“Did they check the pouch?” Micah asked. He had spent more than one evening on baking those shells for the exam. He’d had to reserve oven time. “Please, tell me they didn’t just check the pouch and make you waste— How many shots did you put there?”
Lisa didn’t respond immediately, so he nudged her. Eyes closed and expressionless, she swatted his hand away.
If the Kobolds were smart enough for all of this, they might have been smart enough to check the pouch, notice the summon inside, and kill it.
“Micah,” Ryan chided him. “Let her concentrate. We didn’t bother you when you were checking yourself for poison, right?”
He grumbled a bit and gave her space, but had to admit he was glad to see the two taking more active roles in the team again. She had seemed indifferent before and he distant, but something about this was waking them up. The challenge of it, maybe. He felt it, too.
Despite the heat and itching, he could never stay grumpy in these shitty tunnels for long.
If only the scenery was a little nicer, like the Open Sewers. Micah wanted to go back there someday to fight Golems and experiment with the bowls. He’d read up on what others had managed to get out of them, using other offerings. He wondered if an [Alchemist] could refine those products even further, even it was seen as kind of cheap to use Tower potions as ingredients in uncomplicated things. But what if he could level from it?
Maybe during summer break. It would be nice to reclaim the place. He could show Anne around and earn money. He knew he’d go back to those first two days with Ryan in a flash.
If they didn’t check, he supposed, it was fine to use his ammunition. It was something they knew they had stolen before, so it was better than risking an alternative. Who knew if they would get a second chance at this?
And if it meant they could finally clear this miserable floor, all the better. Maybe then he could regain some peace of mind.
Lisa looked up with a sharp intake, and the others turned to her. “They took the bait,” she said. “They’re moving.”
Jason and he had been almost right. The direction Lisa described was only a few degrees off from the center of the triangle. They probably could have found it on their own.
They ran through the mud and hail of darts again, weary and wary of more traps or ambushes. Ryan went ahead while Lisa called the directions, and when they took their next break, she reached into her pouch for one of the few glue shots she had left.
Right.
Micah steeled himself, sped up, and said, “Lisa, stop.” He had to pause to catch his breath but also needed to find the right words. After a second, “Stop doing this,” was all he could find. It was hard to talk through the bandana and this was stupid anyway. He yanked it down.
She scowled at him, but she had to know he wouldn’t be happy with this. Why was she pushing back so much?
“I screwed up, yeah.”
“Micah—”
“But! I’m not going to screw up when I’m actually thinking about what I’m doing. I’m not stupid. I just … trust me? Please?”
He met her eyes as they slowed toward the crossroads. If she said no, Micah didn’t know how to feel. It genuinely hurt, the thought that both of them might not trust what he said anymore like …
Well, he didn’t want to compare them to his parents but the option was there for the taking.
Like assholes, was the kinder thing to think. Not that they were, of course. They were awesome! It just sucked that after all this time, one mistake might be all it took for them to not believe in him.
Micah knew Ryan was overprotective and some of that might have rubbed off on her, but if he did let them protect him because he was younger or his Class less suited for combat, he wanted it to be based on trust and not distrust. Otherwise, it wasn’t protection in his mind but oppression.
Not that he knew how to say that without sounding like a pretentious asshole himself. He just hoped she knew him well enough that he didn’t have to say anything.
She stared for a second longer, cursed, and said, “Fine. But don’t you dare breathe any of the glue or water in. And just so you know, with a little practice I could be great at this.”
She waved the ball in front of his eyes before it disappeared back in her pocket.
Micah smiled. She still had that on her mind? His comment must have cut deeper than he’d thought. But it was nice to know she was as unhappy with her spittle breath as he was.
He popped the ingredients in and unlike her, breathed a smooth sheet of glue at the wall with a shifting spiderweb pattern, the individual threads of which looked like shimmering bones up close.
It billowed and bulged in places as darts impacted, but the glue robbed them of their momentum. The Kobolds snarled something behind the wall and stopped. For now.
A few last breaths to make sure it stuck properly and they were safe for a minute or two. He sighed in relief. Much better.
He worried about them, but small assurances like this, Lisa relenting, were all he needed. One less thing to fuel the chaos in his head. He ate a vitality gummy with a smile, washed it down, and caught his breath.
Glancing around, the others did the much the same. Jason had stolen one from Kyle and Ryan—
“Want one?” Micah asked, holding the pouch out to him.
The guy didn’t seem to hear him. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder and said, “I’ll go scout out the corners.”
“Sure,” Lisa said and he left.
Micah hesitated. Should he ask again, louder? Or go with him? Would he want even less to do with him if he tried too hard? What if he began to think Micah was annoying?
… What if he already did?
Micah stayed where he was.
Last push. Just this and Day One will be over, he assured himself. Two more and he had loot, climbing without constraints, visiting Ryan’s family, and maybe even dancing to look forward to.
And, of course, summer.
He held that thought and focused on earning a good grade so he could enjoy it without having to worry about things like he had all year. It helped.
“Anything interesting?” Lisa asked.
Ryan shook his head on his way back. “No. Which way?”
She pointed and the guy looked around, checking with them to make sure they were ready.
He got impatient nods in response, things already tucked away.
“Alright, then. Let's go.”
It was only a few bends further in when Ryan stumbled ahead of them, glanced down, and hopped toward the nearest corner to raise his leg.
The Kobolds tried to use that moment to target him, but the darts wouldn’t pierce his clothes.
“Payne?” Kyle called, first in line.
He pulled something out of his boot and called back, “More caltrops.”
Just as he said it, Kyle twisted with a curse of his own and hopped around to yank one out of his own sole. He put his back to the wall and a Kobold used the chance to shoot him.
He jumped and spun the other way, caltrop in hand, but it was too much to hope he would be hit again from that side.
Micah ran past him, jumped over a small cluster in the mud, and stepped around to get a better look. These caltrops were carved of stone or bone as replicas of their spell, it seemed.
He was about to ask if he could have it when Kyle smacked a hand against the wall with another curse and let go. The caltrop landed in the mud.
It almost sounded like the Kobolds on the other side snickered. One of them barked command and the voices picked up and crawled over one another, then abruptly grew more distant as they ran off, probably to set the next traps.
Micah wished he could just reach through the wall and stop them here. He’d almost had that, too. Or deluded himself into thinking he might. Instead, they had to suffer their war of attrition.
Maybe they really could have outrun them if they hadn’t been so exhausted after this day, but deeper into the camp as their numbers grew? He wasn’t expecting the darts to stop anytime soon.
A look ahead, and Ryan had tucked his caltrop away. A look back, Jason was picking them out of the mud.
“Gale!” Kyle barked out and tossed the dart aside. “C’mon, let’s go.”
“One—”
He groaned, “Come on!”
Ryan was already looking ahead. His gaze swept along the ground now, as well. The moment they were together, he gave them a warning and ran off.
Nothing wrong with that, Micah told himself, we’re on a time limit. He exhaled to whip the air up, filled his lungs with as much wind essence as he could, and ran after him.
Every other tunnel or so, the guy’s jumps and sounds of boots squelching into mud warned them of where caltrops lay. Over time, that sound became less and less of a squelch and more and more of a splash until they had to be careful not to slip in the mud during their jumps.
Ryan had no such qualms with his newly-trained control over [Enhanced Traction], and no compunctions in slowing down when he slipped around corners.
Micah grabbed the stone to pull himself around and drew back a wet glove. Even the walls dripped here. Did the humidity rise deeper into the floor? The place they’d seen in the ceiling had been close to this, too, to the point where water chains had flowed down from the hole.
He wondered if that was relevant or just another feature; something the Kobolds had engineered on purpose or the Tower done? If so, did that have a purpose? Maybe it was just humid.
At least, Lisa’s prediction was coming true. They’d found a new type of trap, though they were only brittle caltrops. They wore sturdy boots, so it was like rocky terrain at worst. He doubted any of them except Lea, maybe, would be stupid enough to twist their ankles on them.
And the Kobolds darts hadn’t done anything in ages to follow up. They seemed to have noticed that themselves as the darts let up the further in they got. Did they not want to waste resources?
Micah enjoyed the quiet for a few bends, but slowly began to worry this might be a quiet before the storm as still no darts came, then almost said something when Ryan called back:
“Tripwire!” His voice was weirdly panicked ahead.
Kyle and Lisa scrambled to a stop, and Micah almost ran into them as he struggled to keep up. Tripwire?
For a second, he worried Ryan’s voice meant he had triggered it, but then he saw the thin, mud-laced twine rope that almost blended in with the dark ground between them.
Twine …?
Then Jason called right behind him, “Don’t stop. The Kobolds know we’re here, we don’t have to trip the trap for them to trigger it.”
“Oh, shit,” Kyle said and ran right on through, leaping over.
Lisa failed to grab him and cursed. “Idiot! Don’t just run over the trap right after we said that!”
Jason’s eyes went wide when he realized his mistake. The Kobolds could have done something just then.
There was a hole in the ceiling above the trap, Kyle said, hidden from view on their side by a rock jutting out below, but those two could see it. They couldn’t see where it led from a distance, though.
But then they stood around, two on one side and four on the other, and … nothing happened. The Kobolds didn’t shoot at him, laugh, or even make any sounds. There were no screeches in the distance, and even if there had been, it had never kept them from attacking before.
Maybe … they just ran out of ammo? he wondered. It was possible, Micah thought, if unlikely. “Ryan?” he called. “Can you hear—”
“Already on it.”
They were silent for a moment and kept an ear out themselves, but the walls seemed quiet.
“More fighting,” Ryan broke the silence, “I think they’re busy trying to herd something at us. Doesn’t sound like just Cavern Prowlers this time. Maybe they just …” He turned back to consider the trap.
“Hoped we would trigger it on our own?” Kyle finished for him and took a few steps back to peer around the corner.
Micah really wanted to be on the other side then. He felt trapped here with their team divided.
Lisa searched the walls for a moment and when they noticed, they helped her find a dart hole. She sent another lizard inside and it crossed through without issue. The moment it did, she rushed them, “Alright, then! Move, move, move! This is our chance to cross.”
Jason ran.
An irrational mountain of fear rose up in his chest when it was Micah’s turn, that he would somehow slip, trip, or otherwise screw up and trigger it. But he jumped and made it to the other side.
Lisa and the other one followed behind him. Almost as an entire group, they checked the corner, glanced back, and looked to their scout.
“Herd?”
“Still fighting. The more I listen, the less sure I am they’re succeeding at it. Maybe they have to physically restrain monsters for their traps?”
It would explain why they had sent so few at them, but not the absence of monsters in general. Had the Kobolds cleared these floors? They had to hunt Whip Spiders for their poison, at the very least.
“You said there were more than just Cavern Prowlers?” Micah asked. “So stuff like Teacup Salamanders, too?”
“From the sounds of things, yeah.”
Numbing poison was also an option, then. The rest might have been put into traps or been taken out as collateral damage. Either way—
“Alright,” Kyle put words to his thoughts, “perfect chance. We use the distraction to cover more ground. Li— uh, Chandler, which way?”
She began to gesture and behind them, someone made a sound like she was struggling with herself before blurting out, “Wait!”
Lea.
Shut up, Micah thought. What could she possibly have to add to the conversation?
“Shouldn’t we trigger the trap first?” she asked and pointed back.
He glared at her. What was she, stupid?
“How do you mean?” Ryan spoke up.
Micah glared at him, too, because it seemed like he was trying to include her instead of ignoring her.
“We’re probably on the safe side here and you guys said it yourself, the Kobolds are distracted so— Look, we don’t even know what the trap does. This is our best chance to find out without getting hurt.”
What was worse, the others actually seemed to be considering it. Ryan glanced the other way and back, then looked like he wanted to say something.
Kyle got there first, pushing past him, and drew a knife. “Damnit, we are not wasting minutes discussing this again. She has a point.”
Before anyone could respond, he threw the knife to sever the rope. The tension lifted and the ends snapped back into the cracks in the wall.
Micah saw the air shift a second before a heavy stone jug dropped from the hole and shattered on the ground, sending its contents splashing across the tunnel.
The moment it fell, they’d already drawn back, lifted their shields, or hidden around the corners. A shard flew into the mud between them and they leaned around the corner to see.
A pungent, musty smell with hints of pepper filled the air, and Micah already suspected what it was. The walls dripped, but a shard from the bottom half of the jug was still intact and cradled some of the liquid.
He went for that instead, ignoring the others’ warnings, and crouched down to get a better look. A glance confirmed it: “Fire potion. Extremely crude, unrefined fire potion but still … fire potion.”
He stared for a second, then swung his backpack around to get a bottle, carefully lifted the shard, and poured the sample over. A crack spread and he had to scrambled to adjust his grip, but the piece still broke off and some sloshed out.
“Dammit.”
“They wanted to set us on fire?” Kyle asked as he got his knife back and wiped it off.
“Apparently.”
“We might need those fire resistance potions moving forward, then?” Jason said, but Micah shook his head.
“It’s crappy fire potion.”
“Oh. So why … do you still seem spooked, then?”
“Exactly because it’s crappy.”
Micah got less than a hundred millimeters at the bottom of the bottle, at best, put the jug down, and stepped back. He held the bottle up to inspect the patterns through the clear glass.
Part mixed oil risen to the surface; crushed Ember Beetles, whole; dried Teacup Salamander shavings that hadn’t been mixed properly, powdered claws and dried bits of their flesh for some reason; wood shavings; crushed fire crystals going by the gaps in the essences; other crystals going by the intensity of the fading essences; and hints of Kobold blood.
Some of the ingredients were nonsensical, like the entire beetle, the additional parts of the Teacup Salamander, the crystals, and blood. They wouldn’t help any maybe even hinder.
The essences fleeted like rising vapor. The patterns interacted a bit around the edges, but it was likely an accident of the mixing process and nothing intentional. Nothing to actively manipulate or bind the ingredients, intentionally fuel the patterns, or combine the ingredients, but still alchemy.
“Crappy means the Tower didn’t provide it,” Lisa thankfully explained. He was busy. “Which means the Kobolds aren’t just making traps and tunnels, they’re making alchemicals, too.”
Just how smart were they? He felt something sink in his stomach.
“I get that’s bad,” Kyle said, “but more importantly, why was there no Kobold here to follow through?”
That was a better question and thankfully, one good enough to distract him. Micah put the bottle away.
They turned to Ryan and Lisa but neither had any idea where the Kobolds were. If they had set the trap, they seemed to agree, one of them should have been here to light it. It was as if they had abandoned their post, but why?
Nothing had changed on their side of things, except they had a direction now. That should have encouraged them to try harder.
“Maybe that’s what they’re doing,” he said. “Maybe they’re getting reinforcements?”
“A messenger should have been enough for that,” Jason said.
Either way, they had wasted enough time. They could discuss on the go while they walked.
“Wait a sec, I want to see how well it burns,” Ryan warned him and poked the puddle with his spear.
A lazy flame ignited, wispy, low, and slow to spread. Micah could have told him that, and the Ryan of yesteryear would have asked.
“Fire potion. Even if it’s crappy, that’s useful for you, right?” Kyle asked. “Sorry about the jug.”
“It’s fine. You chose the quickest option. We do need to move.”
“But now we know!” Lea jumped in with a nervous smile. “See?”
Micah shouldered past her and grumbled, “Know-it-all,” under his breath. He didn’t check but by the lack of reaction, he hoped it had shut her up.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
Without the harassment of the Kobolds, they could travel at a continuously brisk pace instead of their usual run and stop. They were still too exhausted to make the most of the situation, but it was a welcome change of pace.
Each one of them had eventually stepped into at least one caltrop and had to yank it out of their boot. The holes of the dart traps grew bigger for some reason and Lisa led her summons inside to course through the stone alongside them, but there were still no signs of the Kobolds.
They found another tripwire and Kyle asked, “Want to trigger it? Could use a sack as a blanket, spread it out; might get us an entire jug this time.”
The jug itself would be too heavy and brittle to carry around, but it would be good to top his sample off. They did as he said and cut the rope. Instead of a jug though, a weighted twine net fell down on them.
“Huh. Good to know.”
They packed up and moved on, but Micah asked, “Haven’t we seen this before?” and held it up between his fingers before putting it away.
The others looked, slowed down, and Ryan nodded. He reached around and pulled the sign out of his bag. Twine rope.
“The sign? Even back then?”
“Ha!” Lisa smiled. “No wonder the writing was so shitty.” She sounded vindicated.
Kyle reached back to slap Jason’s arm, seeming much the same. “So I didn’t screw it up after all, huh?”
He smiled. “Yeah. Kobolds …”
Micah didn’t join their brief celebration. For him, that feeling just burrowed deeper into his gut.
‘Announcement to strength’ or whatever had been the literal translation. Maybe ‘show your strength’ could have been their meaning?
They wrote a sign. He didn’t say anything yet. He’d learned when to keep his mouth shut.
They tripped two more tripwires before long, one of which dropped a jug like they wanted it to, which was filled with Whip Spider poison heavily diluted in water instead of fire potion.
That seemed just evil. If that got into someone’s eye or wounds … Micah shuddered to imagine it and involuntarily scratched his neck.
He inspected the jug as he took his sample. He wasn’t sure but thought it might have been smaller than the last. But just like the other, there were grooves along the insides as if it was really just a rock that had been hollowed out with something a few centimeters wide that could shape stone.
Two claws put together, he thought as he ran his thumb along one. It wasn’t much of a stretch to believe. It only made that sense of unease worse.
The second tripwire they tripped dropped nothing but did cause something in the distance.
There was a ding.
“The bell.” Ryan perked up. “I fucking knew it.”
Micah hadn’t really put it together himself, before, but there must have been a Kobold in the walls even back then, listening and ringing its little bell whenever one of them shouted something.
Guessing by how it had rung even for stuff like ‘ballsack’, it must not have understood a word of what they’d said …
That was reassuring, if only a little. But it made the feeling all the worse from another angle. Children didn’t understand everything adults said, after all.
They thought nothing of it and moved on, but one tunnel down, Ryan stopped and looked up.
“What?” Kyle asked.
“They’re coming back. In the walls.”
“What? Why now?”
“I don’t know!”
Micah looked back and realized: a bell wasn’t a trap. Even if the Kobolds had been here, what could it have done? No, it was a warning bell. Whatever the reason the Kobolds had ignored them, the bell signaled they’d made it too far in that they couldn’t afford to any longer.
They hurried up.
“Dammit, I hate running through the hail of these fucking itching darts,” Kyle said. “Chandler, how far?”
“About two hundred meters that way,” she pointed. “But that’s the distance, not the direct route.”
“Great.”
“They’re getting closer,” Ryan warned them and sped up more. Without discussing it, they had stuck speed-walking while they still could. None of them wanted to run again. It was tiring.
Micah heard the first faint yaps and snarls himself then, in the distance. They quieted down as one barked a command, apparently not interested in trying to hide. So they wouldn’t be interested in being subtle, either, he figured.
I have my scrap armor, he assured himself but still somehow felt naked without his chainmail. And a coif like Ryan. He tugged on it to properly cover his face and took a deep breath.
Two hundred meters … so maybe thirty or so more tunnels …? Six more breaks …? He could do that. And the Kobolds were behind the walls anyway, so they wouldn’t have to fight them and … even if not, he could do this.
Micah focused on that thought, and his grade, and summer, and shoved it all out of his mind.
The first dart hit the wall with a silent plick, bounced off, and drifted. The moment it hit the mud, they ran.
Ryan’s boots splashed as he sped up. He turned a corner, another, and with the third, Micah saw the rising of his spear. A moment later, there came a crash with the fall of another jug.
Micah followed behind Lisa and Kyle through the hail of darts and turned the corner to find an infestation of arm-length, black centipedes crawling out of the stone remains.
Ryan fought without slowing down, doing what he did best. He struck one down and flicked his spear up with his javelin, caught, then used both to cut another while mud flew off the shaft.
Micah grabbed his slingshot, hesitated, and drew a knife instead. Ryan had the right idea. It was time for a return to form.
He kept an eye on Ryan in case he had to throw it to help, but the guy had no trouble cutting through small swarms.
More and more darts shot out of the walls around them, seeking gaps in their armor, and they might as well have found one for as much as he cared. He already itched all over, what were a few more darts?
Their improvised armor was worn by now, though, so he kept his guard up as he hit the first of the centipedes rushing toward them. Kyle and Lisa joined the fray, but Ryan had already taken care of most.
He spun and wove and left the centipedes as clouds of light-made smoke or mangled messes that bled them.
The block had to have been instinctual then, because when the first spear shot out of the stone wall, Ryan shattered the tip off with his own and froze.
The splintered shaft hung from the hole for a single frozen moment and was yanked back inside.
“What the—”
“Behind you!” Kyle shouted and Ryan spun around, raising his shield to block another thrust. The rest of them almost did the same before they noticed whom it had been directed at.
He blocked easily. These were Kobolds. They were small and weak and thrusting with long spears through a meter or so long hole, but it could still be dangerous if they lucked out.
Especially since, Micah saw when he jumped back from a spear himself, some of the tips were coated in dripping poison.
He called it out and got a, “We can see that, dumbass,” in response. Well, screw you, too, Kyle.
A centipede made it close enough to crawl up the guy’s leg, he jumped, and cut it off him, then cleaved into another, but kept his eyes on the walls as he moved forward.
All the while wood clattered in echoes around them and the Kobolds yapped as if the walls lived.
Lisa put herself in a gap between two holes and had a summon check to make sure it was safe.
Ryan slowed down, stride broken, and impaled centipedes one by one with none of the grace from before.
Micah almost found himself mimicking them before Jason bumped into his back and called, “No, don’t slow down! The sideways spears should slow them down. They can’t keep up!”
Right. The clattering sounds had to be them struggling with the long spears in their tunnels. Setting them up and pulling them back out again had to be a hassle and a half, but …
He looked around at the walls that were riddled with larger spear holes and had no idea how he was supposed to predict which ones would attack him. They already were set up here.
Micah carefully made his way forward.
Ryan was close enough to the end of the tunnel, he could probably just step around the corner if he had wanted to. He still stayed and blocked or tried to break any spears that he could.
“Watch out,” Jason said and pulled his coat forward to block another spear aimed at them and Micah jumped and sucked his gut in to bend around it anyway. Belatedly, he tried to break the shaft off like Ryan was doing but only got a glancing blow against the wood that rocked it before it disappeared again.
Dammit.
“Thanks,” he said.
Jason quickly stepped into the new space he made when he walked forward, urging him on with his presence alone. He couldn’t move with Micah in front of him since sticking to the walls was dangerous …
Lisa’s summon got killed by a spear. She grabbed the wood and broke it an angle to point down. The Kobold tried to pull it back out and it knocked against the stone. She used the chance to walk forward two steps, still mostly out of the way.
Micah saw her, Kyle nearing the exit, the attacks, and almost laughed. He turned sideways, backpack at the back, shield in front, and horse-galloped down the tunnel, hitting the sides of his muddy boots together on the way.
She gave him an incredulous look. Spears shot out to hit him, but Micah just blocked or twisted when they caught on his backpack.
In just a moment, he bumped into Kyle, who called him an idiot.
“Hey, if it works. Not all of us can anticipate attacks like you. How did you warn Ryan anyway?”
“Lucky guess.”
Jason copied him. The other two seemed more reluctant about it, though. Micah left them their dignity and turned the corner to where Ryan was already breaking more spears.
The Kobolds let up, apparently realizing that they wouldn’t get far against him, and Micah used the chance to raise his shield and catch up. He had wanted to step around and gallop ahead but realized something else.
“Fighting in pairs can also work!” he called back. “Each person blocks one side. The bigger holes should be easier to see.” He turned to Ryan and asked, “Right?”
“Good catch,” he said.
Micah froze for a second, then grinned.
“Break the spears over the edges so part hangs down,” Lisa added, “it clears the way for the people behind you.”
“Meaning you?” Kyle asked.
She made an annoyed sound.
They worked their way down the tunnel that way, blocking and trying to break spears as Lisa had said, but it was hard. They hid behind their shields and by the time they peeked out, some Kobolds had already pulled theirs back. They got a few. Well, Micah got a few and Ryan more.
Then, abruptly, the attacks halfway down the tunnel stopped. Micah could hear the clatter as the front-most Kobold set its spear up, side-stepped, and cleaved the tip off the moment it shot out.
Jason had been right. The spears really did slow them down. It was the consequence of these tunnels of theirs.
It meant they could run.
There were still traps, still darts, and they had to take breaks, but the spear units only caught up with them in every fourth tunnel or so, or after they took a much-needed break, and they could pair up and turtle their way through them. Lisa and Kyle used their backpacks as shields and Jason enchanted those for them whenever he could.
It still seemed dangerous.
“About a hundred and fifty meters,” Lisa said during the third break while she caught her breath.
Micah wavered. While it was good time, it still seemed so far and he didn’t know if he wanted her to keep them informed then … He tried to shove it out of his mind and think of summer.
Ryan checked with them, and Micah subtly made sure to be second-in-line to pair up with him ‘by accident’. Maybe then it wouldn’t be as annoying?
The thought must have distracted him, he thought, because when they stepped into the second tunnel, the first spear shot out, and Micah felt a burning sting in his leg.
But I blocked it?
He glanced down and saw second the spear that had glanced off his leg guard and skimmed his lower calf. And the third one next to it.
He tried to stomp on that one but they immediately disappeared back in their holes and he realized, They adapted again.
Ryan moved and he instinctively followed. Halfway down the tunnel, half a dozen spears from nearby holes attacked them at the same time again. They were attacking less often but in groups now. Not really so much adapting as doing the same thing they had done before.
The burning in his leg did nothing to help his exhaustion or stride, and Micah could begin to feel the first hints of a wet sensation but didn’t say anything. Ryan hadn’t noticed and so long as the others didn’t, he could bear on through it until the next break.
They called back a warning, still, and there was a murmuring from the group behind them before they suddenly crowded closer.
Micah frowned back at them, wondering why. If the Kobolds only attacked in waves, he supposed, then maybe Kyle and Jason thought they could slip past after they took the first attack.
But that would leave the third group—
“Hey!” he snapped before even finishing the thought. “What’s the big— Argh-a!” He couldn’t finish that either as another cluster shot out.
The spearheads thumped against their shield and Micah jumped wide and splashed in the mud to dodge the rest.
Jason’s shimmering blade came down along the wall and cut through the first all the way to crack into the second.
“[Power Strike]!” Kyle called and broke all three of his. Micah was too surprised to try to get his third.
“If they attack together,” Jason panted and picked up his guard, “we can get them all at once together, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
They kept it up. The Kobolds did not.
They couldn’t, Micah realized. They didn’t have endless spears and the ones they did have were already kind of shitty with bent shafts or sometimes even made of two sticks tied together with twine rope.
They couldn’t keep up this tactic forever, and the couldn’t keep up the darts forever because while bone darts and tufts of fur might have been easy to come by, poison definitely was not.
And even so, how many would they have prepared?
They might have tried to thrust at them quicker or not thrust so far, but they were too weak for the former and the latter might not hit. So as long as they stayed in these tunnels, they were safe.
Micah could see an issue arising if they sicced another horde on them, but they were apparently thoroughly distracted by something else in that regard.
Ryan came to a halt at the next crossroads and Micah might have thought it was for another break—and part of him might have hoped—but then he checked each direction with heavy breaths and he knew he was scouting instead.
“Lisa?!” he called back. “Which way?”
She grunted as a spear caught her pack and shouted, “Northwest, now!”
Ryan looked left and propped himself up against his knees for a moment. Maybe he needed a break after all.
“I could use—” Micah started.
“Shh!” he said and didn’t move.
Micah rolled his eyes and twiddled his thumbs, then noticed Ryan wasn’t catching his breath. He was listening.
Then he ran down the right tunnel instead, northeast.
“Ryan?” he called after him. “You’re going the wrong way?” Of course, he knew that. So he followed him down that tunnel. No Kobolds attacked them, but it was still a waste of time.
Ryan looked back ways again and listened.
“What are you— listening for?” he spoke over his shushing sound again. He had to have a good reason.
“Fighting,” he said and thankfully explained in long-form, “The fighting I’ve been hearing is not so far away.”
“So? Their camp is in the other way. All the better if they’re distracted when we fight the Guardian, right?” It actually seemed like good news.
“Yeah, but don’t you want to know why?” Ryan asked. “Do you really want to go into a Guardian fight half-blind and exhausted like this?”
“Well, yeah,” he said, “but not if looking means we lose this opportunity. It might make up for going in half-blind and exhausted?”
“That doesn’t change that the Kobolds were distracted for half an hour and their main fighting force is still distracted despite us heading straight for the heart of their camp,” Ryan snapped back.
He didn’t look at him as he said. If not for that, Micah would have felt like they were discussing this as usual.
This is the fifth floor, he could have said. Going to check that out is also ‘going in half-blind’, just running up to their main fighting force instead. What if they’re fighting another monster that’s even more dangerous? Either way, we should take a break. We could sneak up to the Guardian to make sure we aren’t as blind. Lisa can scout ahead with her summons and Sam. We only have so many potions for big fights.
They were all things he could have said. But would Ryan even have heard him if he did?
“Why don’t we wait for the rest of the team?” Micah said instead. “We can discuss it with them—”
Ryan shook his head and ran off.
Micah was too surprised to react, stop him, or even say something. And so he didn’t when he chased after him. He lost his grin.
Instead, he took deep breaths and slowed down a bit to slip his backpack around. He took a long swig of stamina potion, made sure his healing potion was where it was supposed to be, clipped the [Surging Strength] potion onto his belt, and pulled the bandana down.
If words didn’t help, maybe actions would?
The tunnels grew even dimmer as they ran. And they actually ran this time. Ryan didn’t have to slow down enough for them to keep up. Micah took control of the stamina potion and infused it into every muscles he needed right now. Only those. The rest of his body could ache for all he cared.
This was going to look so bad on their reports. This was going to look so bad with their teammates. He could already hear their complaints and ignored them.
The Kobolds couldn’t catch up, so they didn't have to worry about those, but the occasional trap still lay in wait. Caltrops and tripwires and even a small pit filled with spikes. A wooden arch passed overhead. The tunnels began to slant down. A heavy stone hung from a horizontal rope in the ceiling.
Ryan happened upon a group of Kobolds and cut his way through, leaving the dying for Micah to clean. He saw their snarling faces, saw another face lean back as his punch connected with the gentle ding of a bell, and pushed through the smoke cloud his sword created.
Maybe his teammates could finish off the other two … if they even caught up. They had been close enough to see them when they'd run off, but would that stay that way?
"This way!" he yelled back just in case.
Ryan sat at the end of the next tunnel ahead and disappeared below, and Micah ran up to a sudden, meter-high drop that led further west. At least, that was the right direction, he supposed.
He leapt down into a tunnel larger than the rest. And it seemed somehow … familiar. Gouges in the walls ran seemingly at random, but then he recognized the pattern of the fire crystal veins in the walls, now missing.
The sounds of fighting grew louder and echoed down the tunnel: snarls of monsters, bursts of smoke, wood clattering against stone, and even the rushing sounds of flames flowing in a stream.
His pounding heart sharpened from a thud to a sharp pain in his neck, louder than the constant cry of attention from the itch there.
He turned a corner, spotted Ryan, and saw him trip and fall hands-first into the mud. A trap? He pushed into a sprint, but the guy hadn’t moved away from the spot. He'd pushed up into a squat and looked right.
Micah almost tripped himself when he stepped into the tunnel. At first, because of the gap to the lower floor. It was only a few centimeters low, but the intersecting tunnel was definitely slanted to his right.
Then again when he tried to step around Ryan and his foot caught on something in the mud.
Tripwire? he thought, but nothing snapped. He felt out with his boot and found something hard like stone running along the ground toward the—
The tunnel was collapsed.
He’d followed the line in the mud to the right, where Ryan stood, and saw the rubble stacked high up to the ceiling with a dark gap toward the top. The rubble was lower as well, along the slant of the ground. It wasn't a friendly sight, reminding him of too many nightmares where he crawled through tiny gaps in the rock.
But even without that, like the gouges in the walls, this seemed somehow familiar to him, but as the sounds of combat echoed in his mind like a rushing wind, and the uneasy memory of his nightmares lingered, he couldn’t put his finger on why.
“It’s the railroads,” Ryan said, pulling him out of it, “the ones we raced down. Not the exact same ones, of course, just the general design.”
He gestured along the line hidden in the mud down toward the dark.
It wasn’t just a Summoner they were fighting. It was the exact same type of Summoner they had fought before, which had now gouged the light from the walls, collapsed the tunnels leading directly to its lair, and covered everything with mud from an upper floor.
“How?”
Ryan didn't answer, because there was no way he could. The question was too big. Instead, he nudged his head to the side. “C’mon, the fighting is just around the corner.”
The comment snapped Micah out of his awe for a moment—was it awe?—and he remembered to listen for himself to gauge distances for once. It was close.
Ryan carefully stepped over the hidden railroads and Micah mimicked him. They left through a tunnel opposite the one they had come from.
Just as with the screeches of the Cavern Prowlers, so did the volume pick up here with each corner they crossed. But it sounded like a monster free-for-all, which didn’t make sense. They met a crossroads and Ryan silently signaled for them to check the next corner.
They snuck up and found another crossroads where the sounds were so loud, they seemed to come from everywhere, but found no monsters that could have made them.
Ryan looked at a loss himself. The tunnels were shorter anyway, like the drop-off points where the Kobolds made smaller camps. Probably exactly like those, if that last tunnel had been anything to go by. Micah pointed down each way and shrugged.
They would have to check them all.
He headed right and glanced either way, saw smoke curling around a corner and signaled Ryan to come, that he had found something.
He snuck up and found a tunnel full of dead monsters, crystals on the ground, and wisps of smoke dispersing in the dark. Nothing else.
The crystals were there for the taking, though he wondered if he even should because it wasn’t like he had earned them. But … it wasn’t like the Kobolds or other monsters would make use of them, either. There was no point in letting them go to waste.
He collected a few of the bigger ones to save time—finally, some actual loot—made his way to the next corner, and peeked around right into the lighter underbelly of a True Salamander that crawled out of a hole in the wall and slammed onto the mud.
He immediately pulled back around and held his breath, hoping it hadn’t noticed him, but the crystals in his arms clinked.
Micah took a deep breath and found, past the feeling that made him want to groan, acceptance.
There was a heavy shifting sound, body brushing over rock, and he had no illusions as to their current situation. He turned to warn Ryan with an apologetic smile and found no-one there.
A heartbeat later, Micah ran.
A glance back and the alligator-sized Salamander crawled around the corner behind him, spotted him, and opened its maw to breathe—
Fire.
He huddled up and felt his ring kick in as the wave washed over him for one second before he made it back around the corner. Thoughts flooded into his mind like the flow of the flames themselves and he shoved them all aside like shaping water.
Instead, he focused on important things and checked his smoking pack to make sure it hadn’t caught fire. He slapped a few embers out here and there and kept on running, back the way he’d come.
Each tunnel he passed, he checked left and right for Ryan but had no idea where the guy was and he didn’t know if this was worth alerting the Kobolds they were here, either. If he called out, they would lose the element of surprise on their Guardian.
He told himself it didn't matter. He still had his stamina potion, he could outrun the beast, or fight if he had to … If it stayed one-on-one. And only if he had to. In this tight space, that would be a good way to lose a limb or face.
Like, I know one guy who screwed up [Fireball] once and now he has burn marks all along his arm, Jason’s voice echoed in his head.
Yeah, not helping.
Micah heard its heavy footsteps splat in the mud behind him and felt its grumble shake his chest just as it seemed to shake the entire tunnel.
But that was a good thing! he reminded himself. Because Ryan had to be looking for him, too, and as overprotective as he was, of course he would worry about the most obvious danger and come running in case Micah was in trouble, right? ... Right?
He got his ingredients out and the moment he reached a corner, turned around and breathed a thick glue cloud right back at it.
It billowed around its head as it ran on through just as it would through a thin curtain, then smoldered and began to break away in pieces of stinking ash from the flames of its scales.
More importantly, aside from a side-to-side thrashing of its head, it did not slow down.
Micah turned tail. His breath began to lag and his leg act up again as all the small aches in his body flared up. He reluctantly took a deep breath and pushed some of his stamina potion everywhere else through his body, conceding the earlier notion of optimization.
He almost missed it then: a faint cough beneath the grumble of the Salamander close-by. And though it led away from the way back, a cough could only mean human, which could only mean Ryan, and so he headed straight in that direction.
Micah! someone shouted, just as quiet but he didn’t know from where it came with all the sounds around him. He wasn’t Ryan.
Right or left? Maybe he could still turn back? He could not leave him alone here. He was the reason Micah had followed him here instead of sticking to the team. Besides, if Ryan had run off on his own it would have been even worse for their score. Micah had to do well.
The Salamander stomped around the corner, cutting his choices in half. It gained on him and he scrambled the other way. He chose right, turned the corner, and stepped into a larger chamber with a treasure chest on a small stone pedestal in its center.
The lid was flipped and the contents missing—if there had been any contents at all, because there were dart holes along the walls and crystals on the ground, which all screamed trapped. Had Ryan cleared this entire room by himself?
Maybe, he thought as his eyes darted around, maybe we could fight the Salamander here.
But said Salamander turned the last corner toward the room and galloped along the wall at him, and Micah had to move to find Ryan first. He slipped past the treasure chest and put it behind him to cover his back as heat rushed at him with another gout of flames.
Micah huddled up, scrambled around the hopefully last corner, and came face to face with the tip of an arrow, bow, and a stranger with wide eyes loosening his grip right behind it.