Ornate knots framed the tunnel’s corners. They gave way to rivers of carved scales and a ball drawn in crude strokes as if by a sharp rock. It hovered between it all at the beginning.
When Micah’s fingers passed over, grit came off like chalk dust. He rubbed it away and moved on.
The relief of the Teacup Salamander broke free and struggled. Scaled ligaments held it back, tethering it to the wall. It pushed with all its might until they snapped and it ran. Further, down the hill, over a coiling river, and into the depths like a hare hounded into its warrens.
It shied the scales’ touch, but the crude lines, almost white on the stone, connected it to them anyway. The snapped ligaments pointed toward each and every one it passed during its flight. Puppet’s strings, hidden.
Along the sidewards relief, the Salamander ran, and crawled, and grew. It squeezed through narrow tunnels and chose left or right. It snapped at stretching shadows and licked scabbing wounds. It ran into an open cavern like a beaten dog and looked over its hunched shoulders with every other step.
The final depictions saw it crawling up the ornate knots in desperation, the only way to move on.
“The other side is different,” Jason said. His voice was barely a whisper. All of theirs were.
Micah’s urgency had fled him the moment he’d seen. Somebody had made this. It demanded respect. If they could carve out these walls and bring them to the nearest portal, they would be rich. Literally. Not a child’s riches. People would pay a fortune to have this in their personal collection.
He knew he would.
“How?”
“It eats them.”
He furrowed his brows and headed to the opposite end. The Teacup Salamander didn’t strain against its bonds there. Not as long as the other had. It snapped at them, and ate them, and the depictions spiraled out of control as it doubled-back and ate the ball, and drank from the rivers, and grew.
Crude lines shot off from it like a cat’s cradle. Where the other had squeezed through tunnels, this one strode onto the scales, hid beneath them, flowed alongside as their equal. It stood taller when it climbed the knots, looked prouder. They each lined a side of the stairway like reflections of a false mirror.
“I don’t understand.”
Jason nodded. “Me, neither.”
“Maybe it’s a warning?” Brent offered.
“Or a clue.”
Micah glanced around until he spotted Ryan at the beginning and left the others to discuss.
His friend was looking at the ball shape with an indecipherable look on his face. Or maybe Micah just lacked the key. “The first thing my Path ever taught me,” he said, “was that Teacup Salamanders aren’t natural. They had a cloak of scales thrust upon them that was never meant for them, and it changed them into the monsters we fight today.”
“They had other things changed beyond that.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “They did.”
He joined him in looking. If he tilted his head just right and thought of the tiny indent as a closed eye … It almost looked like a natural salamander curled into a ball. No scales, but little else either. Unborn? Changed before birth, no wonder their insides were so messed up.
“Do you think this would have helped you further your Path if you hadn’t known about it before?” He nudged his chin at the wall.
“Maybe.”
“Is your Path telling you anything now?”
Ryan nodded and led them back. The others noticed when he raised an arm to point. “That,” he said, nodding at the meek one, “is almost an exact relief of the Salamander we fought yesterday. And that—”
He pointed at the other.
“Our guardian,” Micah guessed.
“Yeah.”
It was more muscular, larger, prouder—but there was a difference in quality, too. One looked more statue than relief. Maybe they could break just that one free? They had Jason’s pickaxe … But how would they carry it around? And what if it broke? Micah didn’t think he would survive seeing it in pieces.
“So we’re most likely up against a powerful true Salamander,” Alex said. “That’s good to know. What else?”
They shook their heads or shrugged.
They had split up, scouted, divided sections of the wall to copy onto paper, and inspected as much as they could beyond the golden sheen. None of them found any other clues. Ryan couldn’t hear much, they couldn’t see much—the path immediately split left and right.
“I guess we’re going in half-blind, then.”
“There’s six of us,” Micah said, regaining a spark of his excitement, “and we’re all more than capable of handling this floor on our own. We’ll be fine.”
“Let that be the only motivational speech we hear today,” Kyle said.
“Aye,” Brent agreed.
They chuckled.
Jason raised a potion and his eyebrow. “Bottoms up?”
“Go for it.”
It was his last. The rest of them turned to Brent, who had spent the time cooking meat he’d salted, wrapped, and brought along. He handed out the small pouches and told them to eat up.
Jason got his last after gasping, “Ahh, [Surging Strength]. Welcome back.” His excitement made Micah smile. He tucked the bottle in with their belongings. They weren’t taking most of their things with them.
Micah ate his portion directly from the pouch. It was just a cube of fried meat and garnish. It tasted like mutton and … clouds? That was weird. How could something taste like clouds?
He was the first:
[Skill — Wool Coat obtained!]
Wow.
Not long after, the others looked up as if they had heard the same.
“We’ve got an hour,” Brent said.
Why did he feel so … fluffy? He bounced up and down and his armor felt weird. A little more comfortable, but also a little tighter. He wanted to hug someone. He wanted to hug himself.
“Fire resistance and toughness, you said?” Micah asked.
“Yeah, and some other stuff besides. Like cold resistance. Best not think of it in terms of stats.”
Everything else had been double-checked. They were as prepared as they would be. They headed up the stairs.
There was no guardian protecting them, nor a keyhole to pay a toll at. Micah told himself it had to be because they were on the third floor instead of the ninth. Things had to be easier. But they’d had no chance against Maria back then, so this should be perfect.
Jason had the honor of pushing through. The light bulged around his glove like glass trying to imitate a fluid. Then it shattered. Micah kept his ears open, but it was the hot breeze that pushed past them that caught his attention.
Left and right were their options. Crystalline veins led in either direction, red or blue. They scouted out both corners—they weren’t long—and both led to the same destination:
A large chamber of black stone, which looked like it had been made of tumbling waves. A path on either side, each maybe five meters wide, and something that might have passed as hills splitting off halfway in. They reminded Micah of the hill the first Kobold they’d fought had stood on.
But it was what was in between the paths that mattered, what drowned the chamber in orange and red light, and literally robbed their breath away.
Magma.
It flowed in a river toward the end. Above it, all the walkways met up in a flat space. Here and there, black crust formed where the river cooled too much, but the smallest ripple revealed the red-hot glow underneath. Bubbles popped and sprayed red drops like cooking oil.
Micah took a step back. He had to wrench control of his breath. Only half of it was his own fault. Maybe having cold resistance hadn’t been such a good idea after all. They’d need breath potions to spend any extended amount of time in there. His lungs already felt like they were cooking.
He headed back to the beginning and took in a lungful of fresh, cooling essence, from the warm air.
Better.
The others joined him, red and sweaty already. In the Winter, few of them had the benefit of his skin.
“We’ll have to be quick,” Ryan said.
“Nobody fucking step in the lava,” Brent told them, as if that needed saying.
“Did anyone spot the guardian?”
Heads shook all around. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be a purely trapped area. Especially if it had something to do with that magma. Micah had read about those, but they were more common in Anevos.
“Let’s go then,” Alex said. He took a step toward the sea of orange light.
“Do we—” Micah started and shut up. He hadn’t meant to speak up. Do we have to fight this one? he’d been about to ask. But of course, they did. Micah had spent all day hoping for this. But the others looked at him so he improvised, “Do we take the left path or the right one?”
Red or blue?
Alex frowned and pointed. “I was going to take the left one.”
Ryan sighed and raised his arm. “Let’s put it to a vote.”
Four to two, left over right, red over blue. Jason and Micah had been the only ones to vote for blue. It seemed more novel than the other, but maybe that was why they had voted against it.
They stepped into the chamber and stuck to the walls as far from the magma as they could, weapons drawn, eyes searching the entire room as if something was going to burst from the stone at any moment.
A third of the way in, two Salamanders stepped out of hidden recesses in the walls ahead and joined them.
One was red, an almost exact copy of the Salamander they had fought yesterday. It headed up the hill to the space above. If they followed the lower path, it would put them between it above and the slow river below.
The other was a brilliant blue, something Micah had only ever heard of in stories. From Ryan. It was larger than its kin and left smoldering footprints where it walked. Tiny blue flames lived for a second and went out like fireworks. Licks of flames arced across its body.
His eyes were glued to it.
Where Red looked like any other monster defending its territory, Blue stalked them. Every movement had purpose, every other step it glanced back. But there was a river of flames dividing them. The ceiling was high and uneven. It didn’t look like it could be climbed. The distance was easily fifteen meters. It couldn’t get to them until they met up on the other end of the room.
That meant—
Alex drew an arrow and turned, targeting Red.
It casually stepped into another hidden recess and disappeared, the perspective hiding where it went.
When Micah glanced the other way, Blue had done the same.
He panicked. That same low terror he felt when he went to get a jar from the kitchen and the large spider near his bed was suddenly missing, just scaled up to two huge burning alligators that could walk on walls and breathe fire.
If the Salamanders attacked them here, they wouldn’t have much room to maneuver. The magma was right there. The unbearable heat made them feel like they were inside a furnace.
They hurried, lungs full of heat, and kept an extra eye on the walls and the tunnels that showed up from the other side of the room. Another few steps in, Red and Blue showed up again, walking ahead of them, matching step for step.
Every now and then, they glanced back. A low rumble reverberated in the chamber, building up the closer they got to the end. Were they waiting for them to get there before they attacked?
“Man, they’re freaky,” Brent whispered.
Alex took a deep breath and glanced back. He gave Micah a barely perceptible nod with a sweaty eyelid.
“Yeah,” Micah answered, as if speaking to Brent.
“[Aimed Strike].”
Red had a burning arrow sticking in its shoulder. Alex drew a second. The beasts turned on them, tail thumping across the floor, and growled. The sound echoed through the cavern and hollowed out Micah’s chest as he took aim. His shot went an inch wide of its target.
A second arrow hit Red, but didn’t stick. Ryan fumbled with knocking another, eyes still glancing right. None of them were as good shots as Alex, except maybe Jason, but he hadn’t been in the know.
Red ran around to charge at them, straight down the wall. It cut into the lower lane ahead. A second arrow glanced across its back that drew a flare of fire—and light-made smoke.
It was unmade.
Blue mimicked it at first, but headed for the far end. It would have to run around the high open area first before it could help its brother.
So they used that opportunity to rain fire on it. Ball bearings, arrows, and even a knife impacted it and drew light. It was already looking much worse than the one they had fought yesterday.
As it got closer, their ranged fighters stepped to the side so Brent and Kyle could advance. Ryan switched his bow for his spear. Rather than join them, he stepped back and ran up the hill to the higher lane with his [Enhanced Traction], one eye and speartip targeting it.
Micah glanced to the right to track Blue and glimpsed the tip of its tail slip into the magma.
His eyes widened.
What the—
“Fuck!” he shouted. “It can swim!”
The wall. The weaker Salamander had crawled underneath the scaled rivers, but the other had joined them. It could freaking swim through magma? That had to be [Greater Fire Resistance]. Or more. Was there even something “more”?
He’d shouted when the others engaged, and Brent and Kyle didn’t seem to hear him. They were too busy sinking knives into the beast or swinging its bite aside with a good right hook.
Ryan had, though, and bellowed a warning as he ran.
Blue didn’t attack them, though. Just like the Salamander yesterday hadn’t attacked Ryan.
Magma sizzled a heartbeat before Micah glanced right. He threw his shield up and himself backward. A gaping open maw sailed at him, the body behind it throwing splatters of molten rock. His teammates scrambled back. It bit down on the edges of his shield and the wood snapped.
If he had thought its growl was loud, he heard nothing over the sound of it crumpling his shield like paper. The wood exploded.
The Salamander tumbled toward the wall and wrenched his arm with it. The small wound from yesterday flared and Micah cried out. His arm felt like it had been ripped from the socket. The beast weighed him down and yanked him off-balance, further toward its mouth.
He let go of the handle, almost stabbed his arm in his haste to cut the strap, and wrenched himself free to stumble back.
It shook the shield like a fresh kill. Ichor sizzled out of its mouth from the splinters.
Dimly, Micah felt blood trickle down his face, but his chainmail had protected the rest of him. His eyes were fine. His eyes were fine.
He was not. Blue stood between him and the rest of his team. Or rather, they stood between it and Red on both sides. Distracted by the attack, almost none of them noticed its open maw.
“FIRE!” Micah shouted and pointed with his knife.
Ryan skid to a stop where he was running toward him and turned to throw himself the other way. The other two reacted a second later and ran toward him. Jason pulled his cape out of his belt to try and raise it up as a shield, though Micah wasn’t sure that was a good idea.
Only Alex ignored the warning as he sunk a glimmering arrow in Blue’s hide. It went up in flames.
A river of fire blossomed behind his back. Their teammates, smoking, burst out of the sides and hid behind Ryan’s shield. It flowed over the stones toward them and lapped at his boots.
Blue spat out a chunk of burning wood out and did not look happy.
Alex sunk another arrow in it.
C’mon, he mouthed.
It shifted its feet and thumped its tail, grumbling low.
Micah took a hesitant step forward. The moment it turned, he gutted a waterskin and slammed it down on its back by its rope. Water burst into steam. The beast spun around to snap at him. He fled, letting the skin to wilt and burn. What did he care about a single one? It would be worth the effect.
“[Dissettle].”
The steam around the beast shifted into the image of scales, as it had all those months ago when Mr. Faraday had demonstrated with the olive oil, and the Salamander winced, but didn’t let up. It ran through the still hot water.
An arrow sprouted in its back.
“[Infusion],” Micah tacked on and pushed, having virtually limitless heat to work with here.
It turned into ghostly images that might have been pieces of limbs. The beast slowed for a step, but that was about the end of Micah’s tricks. The second step of his three-step plan. Because while he might have had limitless heat to work with, he was out of water.
Blue loped toward him. Two-hundred pounds of magic condensed into fire, flesh, and rage.
Micah didn’t have a shield.
Alexander charged after with his sword drawn, but only managed to nick its tail. It was too close to be deterred from its course. So Micah did what anyone would do: fling his knife at it, turn tail, and run.
He’d considered trying to run around it, or run back and jump off the wall, but he knew how fast they were from textbooks or seeing the one yesterday, and he knew how high they could jump.
He wasn’t sure he could jump higher.
But he did know they didn’t like to run for very long. Some higher ones could move the same as lizards would, but this was the new fourth floor.
Through the pass and around the corner. Micah slammed a hand into the stone to drag himself around. He glanced back, felt relief surge in his chest when he saw nothing, and skid to a terrified stop before Blue could ambush him from the other side.
It could cut across the river.
Instead of on the ground, the underside of its head poked up and around the middle of the wall—where his head might have been, had he continued running—looked at him, and opened its maw.
Micah fled the other way, right into Alex, who was trying to warn him with a drawn sword.
“Fire!”
They ducked behind the corner. Blue flames flooded the tunnel and pushed past their shoulders, making them jump back. Alex tried to raise a ward, but it was too late. It broke. He winced at the jarring sound of its shattering and jerked the guy away with more force than he probably had to.
Across the river of magma from them, Blue spun back around to face them and dove inside.
Red burst into smoke on the hill.
Micah coughed, needed to swallow, and took in a searing hot breath before he could call out, “It’s in the magma!”
His teammates reacted a second late and scrambled three steps further from it, leaving Red’s crystal where it lay, weapons ready.
But Blue came for Alex—
—who stepped aside and rammed his sword up its throat. The beast slammed into his shoulder, Micah saw a flash of smoldering clouds, and they went down hard on the black rock.
It recovered far too quickly for something with a sword in it and went for his arm. The other guy smacked its mouth aside with a two-handed shield strike and scooted back on the rocks. Micah slapped his sword down on its hide to help, but he was too scared to thrust in case he might hit Alex.
It spun around and snapped at him.
He scrambled back. The beast was just posturing in its wounds and confusion, but there was no way Micah was going to spend another few months in a cast recovering; need another surgery.
Instead, he tried to draw his slingshot and found nothing there. Reflexively, he almost looked around for it. Had he dropped it? But the fight took priority.
A metal ball smacked into it all the same, an inch below its eye, and he spotted Jason taking aim. Alex stole his sword straight from its sheath and returned with wounded pride in his eyes.
Another one of Jason’s shots and Micah did the same.
His teammates were running toward them, but they were distant, Blue wounded, and cornered. They had to either end this now or evade its panicked attacks while it succumbed to its injuries.
A moment before Alex got close enough, Micah threw his second-to-last knife. A glancing cut was all he needed. The moment ichor hissed into steam, he took a deep breath in.
I can do this.
Scales began to crumble. Their blue color bled out and they cracked from the heat. Wisps of smoke trailed from those, and Micah—
Micah started coughing like a fourteen-year-old with lung disease who had taken his first puff from a strong cigar in an active forge.
He doubled over, each cough feeling like he was heaving his throat out, like he was about to throw up, like his body wasn’t his own. He tried to back off, but he had troubles seeing what was going on.
He knew he had damaged the beast. It had worked, but the essence was too much for him.
And despite the comparably small wound he’d made and Alex slashing at it, Micah saw when he looked up, he had managed to draw its attention.
Blue turned its back on the other, growled, and charged—
And Ryan sprinted past the guy to slam his spear straight through the wound Micah had made. The tip punched out the other side. He stumbled forward three steps to a stop, dragging the body along the black ground with him. Three weapons in it, three arrows, Blue went still.
When he pulled, it burst.
“Breathe, breathe,” Ryan said, rubbing slow circles under his chainmail. “You got this. What happened?”
I bit off more than I could chew, Micah thought, trying to chuckle. Almost literally. His humor just made things worse. He broke into a small coughing fit and took in too hoarse breaths when he calmed down.
Ryan offered him a waterskin and he accepted it with a thankful smile. It helped, but his lungs still felt like they were on fire. He needed to move. He leaned right to look past his friend’s shoulders at the room.
His slingshot lay a short distance from the wreckage of his broken shield. Intact, thankfully, but the shield wasn’t. Nor was it his. It belonged to the school. That would get him points deducted and he would have to pay for it, later.
A single step and Ryan slipped his hand away so Micah could limp toward it and pick it up.
Alex retrieved his sword, which was miraculously intact. It had stuck in the Salamander for ages. The others headed up the hill to the open plaza on the other end of the room.
He spotted a few more hidden tunnels but there was nothing in them. Not even little monsters.
The magma rolled on.
He looked around. His smile began to fade. Kyle and Alex weren’t smiling, either. Neither was Ryan, but he rarely ever did. The others called about an exit portal and a treasure chest, but—
Micah spun a slow circle and looked at the features he could see. He took in an almost normal breath.
Was …
Was that it?
“Hold still,” Ryan said.
“I am still,” Micah mumbled. His heart wasn’t in it. He sat on the bottom of the stairs, Ryan crouched in front of him with a pair of tweezers. Apparently, he had a face full of splinters.
Brent had also been bitten. Two half-circles of bloody tooth marks swelled on his left calf. He cleaned and healed the wound himself, munching down on vitality gummies on the side.
Alex had an angry red bruise on the top right side of his torso where Blue had tackled him. Chest, shoulder, arm. It was only thanks to [Wool Coat] and his armor that it wasn’t any worse. His shoulder and wrist hurt, too.
“Welcome to the club,” Jason joked.
They all three had similar injuries from similar fights. Why did Salamanders have to mess with people’s shoulders? Getting his shirt off had been a hassle and a half until Ryan had helped him, and then it was another kind of hassle as the others joked around about it.
They didn’t make jokes about Alex and Brent walking around half-naked. Micah knew it was all in good fun, but he wasn’t in the mood for good fun. At least, he got to enjoy the portal’s breeze like this.
“I think I got them all,” Ryan said and switched them for bandages. “Do you have anything weak enough with you to apply right now?”
Micah could probably make something, but he didn’t feel like it. He shook his head. “No, but thank you.”
A moment later, he had a tiny pillow glued his face as if he had just gotten back from the dentist. Then Ryan started applying the muscle salve to his shoulder and that— Well, that was much better.
“Get a room,” Kyle grumbled, one hand full of blue jelly himself as he slathered it on Alex.
“Screw you,” Micah pouted.
Ryan gave him a hesitant look. “Want to do it yourself?” he asked entirely in his interest.
Micah shook his head. “Please, no?” An almost shoulder rub from Ryan. At least, one nice thing from this whole mess.
He was down a waterskin, a shield, more slingshot ammunition, and—functionally—a knife. Its blade was deformed, either from the Salamander’s heat, the throw, or from lying too close to the magma for too long. Or all three. It was twisted toward the tip and wouldn’t fit in its sheath anymore.
He wasn’t too worried about the price of all that anymore, though. His share of the loot would probably cover it—the loot of this room, the damages of this room. The chest was made of Salamander wood and filled with a small sack of marbles and a padded grid that held three potions.
Green, red, blue. They could all guess what they did. Middle-grade stamina, healing, and mana potions.
Brent took a sip of each in turn, in a little bottle cap, and told them the healing one was better than the one they had found yesterday. So high-tier, middle-grade potions, then. About two to three silver pennies for each—closer to three, based on his assessment—along with the value of the chest itself, the crystals the guardians had dropped, the scales sticking to them, divided by six—
Yeah, it would cover it. Plus a little extra.
But that meant Micah had gotten nothing from this room but another stupid chest he would have to carry around, wounds, a sore throat, and the bitter taste of crushed hopes and dreams.
He was so done with this exam. With this floor. He couldn’t wait until they could go back into the Tower normally. He could hang out with Ryan and Lisa and collect ingredients, horse around, explore, have fun.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
“Did you at least get to fight the Salamander some?” he asked.
Ryan hesitated. “Some?”
So none. Micah hadn’t even been able to keep his promise. He didn’t deserve this shoulder rub.
“It’s alright,” he said. “I need to deal with them a lot before I can mimic anything most of the time. Three wouldn’t have been enough anyway.”
He was just saying that.
“So are we going to make camp, then?” Jason asked, the only one of them not immediately busy with anything. “Because we have wounded and we’re all exhausted, I think?”
Kyle sighed.
“You don’t want to?” He sounded almost hopeful.
“No,” he said, “it’s fine. You guys can make camp, I’ll just steal one of you to fight some monsters, then.”
Brent looked up. “You think you can still keep going? Because I don’t know about you, but I’m genuinely exhausted. It’s like fifty degrees in here and my [Lesser Constitution] isn’t helping as much your Skills are, I bet.” There was a pause. “Except Micah. How are you even still standing? Micah?”
“Huh?” he opened his eyes and looked over. He hadn’t really been paying intention.
“How are you doing?”
“Fine.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” he said and kind of hoped they would switch topics already. He was doing fine. He had put in a lot effort to recover from his leg injury and now it was paying off. He wanted to feel proud about that.
“But you don’t have any Stats to help you, right?”
“Agility and Resilience,” Kyle said, frowning too.
And Ryan’s strength.
“Maybe it’s one of the few occasions where my youth is helping me out?” he said instead. Even just joking made him feel more tired than he was.
“And you’re sure you didn’t make something to help you along?” Brent asked. “Because if you did, that’s cool. No judgment here. I’d just rather know, in case of.”
Micah shook his head, knowing full well what he was talking about. “I had considered making a cheap stamina potion, but even cheap was too expensive. I wasn’t sure how much we’d earn.”
The guy hissed and scrunched up his face. “The struggle. I know it.”
Some still looked dubious, so he added, “Probably, your vitality gummies are helping me more than the others, too, right? There’s less of me than there is of you guys.” He glanced at Jason. ”Especially you.”
“Hey, you get gummies.”
Then it was only Kyle who looked dubious, but he always did. He probably assumed Micah was lying again. Freaking Kyle.
Ryan finished slathering his shoulder up and started bandaging him. Alex convinced his helper to do the same.
“So yeah, camp or no?” Brent asked. “Kyle?”
“Already said my piece.”
“Yeah, but how are still you standing? You got any Stats we should know of?”
“‘Should’? No. But I have something against this heat, at least.”
“You can just say [Lesser Weather Resistance],” Micah sighed, “there aren’t many other Skills a [Gardener] will get that offer heat resistance and we can all guess.”
He rolled his eyes but didn’t contradict him.
“Everyone else?” Brent picked it back up.
“It’s barely past six,” Alex cut in, a pocket watch in hand. “Do we really want to make camp?”
“Screwing with sleep cycles sucks,” Ryan said.
“I’m sure you could manage for a day, princess,” Kyle told him.
“Oh, I could. Probably better than you.”
Everyone but Jason nodded matter-of-factly.
“I’m just throwing it out there. Going to sleep early and waking up in the middle of the night might not work out as well as you would want it to, alchemicals or no.”
“We could take it slow and scout out the area for a place to stop?” Jason suggested. “The healthiest people, Ryan and Kyle, could take the front. And we only hurt one shoulder so we can carry the chests in the middle. Brent, you’re all healed up, right?”
He put a little pressure on his leg and leaned it left and right, making a face as he did. “Mostly.”
“Pain?” Micah asked, worried.
“Tight skin. And the aforementioned exhaustion.”
Oh. Just normal healing side-effects, then.
“If we don’t find anything in two hours,” Jason said, “we head back and make camp here. We need to stick close anyway. Tomorrow probably, too.”
Micah frowned. “Why?”
“Because this is the first portal we’ve found. We need a way out.”
Oh, right. He had almost forgotten about that. It made him want to groan. Wherever they went, if they didn’t find a portal, they would have to calculate the return trip in to make it back in time.
He rolled his head until he settled back on Ryan and gave him a look. Why did everything suck? Yesterday had been great. And they probably were going to get a good grade with all the things they had. It just …
None of what Micah had done today had felt satisfying.
Ryan ruffled his hair and looked tired himself, though he was physically the fittest of them. He had Endurance, Strength, and Vitality. Not to mention his [Hot Skin] Skill, which gave him heat resistance and magical perspiration. It was a little more noticeable now than usual.
Curly hair.
Ryan frowned and did it again, mumbling, “Your hair is fluffy.”
Micah beamed. “I know, right?”
“It’s kind of not,” Kyle was saying.
“Huh?” Micah fetched his shirt up and glanced over to listen. He wasn’t talking about his hair over there, right?
“There was another portal in the last guardian’s chamber. I just didn’t tell you about it.”
“What?”
He wasn’t the only one who asked but Kyle looked at him. “When you told me to go check for ambush routes? The spring led into a crack in the wall, but the tunnel went on for a little way to an exit.”
Alex elbowed him in the side and Kyle boxed him back on reflex. The guy took it with a grunt and grumbled, “You don’t withhold information like that.”
From what Micah could see, Ryan’s casual mood was gone. Freaking Kyle.
“Yeah,” he said, “you really don’t.”
The guy scowled at them. “If I had told you about the exit, you would have had an exit on your minds. The fight wasn’t hard. And there’s no fucking way I was going to let anyone screw us over right there at the beginning.”
“You mean you,” Brent said. “You didn’t want anyone to screw you over.”
“Yeah. Of course.”
At least, now he was being honest.
“And what about afterward?” Ryan asked. “We have to know shit like that for our grade. For our reports. When did you plan on telling us?”
“I told you now, didn’t I?”
“Why not then? Right afterward?”
Micah sighed and rubbed the butts of his hands in his eyes until he saw white patterns.
“It doesn't really matter, does it?” Jason asked. “The exit he mentioned is even further away.”
“It does matter,” Alex said and took the end of the bandages from Kyle, “but yeah, it doesn’t help to squabble about this.”
He raised his hands up in innocence and stepped away, leaving Alex to do the rest on his own.
“So, what was it?” Ryan asked. “Slow scouting, wounded people in the middle with the chests, and we give up if we don’t find anything for two hours to come back? Make camp here? Maybe give Kyle double shifts?”
“Yeah.”
“Hey.”
He ignored him. “Micah, do you think you can carry both chests if we stack them?”
“It depends on if we leave the potions inside, right?” Alex asked, fetching his own shirt. “They’d be more secure, there.”
A grid of padded wood held the bottles in place. Those and the increased size would add more weight for them to lug around, slowing them down even more as they trudged about, followed railroads to useless minecarts, and looked for guardians all day at a snail’s pace.
Micah stared at the loot, felt the sweat drip down his face, his healing salve burn and freeze on his shoulder at the same time, and forgot to answer. He was doing something wrong.
On a whim, he leaned over to reach for Ryan’s backpack to get the maps they had made.
“If not, Alex and I could carry them?” Jason offered when it was clear he wouldn’t answer.
“We’ll switch every now and then,” Ryan said in a casual tone. “Cycle people in and out just like we did before. We’re just scouting.”
“Alright, then?” Alex asked, looking around for agreement.
Micah glanced up.
They all looked … not unhappy, but not happy either. They looked the same as they had before this room, like this was just another Kobold camp to be cleared out and moved on from.
Brent put his pants back on, Alex his armor. Jason was still in awe of the walls and treasure chest and seemed impatient. Micah doubted he had caught on yet. He would, soon enough.
And Kyle … Kyle looked genuinely unhappy. He looked at him and Micah scowled because he knew exactly what he wanted. And he knew exactly what he was doing wrong. Freaking Kyle.
They weren’t risking anything.
He glanced back down at the maps and had a hunch. As everyone got their things from the pile, he said, “I might have a better idea.”
Alex looked over. “You do?”
“Yeah. But first, Kyle, are you sure Ms. Denner wants us to bend the rules as much as we can?”
He gave him a confused look. “Freaking of course, she does.”
Good. He just needed to hear someone else say it.
“Then I say we use that stamina potion we just got and the marbles we have to do what we should have done from the start: We use the minecarts to carry our luggage.”
“You don’t think you can carry the chest after all?” Ryan asked.
“No, I could,” Micah said. “I don’t want to. I don’t think we should. I say we have Kyle break them into pieces and add them to a pile, because the little extra worth we might get out of selling them whole isn’t worth the time they rob of us acting as dead-weights.”
A lot of what they were doing wasn’t worth the time they robbed of them acting as dead-weights.
“It’s not like we’re on a time limit. We’ve had three days to do this right and we’ve been great so far.”
“Yeah, great. But not outstanding,” Micah said. Didn’t he get it? “We haven’t risked anything yet, beyond our physical health and that isn’t special. Every climber does it the moment they step into the Tower. And really, we haven’t even risked it that much. All six of us, this floor couldn’t kill us even if we walked through it naked.”
“Okay, okay,” Brent said, chuckling to himself. “Stop ranting and put your shirt back on, Tiger. I get the sense you’re getting to a point?”
Micah considered the shirt for a second and grit his teeth before he slipped it over, but the salve had helped a lot with his shoulder already.
The moment he pushed past the collar, he breathed, “Yeah. I didn’t mean we put the treasure chests in a minecart. I say we put all our stuff in one. Backpacks and loot. That’ll make us ten times lighter. Then we stuff the cart full of marbles, split into groups, and drink the stamina potion to keep us going. One group sticks with the cart. The other two split off to clear out tunnels and Kobold camps. We let the cart carry our weight and run.”
“What if we hit a dead-end?” Ryan asked, giving Micah the counter-balance he needed.
“We get our stuff out and scout until we find the next one, then throw it all in and do the same all over again.”
“No, I mean, what if we hit a branch, have to choose, and it leads to a dead-end?”
“Ohh—” Micah held up the map. “For that, we stick North. The railroads we’ve found have been getting longer and longer, but in almost all cases, whichever bend is closest to North goes the deepest into the Tower.”
He peeked around and showed them by tracing the longest route; flipped to the next page and did the same.
“Almost all cases?” Alex asked, stepping closer.
“There are two where the others led to mass-branches.” Micah showed him. “But we would want to avoid those anyway because they take too long to clear out.”
Alex flipped through the maps in consideration and glanced down. “You’ve been holding out on us.”
Micah smiled. They’d all been holding out on each other. That was sort of the point.
“What about maintaining line of sight?” Jason asked.
“That’s where we bend the rules,” Micah told him. “Two people stick with the cart, one to protect and choose directions, the other to act as middleman in case someone needs help. Maybe Ryan could?” He glanced over. “You have the best hearing and are the fastest runner.”
He hesitated and gave him a half-nod. If we do this, then yes, it said. But he didn’t seem against the idea.
“The others treat the cart as a mobile base,” Micah said and watched to make sure he wasn’t making a fool of himself, but he didn’t think he was. What worth was success without the willingness to sacrifice?
“And you want to do this now?” Jason asked, still impatient.
Of course, he was impatient. “You still have two hours of strength left, right?” Micah asked him.
He smiled and nodded.
He looked at the others. “Screw taking it slow and steady. Or hoping for guardians. Even those won’t be a challenge. We divide and conquer. We’ll make the most of the time we have left to raze this floor for all it’s worth.”
He finished his look-round on Kyle.
The guy gave him an estimating glance and surprisingly, broke into a smile, then quickly changed his mind as if it were a bad fit, shifted, and cleared his throat. “All in favor?” he asked.
It was unanimous. “Aye.”
They had to reorganize a lot before they could go through with his plan. They still needed their backpacks if they were going to fight monsters, to collect loot or carry supplies, so they shifted all extraneous weight someplace else: into loot sacks—for things that could weather them—or Ryan and Brent’s backpacks.
Aside from Kyle’s, those were the largest.
They shifted things over, sorted, and stuffed them into corners until there was no room left.
Other things, they threw away: Empty food wrappers, leftovers from yesterday, crumbling climbing cookies they wouldn’t eat anyway, general rock and crystal crumbs at the bottom of their backpacks; somebody even threw an old pair of socks out that had holes in them.
Micah was down his shield and a waterskin. He used a hammer to bend his knife until it fit inside its sheath again, thinking it had to be repaired one way or another. That’s when he noticed the streak of holes in his pants where a spray of magma had burnt through. The skin underneath was fine, a little red maybe—it was hard to tell—and the holes weren’t large.
It was still unsettling.
Ryan asked if he hadn’t known.
“No?”
[Wool Coat], his clothes, and fire resistance ring must have protected him without him even noticing. He didn’t know if that was more reassuring or terrifying.
When Jason put his pickaxe in the first cart they found, he eyed it and asked, “How expensive was that anyway?”
“I’m not abandoning my pickaxe.”
“Mm.”
In the end, they had a few pouches full of monster parts, two backpacks stuffed to the brim with their belongings, bundles of treasure chest planks, bones, and a small pile of sacks full of crystals.
Another two, they hooked around the inside of the rim. That way, they could just dump their crystals when they got back and head off again. Micah would take care to switch when they were full.
It made them feel twenty kilos lighter. At least. Micah felt like he could actually move again. And when he drank a sip of the stamina potion, he felt like his body had just woken up from the best nap ever. The only exhaustion he felt was in the corner of his eyes and in his head.
The others had the same look when they did. They stood straighter and moved their limbs more. They looked more focussed. They carefully divided the potion into bottles to be rationed out. [Wool Coat] left them, but that was fine. Micah only really missed how fluffy it made him feel.
Finally, they put three marbles in the minecart to start. Since it was his plan, they let him hash out the details. Lazy bums.
“Okay, so Jason and Alex go on different teams,” Micah said, pointing them apart as he thought it over.
“Why?”
“Because of range. Although Alex, you might not want to use your bow. You’ll have less time to retrieve your arrows. This is just in case. And choose who you want to be on a team with.”
They glanced at their options.
“It’s okay,” Brent joked, “you can tell me how you really feel.”
“Couldn’t we do ranged versus melee teams?” Ryan jumped in. “And split them up depending on our needs?”
“Huh?”
“If there’s a longer path or more monsters, Jason and Alex could shoot them down from afar while they approach, take their stuff, and leave. Kyle and Brent could take the shorter tunnels. If it’s one melee, one ranged, the melee person is going to stand around doing nothing because of line of fire.”
“Oh, uhm—” Micah reconsidered. He didn’t know if it was true, but it sounded like it made sense. Ryan was the one who forced himself to go to regular archery training, not him.
“Wouldn’t that mean we get fewer opponents?” Kyle asked.
“No, it means you’d stick closer to the cart,” he answered, catching up now. “And have to run to and fro more often for the side tunnels. The ranged team would take on branches?”
“We could try out both,” Ryan said as he headed off. They were speed-walking to keep up with Chariot Junior and every now and then, monsters showed up that needed killing.
“Okay, so you guys split up however you like, just don’t break Brent’s heart. And keep … all of that in mind. Make sure to keep your crystals and belongings in separate pouches, too, so you can just dump them in the cart when you get back.”
Alex was already stepping away with a nod. “Sounds simple enough. Brent? Want to come with me—?”
Brent smiled and walked toward him with open arms.
“—I’ll switch you out for Jason when we get to the first major branch.”
His arms fell.
“What did I just say?” Micah called after them.
Kyle and Jason took off in another other direction.
Ryan dropped the first new crystals in the cart and asked if he wasn’t going to join a team. Most of the space was taken already, but Micah wanted to see the last third filled to the brim.
“Nope. Or maybe later. I want to watch after Chariot first and make sure this goes right.”
Ryan didn’t even stumble over the nickname. “So I just watch our backs and mediate in case they need help?”
“Yeah, and catch them up on which direction we’re headed and stuff like that. Or help them carry things.”
“Got it.” He slowed down to create some distance.
The first of their teammates came back earlier than he would have thought. Jason tossed a pair of crystals in the cart and headed on to the next the tunnel, ignoring the centipedes crawling in the distance. Those would Micah’s job to deal with. “Like this?” he asked.
“Yes, but maybe don’t always drop the crystals in right away? You could fill your backpacks to save time. If it saves time.” He glanced back. “And, uhm, make sure you wait on Kyle, if we’re already bending the rules?”
“Huh?” He jogged backward. “Oh, right.”
“I’m right here,” Kyle grumbled when he added another crystal to the pile. “No need to wait, you potion chuggers.”
“Sorry.”
“Just make sure you keep up when it wears off,” he said and they disappeared around a bend.
Micah jogged ahead to cut the centipede down, then hacked it into pieces. When the cart passed him, he lobbed the crystal inside and almost missed. Close enough. Ryan added a few more.
“Did something try to ambush us?” he called back.
“I just passed them on for Alex and Brent.”
“They should be using their backpacks,” Micah groaned. When he saw them, he told them himself, “Use your backpacks! Don’t make Ryan play gofer. What if he’s needed for something else?”
“We get it!” Brent called back. “You want him all for yourself!”
“That’s not it and you know it!”
It wasn’t long before they arrived at the first branch and Micah shifted the cart to the left. Ryan called it to the others and they came back early. Then Jason and Alex headed off to hopefully raid any Kobold camps on the right-hand side.
Micah flagged down the two others and asked if he could switch in for a short bit. “I want to get a feel for it myself.”
Brent said he would happily take a break, though guarding the cart definitely wasn’t taking a break … Micah had thought.
Jogging to kill monsters, collect their crystals, and keep up with the cart was more demanding than he had thought. At least, it was more demanding what he had been doing. He needed to warm up to it first. So when he killed another fully-formed centipede and had to drag it back while it bled out, Micah heaved it into a sack and told Brent he would gladly switch again.
“Only if you cut out its crystal later,” he said, pointing at the corpse.
“Deal.”
“Oi, Kyle! Wait up,” Brent called.
Alex and Jason dumped a dozen or so crystals in the cart when they next returned, a good number of them blue. They had found a camp after all. But Alex told him they probably had been off the mark, earlier.
“I think the teams should switch. We’d have more time to collect our ammo if we didn’t have to run around so much and they could keep up their momentum by rushing in and back out again.”
Micah shrugged. He didn’t have that much experience with ranged weapons. He suspected there wasn’t a perfect solution, but he smiled as he asked, “You mean, you want to be the one [Guard]-ing the cart?”
Alex suppressed a smile. “Yes.”
He chuckled. “Okay, then let’s ask the others when they get back.”
It turned out, Kyle said he actually preferred it that way. Micah should have known. He seemed like he liked working alone. “But can we speed this up a little?” he asked. “I’m not sure we’re being that much quicker than we were before. And I think it’s been getting slower.”
“Oh, uhm …” Micah considered the pouch. They didn’t have unlimited marbles and none of the monsters they had fought had dropped any. Next time, they had to buy some and take them with. “I can add one now, but for anything more, we wait until the next one?”
“Fine.”
They traded tactics. Micah saw a lot more of Jason and Alex as they ran ahead to shoot down anything in the side-passages, then ducked in to get their ammunition or crystals.
Brent and Kyle only showed up every ten to fifteen minutes or so, but he liked seeing them turn their backpacks over and rain loot out. Watching the piles grow was definitely worth staying with the cart.
Plus, it was fun.
He got to cut down monsters, lob crystals in the cart from afar, see everyone come back, talk to them on the go, and coordinate.
When they reached the end of their first road, they heaved the sacks out and ran to find the next, and the next generation of Chariot, and stuffed it full of four marbles, then.
The pace picked up.
Brent and Kyle showed up from their third trip covered in sweat and had to take a break. Ryan lent them a hand with taking down the initial monsters, scouting out side routes, or carrying loot, but that was counterintuitive to what he was supposed to be doing as a middle-man on paper. It was as if they had split up into two groups of three with one running off every now and then.
And the minimum requirement of members for this exam was four.
Micah suggested a redistribution of resources. He didn’t know which Stats Kyle had, but he and Brent were definitely not as fit as the others. So they slowed down Chariot while those two took sips of Stamina potion and switched the bottles with Alex and Jason’s untouched ones. Micah offered his own since he had the least demanding job, but they didn’t take him up on it.
They got permission to drink from theirs more often, then. They split up and tried it again.
And surprisingly, it worked.
They picked up speed with a fifth marble. The others had to run to keep up with him, but every time they dropped by, they added loot to the pile. They passed tunnels of monsters soon to be killed and cleared out the main railroad. Micah kept track of where they were and where they were going. Ryan and he helped the others and coordinated with calls back and forth.
By the end of the road, one of the big sacks was full and they switched it for an empty one. They had two others full of fully-formed corpses. Brent argued for a break and they sat down to dress the bodies, but soon moved on.
Their knife proficiencies made it quick work. They only took the most valuable parts to save space.
The next railroad they found, the next minecart, they put in five marbles from the start and planned on adding a sixth when it slowed down.
That’s when the fun really began.
Micah sprinted ahead and cut down a Whip Spider and Kobold. He fetched up their crystals with his free hand lobbed them into the cart. He knew how fast it was and where it would be.
He pushed off and ran for the next monster. But Chariot was almost too fast. Almost. So instead of lobbing the crystal back, he switched his sword to his off-hand and reached out.
The cart hit into his hand and he held on. It slowed down and pulled him up. He plopped the crystal inside, kicked a Whip Spider in the face in passing, and pulled himself to the other side. Another Teacup Salamander charged at him on the left-hand side and he leaned over to cut it down with his sword like a rider on horseback.
A glance back. The Whip Spider wasn’t dead. He called back a warning before anyone got any nasty surprises.
“I’ll get it!” Jason called back.
“Thank you!”
Micah held on with both hands, tested the ground a few times to get a running start, and pushed off to fight the next monsters.
Chariot sped up again.
When Brent and Kyle came back in the distance, Ryan called, and Micah ran ahead to hold on to its front and slow it down that way. A Kobold ran at him with a pickaxe and he threw a knife at it, missed his chance to finish it off, and called back, “Somebody get that one for me, please!”
“Again?”
He was getting better, but sometimes, monsters slipped through the cracks.
With him in front, the cart slowed down enough for everyone to catch up. Once they got a headstart again, Micah let go and fought on his own. He was constantly regulating the cart’s speed, its course, and protecting its contents; using it as a tool just the same as he would anything else.
When the monsters were too many and a Centipede crawled up his leg, Micah tore it off with a strong glove grip and threw it in front of its warpath. Chariot lurched and the beast burst into smoke.
It was fun, to say the least. And exhausting as all hell. And Micah wanted to do it at least once every weekend.
Another bend came up ahead and he had to force himself to run there so he could shift the part. The moment he did, he speed-walked to take a sip of stamina potion and pop in a vitality gummy.
He didn’t need those to give him life. Doing this gave him life. But it definitely helped with quality.
He sped up again to hold on to the cart and put the potion back, calling back to Ryan, “Another left!”
“Another left!” the guy repeated to the others.
Hands free, Micah drew his sword to fight the next monster and his eyes went wide when the cart drove by a tunnel to the right, and the large red beast hanging from its wall in there.
“True Salamander!”
“True—” Ryan began and then broke off. “Wait, what?”
It stepped out of the tunnel and opened its maw at Micah, a glow in the back of its throat, but Chariot was faster. Too fast. It closed its mouth again and looked reluctant to run after him.
“Haha, sucker!” Micah called back, then immediately spun around to rummage for their maps. How far in were they that they found true Salamanders just wandering around?
But the maps definitely suffered from this plan. They were little more than a collection of directions and estimates. He wished he had a Skill that let him measure distance more reliably, like [Breadcrumbs] or a mental compass. This was exactly the type of information the Guild would want.
… Sixty kilometers in, maybe? he thought. Give or take … sixty. He’d have to confer with the others.
Their [Scout] had to run back to yell at the others to get their butts to the cart before he could fight it. With every second, the distance grew larger as the monster stood between them.
So when Jason came around a corner and saw it, Micah called at him from the distance, “Jason! Ignore it! Help me slow this down!”
Ryan distracted the beast while he inched past the side, then broke into a sprint. Alex joined the fight in the background and the guy used his [Surging Strength] to bring Chariot to a crawl.
“Thanks,” Micah told him and promptly ran off to cut down Kobolds. This had to suck for him, everyone normal would want to fight the strongest monsters, but somebody had to protect the cart.
His cart. Their cart. And their shimmering piles of treasure within.
They took their sweet time killing the true Salamander, but it was for Ryan so Micah had no complaints. When they regrouped, they issued a warning about them to only fight them as three. At least. The school would never let them hear the end of it, otherwise. It had been a guardian just one floor below, after all.
Everyone took another sip of stamina potion, broke up, and went to hunting for more of them.
Chariot was fed another marble.
Micah hitched a ride again and hung off the sides to cut down monsters that came in their way.
It wasn’t long before they spotted another true Salamander and Jason got to fight it this time. It wasn’t long before his [Surging Strength] left him. Or that they had to tie up yet another sack and switch it out for an empty one as they gathered too many crystals and body parts.
They were ragged, sweaty, and weak. Exhausted from running around and living off stamina potion. But that was what it was all about. Risking things and pushing themselves to their limit.
Micah loved it. They should have done this from the start. They should do this again tomorrow.
They should have remembered the other paths the railroads could take.
Another bend came up ahead and he took a deep breath and sip of stamina potion before he pushed himself up to run the distance. For the first time, there was no moveable part on the ground.
Micah’s eyes went wide and he almost missed a step, but then praised Jason’s name in his head.
A frantic run back, he almost barrelled into the front of the cart and fished out the part the guy had picked up, all the way back when. He turned around, bit his lip, and eyed the distance. He needed to time it just right. When Chariot was close enough, he pushed off, ran, and slotted the part in, then threw himself into a roll to the side before it could run him over.
“Another left!” he called back, standing up.
“A little busy!” Ryan told him, a smile in his voice.
“Insubordination!” Micah laughed and caught his breath. He jogged around the bend to catch up with the wagon and it wasn’t there.
Another, immediate second bend was right around the corner, left or right, and he hadn’t been there to choose which way to go. Micah cursed and ran the few steps to see where it had gone.
To his right, the railroad went down, just like it had to that centipede’s layer, but much, much farther.
A slight decline turned into a steep hill and Chariot was already picking up speed. Micah couldn’t even see where the tunnel ended.
“Guys!” he called back, then bellowed. “GUYS, HELP!”
He couldn’t wait for them to come. He ran after it.
He threw his arms into his run, huffed with every step, and tried to keep up a perfect form like Ryan had taught him. He was slowly catching up, but that drop was coming up ahead and then it would be too late.
Close enough, he reached out to grab the rim, held on, and it almost yanked him off his feet.
He stumbled, ran to regain his form, and tried again a second time, this time throwing himself at it with all he had. He threw his body over the rim and slammed his feet into the small holes and indents, then held on for his dear life. Chariot brought him along, faster and faster, and he looked up.
The cart met the hill.
A light at the end of a long, dark tunnel. Micah still couldn’t see what was there or all around him.
“Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck—”
He leaned forward to wrap his arms around Brent’s massive backpack, used one elbow to steady himself, then threw it out of the cart.
“Micah?!” Ryan was calling.
“DOWN THE HILL!”
The wind whipped his voice away.
The backpack hit the railroad and tumbled a short distance before it came to a stop. Micah teetered on the edge and clawed both sides to stay on. He went for Ryan’s backpack next as the wind buffeted his face.
Something cracked when Ryan’s backpack hit the ground and he winced, but he had no other choice. He grabbed two small sacks and threw them over his shoulder, then a third. The bundle of bones—
“MICAH! GET OFF!” Ryan called.
No.
Just a few more sacks. He threw one full of crystals, a few small pouches full with scales. He reached forward to get one of the bigger ones, almost lost his balance, and heaved.
Last one.
Chariot Junior Junior crashed into something and lurched.
Suddenly, Micah was weightless.
Pillars holding up a ceiling spun in slow circles, sideways, diagonal, upside-down. The sack flew toward the hole they had burst out from. It was high up in the wall, halfway toward the ceiling. But the sack smacked against the side and fell down.
He thought he saw a Kobold with a large fancy staff duck behind one of the pillars. He thought he saw a blob of something blue and ducked behind his arms, wary of a fire spell flying at him.
Nothing hit him.
Chariot crashed into a dozen-dozen pieces of vibrant colors ahead of him, red, blue, purple, yellow—impossibly loud.
Oh, well— The ground did hit him then and he went tumbling, trying to shield his face, his head. Everything was spinning. The stone smacked and into his body, ground against his armor, and he dearly missed [Wool Coat] all the sudden.
When he came to a stop, [Lesser Resilience] kicked in and Micah used the extra second it gave him to lay there and moan.
He wouldn’t be surprised if he had broken something again. Not that he would know, he had troubles feeling much of anything right now.
Idiot.
He tried to raise his head and look around, but his vision was made of multiple images that kept on trying to overlap with one another, and spun, and turn blurry and then bright, and—
Oh, no, he didn’t need his mana sight right now. Thank you very much. And was that a different kind of mana sight? Tiny blue glitter was flying off him. Oh, and now everything was yellow and bright and—
Heat essence, he thought. Nature, please.
His vision returned to normal.
“Oww …”
When he looked up, he saw the blurry blue blob from earlier. An actual blue blob. A small slime the size of his head was quivering a little ways away from him in the center of the room.
It looked afraid of him.
Oh, hey there, little guy.
Slimes, too? There were small blue slimes about seventy kilometers into the Lost Mines. The Guild would love to know that.
Okay, up, he told himself. He needed to get up. The little thing might not be a threat, but who knew what else there was? He focussed on taking deep breaths and moved, but— His arms and legs just didn’t quite want to obey his commands. In the distance, he heard people calling his name.
Man, would they be angry. They had worked so hard to get all this loot and he had screwed it up. Was anything salvageable at all?
The contents of the cart were scattered in a long line toward the center of the room. Crystals in all sorts of colors lay cracked, dissipating, broken—but a large many also looked whole.
Micah sighed in relief. At least, something.
One of the larger sacks had spilled its contents in a shorter line than the others, lying on its side like a cornucopia. Two small ones, from what he could see, were intact. He hoped their contents were just as fine. If they just scooped all three of them up and—
The slime took a tentative wiggle forward. Micah smiled at it ruefully. Careful there, wouldn’t want to have to kill you.
He dimly realized the bruise he felt in his leg was probably from his own sword ramming into it during the tumble, then. Hopefully, it wasn’t broken.
But instead of head toward him, the slime headed for one of the fire crystals. It slowly started to ooze around it. Halfway there, it swallowed the rest of up in one big gulp.
Micah blinked. Had it just … eaten the fire crystal? It seemed to be dissolving inside the beast.
He pushed himself up onto his knees and wondered where the hell he was. Some kind of circular chamber? The ground was almost paved, much better than anything else they had seen so far. Where was the Kobold from earlier? Had there even been one? It was bright, but the chamber seemed deserted.
The slime ate another crystal, but it was cracked and losing essence so that was fine.
Micah took a look around and wondered what he should name it. Slimy, the small slime.
There were dark holes in the circular walls, halfway toward the ceiling and between each pair of pillars. Railroads led into them. Some had some sort of stoppers. Low barricades that would keep minecarts from falling off the edge. Not all of them. The one Micah had come from was broken.
Slimy the small—
Uhm, hadn’t it been smaller a moment ago? Well, then, Slimy the slime ate another cracked crystal. It seemed to have an easier time of them. It snaked its way through the rubble to eat only its favorite color—red.
Curiously enough, there were small piles of rocks beneath each of the holes in the walls with crystalline veins in them and a few crystals. It was almost like this was an endpoint to offload them. But that was weird because—
Micah frowned and scrunched up his eyes. He rubbed his temple and managed to get on his feet.
It was weird because …?
Oh, because the last Kobolds they had seen do that had been in the guardian room. They had only done it to feed Teacup Salamanders, so they would grow larger, so they could harvest their crystals to use for their spellcasting.
But there were no Teacup Salamanders here. Only—
Micah stopped. He slowly turned back to the center, but it was missing. He searched until his eyes fell on the large sack that had spilled its contents like a cornucopia. Something shuffled about inside it. A feast, a sudden bounty, which the slime had gladly taken him up on. Scores of crystals inside, dozens of which were fire crystals, many from Firescale Kobolds, and two from True Salamanders they had slain on the way here.
It was eating them all.
The sack bulged and distended. It went up in blue flames. The seams popped and the rope ran through its loops. The first tears appeared easily enough. Charred black tatters fell away and Micah had to look up.
Oh.