, see? The ledge is thicker there.”
“I wouldn't trust it.” Levi frowned at the ledge. It looked wide enough for a gremlin moving carefully, but nothing bigger. It would be precarious even then.
Gremlin Two didn’t wait but ran toward the ledge as if to prove his bravery to the world.
“Hold up,” Levi called, and Two slowed his scamper, looking over his shoulder. “Something’s not right here.”
Two slowed to a stop.
“What could be more right about a pit?”
“I don’t know.” Levi stared into its dark depths, trying to put his finger on what was bothering him. If only he could see through the darkness...
The thought triggered a memory. He'd picked up a traced lens in the other dungeon but hadn’t examined it closely at the time. He pulled it out and looked it over carefully.
Components with tracing were used in crafting, with different arrays depending on the item's purpose. The lens would be for visual enhancement.
Unlike the blank orb and wand that needed to be inscribed before they could be useful, this could be activated without needing to understand the specifics of mana tracing.
A crafter would create a framework to channel and maintain the flow of power through a power stone and into the lens, for instance in a helmet's eye, or even a simple pair of glasses. But the framework wasn't essential, and these tracings were versatile enough that Levi could preview its options simply by holding it and a power stone together.
He had the second Beast stone that he'd yet to combine with anything, so he fished it out and held the lens up to his eye. It had three mana tracing inputs, so it could support up to three power sources for its various effects once crafted into an item.
Levi touched the power stone gently to the edge of the lens, lining it up with the first mana tracing input, then ran mana into it.
Through the lens, everything took on a sharply focused edge that made normal vision seem blurry and disorienting by comparison. Levi closed his other eye and looked around at the dungeon through the lens. Distant objects were zoomed and sharpened, while closer things seemed hazy and unclear. Except when Skarm jumped up to try and see what Levi was doing, then the lens’s focus immediately snapped to him.
Motion-sensing. That would be good for scouting but distracting any other time. Still, he stared down into the darkness of the pit, trying to see anything that stuck out at him. It seemed no amount of sharp focus could turn darkness into not-darkness.
Levi let the mana fade and rotated the lens so he could test the second mode. This one washed out all the terrain, painted the room in uniform shades of brown, except where his party stood. And where a gremlin lurked in the walls in the next room, ready to ambush them if they managed to cross the pit.
“Ahhh, very useful.” His old helmet in the future had traced lenses, but their effects were to improve lighting and detect mana concentrations. Life-sight was expensive. Once he could build a frame for it the ability to scout through walls would be invaluable, even though it had significantly shorter range than the motion-sensing option.
He moved the power stone to the third input, and this time the opposite effect occurred. Instead of highlighting every creature in the vicinity, it filtered them out, showing the walls and floor clearly and leaving the people and monsters as only brown shadows. He could still tell where the creatures were, but only barely, not enough to distract from the terrain.
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When he stared down into the pit with this mode, he caught the faintest flicker of movement.
“Hmmm.” Levi put the power stone back in his belt and looked intently at the lens, memorizing each mode so he would be able to activate any one of them without needing to test them all. He'd need to build a frame for it as soon as he could find the right materials. The life-sight in particular was too valuable not to use, he wanted that available at all times.
“What do you have there?” Gordon leaned closer to look.
“Crafting item.” Levi held it up. “Motion-sensing, life-sight, and terrain sight. Very useful. And I think I know what's going on with this pit now.” He tucked the lens away securely. It would be best not to risk using it without a stable frame too much. If the power stone were jostled out of place while active it could damage the item’s tracings.
“It’s a dark pit in a dungeon.”
“Yes, and that’s the strange part. Dungeons are always lit, not always well, but generally enough to see. This darkness isn’t natural.”
“I’m still trying to get over the fact that we’re stepping through rifts in the air into dungeons full of monsters.” Gordon shrugged. “I can’t speak to the naturalness of anything we encounter. It all seems like a crazy movie set to me.”
“Well, wait a moment, I think I can demonstrate for you.” Levi stepped back, then turned and searched for anything not connected to the wall. He found a rock and tossed it into the pit.
The rock fell into the darkness. They heard a faint splash, followed by a fainter thunk.
“Water.”
“So?”
“So, why is it hidden? If it’s not a trap, it’s a detour. Granted, dungeon detours are generally intended to kill us one way or another, but since we know what to expect it’s basically free experience.”
“Do we know what to expect? I’m not confident in that assessment.”
Levi ticked off points on his fingers. “It’ll have another way forward. Anything you can’t climb back out of has to be connected to the endpoint. There might be monsters to ambush us, or more traps. And the water itself, but there’s too much of it to be a serious threat.”
“That sounds backwards. Wouldn’t a bigger pool be more dangerous? You were very insistent that we not step into the streams all through the dungeon, and now you want to go diving into a pool?”
“Dungeons have limited resources related to their level. This one has been using a lot of corrosive, so it doesn’t have enough left for a full strength pool this size. Even if this water is intended to kill us, it’ll be diluted enough for our regen to handle.”
“What about monsters or other traps? Some of us are only level 2.”
Skarm squeaked sadly in agreement.
“This is a perfect chance to close that gap,” Levi said. “I’ll stay back and watch, only intervening if necessary. Same for you, Two, hang back unless it’s an emergency.”
Two looked up at him, eyes wide and pleading.
“I know you’re eager to hit your threshold, but the closer to the same levels we all are, the smoother everything will progress. We can afford to play it by ear so long as the dungeons are weaker. Once we get past the easy ones it’ll be harder to single out anyone for specific leveling.”
Two reluctantly sheathed his dagger.
“I’ll go first,” Levi said. “If I’m wrong, it’ll be easier for me to survive than the rest of you.”
“And you’re confident this isn’t just a pool of acid you’re going to be trapped in until you melt away to nothing?”
Levi nodded. “Dungeons follow a strange sort of logic, but it can still be predicted if you know enough about them. One of the main things you can count on is that there’s always a way forward or through or out. If this pit can’t be climbed out of, it’s because there’s another route down there. Most of the dangerous streams have been shallow enough that you can step out of them or crawl out if you’re a gremlin. You might end up in a dead-end corridor surrounded by enemies, but if you can fight your way through them you will get to the exit sooner or later.”
“Why is that? I thought dungeons are out to kill people?”
Levi shrugged. “I just know the what, no idea of the why. It’s not like I can sit down and have a heart to heart with it. ‘Oh hey, monster factory of death, how’s it going? Mind sharing why you let us through instead of making dead end pits we couldn’t hope to climb out of? And while we’re on the topic, why do you reward people for killing your monsters? Thanks, get back to me as soon as you can.’ If they could be communicated with, that would change things. But they can’t be, so…”
“Have you ever thought how weird it is that life so closely resembles an RPG game now?”
“Ever? Probably. But that was a long time ago. Honestly, the number of people who don’t care about the danger they’re in is more confusing to me.”
“They only don’t care because they don’t know. After we get out of here, you’re going to start spreading the word.”
“If anyone will listen.”
“They will. It may be slow at first, but this is undeniable reality. Enough people will see that to get through to the rest.”
Levi nodded, though he knew it wasn’t true. So many people just wanted to pretend everything was normal, even in the face of blatant abnormality. Oh, it’s terrible what’s happening over there, but it’s nothing to do with me. All too common of an attitude. It would be years before things fell apart enough for the average person to realize they had to take action, and by then it would be too late.
He shook off the memories. Right now, he had a dungeon to deal with. He turned and dove into the pit.
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