"You two done being sick to your stomachs yet?" I hissed at them, keeping my voice low.
Noah gave me a thumbs up, and Adhara nodded shakily.
"Good enough. Ok Adhara, move up. Check for traps." I said. I could tell she bristled from me commanding her, but she also knew better than to blow her cover. There was a small, evil part of me that loved bossing these proud knights around, but I knew better than to push it.
I had no idea how long I was going to have to work with these people, and antagonizing them sounded fun; it wasn't wise to have too many people who were annoyed at me to have access to my person.
Adhara crept along the corridor, crouched low. She stopped every couple of feet to check for trip lines or floor triggers. I had gotten so used to how deftly Cori did it, because it was almost painful to watch Adhara work. She moved fluidly, sure, but it was definitely the grace of a warrior and not a dungeoneer. Caution was understandable, but it was slow.
I wanted to snap at her to pick up the pace, but I did not doubt that I would regret it.
Noah was behind me, and I could feel he was getting antsy.
"Calm down, Scarletti. We're not likely to run into anything yet." I whispered to him.
"How do you deal with these narrow spaces like this? Especially with the mana and the darkness? I feel trapped!" He replied, a tinge of nervousness coloring his words.
"You either get used to it, you quit, or it breaks you, I guess. I was pretty nervous my first time, too, but don't worry. This is simulated, so we don't have to worry about getting killed or trapped. If it gets too much for you, we can end it." I explained. I remembered my first time jitters well enough, and as much as I wanted to roll my eyes at these knights, who were highly skilled, being nervous, dungeon delving really was a different skill from monster hunting.
"Thanks. I'm used to having more places to dodge or hide if needed. Most of our fighting as knights is in the open." He explained, after gulping nervously.
Adhara said something harsh in a language I didn't understand. I started to ask her what the problem was, but the sudden sound of ticking clockwork told me all I needed to know.
She missed a trap. I caught a sudden whiff of foul air and knew exactly what she triggered.
"Down!" I shouted, shoving Noah to the ground. Adhara, quick as lightning, dropped as well as gouts of fire roared overhead. I could feel the heat on the back of my head as it continued, for what felt like far too long. The heat was high, too. That was too hot for newbies.
I then remembered that my companions were supposed to be guild dungeoneers. They should be able to handle this at their point in their fake careers. I was starting to increasingly realize how stupid of a cover story this was for them.
"Are they trying to kill us?" Adhara hissed angrily.
"This is pretty basic-level stuff. For 'guild dungeoneers,' this should be old hat." I snapped back at her. "Do you all seriously never deal with traps or anything like this?"
"No, we don't deal with stuff like this! Most monsters don't have clockwork flamethrowers hiding in their walls!" Noah replied.
"And what about the criminals and rogues you have to bring in?" I asked, genuinely curious this time.
"Their booby traps tend to be a bit simpler. They'd rather make you dead quickly than roast you alive!"
"Huh. You'd think there'd be more traps for criminals. Live and learn, I guess." I said and waited out the fire.
Soon enough, it stopped. I took a sniff of the air.
"Ok, the fuel for that one is empty," I said, standing up.
"How can you tell?" Adhara asked, dusting herself off, despite the floor being completely clean.
"If there was any left, there'd still be some gas smell, but it's all burned off. So unless there's more than one flame trap in this corridor, we're fine." I shrugged as I helped Noah to his feet. Adhara sniffed the air herself and shrugged.
"I'm going to trust you on this. What's next after surviving a trap?" The Bastetian asked, her tail whipping slightly.
"We keep going. There's going to be more traps as we go, so letting one shake us is just not professional. Let's keep it moving." I said firmly, and gestured down the corridor.
As we moved slowly, Adhara checking even more carefully, Noah tapped my shoulder.
"Is this a normal pace? We seem to be going really slowly. I know I'm not used to dungeons, but I always assumed it would go a lot like clearing a fortress. Kicking in doors, fighting beasties, and so on." He asked.
"We're going slower than normal, which isn't ideal. But yeah, dungeoneering is slow going sometimes. You've got to be careful, and being careful takes time. It's slow until it's not. I'd rather take my time than be tired when a monster shows up." I explained.
And almost as if one queue, I heard scraping of metal on stone ahead of us, just around the bend.
"And there's our monster. Alright, Adhara, let's switch positions." I ordered, and then dealt with the two awkwardly swapping. This was something my crew had trained for extensively. Fast swapping your order in the tunnels was crucial, as well as positioning so you can attack around each other.
I was appreciating how well we all worked together more and more. And in turn, I was regretting our earlier argument too. Gods above and below, I needed to figure out how to patch things up.
Ugh, why were friendships so hard!
My attention was drawn back to the present by the hard crack of a hammer against bone. Noah had already laid into the monster, a skeletal warrior it seemed. Pretty basic, but it was alone at least.
Skeletons typically moved in packs, for reasons that were still mysterious, but occasionally you ran into solo ones, like this bony fellow we were handling. I had to give Noah this; he was very good at dealing with skeletons. Hammers seemed to be ideal for dealing with them.
We continued thus for quite a while. Traps, skeleton, trap, more skeletons. It felt very rote and a little boring for me. Adhara seemed to be getting increasingly annoyed as there hadn't been much fighting for her to do. I understood completely. Noah had been doing the bulk of the work, and I wasn't able to figure out a good way to adapt my style to his.
I started to realize that this is where that saying about dungeon school parties were for life comes from. You spend so long with your regular group, getting used to their skills, that you're not sure how to work with others.
And I knew that was going to be a problem when I left for my internship, because gods above knew if I was going to work with my friends. I had begun to lean on them so much that I was off-center now.
Something to consider, I guess. The key to survival was adaptation, and I think I had slacked off on that.
We continued our nearly glacial pace, this time with me assisting Adhara with traps, something I'm not the best at. As we proceeded, the corridors turned constantly to the left, with nearly no side rooms, which was something I was a bit disappointed by. Side rooms sometimes had good loot and were good places to hole up for safety in a pinch while the party caught its breath.
The traps had begun to thin out, and the skeleton attacks were ramping up steadily. There were even a few archers added in, which gave me a good excuse to use my barrier spells.
Eventually, we came to a larger room, with a large, shining red gem in the middle on a pedestal. The room itself was as bog standard as bog standard could get, but it was a simulator dungeon, so I didn't expect much.
"That's the treasure we're supposed to grab?" Adhara asked, her tone indicating that she was finally glad to be nearly done with all this.
"Oh, I hope so. I need a break." Noah said, catching his breath. He had really done the greater share of the fighting on our way here, which I was fine with. This was my time to shine."
"That's it. Now comes the fun part. We get to figure out if this is a puzzle, a trap, or a boss trigger type of treasure." I said, rubbing my hands together with delight.
"Why are you excited about this?" Noah asked incredulously.
"I like puzzles, traps for treasure rooms are usually fun and complicated, so it's like an aggressive puzzle, and if it's a boss, I get to let loose and fight something for real. It's a three-way win for me!" I said, only partially being truthful.
It wasn't that long ago that I hated puzzles and the like. I thought of them as annoying at best, and horrifying at worst. But you do them enough, and you start to see the fun in them. It made a nice change from fighting and regular traps, which made up an unfortunately large amount of dungeon exploring.
I especially enjoy the final rooms of dungeons. The tunnels and side room stuff wasn't really that exciting to me, but the final rooms were where the fun happens. Admittedly, that's usually where stuff tends to go weirdly wrong for me, like that time I had a dungeon core latch onto my very soul, but that was neither here nor there in the grand scheme of things.
"Alright then, Marchesi. Have at. I've had enough messing with mechanisms today." Adhara said with a long-suffering sigh.
"Thank you very much!" I said, moving closer to the pedestal, before crouching down to get a good look at it.
It was very simple, a weight-based trigger, set to go off if the gemstone was moved. Classic. Classic was good. Predictable.
I decided to take my time looking at it, not only to rub in the fact I was more knowledgeable than they, a petty gesture I know, but to give Noah some time to catch his breath. The dungeon mana was hitting him hard, and it was making his breathing ragged. He was going to need a good long soak in the baths.
As I was examining it, and making an overly dramatic show of it for that matter, I noticed something a bit off from a normal pedestal. Pedestals don't typically have runes at the bottom of the section on which the gem rested. Especially the ones in the simulator. That was curious.
The parts of a simulator dungeon were modular, so you never really ran into anything too unusual. Runes were unusual. I had never seen runes in any capacity in a simulator run at all. I doubt Kugarth or Craw saw these during setup either, as they were in a weird spot. I only noticed them because I was being annoyingly thorough. I had some knowledge of runes; it came with the territory of being a sword-witch, but these I didn't really recognize, at least not in the way they were being used.
Put simply, I recognized the letters, but not the grammar.
"Either of you know anything about runes?" I asked.
"I've got some knowledge, yes," Adhara answered.
"Could you take a look at these?" I pointed at the underside of the pedestal stand.
Adhara sighed and crouched down next to me. She looked at them and whispered a few things under her breath for a moment in a language I didn't quite understand.
"Huh. That's odd." She said, finally.
"Odd good or odd bad?" I asked.
"It's a silence spell. Kind of? It blocks all sound out of a set area, which seems to be the distance of this room. We used to use stuff like this to set up hiding spots while waiting for monsters, but so we could still communicate." She furrowed her brow a bit and stared.
"So if this goes off, no one would hear us?" I asked, a gnawing suspicion growing in my gut, keeping my voice low.
"Exactly. Is this normal for simulated dungeons?" Adhara asked, and I could tell she was getting suspicious, too.
"Absolutely not. Too hard to dial back if needed." I added.
"This is not great, then. Someone rigged a real trap, and not just one to test our skills. Who else knew about this other than the instructors, Farina, the headmaster, you know what, never mind. Too many variables right now. Suggestions?" The bastetian asked, her ears flat against her head. She was nervous. I was also nervous.
I gulped.
"There's an old dungeoneering saying that I don't care much for, but it might apply to this situation," I said.
"And that is?"
"The best way to disarm a magical trap is to trip the trap," I said with a shrug and a grimace.
"That is stupid advice. Mindbogglingly stupid in fact." Adhara palmed her face with a groan.
"Fighting monsters in a hole in the ground is not the career for people who are smart. Let's get this over with, and then play it by ear." I said, standing up, shoving the gemstone off the pedestal, and drawing my sword.
Sometimes the best plan was no plan at all.
