The Land: Forging (Chaos Seeds Book 2)

CHAPTER 16

Richter came to with a knot on the back of his head and a throbbing headache. The only light was from the hole thirty feet above them and from Futen’s soft white glow. It was just enough to illuminate Yoshi’s angry face.

“Stupid gyoti!”

Richter looked over at him, “You kiss your Hearth Mother with that mouth?” Yoshi just started pacing and muttering under his breath. ‘Gyoti’ was sprite speak for irritating fool. Sion had called him that a time or two. “Is everyone okay?”

Daniella spoke up saying she was fine. Sion groaned and then questioned Richter’s parentage. He took that to mean that his Companion was fine. Yoshi’s pacing back and forth was coupled with a quiet monologue that had a fair amount of cursing. At the very least, it reassured Richter that the sword adept had avoided serious damage as well. Richter had lost eighteen points of health, but it could have been a lot worse. Where was Alma?

A gust of air right in his face answered that question. *Dumb*, she thought at him. He couldn’t really disagree with her statement.

Yoshi turned and verbalized his ire directly to Richter again, “You don’t just push buttons and activate magical locks. They can do anything! Do you realize there could have been spikes at the bottom of this pit?”

Richter nodded to show he had heard and then apologized. Yoshi just repeated, “Gyoti,” and then started muttering and pacing again. Richter looked around. A new prompt stated:

You have found: Timeworn Dungeon

“Futen, give us some more light.”

The grey orb increased its inner light until it was easy to see the details of their new surroundings. The prompt had said ‘timeworn.’ That meant the dungeon they were facing was anywhere between 1,000 and 10,000 years old. This was not going to be easy.

They hadn’t just fallen into a sinkhole; they had dropped into an antechamber of some sort. The floor was made of square blocks of brown stone. The walls were made of the same material, but the blocks were more rectangular. The surface of each was rough like sandpaper, and the stone had a porous appearance. Crumbling mortar filled the cracks between the blocks, leaving all surfaces pockmarked with holes. Along one wall was a doorway.

The double doors and the doorframe were made of black iron, and were almost completely corroded through in spots. Despite that, the door was solid and rang loudly when Richter rapped it with his fist. This of course earned him another glare from Yoshi, which he ignored. When he started examining the clear circle set in the center of the left door though, Yoshi half drew one of his swords. Richter decided there were other things to examine in the room.

Sion was looking at the wall opposite the door. Loose rocks were strewn around on the ground and a series of protruding bricks could be seen in a rising line along the wall. They almost looked like… stairs. Richter realized with a drop in his stomach that long ago a staircase had extended out of the wall. All that was left now though was the rubble on the ground. From the resigned look on Sion’s face, he had come to the same conclusion.

“We won’t be leaving this way,” Sion said.

They all just looked at each other. Richter pointed at the door, “We need to go forward then.”

“No,” Yoshi said sharply. “We are in this hole because you acted rashly. After the attack on your village, I would have thought you had learned your lesson.” Richter opened up his mouth to angrily retort, but the truth of Yoshi’s words and the guilt from his latest mistake combined to keep him silent. Yoshi continued, “There are cracks in the walls. With the climbing boost in our armor, we can reach the top.”

Richter looked at the walls doubtfully. He had seen Sion scamper up a tree like a squirrel, but he had yet to test the climbing properties of his own enhanced armor. He was also lugging a lot more weight around than the three and a half foot tall sprites, and even more then Yoshi with his half-human frame.

“We are here to beat this dungeon,” Richter said. “We can’t turn back at the first little bump in the road.”

“I am not saying we give up,” Yoshi said. “I am saying that we get to a safe place, ideally outside and thirty feet above our current position. Then we can approach this quest from a position of strength. At the very least, we can tie off a rope and climb back down. Then we would have a ready escape if we needed it.”

Richter was about to concede the point when Daniella shouted and pointed behind Yoshi. Faster than Richter could follow, the sprite had one of his swords out and slashed downward. The creature that had jumped at him from one of the holes in the wall fell in two pieces. Yoshi leaned over to look at it and called out, “More light.”

Futen was in another corner in the room and did not move. Sighing Richter said, “For the duration of this mission, do as they say, Futen.” Richter didn’t wait for the remnant, though, and cast Simple Light. A white ball of light appeared above his head.

The insect, because it was clearly somewhere along that particular branch of the genetic tree, was about one-foot long. The black carapace reminded Richter of a cockroach, but it was split into three distinct segments. The mouth was framed by serrated pincers and sharp teeth could be seen lining its jaws. It had six thin legs, and its blood was green. The fluid steamed slightly where it dripped out along with white viscera. Yoshi swore as soon as he saw it.

“Open the door!” The sword adept had drawn both blades. Once Sion and Daniella saw the bisected insect, they cursed as well and nocked arrows.

“Why?” Richter asked. “What’s going on?”

“Open the door!”

“What’s the problem?” Richter asked confused. This bug thing had been easy to kill.

“They are coming! Listen!”

All Richter heard was a low buzz. It was getting louder, though, and pretty quickly… and it didn’t sound like a buzz anymore. It sounded like… scratching… like maybe the scratching of countless sharp legs on stone…

Richter ran over to the door and held his Mark to the glass circle willing the portal open. The doors started opening inward, but then they ground to a halt. A squealing of gears created a head splitting racket. The horrible noise had to compete with the skittering and scratching sounds that were now horrifyingly loud. Then the holes in the wall exploded with the bodies of hundreds of the foot-long bugs. They squeezed through the small spaces like roaches through a small crack in the floor. They looked exactly the same as the last one, and they were swarming towards Richter and his comrades!

Richter threw his shoulders against the doors trying to get them open another few inches. It barely budged. Sion and Daniella were firing imbued arrows at the high speed of one per second, but it was like trying to stop a flood by throwing rocks at it. Yoshi stood in front of them ready to strike any that got too close. Alma helped by sending psychic pulses into the swarm, but the damned things jumped! She was having to weave in the air to avoid being brought down and torn apart. Richter threw his shoulder against the door again. It moved a bit but not enough! The gears were rusted shut. If only he could oil them, or g-!

Quickly, Richter cast Grease, not on floor but on the wall that held the door. He wasn’t even sure he could cast the spell vertically, but thankfully the familiar brown gravy colored slickness coated the wall and the hinges. Richter slammed his shoulder into the door again and felt it give a little. Another shove and it flew open, making him sprawl on the floor of the tunnel beyond. The loud boom of the door against the inside of wall, coupled with the impacts of the sprites imbued arrows in a confined space, robbed Richter of all of his hearing.

The sprites had rushed in after him, still firing back into the antechamber. Richter looked up confused, his bell rung from hitting his head on the ground. Yoshi shouted at him, but it sounded like a far-off sound heard while under water. The sword adept spoke again moving his mouth in an exaggerated fashion so Richter could read his lips. He still couldn’t get what Yoshi was saying. All of a sudden the sound came back like someone had unplugged his ears.

“DOOR,” Yoshi shouted for a third time.

Richter stumbled to his feet and put his back to the door trying to shove it closed. He was wondering why they hadn’t all been eaten by now, and saw that there were three factors contributing to their continued survival. One, Sion was holding a vial that radiated a bright white light. The radiance was forcing the insects back. The ones in back kept surging forward over their hesitant fellows to in turn be driven back by the light themselves. Two, Daniella’s was still firing imbued arrows into the swarm of bugs. Each strike momentarily cleared a section of the antechamber floor, but it would immediately be filled again with more of the giant insects. Three, the attention of the bugs was divided between trying to kill the party of adventures… and eating their own wounded. As Richter tried to yank the door closed, he had one thought on his mind. He really hoped he had been down on the ground less than thirty seconds. That was the duration of Grease, and if the spell ran out… well… then they were all about to become termite shit.

Both Yoshi and Richter strained against the door to no avail for several seconds, but once again, when it started moving, it slammed shut quickly. Several bugs were crushed between the doors and others were left on the same side as Richter and the others. They were saved from the majority of the ravaging horde of insects now locked outside in the antechamber, at least momentarily. The sprites immediately started dispatching any of the giant roaches locked on this side of the door. Before all the bugs killed, Richter Analyzed one.

Esurient Beetle. Lvl 2. Health 40. Mana 0. Stamina 50. Disposition: N/A. Esurient Beetles are a plague upon The Land. Also known as hell bugs, eaters, or ‘the scourge’, these voracious creatures perform only two actions, eating and reproducing. Highly territorial and aggressive, every sentient species no matter the alignment hates these creatures, and will kill them on sight. Entire regions have been lost to these swarms of esurient beetles. Fortunately, their queen has a short lifespan of one year, after which that particular nest will not resurge for a century. Unfortunately, that one year is enough to turn forests into wastelands.

God! If those things had been able to bear any of them to the ground, or Alma… Alma!

*Alma, where are you?*

*Here*, she thought to him soothingly. He looked up, and saw her clinging to an empty torch bracket set into the side of the tunnel. He exhaled in relief.

There were only a few eaters left on their side of the door, Yoshi having dispatched the rest. A thought occurred to Richter. “Wait,” he called out. The sprites pulled back from the five insects remaining insects.

“What?” Yoshi asked irritated. The bugs were clustered in a corner gnashing their serrated teeth in anger, but not willing to rush the dangerous sprites.

*Stun them*, Richter thought.

Alma swooped to the corner where the bugs were and let loose a psi blast. The bugs fell over in a stupor. It appeared her attack worked well on the simple creatures. Thank Abrams and Whedon for small favors.

“Disable them, but don’t kill them if you can help it,” he said to the sprites. It was a relatively simple matter for them to cut the eaters’ legs off while they were disabled. By the time the bugs could respond, their mobility was gone. Richter consumed a Potion of Clarity, and then looked up at Alma. Curious what would happen he offered her a Potion of Clarity as well. She took the end of the vial in her mouth, and then put her head back letting the potion slide down her throat. Richter gave a vicious smile and then said, “Drain them.”

The dragonling let loose an excited cry and pounced on the first eater. Richter cast Soul Trap on each in turn. She took less than a minute before moving on to the next. As she finished each, a ribbon of multicolored light flew into his Bag of Holding. While he watched her kill the beetles, Richter re-enabled his prompts showing experience from kills. He had disabled it soon after coming to The Land because it was too distracting. With each kill, though, his experience went up by 75-90 depending on the beetle’s level not including the 25% boost that the Potion of Clarity gave. He also received a second prompt because of his familiar’s Brain Drain ability. Depending on the level of eaters that Alma consumed he would get between 30 or 80 experience as well. The awesome news was that the experience gained from Brain Drain was increased by his potion as well! True, these monsters were low level, and didn’t give much experience, but it boded well for the future! He disabled the experience prompts again before he forgot. Those things were seriously distracting and cluttered his notification log.

While he was waiting, he also looked at the backlog of experience prompts from the frantic fight with the eaters. Just like the battle with the bugbears, it seemed that he got experience even from the sprites kills. A quick question revealed that the sprites got experience from his kills as well. Yoshi explained that in group battles everyone that contributed to a kill would get some decreased experience. The more people involved, the less the individual experience each person got. Up to a party of five, though, everyone got an equal and unreduced level of experience from completed quests. It seemed The Land followed old D&D rules. Most people accepted that the ideal party size was four, but you always made a party of five. That way if someone had some bad lo mein, and subsequently was spraying dark miso soup out of their bottom, you were still ready to rock with the four who made it to your mom’s garage.

Richter had been slightly concerned that the sprites would have a problem with what Alma was doing, but they just looked curious. Yoshi asked about what was happening, and when Richter explained he just nodded in agreement, “Any opportunity to get stronger should be taken.” It was clear he was still irritated with Richter from the way he spoke, though.

Once Alma was done, they took stock of their surroundings. Sion’s bottle of Pure Light had gone out, and if not for Futen, there would be no light in the subterranean tunnel. The stone of the hallway was different from the antechamber. It was grey slate and the blocks were expertly laid together. Most importantly there were no holes in the walls. After seeing the eaters speed out of holes that should have been too small to accommodate their bodies no less, it was a relief to know that they wouldn’t be swarmed from all directions. The tunnel led on into the darkness. Futen’s light only extended about twenty yards, past that nothing could be seen.

Alma had perched back on his shoulders when she was finished killing the eaters. Yoshi was cleaning his blades, and Sion and Daniella were shouldering their bows and checking their arrows. Other than the quiet sounds the four of them were making, the tunnel was as still and quiet as the grave.

“Well how do we get out of there?” Yoshi asked.

It was quiet for a moment until Richter realized the question was directed at him.

“How should I know?” he asked.

“That internal map that you have been bragging about,” Yoshi said sharply. “Find us a way out.”

“It only works on places that I’ve already been.”

“Only works on where you’ve already been? Not where you are going?” Yoshi asked putting emphasis on the last word. “You do know that’s the exact OPPOSITE of the purpose of a map, right?”

“Oh! Is my magic map not good enough for you?” Richter asked loudly. Not giving Yoshi a chance to respond, “Well let me just check and see if it CAN tell us anything. Looking, looking, looking. Wait! I was wrong! It does say something. Yup. It says right here that we’re fucked. Wait, let me check again. Yup! We’re fucked!”

Before Richter and Yoshi started wailing on each other, Daniella pulled the sword adept away, whispering urgently to him. Richter walked up to Sion, who was checking his quiver.

“What is wrong with that guy?” Richter asked.

“Well,” Sion replied, “he’s just kind of in a bad mood. Probably due to falling down a pit, then nearly being eaten, and now being buried alive.”

Richter was quiet for a moment, “Well yeah! But what’s his problem with me?”

“Well,” Sion said again, “all of that happened because you activated whatever was set into that stone.”

Richter was quiet a bit longer this time, “Yeah well, that’s still no reason for him to be a total twat!”

Sion sighed, “I don’t know what that means, buuuuttt, I’m guessing if there were reasons to be a… total twat, then being dropped down a pit, almost being eaten alive, and then being trapped in an underground tunnel, would all be pretty good reasons.”

Richter chewed on Sion’s words and realized his Companion might have had a point. He looked over at Yoshi. “Hey Yoshi, I feel… partly responsible for all of this. I want to apologize.”

The adept looked at him with squinted eyes, and then half raised one hand. He did something peculiar with his fingers though, with only the second and fourth ones extended. As soon as he made the gesture, Daniella grabbed it and pulled it back down.

Richter looked at Sion, “What did that mean?”

Sion looked back and forth between the two men, “Uhhhh, it means he accepts your apology.” He quickly redirected Richter’s attention from Yoshi’s blatant insult, “If we are going to be trapped in here long, then we might be in trouble. I just used a third of my arrows,” Sion said.

Daniella chimed in to help with the distraction. Walking over, she said, “I used a bit less, but if we run into more hell bugs, my arrows will deplete quickly.”

Richter looked at the two sprites, quite sure that hand gesture did not mean ‘I accept your apology,’ but seeing Yoshi leaning against the tunnel wall clearly pissed, he decided to let it go. This was at least partly his fault after all.

“Not a problem,” Richter said. “I asked Hisako to make me more sprite arrows before we left. She went a bit overboard.” Richter pulled out one of the bundles Hisako had left for him near the Great Seal. Each of the three bundles contained hundreds of arrows. The sprites replenished their stores and Richter put the rest of the arrows back into his Bag. Richter also took the time to give them ten Potions of Clarity each. Yoshi scowled initially, saying he could not afford them, and despite Richter’s insistence he continued to refuse. When Richter repeated Yoshi’s own words about not missing opportunities to get stronger though, he finally accepted.

“So those things were eaters?” Richter asked.

“I can’t believe there is a nest in the Forest,” Yoshi spat. “I still remember fighting to clear the last nest forty years ago. They shouldn’t be back for at least another fifty or sixty years! We lost good sprites during that fight,” he said in a regretful tone. “This is no longer about your quest, Lord Richter. We need to find the nest, and destroy it. Will you help?”

You have been offered a Quest: Scourge the Scourge I. Yoshi has just discovered that the Forest has an infestation of hell bugs. He has made it clear that finding the nest is more important that anything. He wants your help. Not accepting will cause Yoshi to leave the party and decrease your reputation with him. Yes or No?

Like there was really a choice, he thought. “Okay, how do we start?” Richter asked.

Yoshi looked around at the hallway that contained them and the iron door behind them. He made eye contact with Richter, “We go forward.”

Remembering what had happened when unlocking his first power, he told Futen to move ahead of them and scan for traps. The remnant moved ten yards ahead of them and waited. When they started walking after him, the grey orb matched their pace, staying in front. Richter took lead, followed by Sion and Daniella who had arrows nocked to their bows, and Yoshi brought up the rear.

While they were walking, Richter accessed his inventory. All of the quartz soul stones Gloran had given him had taken up only one slot in his Bag of Holding, each type of larger soul stone also took up one slot with a number next to it to show how many there were of that type. The five soul stones holding the spirits of the hell bugs, though, now took up one slot each. These stones had a pulsating radiance at their center. Richter pulled one out of his inventory and looked at it. The amber jewel did indeed have an undulating spherical light in its heart, that showed a rainbow of colors, changing from second to second. The tingling feeling was still there, but there was also now a slight sensation of warmth. He put it away.

The silence in the tunnel was deafening. The air had adopted a progressively worsening ‘stale’ smell as they went further in. Richter could only guess that opening the iron door had let in the first fresh air this dungeon had seen in ages.

The four party members walked for at least half a day. The tunnel bent and zigzagged. Occasionally it even led back up for short stints. The actual features of the hallway they walked through, remained uniform, simple grey blocks of closely fitted stone. It was clear that they were slowly being led deeper into the earth.

To stave off boredom, Richter withdrew one of the soul stones containing an eater’s soul. He also took out the Wand of Dark Bolts. First, he simply held the glowing jewel next to the wand, but nothing happened. He left them pressed together for a full minute, but unfortunately, it still didn’t yield a positive result. Next he examined each item, but it just gave the basic stats of each separately. The wand had recharged another five shots in the past day or so. Richter was getting frustrated, but then he remembered Gloran told him to ‘will it.’ He placed the two items together again and imagined the power in the soul stone flowing into the wand. A prompt came up:

Do you wish to recharge the Wand of Dark Bolts with the Basic Soul stone? Yes or No?

Richter chose ‘Yes.’

The same ribbon of rainbow light that appeared when a spirit was captured, now flowed out of the soul stone and into the wand. The gem lost its inner light and then fractured. Richter was left holding a few pieces of broken amber in his hand. He put them away, not wanting to just leave them on the floor of the tunnel. Another prompt appeared:

Congratulations! You have learned the skill: Enchanting. The path of the enchanter is to make the wondrous out of the mundane. You can now add spells to items to greatly increase their strength.

Awesome, Richter thought. The soul stone had added another eleven charges. He was about to use another soul stone when he realized that the tunnel had ended. Directly across from the passage they were in, on the other side of the open area, was an archway made of the same grey stone that formed the hallway. Set into the archway was a large door made of overlapping bands of metal. Four other doors were randomly set into the walls. One appeared to be made completely of long bones, like femurs. Another was made of red iron with no handle or apparent means of opening it. A third was black wood with glowing silver sigils carved into the frame. The fourth was simply a hatch. It looked like a dome, and it bowed outward in the direction of the room. It had a cross-shaped indentation set directly in the center of the dome, but no apparent handle. What concerned Richter, was that it was set two feet off the ground, but was only three feet in diameter. Good god, don’t let the passageway on the other side be a small tunnel, Richter thought. He wasn’t afraid of small spaces per se, he just heavily preferred NOT to be in one.

All of these doors were definitely weird, but everyone in the party was happy to have a change from the tunnel. Richter was about a step into the room when he had a strange feeling. It could only be described as a ‘wrongness.’ He sharply snapped his arm up, hand flat, to stop the sprites behind him. He immediately heard the creaks of Sion and Daniella drawing their bows taut, and the shing of Yoshi drawing his blades. He didn’t know what had alarmed him exactly, but he knew on an instinctual animal level that something in the ‘bad’ category of things would happen if he walked into the room.

Despite being sure of his feeling, he just didn’t see anything. He scanned the room, but nothing jumped out at him. No giant spiders, no robots with laser blasters, and no womp rats. He looked at his familiar.

*Alma, do you feel anyone in the room?*

*No*, she thought back.

Well at least there is that, Richter thought. She had been able to detect those bugbears even though they were hidden by magic. He guessed psychic vibrations were hard to hide, or at least common concealment spells were not aimed at hiding them. That still left the question of what was going on, though. The feeling had not abated.

He expanded his other senses, but still felt nothing. He stared at the walls, the ceiling, the floor… Was that a red glow? He knelt down and examined the floor of the room closely. Unlike the slate block floor of the hallway, the floor of the chamber in front of them was an irregular pattern of shapes: circles, diamonds, rectangles, and triangles. They interlocked with one another in a seemingly haphazard manner. From his lower vantage, he didn’t see the red glow, but his feeling of unease increased. Letting his eyes relax, he gazed at the floor. When he saw the red again, he was able to focus upon it this time. The closest circle had a superimposed red glow. A prompt appeared:

You have found: Level 3 trap.

Congratulations! You have learned the skill: Pierce the Veil. The Land is full of hidden secrets. Traps to snare the unwary, hidden treasures, booty: both pirate and otherwise. From this moment on, you will be able to find that which others have concealed.

Casting his gaze wider, he looked at the other nearby shapes and with close attention, all of the circles near him began to glow red.

“Relax,” he said to the sprites. “There aren’t any enemies here, but the floor is full of traps.”

Yoshi looked at him, “Who trained you in trap detection?”

“No one,” Richter replied. He tapped one of the rings he was wearing. “It’s called the Ring of Hidden Dangers. It increases my likelihood of detecting traps. The real question is,” he said looking at Futen, “why didn’t you warn us about the traps?”

“The trigger was not magical in nature, my Lord. I have no skill in detecting this type of trap.”

Why doesn’t everything always just work out for me? Richter wailed silently. So far only the circles were glowing, but that still made the floor a minefield. It would take careful footwork to avoid the traps, and one misstep would… well, he had no idea what it would do, but he was pretty sure that it would both suck and blow.

“So what do you think the traps do?” Sion asked.

“Let’s find out,” Richter said. He tossed a small pebble from the tunnel floor towards the other side of the room. It bounced once then lay still. Yoshi reached out a hand to stop him, but Richter’s impulsive action caught him by surprise.

Nothing happened. Richter looked at Yoshi’s irritated expression. “Maybe the traps are duds,” he said.

A loud whoosh heralded a foot-high gout of black flame extending vertically up from the floor in the exact spot that the pebble had first hit the floor. At the same time, a flash of steel showed at the final resting place of the stone. Three different razor wire hoops shot up from the floor crisscrossing each other at ankle height. Both traps started and ended in the space of a second before disappearing completely. The only evidence that anything had happened was a lingering smell of burnt ozone.

“Fuuuuck meee,” Richter said slowly, backpedaling away from the dangerous room. What was truly terrifying was that neither of those traps seemed designed to kill. They would just remove a portion of a leg. Then you would fall back on even more traps, and… yeah, definitely in the ‘bad’ category of things. “I thought you said the traps weren’t magical Futen! Since when is black flame not magical?”

“I said the trigger wasn’t magical, my Lord.”

“Greeaat,” Richter said.

“Gyoti,” was all Richter heard before a hand slapped the back of his head. Hard. “What did I tell you about just pushing buttons!”

Richter was wired from everything that had been happening, and the disrespect from the sword adept pushed him over the edge. He took a swing at the sword adept who dodged under the blow. The situation would have grown more out of control if not for Daniella.

“Enough! Mother Forest! The Hearth Mother was right!” the female sprite shouted. “There isn’t a brain among you! Lord Richter, Yoshi was right. You had NO idea what those traps would have done. It could have triggered something that would hurt us even though we are still in the tunnel. And you,” she said pointing at finger in Yoshi’s face, “are not making a bad situation any better. Gyoti or not, Lord Richter is the Master of these lands, and the Hearth Mother sent you to assist him. Now can you stop bickering like old mothers and act like men? I can show you how if you need me to!”

Richter and Yoshi glared at each other, but by the end of Daniella’s verbal barrage, Richter was looking down in shame. Even Yoshi looked a bit sheepish. Richter looked back up at Daniella’s fierce expression, and then at Sion. His Companion was standing behind her, clearly trying not to laugh. Little bastard, Richter thought. He looked back at Yoshi. He couldn’t find it inside himself to apologize just for striking back, but Daniella was right. It had been a bone head move. He nodded at the half-human. Yoshi gave a noncommittal grunt in return. Richter decided it was as much bro love as he was going to get. He turned his attention back to floor.

“All of the circles that are close by are rigged. I’m assuming they all are, so what do we do here?”

Yoshi pulled out two small spikes of metal. One had a small hook at the end. The other undulated like a sine wave at the end. The opposing ends of both spikes were sharpened like needles. “We disarm them. Point out the closest trap. Your skill to detect it might be more advanced than mine.”

Richter showed him. The sword adept knelt down to examine it. After a few seconds, he said, “I see it.” His face was only inches away, but he never directly passed any part of his body directly over it. Yoshi looked at it, and then he looked at it, and then he looked at it. After twenty minutes, the other sprites sat down in the tunnel. After forty minutes, Richter joined them and broke out some hard rations from his Bag and handed them to Sion and Daniella. Hours passed.

Sion was in the middle of one of his ‘a dwarf, a goblin, and an elf’ walk into a bar jokes when Yoshi called out to get their attention and then waved them over. Richter was hoping it meant they could start moving again, but he really had wanted to know why the dwarf had looked so triumphant and why the goblin’s butt was sore.

“You figured it out?” he asked Yoshi. The sprite told him to kneel down and then pointed to a small square to the side of the circle he had been studying.

“The release mechanism is here,” Yoshi said pointing at the square. “That’s why it took me so long. I was examining the circle meticulously, but couldn’t find any way to disarm it. Then it occurred to me that if one symbol triggered the trap, maybe another disarmed it. Watch.” Yoshi reversed his two tools, pointing the needle like ends of both picks downward. He placed them at opposite corners of the square. They slipped into barely perceptible holes. He pushed both down, and with a soft click, one side of the circle popped up. Yoshi carefully pried it up further, and a mechanism could be seen underneath. A bar was underneath the circle, and it was connected to a small spring. That was in turn connected to a bar of metal which disappeared down into the floor past the point that Richter could see. With a grunt of satisfaction, Yoshi used the hook end of one of his tools and detached the spring from the lever that was apparently the trigger for the trap. He then put the circle back into the floor and stood. He cracked his neck and then arched his back, stiff from squatting for such a long period of time.

“Is it disarmed?” Sion asked.

Yoshi waved Sion closer, and then put a hand around the younger sprite’s shoulders once they were standing next to one another. The adept looked at Sion and said, “What do you think?” At the same time that he asked the question, he stomped down on the circle.

Sion shouted in alarm and leapt back. Yoshi just stood there with a manic grin on his face.

“So, are like, ALL sprites assholes?” Richter asked his heart racing. Yoshi just chuckled while Sion cursed under his breath.

Richter looked at the sword adept, “Okay. So I’m glad that you’re having a good time, and that you disarmed that one trap, but it took you an hour.” He looked out at the sea of small shapes that comprised the floor of the large room in front of them.

“That’s why I’m going to need your help. Did you follow what I did?”

Richter checked his prompts and saw:

Congratulations! You have learned the subskill: Trap Disarm. You have learned how to disable the mechanism of traps. Through careful application of your new subskill, you can make the world a safer place. This is a subskill of Traps. As you have learned this subskill, you have also learned the skill Traps.

Congratulations! You have learned the skill: Traps. You can set traps that will harm unwary enemies, but use caution lest you harm the innocent as well.

“I guess I did,” Richter said. “Let’s get to work.” Yoshi handed him a pair of lock picks.

You have received: Lock picks. Durability 5/5. Item class: Common. Quality: Average. Weight 0.01 kg.

Before getting started, Richter pulled out and activated his Wand of Magic Illumination. The blue beam of light didn’t show anything on the floor though, thankfully. Even with having been shown how to disarm the traps, it still took Richter at least fifteen minutes to disarm the next one. Unfortunately, the shape that hid the disarming holes varied. The release mechanism that Richter found was under a triangle. The only hint seemed to be that it needed to be near the circle. One of his picks also got caught when trying to withdraw it because Richter was moving too fast. The durability decreased by one. When he asked Yoshi if he had any more picks, the sprite told him no and called him a gyoti. Richter thought about snapping back but decided distracting Yoshi while he was disarming deadly traps was a bad idea. At least while Richter was still working next to him, that is.

Richter realized he would have to slow down even farther. If he messed up too many times, half of their total number of lock picks would be gone. He looked out at the hundreds, no thousands, of small circles set into the floor and sighed. He got back to work. Hours passed as they slowly made their way across the floor. The good news was that Richter got a small amount of experience for each trap that was disarmed. His skills with Pierce the Veil, Traps, and Trap Disarm improved as well.

Congratulations! You have reached skill level 2 in Pierce the Veil. +1 to perception.

Congratulations! You have reached skill level 3 in Pierce the Veil. +1 to perception.

Congratulations! You have reached skill level 4 in Pierce the Veil. +1 to perception.

Congratulations! You have reached skill level 5 in Pierce the Veil. +1 to perception.

Congratulations! You have reached skill level 6 in Pierce the Veil. +1 to perception.

Congratulations! You have reached skill level 2 in Traps. All traps 2% more effective.

Congratulations! You have reached skill level 3 in Traps. All traps 2% more effective.

Congratulations! You have reached skill level 4 in Traps. All traps 2% more effective

Congratulations! You have reached skill level 2 in Trap Disarm. +2% more likely to disarm trap.

Congratulations! You have reached skill level 3 in Trap Disarm. +2% more likely to disarm trap.

Congratulations! You have reached skill level 4 in Trap Disarm. +2% more likely to disarm trap.

Richter could only reason that Pierce the Veil leveled faster than the other two because he was using that skill directly, whereas all of the points going towards Traps were actually coming indirectly from leveling its subskill, Trap Disarm. It meant his Trap Disarm skill might have risen higher, but its growth was limited by the fact that subskills could never be a higher level than their main skill. He thought about examining the logs to see exactly how much his Traps skill leveled in proportion to his Trap Disarm skill but then decided that would be about as interesting as watching paint dry. He got back to work.

As they had moved deeper into the room the level of the traps had increased as well. This was initially a problem because the mechanism was more complex, but Yoshi was again able to show him what to do. After that, it was just back to rinse and repeat. The good news was that the higher level traps gave a commensurate higher level experience and seemed to level his skills faster.

The hours of focus required to get to the middle of the room had taken their toll. Richter was mentally fatigued. His actions were getting sloppier as well, and he had fumbled disarming another trap. Thankfully he didn’t trigger the trap, but it did remove another point of durability from his other lock pick. He told Yoshi that he thought they should rest. He had expected some ‘Goonies never say die nonsense’ from the sword adept, but instead the swordsman agreed. At seeing Richter’s confused expression, he said, “There is no honor in pushing through a bad position.”

As they were walking back to the hallway, Richter muttered, “Yeah, that’s why I always put their legs in the air.”