“Was that an <Steam cannon?>” I ended up blurting out.

“Probably, ranged attack spells that folks like us can use are very rare.” Timotei answers my question “If you had the instructions for it and they took them… it’s not hard to see what happened”

“What do we have to look out for?” Aurora quickly asks.

“You have to out your hand like this to use it” I point at the wall while also pointing my thumb upwards “And the spell takes a few seconds to construct, and must be fired immediately after that, or it will explode.”

“Anything else?” Timotei asks “It is a literal Steam projectile, so it’s not only a blunt attack, but it will also scald you if it does hit, it’s also very fast moving.”

“Very well, let’s go.” Timotei declares, and we leave the dungeon.

*Bang! * *Bang! * *Bang! *

We are walking on a hallway and the sounds of the small explosions keep appearing on the background, we find a room in a short amount of time, these hallways are surprisingly long, the room seems to be used for storage, we find some of our things, but besides that there’s nothing very valuable here.

Aurora finds her chainmail bikini. Timotei found his pants and spear. Antonia also finds most of her clothes, these are a red leotard, a skirt, and her oversized leather jacket, I find my clothes and the <Milk engine>, it still has cheese in it.

We all quickly dress up.

 “my <Cranberry beret> is missing, it can increase the speed and reaction time of anyone who is wearing it, but other than that I should be able to fight at full strength!” Antonia then slaps her thigh and makes a confident face “These are the only weapons I need!”

“I have my <Absolute Terror Scales>, I can make a barrier with that has great defense, but it destroys any other clothes I wear. But my <Executioner blade> is missing, it’s a massive sword, extremely heavy too” Aurora makes a proud face “it also greatly increases the user’s physical strength, but it sucks the blood of the wielder.” She then makes a cool pose "If I have the two of them I can even beat people with two patterns! and maybe even 3!"

“I didn’t bring any offensive artifacts.” I say honestly. “This pouch is called <Milk engine>, it turns milk into cheese and generates ether during the process. But my other artifact <Ice to see you> is missing, it’s a bucket that can keep any liquid cool for 3 days, but absorbs it afterwards”

“How mundane” Aurora is showing a teasing smile, then she turns to Timotei “And what about you?”

“I found all my belongings here, and this is a common spear too.” He crosses his arms “I don’t have any artifacts, they’re not something you can just find laying around.”

“That should be everything here! right?” Antonia seems more relaxed now that everyone is dressed “Then let’s get moving!”

 

* * *

 

The loud bangs of the <Steam cannon> can still be heard in the distance, but we haven’t seen anybody yet, this fucking scares me, at first I was relatively calm since I had a bunch of strong people at my side, and I even had a really nice view if I ignored Timotei, but now everybody is on edge, and that is putting me even more on edge! This suspense is killing me!

We keep walking, until we see a two different hallways, one on front and one to the right.

“What do we do now?” I ask, and Aurora responds, “Maybe we should split off?”

“Absolutely not!” Timotei completely rejects the idea “Most of you can’t fight at full power since you don’t have your artifacts. But even if you did, we’d just be cutting into our battle power for a marginal gain.”

“I agree! We need to stay together in order to leave this place as soon as possible!” Antonia also chimes in.

“Alright, so right or front one?” Aurora doesn’t persist and moves on.

“I feel the right one will be the right path to take! Let’s go that way!” Antonia tries to lighten the mood.

I chuckle and say, “That’s fine with me” and Timotei also responds “Very well, let’s take the right hallway”

 

***

 

We keep walking and we find ourselves in a large room with some tables and even more chairs, there’s also a door on the other side Aurora moves to the center of the room and looks around “They must eat here”. Timotei moves near her, and Antonia is also looking around, while I’m standing near the door where we came in.

However, just at that moment, two men come from the other door.

“Ah fuck! Some of the prisoners have also escaped!”

The two men immediately point their fingers at us, Aurora recognizes this, and orange octagons immediately appear and start nesting inside one another, until they form an octagon that’s as tall as she is.

The men took 3 seconds to build their <Steam cannon>s, and fire them, but Aurora’s barrier manages to stop the projectiles without much trouble, I immediately start building my own <Steam cannon>, and Antonia starts closing the distance rapidly between her and one of the men.

I fire my own projectile and Antonia kicks one of the men in the gut and he falls to his knees, while my steam pebble hits the other man in the shoulder, and he starts screaming and lunges at me, but Timotei quickly stabs him with his spear, and the man dies.

“Why didn’t Octavius bullet wound him? I saw that spell kill a few creatures when we were in the caravan.” Aurora asks, it seems she’s as confused as I am.

“It’s because he had two patterns” Timotei answers quickly “The difference of his defense and our friend’s power is simply too big.”

I’m trying really hard to not look at the corpse, so I turn my head around and see Antonia looking up, also not daring to look at the corpse, I’m trying not to show it, but I’m panicking a lot right now, a man just tried to kill us, and his bleeding body is now in front of me.

Antonia notices me and gives me a confident look, her green eyes seem full of determination, I feel a little more… rational? I’m not panicking as much at least, I know that if I do it’s very probably I’ll end up like that guy over there, I breathe, but I still don’t want to look at the corpse.

Timotei walks over to the man on his knees and points his spear at him, he looks younger than me and has blonde hair.

“What is this place and why are we here?” Timotei ask in a completely serious voice, and the man looks really intimidated “This is the hideout of the <Sycamore gang>!” the man gulps “And I think the old granny captured you guys to test a certain artifact! But I don’t know anything else about it!”

“Where are the others?!” Antonia asks in an angry voice “They should be in the dungeon in the left side of the hideout!”

I point my finger at him and ask him “Do you know where the rest of our things are?”

The man looks very panicked, I’m sorry, but this is important! “HIIiih! It should be in the treasury! Some of the other boys might have also taken them!”

“Where is the treasury?” Timotei asks, during this entire time the loud bangs of the <Steam cannon>s can be heard on the background, giving him a more intimidating aura

“I can guide you there! I can also guide you around the hideout!” The man is pleading, I feel really uncomfortable seeing this, and I pity him a little.

“What do you guys think?” Timotei asks us “I personally vote we just kill him” Aurora says seriously “I don’t want to risk this guy pulling something funny and giving us problems.”

“Let’s keep him alive, and I don’t want to get pointlessly lost in this place” I think that as long as we keep an eye on him he shouldn’t make too much trouble. Me and Aurora look at Antonia, she looks pensive for a moment and says, “before deciding on what to do with you, I want you to tell us why it sounds like a battlefield outside?!”

The man looks scared for a moment, and then says “I don't know! I was sleeping when the fighting started, but when I woke up everyone was fighting each other, I swear!”

“And you fled from it…” Aurora looks at the man like she was looking at an old shoe in the middle of a clean street.

“Is there some sort of backdoor we can use to avoid the fighting?” Antonia asks him again.

The man looks really troubled for a moment, and after a few seconds of silence he says. “No… if there was we would have fled long ago.”

“I see…” Antonia makes a solemn look “Ok, you get to live, as long as you guide us!”

“Really?” the man makes a surprised but delighted expression.

“Ah, I almost forgot. Who is the man with the bronze jaw? And also, who is this “granny”?”  I’m no longer pointing my finger at him, but he still looks nervous “Granny is the leader of our <Sycamore gang>, her name is Miruna Sycamore, she has 5 whole patterns! and for the man with the bronze jaw, he was not with us, we just found his mangled corpse in your camp…” He slowly stands up, as if afraid that we’ll hurt him if he moves too fast “My name’s Felix…”

For now, it seems we can at least recover our stuff without much trouble, but we’ll have to figure something out to actually get out. As for the man from that time, there’s not much I can do about that, he probably was just some weirdo.

But just as I’m thinking this, I hear something behind me, and I turn around immediately and see another two men entering the room.

I point my fingers at them and they point theirs at me and we start constructing our <Steam cannon>s. I remember the other guy’s bullet, it was just a little stronger than mine are, so even if he had more power than me, he still lacked the inherent talent for it I have, so if these guys are similar to that, I should be able to shoot first, if I can’t do that I feel I’ll just die.

Even if our bullets are just as strong as each other, without any patterns, my body simply cannot take as much damage as someone who does have a pattern, and there’s no need to think about it if they have two.

*Bang! * *Bang! Bang! *