When trying to determine how best to split loot, it was considered amongst the populous - both Hunters and civilians alike - that a mixture of even shares and games of chance was the most fair and balanced way to do so. After all, so long as everyone gets something, and preference is settled by the hands of fate itself, surely, everyone must be, if not satisfied, at least not resentful of the outcome. However even in a game of chance, skill can still prove to be a factor, and Vivi, as her teammates soon discovered, was astonishingly good at rock paper scissors.
Of course, all other factors rather quickly become irrelevant in the face of the participants themselves. If for example, the victorious elf happened to be absolutely helpless in the face of their companions' tearful pout, and almost immediately gave the bag of holding to Damaia, then what purpose did the competition serve in the first place?
“And that’s why you should’ve kept it,” Lucas explained. They’d found a second secret passage inside the first shortly after their pointless competition, when the mercenary had jokingly kicked a wall, only for it to fall away and reveal a slanted, spiral ramp heading down.
“I’d like to see you do any better against those weaponized puppy dog eyes,” the elf grumbled sourly.
The mountain of a man scoffed, waving one hand dismissively. “I’d just ignore her!”
“I’m right here!” the felblood said, sounding mildly irritated.
“See? I’m ignoring her right now!”
Damaia stuck out her tongue at the shapeshifter, both unwilling to stop possessively clutching her precious magic item to her chest long enough to smack him with something, and unsure what she could possibly hit him with that wouldn’t be broken in the process.
“Trap ahead,” she said abruptly about ten seconds later.
“You’re sure?” Lucas said, staring suspiciously at the slanted floor in front of him. “I can’t see anything…”
“Oh? I thought you were ignoring me?”
“Damaia…” the lycanthrope growled out.
“Also, you’re looking the wrong direction.”
The felbloood pointed to a spot directly above where he’d been looking. “The ceiling just ahead is built to collapse. Seeing as it lines up with one of the glowing wall runes, it’s probably got a second rune layered underneath it to act as a magical trigger for a mechanical trap.” The engineer tied her bag of holding to her belt before opening it to pull out a small metal rod tipped with a glowing blue crystal. “Runework is a bit beyond me right now,” she admitted with a nervous smile,”but I can probably disrupt the field it projects for a little while.”
“How long is a little while?” Jubel asked cautiously.
“...You guys just be ready to run past me when I say ‘now’, ok?”
Without waiting for an answer, the engineer stabbed the rune, causing the light to flicker wildly. “NOW!”
The light seemed to stabilize after about 3 seconds - just enough time for several people to throw themselves past it.
And just barely too little for Vivi to join them.
Jubel’s moved without thinking, grabbing hold of the elf’s wrist and pulling her to safety just as massive stone slabs crashed down from the ceiling. Before the team had even had time to calm their frantically racing hearts, reality sank in.
They were trapped.
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The Shadow Knight grimaced as he dashed down the narrow stone pathway before him. His helmet was a truly incredible device; the visor was fitted with carefully disguised lenses that allowed him to see even down here, where the only light came from small, dim runes carved into the stone walls. The built in speaker system was custom built to disguise the wearer's voice, too, as well as allowing pre recorded messages to play, warning him when he was wounded or ill even if he hadn’t yet noticed, and every possible airway was lined with high tech filters to protect him from airborne poisons and diseases.
One of the more pleasant side effects of such an advanced filtration system was that the air he breathed smelled, if not good, then at least clean at all times. And yet, in spite of it all, this fucking sewer still smelled worse than a three day old corpse.
Had this mission been one for his liege, it might well have been enough to make him abandon this endeavor entirely and return to the surface. But it wasn’t.
He pressed onwards, breathing heavily as his stamina began to wane.
“Don’t push yourself, boy,” a familiar voice said from inside his helmet. “Your heart rate is elevated, and your breathing irregular. Leave the struggling to older hands, and take a break. Maybe take the armor off for a bit, and find yourself a date!”
Even after all these years, he was still finding new messages he hadn’t heard before. All in that voice. He felt a dim flicker of guilt and regret as -
No. No time for that. He could see his goal just up ahead. He could feel sorry for himself later.
“Beast Knight!” he called loudly, causing the hulking figure in the distance to pause.
“Shadow Knight,” a rough voice growled out from beneath a peculiar, wolflike helm. “It is unlike you to seek me out.”
“I need you to… delay your primary objective for a short while.”
The massive man turned to face him, his bare muscular arms tensing with the promise of violence. “Treachery, Shadow Knight? I expected better of you.”
“Not at all,” the armored man insisted, “but there’s been a development. It has to do with my Wish.”
The Beast Knight froze, staring with amber eyes at the slim, armored man that stood before him. Shadow Knight was privately pleased - all in all, things were going slightly better than he’d expected so far.
“How could your Wish possibly impact my mission?”
“Going into the dungeon right now,” the shorter knight said carefully, “would almost certainly make it impossible to make my Wish a reality. It will be a new moon tonight, and in spite of your many talents, those tend to be quite… difficult for you.”
The beastly man snarled at the mention of his condition. “You think I cannot control myself?!”
“You’re now holding me by the throat,” the savvy spy replied dryly, “so no. No I don’t. It’s not your fault, my friend, and I don’t hold it against you, but this is a matter of grave importance.”
The Beast Knight blinked in surprise, staring at the clawed hand now firmly wrapped around the neck of one of his few friends, and, with great effort, slowly returned him to the ground. “The King himself requested this,” he reminded the stubborn knight. “We must obey.”
“There is always a choice,” came the cold reply.
“And if I refuse to heed you?”
The shadows around the pair grew dark and twisted as the Shadow Knight gave his response. “Then I will stop you, even if it should mean my death.”
The Beast knight barked out a harsh laugh, shaking his helm-covered head. “And when this inevitably goes horribly wrong, and we lose the dungeon core?”
For a moment, there was no response. Then, a dim flicker of light returned to the underground passageway. “I will accept full responsibility if it comes to that. But it wont. Even if they somehow claim the core, the guild will try to take it from them. With the sort of chaos that your secondary objective will create, I should be able to obtain it regardless. If even that goes horribly wrong as well, Thorn Knight can take it for us at her leisure. Victory is all but assured, my friend. All you need to do is clean up some trash. In fact, if you need a place to start, I have a lead on one of your targets - a particularly rude man with an ostentatious blue cape.”
The Beast gave a low, vicious chuckle, which echoed throughout the sewer. The Knight took back control as best he could, unable to prevent the twisted, bloodthirsty grin that stretched across his unseen face. “You always bring me the nicest gifts,” he said quietly. “Lead the way.”
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It took about two minutes for the majority of Valorous to stop panicking.
‘The majority’ being ‘everyone except the person who actually triggered the trap.’
“I’m sorry,” Vivi muttered dejectedly while the rest of her party collected their wits. “This is all my fault.” She was trembling, tears beginning to fall down her cheeks. “I was too slow and now everyone’s doomed because of it!”
“None of that,” Damaia said firmly. “We don’t blame you for this, V. I couldn’t disable that trap completely, Lucas isn’t strong enough to move the rubble, and Jubel can’t just evaporate the stones with his magic. We’re all in the same boat, but you don’t hear the rest of us feeling sorry for ourselves!” From her tone of voice, she clearly mean to sound encouraging, but the bard only wilted further at her words.
“Yeah,” Jubel piped up in an exaggeratedly stern tone, “I’m wallowing in misery and dread quietly, like a normal person!” The quip earned him both a glare from the felblood, and a chuckle from the clearly shaken elf - a roaring success.
“Let me try that again,” the engineer said, more softly this time. “It was just a bit of bad luck, girlie! Nobody’s mad at you; we just want you to get back on your feet so we can go look for a way out of here together.”
Vivi dried her eyes, a weak smile on her face. “S-sure. Sorry. I just… sorry.”
“We’ll make a public speaker out of you yet,” Lucas said dryly.
“I don’t know which of us that was targeting,” the felblood said brightly with her usual cheery smile, “but either way, shut up please!” That drew another weak chuckle from the elf, who slowly pushed herself to her feet.
“Sorry for the breakdown,” she said awkwardly, not able to bring herself to meet her teammates' eyes. “It won’t happen again.”
“It probably will,” Lucas disagreed, “but that isn’t your fault. Breakdowns happen, especially for soldiers and adventurers. Trust me. I have a lot of experience with… ah… stressful circumstances, lets say.”
Vivi nodded, biting her lip nervously. “I get you. It’s just… Look, let’s talk about this some other time. Right now, we should try to find a way to the surface. Preferably before we run out of rations. Dunno about you, but I’m not keen on finding out how slime tastes!”
The lycanthrope made an effort to give her a comforting, understanding smile. The result looked more like an awkward grimace than anything friendly, but she still appreciated the attempt. “Fair enough. We’ve only got one direction we can go right now, so we may as well forge ahead. I’ll take the front, just in case whatever we run into isn’t impossible to fight bare handed.”
“You still have your glaive,” Jubel pointed out.
“And it’s every bit as useful as a stick against slimes,” the mercenary replied dryly. “Maybe even less so, because I wouldn’t need to pay good gold to replace a broken stick. Come on, let’s get going. Stay right behind me, and be ready to blast anything that doesn’t have skin.”
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“Whoever or whatever made this place is more twisted than this hallway,” Jubel said abruptly. They’d been traveling in tense silence for the past half hour, and still the spiral path stretched out ahead of them. If he was being perfectly honest… it was starting to get to him. “I’d say we made a wrong turn, but…” he gestured bitterly at the dimly lit path ahead.
“Can you please take this seriously?” Lucas grumbled.
“I just did that for 30 minutes straight! We’ve passed like a thousand of these stupid glowing runes, and made NO progress. Gimme a chance to whine about it!”
“You want a reason to whine?” the mercenary growled as he felt his temper spike. “Because I can give you one!”
“Oh yeah?” Jubel wasn’t sure why, but he was starting to feel belligerent. “By all means, then - gimme your best shot.”
“You asked for it,” Lucas said without turning around. “Hey, Vivi? Back on the ladder, Jubel looked up your skirt.”
Dead silence met the statement.
Then…
The bard spun towards the wide eyed half elf. “You WHAT?!”
“That was an accident -”
“How exactly do you accidentally do something like that?”
“Woah,” Damaia said, forcing herself between the two, “let’s all try to calm down.”
“You said something to me, and I looked towards your voice without thinking about it!” Jubel felt his temper starting to slip as Vivi reached past Damaia to slap him. “Hey!”
“You earned that!” the elf replied angrily, her cheeks red with a mixture of rage and embarrassment. “You could’ve just not looked!”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t stop a reflex that was beaten into me for twenty fucking years,” he snapped sarcastically, unable to keep his voice down. “Next time, I’ll just blindfold myself on the way down the ladder. Or, and this is just a suggestion, maybe you could not wear a skirt for the first time since we met while going down the ladder in the first place!”
“I can wear what I damn well please, you perv!”
“Then go down the damn ladder first!”
Nobody was walking anymore.
“Why should I have to change what I do when you’re the one in the wrong?”
“Because I didn’t do anything wrong! Back home, if I didn’t look towards whoever was speaking to me, I’d get hit. Hard. Sorry if my trauma is minorly inconveniencing you!”
Lucas’ eyes narrowed. Something was wrong. The growing anger burning in his chest felt… off, somehow. Then it hit him.
“Damaia-”
The felblood nodded, having realized the same thing he had. “On it.”
She moved like lightning, metal clad fists striking each of the angry adventurers one after another. The pair stumbled back, clutching at their now firmly broken noses before turning to scream the felblood, only to feel the rage drain out of them.
“Better?” The felblood asked, glancing back and forth between the pair.
“Wha-” Jubel asked dazedly.
“We missed another trap,” Damai said with confidence. “Something purely magical, so I didn’t even see it. It messed with your heads and made you all angry. Lucas is used to being angry out of nowhere, so he caught on quickly, but you two-”
“-haven’t got a vicious wolf howling in our heads,” Vivi said dryly. “We were easy targets. Why didn’t it hit you?”
The felblood smiled brightly, answering with her usual, nearly omnipresent cheer. “I did! I just don’t lash out when I’m angry. I internalize it and wallow in guilt instead! That way, only one person has to be upset. Do you guys need healing potions for your noses?”
“I’m good,” the elf replied, softly muttering a quick healing spell to fix her nose. After a lingering glance at Jubel, she relented and patched him up as well.
“Sorry about that,” she said quietly. “I… overreacted. Accidents happen. Even if it had been on purpose, I shouldn’t have hit you.”
Jubel raised an eyebrow. “Fuck that. If I were to do that to anybody on purpose, you should have Lucas hit me. Unless I’m in a relationship with them and they're into that, but that’s a different story and why am I saying this part out loud?”
The mercenary chuckled. “You don’t even gotta ask, Vivi - I’ll kick his ass for free. As for the rambling, given what I could feel of it, that trap works by amplifying your emotions, then suggesting one emotion in particular. Just because we snapped you out of the emotion if wanted, doesn’t mean the original spell is completely gone, so it might take a minute or two before it wears off. Guess you get real honest when you’re apologetic. Good to know.” He paused for a second before continuing, “I wasn’t exactly immune to it, either, just… really good at thinking around it. Wasn’t enough to stop me from throwing you under the bus, though. Sorry about that.”
“I know we’re still in mortal peril and all,” Damaia said abruptly, “but Jubel actually made a good point when he was mad. If you were going to get bothered by something like that, V, why not go down the ladder first, so nobody had the chance? Or just, y’know, wear pants?” She gestured towards her own utilitarian outfit, which was covered in over a dozen tiny pockets.
Vivi scowled. “Usually I do wear pants,” she mumbled, flushing “but when I said that to Monika and Lucy, they insisted that skirts were combat viable. I figured I’d give it a shot, and honestly, it hasn’t been that bad, but I don’t think I’ll be doing this too often. As for going first, I was planning on it, but the conversation we had on the way over was pretty interesting, and I kinda… forgot. That part’s my fault.”
“But the rest is mine,” Jubel said, flushing slightly. “Looking up was a reflex, but I should’ve just spoken up when it happened. I thought you might not believe it was an accident, and didn’t wanna look like a perv. Sorry.”
“Never speak of this again, and I’ll call it even,” the elf replied. “There’s one more question I need answered before we get moving again, though.” She turned towards Lucas with a small smile.
“You went down the ladder before Jubel, right?”
The lycanthrope frowned. “Yyyyyes?” he answered slowly.
“And you saw him, the person above him, looking up?”
“That’s correct,” he said, feeling the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.
“How?”
He blinked. “By looking… at… him…” his eyes slowly widened.
“In other words, you were looking up?” she pressed. “The whole time? Intentionally?” Her smile suddenly seemed dangerous somehow.
“... I saw nothing?”
“Was that a question?” her tone turned harsh.
“No ma’am!” He snapped into a salute, old reflexes from his military years taking over.
At that point, nobody could keep a straight face anymore, and the party dissolved into raucous laughter.