“Guys, I think we need to keep an eye out for thieves,” Micah warned the others the moment their group was somewhat together. “My trash was missing. Unless it was one of you?”
Ryan and Lea were a little ways off, but they weren’t fighting anything so he assumed Ryan could hear him.
Kyle yanked his axe out of a dead Salamander and snorted in derision. Blood and ick stretched off the blade and he threw the corpse in a sack before wiping the edge off.
Good thing Micah didn’t have to remind him.
“What, like the Sewer Rats?” Lisa asked. She stood in the middle of the intersection with her notepad out.
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“Huh.” She went back to sketching her map, frowned a second later, and swung her backpack around.
Micah wasn’t that paranoid but now that he saw her do it … Better safe than sorry. He was unsure how many crystals he’d had because he hadn’t counted, but everything else seemed to be there.
Maybe it was just some sort of scavenger … with a knife? But knife made him think ‘human’ and human made him think ‘Rat Hermit’ and Rat Hermit—
Jason looked eager to leave. Micah slipped his backpack back around and headed for him, saying, “Hurry up. I’m right behind you.”
“‘Hurry’?” Kyle shouted after them when they left. “Implying you weren’t doing that before?!”
They continued their slow loop around the mine to find any clues as to what might have happened here; why there was no Guardian.
Micah flipped through his lenses and consulted the map every few bends, thinking of how Jason had found this place, but he was having trouble seeing anything. It was just lines on paper.
They barely even fought, too. He didn’t know if it was because they were so far up or because the mine had been abandoned, but there were far fewer Kobolds around than last time. Or even half an hour ago.
Of course, the Whip Spiders had stayed. Stupid Whip Spiders with their stupid spiked rattle fists.
They grouped up every ten minutes or so to see if anyone had found something or if the others had any bright ideas, but the answer was always, ‘No.’
In the end, they were right back where they’d started with nothing to show for it but a fancy, overly-complicated map, which they had compiled out of all their individual ones put together and even added diagonal lines to indicate height differences and rough estimates on the dimensions.
It was a good map. Hopefully, it would earn them a point or two because it had cost them close to two hours to finish.
Micah tried not to show how much that wore on his patience as he drank some water and caught his breath.
Luckily, Kyle asked him outright, “And, Gale? ‘Any more bright ideas on what to do next?”
Their [Adventurer] considered for a long moment and sighed. “No.”
That was that, then.
“Where’s the river?” Ryan asked.
Jason pointed.
“And where did the sign point toward from where we first found it?”
He frowned and consulted their notes for a moment to point in another direction, a few degrees off from the first.
Ryan considered the distance and said, “Close enough. Let’s go.” He led the way, Kyle a step behind him, and the rest of them followed.
Lea patted Jason on the back as they left. Micah mimicked her from the other side to console him. It would have been nice to find an answer, but they couldn’t waste too much time on the second floor when they had permission to climb to the sixth to fight Guardians.
They simply had better things to do.
Their path brought them to the opposite end of the mine and, a little ways in, to a crossroads: both tunnels led east but one tilted slightly down while the other tilted slightly up.
Of course, they went up. Just a few bends in, the ground became softer below their boots, the area darker and cooler until finally, they stepped in mud. After just one bend, it clung to their boots in thick rings around the soles and weighed them down.
“Fuck,” Kyle groaned and slowed. “Please, tell me we aren’t on the floor from earlier.”
“Seems that way,” Micah mumbled, but Ryan shook his head.
“Something seems wrong here.”
“No duh’. Everything seems wrong here,” Kyle told him. “Can we stop sitting on our asses to consider it every time we notice and just move already. We have places to be, people.”
He took a few steps forward but Ryan didn’t, so none of them moved either except for Lea. The two noticed and stopped. Before they could ask, Ryan said, “Can you shut up for a second?”
He didn’t look at them as he said it. His ear was tilted to the tunnel as he listened.
Micah followed his example.
“Do you hear that?”
Kyle waited a moment and asked, “Hear what?”
Yeah, hear what? The tunnels were quiet … which was odd. He’d become used to the thrum of insects just around the corner, monsters crying out, pickaxes ringing against stone, but this place was as quiet as the abandoned mine had been.
Oh.
That was not a good thing.
“There’s nothing?” he said, almost a question. At least, they should have heard stuff moving in this mud. They were loud enough themselves with their equipment and labored steps.
Again, Ryan shook his head. “I hear something in the distance. Screeches.”
“Screeches?”
Like the Cavern Prowlers?
“Yeah, but like they’re fighting something. Maybe monsters from another floor? But I hear something else, too. Almost like …” He trailed off.
Kyle threw his head up in a silent groan and walked a circle. He gestured at Ryan as if to say, Can you believe this guy?, then told him, “Can you please use your words, Payne?”
“Scraping?” he said, almost a question.
The rest of them looked back and checked the corners as if they expected something to ambush them at any moment.
“Guys?” Lea said. “Something else but … we’ve gone nine tunnels without fighting a single monster which is … ‘statistically improbable’, at the very least.” She winced and smiled as if conscious of her word choice.
The rest of them immediately readied their weapons because word choice aside, that was alarming. The only time you could walk nine bends uninterrupted was if you were on the first floor, had just killed everything, and were on your way back, not after just stepping into the fifth.
What if something did scare everything off? Micah thought. It would have to be small to fit in here. The dimensions were a little narrower, maybe two people wide and a little under three meters high.
Something human-sized might do it.
Ryan silently wandered to the next bend and frowned, then abruptly looked up and said, “Incoming.”
“Incoming?” Kyle asked with another frustrated twitch. He looked like he wanted to smack him.
But Ryan didn’t need to explain. Not a second later, the screeches echoed louder on their way toward them.
Cavern Prowlers.
They backed up. Lisa sent a few lizards out to guard the side-passages behind them along the walls.
A few heartbeats passed while the echoes still sounded distant, then all at once they were right there and the tide crashed around the rocks.
A dozen or more shaggy beasts shot around the corner, tumbling over one another in their haste on the ground, walls, and ceilings; flinging mud and leaking blue and grey smoke as they stampeded. With the light blue spirits coiling around them, they almost looked like a flood.
They saw them, screeched with long teeth, and ran. It was eerily reminiscent of the horde that had crashed around the corners in their chase when Ryan and he had fled the ninth floor.
The memory made Micah take another step back. His heart raced as he took a look behind the crowd to see if there was something there.
The others laid into them with metal shots, flames, and bolts of light from Lea’s wand so he joined in. They picked off one or two. A third lost its grip on the ceiling and smashed into one of its own.
“Ryan!” Lea shouted, stone hedgehog snug in the palm of her hand like a baseball as she raised her knee.
She wanted him to leave, but Ryan raised his soap-colored shield and spear and stood his ground. Kyle was one step behind him and said something that Micah didn’t catch over the screeches.
‘Do it already’?
The Prowlers were only a few steps away, Lea cursed, and Ryan cast, “[Swathe of Flames].”
For a second, the screeching monsters were drowned out by a curtain of billowing fire. Then one pushed through the left side with smoking fur and sizzling sweat and tackled Ryan’s leg at the same time as Kyle cut through the right, kicked one of the back, and split a skull.
“Move, damnit,” Lea whispered again.
Lisa smacked a hand down on hers and said, “Gimme’.”
“What?”
“Gimme!”
She let go and Lisa tossed the hedgehog forward. A Not-Sam jumped up along the wall to snatch it in its mouth like a dog would a frisbee and ran into the fray.
“Oh.”
“Heads up!” Micah called between one shot and the next. He’d meant it for Ryan but it worked for them, too.
Lisa stepped back, Lea looked, and in a panicked reflex, swung her axe forward. Her form was off—he saw it in the twist of her arm—but her axe still nearly bisected the Prowler soaring at her.
How sharp is that thing?
The swinging corpse hit her shield and she stumbled back, then it burst into smoke.
Lisa cursed and stepped through the cloud to see again, and immediately bashed another Prowler down. It twisted, flinging mud everywhere, and tried to claw its way up her leg. She bashed it a few more times to keep it down and flung a stream of flames in the face of another.
Micah had to drop his slingshot and switch to his sword as two crawled along the walls at them. They were everywhere. He still tried to keep an eye on the end of the tunnel where Spike burst out its namesake emeralds—Not-Sam and at least three Prowlers died in a burst of smoke. He was having troubles seeing anything through the smoke, flying mud, and fighting.
“Watch it!” Kyle called back.
“If you had moved!” Lea said.
The two Prowlers leaped at him. Micah cut and side-stepped one; the other latched onto his shield and dragged its claws along the wood as it lashed out. Phantom tentacles uncoiled to tap his arm and shirked back. He had no idea if that was doing anything, Micah just bashed it with the hilt of his sword. At the same time, Jason slashed it off him and the beast screeched as it fell.
His response was a barely audible, “Thanks,” and he impaled it to keep it down. He winced when it slashed his leg, then stepped back and let Jason follow up.
The other twisted itself up and was promptly impaled from both sides as the two of them moved forward to help.
It was hard, in the narrow tunnel. There was barely any room to move; the Prowlers could leap and crawl along walls. They needed to keep an eye out of each other.
Micah dragged his slingshot up by its rope and shot what he could to give his teammates that second they might need to do their best. He had to be careful not to shoot any of them in the back.
A flailing mound of fur jumped from wall to wall and harassed Ryan with slashes to the helmet, and that fear made Micah hesitate as he tracked it for a few seconds and waited for the right moment to loose.
Finally, it slipped on the far wall and needed a second longer to jump. Micah hit its shoulder and sent it crashing to the mud.
Ryan stood his ground and bashed Prowlers aside with burning spear and shield. Kyle killed the one he’d just shot down and backed up the other way past Spike. The rest of them huddled up.
In the end, they stood still and panting, covered in sweat and mud, and propped up against walls, knees, or their weapons in the tunnel while they caught their breath.
Micah’s leg felt red hot along the scratch marks where the Prowler had gotten him. It didn’t feel wet or sticky so it probably wasn’t bad, but he didn’t want to look right now.
Damnit.
He’d also scraped his wrist from when the other Prowler had flailed around and his shoulder from pressing against the wall to give the others room, but those hadn’t pierced the skin.
Ryan looked fine. Exhausted, with scratch marks along his shield and some of his outer layer of armor, but unhurt in his full-body protection and see-through, yellow coif.
Lea looked like she might have pulled something when that Prowler had surprised her.
The others—
“Anyone hurt?” Micah gave up and just asked it outright. They could probably tell him. “Lisa? Jas—”
“I’m good,” Lisa answered a second late. Or early.
Jason nodded. “Me, too.”
“Kyle?”
“I’m good.”
“Really? Because—”
“I’m good.”
Micah nodded a few times and asked, “How?”
He shrugged.
“No, seriously. How? You were at the front. And no offense, you might have gotten a new shirt and some limb guards— And the Kobold shirts?” He didn’t know if he was wearing those underneath the rest. “But still, your armor is shit.”
Kyle sighed, looked up, and gave him another shrug with a shit-eating grin. “Guess I’m just that good.”
Micah looked to Ryan for input, but the guy just frowned and ran off without warning. Because of course, he did.
The rest of them caught up around the corner to get a look at the tunnel where the Prowlers had come from, but—
“It’s empty,” Ryan said, almost to himself. Someone began to say something, but he shushed them and held a hand up. He listened for a second and shook his head, “It’s quiet again.”
“What the hell?” Kyle asked.
Jason was frowning with a grin that spanned ear to ear. He was actually enjoying this, which Micah couldn’t begrudge him.
It was a little annoying, it was also a little intriguing. What was going on?
“If there’s no immediate danger, we should maybe take a moment to patch up and consider what to do next,” he said.
The tall guy nodded eagerly and they retreated back to get their crystals and some of their ammunition in the mud.
“Do you need something for your arm?” Micah asked Lea. “I have a salve for muscles but it makes them a little … not tired, but it relaxes them. It means you shouldn’t strain them as much.”
She looked at him and frowned as if she were trying to remember something. The recipe he had shown them? “Uh …”
“It’s good,” Jason commented. “We used it during the last exam and the side-effects were barely noticeable. It’s both hot and cold, though. Just so you know.”
Micah got the jar out and showed her the tan blue contents. “It definitely gets rid of the pain.”
She sighed and said, “Sure. A few days of overdoing it won’t hurt, especially since we’ve barely used any healing potions throughout the year.”
Right. She was conscious of alchemicals. Micah sometimes forgot people like her existed, but he was probably the weird one there. Normal people didn’t use alchemicals more than once a week or so. He used them all the time and hoped for levels from it.
She began to take her armor off, Micah took his glove off and washed his hands, and she held her hand out at the same time as he took a dollop of salve out of the jar.
“Oh, I can do it,” he said and pulled the jar back out of habit. “I’m sort of the healer of the group.”
She stared at him.
Micah stared back and needed a moment to catch on.
“Uhm,” Lea said, “I think I can do it my—”
“Oh.”
“—self.”
“Oh! Oh, no, I meant— Because I’m used to it? I mean, I didn’t mean— I wasn’t thinking—”
She gave him an awkward look.
Kyle looked up with a frown after picking up a crystal. “What? Did Stranya try to cop a feel?”
“What?! No, I wouldn’t,” he sputtered and tried to assure them he wouldn’t do that, make them understand, but—
Kyle threw an arm around his shoulder and said, “Oh, no. I see how it is. You don’t have to make excuses to me, Stranya. It was brave what you were trying to do.”
“No, I—”
Lea glanced around.
His face was burning. He didn’t know how to explain it. He wished he could jump back a few seconds, throw the jar at her face, and run.
Thankfully, Lisa took it out of his hand and shoved it at her.
From the end of the tunnel, Ryan barked, “Hey.” When they looked, the bite had left his voice. It was almost like he was forcing himself to say, “Back off.”
Kyle raised his arm up and patted Micah’s chest innocently. In a much calmer voice, he said, “Relax. I know you’re not, uh … interested. I’m just pulling your leg. The others won’t but someone has to.”
Micah looked around in confusion. Ryan was still glancing over, but he and Jason seemed like they had their own thing going on and didn’t care about the slip-up. Or at least, were ignoring it.
Lisa didn’t seem to care, either.
Lea just looked exhausted and if Kyle was pulling his leg …
It didn’t mean much, because he himself was all he needed to never let himself live this down.
“Speaking of,” Kyle said, gesturing down, “you should be much more embarrassed about that. How is it that the first time you go into the Tower with less armor, you’re wounded the worst of us? You were in the back.”
Yeah. How is that? he asked himself. It wasn’t like his legs were much less armored than they’d been before, but Micah was supposed to be better than this.
At least treating his own wounds would be a welcome distraction from the embarrassment. He bent to see how bad it was.
Ryan must have still been watching because he said, “Micah.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. I need to be more careful,” he brushed him off. He should have kept his distance and guard up during the fight.
“No, Micah,” he said with more urgency in his voice and pointed. “Your leg.”
He pointed at his other leg, and Micah twisted to find a thin white shard on the outside of his pants.
Bone?
At first, he thought of Jason’s wand and that it might have been broken, then of his own leg and that it might have been broken. Was that a bit of his bone sticking out? He panicked for a second that felt like several, but—
No, that was ridiculous. It hung from the side of his pants. Kyle frowned and snatched it up. Micah felt a slight prick like a splinter or thorn being plucked from his skin, and that was it.
The sliver looked like a bone quill. It widened toward the back with a bit of filthy fur or wool wrapped around it, almost like a …
A dart?
There was blood on the tip and something else. Micah took Kyle’s wrist and held it still to see more clearly, the essences. Poison.
Oh, fuck.
“I need to meditate.”
“What?”
“One minute. Don’t bother me.”
“Wait, Mi—”
He took a step back, closed his eyes, and frantically took deep breaths while the other’s voices picked up around him, asking questions he tried his best to ignore until he had answers.
Someone touched his leg to find the puncture wound. Warm. Ryan, then. Micah went to do the same on the inside.
I can do this, I can do this, I can do this … deep breaths …
He turned his attention inward and started from his lungs. Breathe in. Essences filled him and he focused on that: his lungs and veins that stretched throughout his body. He ran his thoughts along them like roads to trace them all—a habit he’d picked up ever since they had shifted after [Lesser Constitution]. There, he tried to find any essences that shouldn’t be there.
He found a few. Then a few more. And— Well, he found a lot. A voice in the back of his mind nagged him to clean up already, but it was among the dirt that he found hints of the poison.
It wasn’t essence-based. It was actual poison. If he took it out of the Tower, it would last.
That was good to know, at least. Good in some respects because it might mean more loot, unfortunate because it meant he couldn’t clean it out on his own. Unfortunate also because what he was sensing was only a small fraction of a larger whole and that whole was just outside of his reach, but … it was a very small ‘whole’ besides. A few drops on the tip of a dart.
Micah focused on the essences and it wasn’t like he was seeing them as much as he was ‘experiencing’ them inside him. He felt the same experience in and out: itchy.
He let out a giant sigh of relief and leaned forward to scratch his leg. Of course, that only made things worse. “It’s just Whip Spider poison,” he told them.
“No, duh,” Kyle said, close to the wall a few steps away now. “Bluth told us as much right after you did your thing.”
“I got hit, too,” she said and held up another dart. “But it didn’t pierce my skin.”
“I could have told you that,” Lisa said, walking along the wall in the opposite direction. “No need to waste an appraisal like that.”
Lea rolled her eyes. “It could have been worse. Then every second would have counted.”
Suddenly, Jason took in a sharp breath and said, “Guys! I found it.” He waved from where he was crouched next to the wall a few steps back.
The others all glanced around, almost warily, before walking over to see what he meant.
“Found what?” Micah asked.
He grinned and excitedly slapped the stone a few times. “Haven’t you caught on yet? Look!”
He tried, but the tunnel was dim and the stone drab. Micah walked up and needed a second to find the crack hidden behind a jutting of rock. Beyond it, the stone opened up into the beginnings of a hole roughly five centimeters wide that stretched on for some time.
He felt the edge and marveled. A dart trap. An actual dart trap. It was the first one he had ever encountered. The first one he had ever been hit by … and he hadn’t even noticed until after.
Micah felt a little disappointed by that, but his grin still challenged Jason’s own. It was freaking awesome!
He leaned forward to get a better look when a hand gripped his shoulder and yanked him back.
“What are you doing?” Ryan asked.
“What? I just want to get a look at— Oh, fuck. What am I doing?” He’d been about to put his naked eye in front of a dart trap.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Maybe treat your wounds first before you do anything more stupid?”
“Yeah, uhm … but …” He glanced back. He had so many questions and no idea where to start.
“Do it. It’s not going anywhere.”
Micah sighed and leaned back against the wall, then abruptly pushed off and looked it up and down to see if there were any traps. He couldn’t see any at a glance, but the other was well-hidden …
The dart had struck him in just the right spot to get through his armor, between where his climbing shirt ended and his leg guards began, so as long as there were no holes at neck height it probably wasn’t an issue but … what if there were? Or what if some were at face or eye height?
He ran his hand along the stone to make sure, couldn’t find anything, and turned back to relax.
The others were already arguing.
“So what now?” Lea asked.
“What do you mean, ‘What now’?” Kyle asked. “We look to see how many there are, wait for Stranya to get done, and move on. The sooner we do, the sooner we find a way out of here.”
His one leg still burned from the scratches. The other itched now that he’d paid attention to it. Micah got his supplies out and was careful not to drop anything in the mud.
“The tunnels are trapped. We know that.”
“So what? The darts are harmless. They only make you itch, if they even get through your armor. Keep your eyes peeled and your shield up and there won’t be any problems.”
“They only make Micah itch,” Ryan corrected him. “He has levels in [Alchemist] and [Lesser Constitution]. The poison might be worse on others.”
“Oh, definitely,” Micah spoke up. “Whip Spider poison is based on the victim as much as itself. It goes from a brush with nettle to a bee sting on average, but the latter is for like— uhm, level one.”
Children, he had been about to say. But that would have been stupid. Most people who were level one were half a year older than him.
It still felt weird looking at Lea and thinking she was level two. She was taller than Lisa, whom he compared her to, and Lisa was like, awesome.
Lea pointed at him. “I don’t want to get stung by a bee every other tunnel we walk through.”
“We don’t know if it’s every other tunnel?” Jason said.
“And we don’t know if you’re going to get strung,” Kyle added.
“My salve might help a little against the itching as well. Well, Lea has the salve right now.”
“Focus on your leg,” Ryan said at the same time as Kyle snapped, “Shut up and get on it, will you?”
Micah ducked down and focused on cleaning the scratches through the tears. He didn’t want to take his boot off because of the giant clumps of mud stuck to them, and he couldn’t just take his pants off without consideration because … well … they had a girl in the team.
Was that being stupid? He had no idea.
Lea handed his jar back without looking and asked, “So you really want to head this way?”
“We’re not backtracking,” Kyle said. “This is the most direct, highest route and there are barely any monsters around. We’d make good time if we stopped sitting on our asses.”
“What about the missing monsters and the stampede?”
“What about them?”
“Are we thinking the monsters were wounded by the traps?” Lisa wondered out loud. “Because some of them were already leaking light when they appeared. Unless …” She frowned at Ryan.
The guy hesitated and shrugged as if to say, No idea. Micah wished he could have heard the sounds himself, hear what he heard.
“Maybe the traps whipped them into a frenzy?” Jason said and immediately went on. “Oh! What about the traps themselves? Do you think we could dig through with my pickaxe?” He hefted it up.
“What? No.” Kyle looked at him like he was an idiot. “What good will that do?”
“To loot? Or just get a look at the mechanisms?”
“If these traps are anything like the low Sewers,” Lisa told him. “There won’t be any mechanisms. It’s just”—she waved a hand—“‘magic’. They shoot one dart at whoever walks past.”
“In that case,” Lea said, “we might not have to worry about the traps as much if the monsters triggered them?” She sounded hopeful.
Lisa shrugged. “Sure.”
“Maybe that’s why there are so few monsters around,” Jason said, “but … what about a treasure chest?”
Everyone paused at the possibility.
Lisa considered for a moment, bent down, and swooped Sam out of the mud. “In that case, here. Let’s have Sam take a look.”
She held the Teacup Salamander in front of the hole next to him and let it peer inside for a moment.
Sam stared for a moment and slapped its tongue up to lick its own eyeball.
Lisa tilted it up and asked it, “And? Uh-huh, uh-huh. Uhh … huh?” She nodded and turned to the others. “Nothing. It goes on for a bit, too. One to two meters. Then it's just dark stone and dirt. Good luck mining through without wasting your time.”
“That settles that then. Just hold your fancy shields in front of your faces while you walk and there should be no problem.”
Ryan shrugged. “Works for me.”
“Of course, it does. Asshole.”
He was the most heavily-armored out of all of them, but he still held his shield arm up when he moved ahead. That … both looked stupid and would probably wear on his arm over time.
Micah finished up on his legs and followed his example with his shield on the left side and his slingshot on the right to block any evil darts aiming for his eyes.
It only took four bends for one of them to get hit. Lisa stopped walking all the sudden and said, “Hm.”
A bone shard stuck out of the side of her sleeve, just below the elbow. She yanked it out and handed it to Micah as a sample, absent-mindedly rubbing the spot with her other hand.
“Ha!” Kyle laughed on his own.
“Do you need some salve?” Micah asked.
“It’s fine.”
Two bends down, Kyle nearly missed a step and cursed under his breath. He moved an arm up to pull something away.
“What?” Micah asked.
“Nothing.”
“What, did you get hit?” He didn’t want to smile as he asked it, but he found himself doing it anyway.
“Yes. Fucking hell.”
“Ha-ha,” Lea said in a sarcastic tone. She pointed and immediately scowled, “Ow. Damnit, I wasn’t even moving.” A dart stuck out the side of her hand.
“You moved your arm up,” Ryan told her.
She yanked it out and rubbed the spot with a grimace. “It really does feel like a bee sting.”
She accepted the salve when he offered, and Kyle turned back to take it away from her the moment she was done. Both scooped out obscene amounts just for two simple prick wounds.
“Hey!” Micah snapped. “You don’t need that much. A little goes a long way and this doesn’t grow on trees.”
They looked at him as if to say, Should we scrape it off and put it back in or what?
Well, now it was too late. He grumbled and kept a tight leash on the jar then. It didn’t even help that much. It wasn’t meant for this.
They scratched themselves as they jogged down the tunnels at a brisk pace and spread out to adopt a slightly tighter version of their usual formation. They relied on Lisa a lot as they did, but the lack of monsters and other threats meant they could move more freely in here.
It wasn’t long before each of them had been pricked at least once, except Ryan, and a few twice. They scratched absent-mindedly or with small grimaces at first, then more and more often.
He couldn’t even properly reach his skin through his armor and it meant any scratches he tried hurt more than they helped. Not that it stopped him from trying. It was just frustrating.
As they jogged, the mud and heat got to him as well. Sweat rolled over his skin under his clothes and made them itch all the more. Dried mud clung to him and felt like insects crawling all over him.
There was nothing he could do except spray some Breeze potion on himself through the openings, which mostly just felt wet and didn’t help.
He needed something to drink, and an ice-cold bath, and to freaking scrub himself with a cheese grate.
He scratched behind his ear, his jaw, his cheek, and then tried to get a spot just under the rim of his glove. Suddenly, it felt like he was itching everywhere, even in places where there was nothing, and just wanted to lash out and kick something.
Stupid— freaking— argh!
Ryan was the only one of them who hadn’t been hit. He plucked bone darts hanging from his clothes and handed them back to Micah in bulk.
Stupid freaking Ryan.
They sent him ahead—it was a unanimous decision—with the order to make large motions so he would trigger as many of the invisible traps as possible before they had to follow.
He rolled his eyes but did as he was told, stomping ahead with large steps like he was plowing through snow.
It didn’t help.
Lisa pulled a few of her lizards back from the area and sent them running in snake lines along the walls to see if they could find something. A few died to the darts here and there.
That didn’t help, either.
The traps were triggered by motion but not always. It was like they were just shitty enough to be unreliable, which also meant any solutions to them would be unreliable.
Micah spotted a trap in advance once and had to wave his slingshot in front of it four times before it triggered. Were they based on auras or something? Essences?
He wasn’t sure he cared anymore. The next exit we find, he told himself, we take it, no matter where it goes.
They collected more and more bone darts in containers meant for plant samples and he lost more and more of the salve as the others strongarmed it away from him.
Even Lisa joined in, stealthily accepting the jar after another person was finished with it.
There went his perfect image of her, that she wouldn’t be affected. But of course, he remembered one of their first ‘lessons’ together when they’d lazed around during a summer heatwave and she hadn't been able to get off the couch.
The memory somehow itched.
“Oh, you’re taking some?” Kyle asked. “I thought it was fine? How come you aren't magically immune to all poisons?”
“Screw you. You shouldn’t bother others when it’s your fault we went down this way.”
“I didn’t hear you objecting to the idea.”
Jason spoke up, “I thought we would have found an exit by now.”
“Me, too,” Micah mumbled.
“You’re the great scout with your dozen summons,” Kyle told her. “Why don’t you find us something?”
Her eyebrow twitched. “I would if—” She stopped talking all the sudden, turned to stare through a wall, and said, “Treasure chest.”
“What?”
“Where?” Ryan asked, ahead of them.
She pointed, he ran, and the rest of them followed. Lisa needed to shout directions when he called back but it was just three tunnels away in a small alcove low in the side of the wall.
A dart clattered against the stone behind Jason when he ran ahead of him and Micah leaned back in surprise, hesitated, then threw his shield and slingshot up, ducked his head down, and just ran on through with a mental shout like running through hail.
He stopped when he almost ran into someone, checked himself, and smiled. He was fine.
Drab, dark, and small—the chest didn’t look like much. It looked similar to the first they had found during their last exam, which would mean it wasn’t worth much either.
But the way it just stood there, surrounded by empty tunnels full of traps and without monsters, was far too suspicious.
All of them stood a few meters off, crowded together, and stared.
“Kyle, you go check it,” Lisa said.
“What? No. Send one of your summons.”
“And how are they supposed to open it? They don’t have thumbs.”
“So give them some? You’re the genius here, not me.”
“I am. You aren't. No harm, no foul. You won’t be missed.”
“Fuck you.”
She smiled.
Lea groaned and took a step forward at the same time as Ryan did. “I think I should be fine,” he said.
“Wait, do you want me to enchant your armor?” Jason asked.
“Uhh … sure?”
He got [Protection] cast on his shield, helmet, and guards, and slowly headed for the chest, looking around.
A kick to test the lid and when nothing happened, he put his muddy boot on the wood, pushed it open, and jumped back.
Their heads swiveled left and right. The coast was clear.
And nothing was in the chest, either.
“Oh fucking—” Kyle didn’t even finish. He just groaned in anger and walked a small circle. “That’s just great. That’s just really, just fucking great.”
“Are we walking behind some other group of climbers?” Jason asked. “You said you heard fighting?”
“Nothing that would be human,” Ryan told him. “And as Lisa said, the golden sheen was still there.”
“Thank you,” she told him.
Micah had never found an empty chest before. The only way it could be empty was if someone had looted it before them … right?
“Maybe … maybe it’s like the dart traps?” he said. “Like, it is trapped but it’s just so shitty …” He trailed off.
Maybe they needed to close and open it again a few times to see if it would work and hurt them?
Ryan glanced at him, back to the chest, checked left and right, and kicked it again. It shifted back an inch and nothing happened.
Kyle laughed. Micah chuckled along with him up until the guy stopped, looked at him, and said, “What are you, stupid?”
“Hey!”
“Yeah, hey,” Lisa echoed him. “Seriously, Kyle. Stop giving us shit when this is your mess.”
He laughed. And it was the type of sarcastic laugh someone did when they had something clever to say right after.
Micah had no idea what it was, but he jumped in, “It’s not really his mess. None of us could’ve known this would be such a shitty floor.”
She gave him a disapproving look and scratched her elbow. “Don’t stab me in the back.”
“Sorry.” Her scratching her elbow just made him want to scratch his leg and take his pants off and fling this stupid mud off his boots and— Argh. Why did it have to be so warm in here?
Kyle slowed to a chuckle and gave him a bemused look. “So, what? When Payne tries to pin his shit on me, you attack me like some guard dog, but when Chandler does it, you don’t have her back?”
“What? No,” he said. “And what the fuck do you mean?”
“Nothing, nothing.”
“Asshole.”
“See?” He smiled. “That just proves my point.”
“How? No really, explain to me how.”
“I just meant if Kyle really wants to be ‘team leader’ so bad,” Lisa said, “then maybe he should start acting like it and take some responsibility. By the way, what is up with that anyway?”
“Yeah,” Micah piled on, “why would you want to be team leader? You hate teamwork and people.”
“Screw you.”
“Well, I was just trying to say, maybe there’s a reason the treasure chest is empty and maybe we should be trying to figure that out? Instead of insulting each other for having ideas.”
Kyle gave him a look. “And what? Spend another few hours mapping out this place for no good reason?”
“So what?” Jason jumped in. “At least then, we might find some— some freaking answers—” He looked uncomfortable when he ‘cursed’.
“‘Didn’t find any the last two times,” Kyle told him with his usual provocative voice. “‘Won’t find any now.”
“And who’s fault is that? None of you,” he said to all of them, “want to take the time to actually look. We should be trying to figure out what is going on around here, but nooo, let’s go find a stupid river.”
He raised his voice and counted on his fingers: “There are no monsters, there is no loot, there are no other features aside from these stupid traps, there is no exit, and now there’s an empty treasure chest right in front of us. Doesn’t that strike you as a little odd or are you just too stupid notice when something is odd in the first place?!” He threw his arms up.
Everyone shut up. Kyle stared at him, leaning back slightly and obviously taken aback. All three of them did, really. None had really expected the outburst from Jason of all people.
He seemed to realize that himself. His face slowly turned an even deeper shade of red than it already was from the heat and shouting and he backed off.
The corner of Kyle’s open mouth slowly began to twist into a proud grin. Micah followed suit.
Then Lea jumped in and snapped, “Can you guys shut it already? Is this the only thing you people know how to do? Hassle, and complain, and insult, and annoy each other; constantly edge each other on and on, and on, until it develops into some sort of fight? Like seriously, do you know how annoying it is to listen to you? It’s like babysitting a bunch of children!”
Their smiles wavered, but Micah could get where the misunderstanding came from. He wanted to explain.
Lisa got there first. Her smile hadn't come back. “So what would you rather have us do, huh? Would you rather we didn’t talk about each other at all? Maybe talk about someone else?”
She sounded genuinely annoyed this time around and gave up on scratching her elbow before she turned on Lea.
“Would that be more up to your speed? Complaining about someone who isn’t here, talking shit behind their back rather than being honest with each other?”
She headed for her. Lea stepped back and Micah’s smile slipped from his lips. This didn’t seem like banter.
“No, I just—”
“Oh!” She smiled, but it didn’t look friendly. “How about your old team? They kicked you out, didn’t they? I bet you have so much to say about them. Go on. What about Thea? Did you see her equipment before the exam? Ew. So sloppy. Did she even comb her hair before coming here?”
Lea stood press to the wall.
Lisa went up with her voice until it sounded like she was imitating someone. “Oh, just look at her. Did she go through the trash in that dress? Where did she even come from? Who let her in? Well, I hear she’s related to the [Dragonslayer]. Distantly? Yeah, yeah, distantly. I bet it was some sort of pity thing, that she got hoisted onto him. Because like, you know she isn’t all there, right? Like, knocked in the head?”
She rapped her knuckled against the side of her helmet and bent her head to the side in an almost comical fashion.
Nobody laughed.
“Why did he even bring her here? Hey, wait Myra, where are you going? Oh, are you going to say something? Ooh, say something. What, so she’s good at spellcasting? I bet that’s the only thing she’s good at. Yeah like, I bet she needs help in the bathroom. Ew, gross.” She chuckled a little. Her voice was still high and light when she repeated, “Ew, gross.” The third time, it wasn’t light. “Gross.”
She stared Lea straight in the eyes. The meaning was clear.
Just like that, Micah hated her.
He saw the same sentiment reflected in most of the others' faces when they glanced around to make sure nothing would jump them.
Lisa still hadn’t budged where she was standing in front of Lea, somehow looming despite being shorter. In the silence that followed, she spoke in her normal voice again, “I give Kyle shit because he won’t stop complaining. I don’t really mean it. None of us do. He’s earned that much from what I’ve seen and heard. You? You’re an interloper here. You don’t get a say. So say nothing.”
Lea nodded and looked away.
Micah didn’t have to wonder whether or not they were friends anymore. From the comments … that had been what, when she had first moved to the city? Almost three years ago?
“Did you … did you say those things?” Jason asked.
“Some,” Lisa answered for her.
“We were just gossiping,” she mumbled. “Kids can be mean.”
Lisa nodded in agreement and finally stepped away, scratching her elbow. “So I learned.”
Jason’s expression joined theirs.
Micah couldn’t believe he had been worried about what she thought of them. Or any of the other stuff. Really, they should backtrack after all, but to throw her through the portal and do the rest without her. Why hadn’t Lisa said something earlier? Why hadn’t she …
He scowled, in part because of the itch in his leg, and said, “Lisa’s right. At least, we can be honest with each other.”
He meant the words to be reassuring because when he looked around, all he saw were liars’ faces. Himself, first of all, Kyle with his stupid glove and attitude, Ryan who avoided them for some reason, Lisa with her many many secrets, this, and Jason—
"In the interest of being honest,” Jason said.
He’s the only good one among us, Micah thought, and only because none of us bother to ask.
“Stuff like the sign we found are important to me. Not just Class-wise, I love that sort of thing. So if and when we find another, it would be nice if you could listen to me before you just … shout stuff out for shits and giggles? That’s really not something a team captain would do.”
He looked at Kyle.
The guy slowly nodded and put a hand to his chin. “If I do,” he said, “would you be more likely to listen to me as team captain?”
Jason took a deep breath in consideration and let it out as a blown raspberry. “Uhh … yes?”
“Nice.”
“What—” Lisa began and stopped herself with a sigh.
“What’s my obsession with being a team captain anyway?” Kyle finished for her. When she raised an eyebrow, he smiled. “There’s stuff I want to do during these exams. Dangerous stuff. My only two options to do them are breaking the rules or convincing you lot to help me.” He shrugged. “I figured it would be easier to convince you from a position of authority. I’ve been trying to build up goodwill, but it’s not really my thing so it hasn’t been going well. That aside, I deserve to be captain, really. Don’t you think?”
She cracked a smile.
Micah smiled, too, watching them, and turned to his friend who stood a little ways off. Now or never. “Ryan—”
“Shh,” he said. Because of course, he did.
“Ryan, c’mon—”
“Shut up for a moment.”
Micah scowled because it seemed like he was always just using his scouting role as an excuse to avoid them. “Ryan,” he tried a third time.
The guy said, “Do you hear that?”
He didn’t even stop to listen. “No?”
“Scraping,” he repeated and turned away. He searched the walls for a moment, found one of the numerous dart traps, and turned back. “Lisa, do you think you could fit one of your lizards through here?”
“Uhm … maybe. Why?”
“Do it. Tell me what you find.”
She headed over for where he stood, fished a marble out of her pocket, and held it up to compare it to the hole, then shook her head. “I would have to do it freely, which is more expensive if I try to keep it up for too long.”
“Then do that then.”
She shrugged and held up a lither-than-usual fire lizard to the hole so it could dart inside.
“We’ve been over this people,” Kyle said. “We can’t loot the stupid traps. Unless you think the real treasure chest is hidden behind the wall?”
Jason immediately perked up, which made Kyle chuckle.
But Ryan’s voice was almost angry. “No.”
A dart shot out of the trap, slower than usual and warm, going by its essences, after having killed the summon. Lisa scowled and a sent another lizard in.
Then a second dart shot out.
“Wait, what?” Micah asked. None of the traps they had gone by had shot more than once until now.
Lisa, not one to be deterred, summoned a whole cluster of lizards and shoved them in one by one with a frown on her face.
Micah heard a small sound, so small he didn’t know if it was air being blown or bone scraping against stone. Or maybe something trying to cut itself off before it said something.
Her eyes went wide and her expression shifted into a glare. “They’re in the walls.”
He didn’t know which one of them asked it, but someone said, “What?”
“Gale, pickaxe,” Ryan said and stormed toward him. A dart shot out of the other wall the moment he moved his hand and clattered off stone when it missed.
“And they know,” Lisa added.
Suddenly, someone yelped and darts shot out of every single hole in the walls around them. But Lisa was busy stuffing lizard after lizard into the one in front of her.
Micah hid behind his shield while Ryan ignored the hail and carried the pickaxe back to Lisa. She accepted it and pulled back. The pick rang against stone as she hit it and the wall around the hole cracked. A sheet of stone fell off with pieces of loose rubble.
Lisa pulled back again and repeated, “They’re in the fucking walls.”
“You people seriously have communication issues,” Kyle said as he held his arms up and scowled. Without a shield, darts stuck out all over his sides.
It suddenly seemed like there were holes everywhere. Each trap was shooting more than once as well. How hadn’t they noticed them before?
“Guys!” Jason said and pointed at a wall.
Micah turned just in time. A bit of dirt crumble off on its own to reveal another hole in the wall. A bone dart lay on the bottom where it had knocked it open.
A second dart shot out of the new opening a second later.
“Motherf—” Kyle cursed and scooped some mud off the ground. “Plug the holes! Then they can’t do anything.”
Jason still stood frozen. A light seemed to go on in his head and he said what most of them had all realized by now, “Kobolds.” It was why the traps had only shot sometimes and why they’d always seemed to target the perfect areas to get through their armor.
Freaking Kobolds.
Kyle got to snatching up fist-fulls of mud and slapping them onto the places where darts shot out. Ryan copied him ahead.
“Goddamnit,” Lisa said. “Jason, stop standing around and enchant this for me, will you?”
He needed a second to tear his eyes away from a trap, but then rushed over with his wand out. In a moment, the pickaxe shimmered and she went back to striking the wall with her [Surging Strength]. More and more rocks tumbled into the mud.
“I don’t want to— I mean—” Lea started and made a sound of exasperation. “Are you seriously trying to dig through there?”
“Yes! We’re going to dig through, and we’re going to get in there, and we’re going to drag those bastards out—” She struck again and grunted. “Along with their stupid itching darts.”
“Can someone explain to me what’s going on?” Kyle asked in-between mud slaps.
“There aren’t any traps,” Ryan answered him. “It’s been Kobolds hiding and sitting very still in tunnels in-between the walls all this time.”
“The fuck?”
Micah had read about this, but not on the fifth floor. That was something they did in the double digits with elaborate traps around their camps, not in barren tunnels in the middle of nowhere.
“This will take forever,” Lea said and looked from side to side. “Who’s to say they will just sit around and—” She broke off.
In the distance, a single screech echoed. Then a dozen more joined.
“Oh, now what?” Kyle asked. “They’re supposed to have herded the Prowlers at us, too?”
Apparently. To distract them?
Ryan readied his weapons and put himself in front of them in the tunnel. “If anything tries to attack us, defend Lisa. We get through and fight on equal ground.”
Micah searched the chaos for dart traps and ran to plug them all, all the while he searched his mind for some kind of solution.
Something pricked his neck when he bent down. He flinched and froze up to keep his hand from swatting at it. Instead, he groped blindly until he pulled the dart out, eyes wide at the blood-covered tip.
That was dangerous.
He looked at Lisa as she swung the pick and realized this would take forever. And meanwhile, they were supposed to fight the Prowlers while darts rained out around them?
If only they still had Clay, they could have just batted their way through. But noo, the fucking Rat Hermit had to break it and now something else was stalking them through the Tower, this time the mindless sort. Why couldn't things just face them head-on?
Was there another way to speed it up, then? To bring the fight to them? Did they … did they even need Clay to shape the earth at all?
He thought of his mana manipulation lessons with Ms. Burke, practicing [Dirt Skin] with crystals as ingredients, and more. But he would need just the right kind of crystal for that, wouldn’t he?
No, something inside him seemed to say. Look. He looked down and saw the air shift with his every breath, now that he was too unfocused to restrain himself. He was shaping the essences and thus, shaping it to the point where he could tussle hair just by breathing in from a meter away.
He ran over to Lisa while the screeches grew louder.
“I can help!”
She froze mid-swing and stumbled when he ran up to the cracked wall. “Micah! What—”
"I can help!" he repeated.
He placed his hand against the stone and thought of what she had told him about authority, exerting his dominion, how everyone had different methods that worked best for them but most tended to do it under stress or when they got emotional.
Well, he was under a lot of stress right now and somewhat emotional but he also had a hunch: He thought he knew what his way of doing it was.
Deep breaths. He focused on his no-longer light blob lungs inside him, as he had an hour ago. He let the air essence illuminate them from within and all the veins that spread out like roots and pipes in his body.
He ran his mind along them one by one until suddenly, there was no need. They’re you. He could feel them all at once and felt the essences inside them.
In there, he didn’t have to see essences to understand them. He ‘experienced’ them. In there, he didn’t have to do anything to move essences but will it, as was his right to.
He took that feeling, that authority, that area of influence, and flung the borders out to exert his dominion.
The circle spread and something rippled outward. Stone essence fell into his awareness. Heavy, firm, rigid, whole, but most of all: familiar. Other things fell into his awareness as well, one by one. The wind, the mud, his clothes, his equipment—
Lisa noticed and quickly stepped back with a curse that sounded far away, compared to everything else inside his domain.
This is mine, he thought. Everything in this circle, I claim it. He thought it and the rock seemed to resonate in agreement.
Breathing in rock essences was hard, as was its nature. It was heavy, and clunky, and made him choke. It clogged up his lungs and veins. Micah opened his eyes and breathed it in as easily as the wind. The sheer quantity dwarfed the small crystals he had bought for cheap and trained with in class, if not the quality. But after a certain point, quantity was quality.
He guided it down his veins to his arm and right hand, infused it into his mana and flesh, and pushed his fingers into the wall.
The rock gave way as easily as wet clay, as it had with their lost baseball bat.
Micah broke into a grin and could barely keep down a squeak of joy. He wanted to dig his way through like digging through sand now, just burrow his way through. This was something he could do! He was shaping stone!
Then Lisa gripped his shoulder and yanked him away with anger etched clearly across her face. She gripped the front of his armor and asked, “What the hell are you doing?”
“Shaping the stone! I can help,” he assured her. “I can—” He grimaced as he felt a cough coming on, but twisted his head a little to push it down. [Controlled Breathing] helped with that, stopping himself from coughing when he normally would.
She gave him an incredulous look. “By killing yourself?”
“Huh? No.”
She took one last look down the tunnel as the tide of grey and blue monsters crashed around the corner and said, “Look, if you want to learn how to do … this, I’ll teach you. But don't hurt yourself, Micah. Help them.”
Micah wanted to slap her hand away and refuse, disagree with her, say he could help with this. Nothing happened. He tried to move his fingers, frowned, and slowly looked down. Slowly, because he could only move slowly. His right arm was barely moving at all.
Then he understood. Just as ice essence as made him feel so cold he could barely move his fingers, stone essence made it so he couldn’t move them at all.
Lisa realized what had happened and eased him back to the mud-covered wall with a small curse. “Okay, okay,” she said and it almost sounded like she was reassuring herself instead of him. Was she panicking? Why? “Uhm Micah, I need you to focus inward and get the stone essences out. Push them out through your skin or breathe, whichever works best for you. Can you do that for me?”
He nodded and coughed. Of course, he could. He just needed time to meditate and focus on his breathing but …
They looked down the tunnel. The Prowlers screeched and flung mud up as they loped toward them.
“Lea!” Ryan shouted and twisted around to look at her. A dart clattered against the wall next to him after the Kobold firing it missed, or had chosen the wrong hole.
She froze where she was stuffing the wall with mud and looked over.
He froze for a half-second when he spotted Lisa and him, but then pleaded, “Help me.”
She scrambled to throw her crystal forward. Halfway there, it formed into a stone hedgehog Ryan caught and passed along.
Spike landed on its own in the mud at the front of the tunnel and shot out its emerald crystals against the flood.