But it turned out that the adventurers were expecting this and while he had acted asleep the group had quietly changed beds to somewhere else. Luckily for Grum, only one of the remaining adventurers woke up. Unluckily, though, it was the one he’d have most trouble with, especially with the low mana left on this vessel. That was also one of the reasons why he hadn’t realized that the group had moved away, he had to be fully concentrated on each thing he had to do and until recently he was concentrating to appear asleep.

The triad of adventurers was prepared for him, but the food he had given them had indeed affected their capabilities. It was actually because of this meal that they were sure that he was a bad guy, if he hadn’t fed them what he gave them, he could have lived on further, but Grum wasn’t a person to throw himself at opportunities which he can’t control if he can prevent it.

- I did get a bad feeling coming from you, but I thought that it was from your resemblance to my father, I guess I was wrong – Elbian commented before they started fighting, but also using this time to prepare his bow and shooting position.

Grum still believed that he could take more juice of his limited resources, so he came up with a believable story and prepared to make the corpse of this double very similar to the real thing.

- I am the last of my species, tasked to protect this laboratory and I won’t let some puny adventurers defeat me. I will defeat you or I will cease to live trying to do so. – Grum responded, also getting into a comfortable position to quickly move and attack the enemy.

At first, Grum wanted to defeat the Magician to leave the party out of magic users, which would make many future traps highly effective, but both Elbian and the mace-using warrior seemed ready to give almost anything to protect her.

Elbian also wasn’t a good objective, because as the party leader he was the one controlling the others and getting rid of him would cause the other two to go ham on the building which would make him need to rebuild much more than if they were controlled.

As such, he was only left with one more possible target, the masculine-clothed woman using a mace and a shield. It didn’t seem like she would be much of a threat to him, even with a lot of mana taken away from it’s dummy-body, but the support of both Elbian and the Magician made things difficult.

With the knife in hand Grum tried multiple times to severely damage the close-range enemy, but the most he got out of it were some minor cuts on her arms. He decided to “go all out” and started burning the little remains of mana inside the dummy to augment its speed and force explosively, although it wasn’t as much to defeat all three, he was fast enough to make the armed and defended woman flinch and he used this chance to target her inner thigh, making her scream in pain and move her hands towards that zone, as many nerve endings gather there and Grum used this chance to attack her directly in the heart, which he managed, but he also got hit by the mace on his side, making his left arm useless and, if he were on his real body, some of the ribs would have cracked or even broken.

Alas, this fight and dummy were reaching its end. He wouldn’t be able to damage Elbian or the Magician anymore, but he managed to get rid of another one of the group’s members. Escaping by a hair’s length, Grum’s double still had one final use. Make both Elbian and his accompanying Magician lower their guard and use this chance to defeat them.

How? Simple. He just had to make a realistic-looking corpse and the job would be done. They probably wouldn’t instantly lower their guard, but after a while of walking only through traps, they probably would.

While Grum set that trap the siblings were working on uncovering more of Grumbonk’s secrets, be it with magic, wizardry or by talking. Yes, talking. You see, Gabriel was getting used to the effects of the magic pollen and could not only communicate for longer periods of time with David, but he could also remember more of what they talked about.

So, Gabriel learned of Grum’s habits, some of his personal information and even tiny specks of his past. Gabriel carefully noted this information in a diary he had made, an idea stolen from his sister after he had explained him what it was, but she hadn’t actually shown him, so he could only believe her… Or get better at magic or wizardry to unlock the book without the need for the key, but that wouldn’t be nice, and he wanted to be on a good relationship with his sister.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Well with that information he had actually managed to crack a code blocking one of the many doors inside the building. Grum had installed them as a prevention mechanism, in case magic had been somehow blocked inside the building and he’d be forced to use physical methods to block things, such as that lock. Inside was an interesting room, it wasn’t like anything he had seen before.

The whole room had the sphere of a sphere and in the middle, there was some sort of pedestal with a flying glowing rock. Gabriel didn’t know at that time, but he had found one of the twelve batteries which fed the building mana periodically and could be quickly discharged in case Grum needed a big amount of mana somewhere and quick.

Talking about Grum, his plans were reaching their conclusion. The three remaining elves from the group, Elbian, the Magician and the elf which was treated like a slave were all walking together through his predictable and not so predictable traps, slowly accumulating speed, bravery and confidence as they got through more and more of his preplanned dangers. But they were close to getting to somewhere he had planted something nasty… Quite literally.

On the ground he had slowly put more and more plants in, making it seem like they were getting closer to the oldest parts of the building and as such, to the main control room. They were indeed getting closer, but after seeing and sensing that the plants did nothing, they didn’t mind them anymore, which was what the trap was all about.

But this wouldn’t be enough to trap them, so he had prepared a few traps. First of all, some basic arrows were shot, which didn’t cause any damage, but made the group more focused on their situation. After that a group of metal-plated stone golems came out and started attacking them, while also some zombies made from dead animals came out. They weren’t planned to make much damage, but to give out a strong smell, which they did, so that the adventurers’ senses were confused and had too many things to focus so that they only realized too late that their mana was getting sucked.

And so it happened. Elbian and his magician killed many zombies and managed to defeat two rock golems before realizing that something was wrong; the magician realized that he was losing mana too quickly, so he had to focus on the flow of his mana during the fight, making Elbian get hurt, but at least he found out what was taking his mana.

It was the grass! He quickly fired a few fire spells, hoping to quickly burn the plants and focused back on fighting, but the grass was hand-crafted to be resistant to most status effects and the only effective way to get rid of it was to separate it from its roots. The Magician didn’t know that of course and lost strength during the battle, not only his fighting one, but he also was barely standing, as mana is the main energy source of his body. Not long after, he fainted, leaving Elbian fighting against everything alone, but he realized it was hopeless.

He had to run away, leaving both his magician and the carrier elf behind. Konn, this elf, was actually about three rooms behind this fight and would only reach this place after a day, leaving time for Grum to clean up and make everything seem normal.

Konn kept his travels around the building until he heard some sobbing coming from a half-opened door. He had almost experienced no traps, so he suspected nothing, and he had nothing to suspect. Inside was Elbian, crying in a corner and from time to time saying things like “it’s over”, “my turn is next” and “why did I come here”.

Konn came over and tried to console him and he did. Not by his words, but by his presence. Elbian believed that if he used Konn as bait he’d be able to escape and even if he wouldn’t be accepted in his family and he had to live on the wilderness, he’d be alive and safer than in this building. But Elbian didn’t want to be remembered of what had happened here, so he didn’t go back from where he came from, instead he went the other way, which actually lead the two of them to the main room.

Elbian stayed put, in disbelief that it was so close, but quickly realized that he’d die. As a trained soldier he could fell killing intent and he had never felt one as strong as this one before. This was mainly because of two reasons.

First of all, he’d been nursed since he was little, so he never actually got to any dangerous enough situation that could endanger his life. Secondly, Grum had used the mana in the building, making it flow through him, to make his killing intent feel greater than what it actually was.

Feeling that the end was nigh, Elbian gave his last attempt to gain control over the building and make him teleport to the outskirts of it, but before he managed to climb even the first step of the pedestal where the controls were, his head fell to the floor. Konn was surprised and speechless, but after that he started screaming in fear.

Grum didn’t really want to kill Konn, he was the only “nice” elf that was inside the group, but he also didn’t want another follower nor someone giving away his details. So, he lightly tapped Konn’s forehead, transported him away from the enclosures of this building and left him under a tree. It was messy, but at least he had managed to stop everyone from stealing his stuff and get rid of all the elves without risking any leak of information.