Megumi was just about ready to fire off a bolt of eldritch energy when Undine turned to her and yelled, "No! You'll bring the whole place down on us!"

She just barely stopped the spell in realization that the former noblewoman was absolutely right. Her spells had an explosive nature to them that translated to being terribly suited for combat in a place like this. "R-Right," she stammered. "You guys take care of them then."

Undine stepped forward with her palm held upright while Poro-tan charged into the group of lizard-like creatures. He slashed through several of the first wave of enemies before they managed to surround him. Despite his skill with the sword, they were landing blows here and there on him. 

Hopefully, he would be able to hold the tide until Undine finished whatever large scale spell she was preparing. Megumi could literally feel the moisture all around her being sucked out of the air. Instead of the water forming into a ball above the aquamancer's hand, a thin stream of water was now travelling along the ground of the cavern towards their enemies.

Megumi could barely make anything out in the dark cavern, but she had a feeling about what was soon to happen. Barks of rage and agony sounded around where Poro-tan was massacring the little monsters, but it was like there was no end to them. The monsters were known to go berserk over intruders into their domain and she could faintly see that more and more of the things were pouring out of the tunnels and into the room they were in.

Just how many more of the damn things are down here anyway?

Megumi couldn't stand to sit around and do nothing, so she did the only thing she could do, she flung curses about. She began casting Weaken and Siphon over and over. Despite the fact that she was already in good health, it didn't stop the spell from stealing a bit of health from the enemies.

More often than not the spell failed, but it was something at least. Suddenly ice spikes shot up from the ground around where Poro-tan was fighting. The long shards of ice impaled what had to be a dozen kobolds and Megumi saw a look of deep concentration on Undine's face as the spikes instantly melted away back to their liquid form, bodies falling to the ground with a thud in unison. A few seconds later, another batch of spikes shot up out of the floor, impaling another group of the little lizard-men. 

Shrieks of confusion and fear filled the room and what was left of the enemy forces retreated down the two corridors leading out of the cavern that they were in. Megumi stepped forward and squinted to survey the aftermath of the skirmish and saw that there were a ridiculous amount of bodies on the ground around Poro-tan. 

"Are you okay?" she asked him.

"Just a few cuts here and there. They aren't very strong, Undine's spell helped a lot though. I was starting to get tired."

"Do you think they'll return?" Undine asked.

Megumi thought about it for a moment and then shook her head. "I don't think so. You scared them off pretty good I think. The problem is that we still don't know how to get out of here, and it looks like we're going to have to travel further into their domain to find out.."

All of them knew that venturing into a kobold den was said to be certain death. Megumi didn't look forward to what they would have to do, but she would not die down here, she refused to die until she got her revenge. The problem with kobolds wasn't even the fact that they had huge numbers, the problem was that the creatures specialized in creating nasty traps.

The tunnels ahead of them would likely be filled with all kinds of terrible surprises, and she didn't look forward to it one bit, but what choice did they have? 

"So which way should we go? Want to flip a coin?" Poro-tan asked as he wiped the black kobold blood off of his blade.

"The monsters retreated in both directions, but that doesn't really help us. I think we can just go to the right, but first thing's first. Undine, do we have enough water available to block the other opening?"

The aquamancer peered into the darkness towards the opening to the left. It was smaller than the tunnel to the right by a fair margin, about the size of a standard doorway. "I can block it off. It'll leave us with nothing, but there is plenty of moisture down here. I can probably draw more from the air and the walls as we continue."

"Great. I just don't want them popping up behind us in a closed space."

Undine nodded and began to focus her power once more. The bloody water slid across the ground and grew into a thick piece of ice that blocked the doorway.

"It's only a few inches thick, so don't expect it to stop them for long. They're small, but they do have weapons and they can chip away at it. It's cold enough down here that it won't melt for quite a while."

"Okay. So we'll move slowly and try to avoid traps. No doubt their whole colony down here knows about us by now. There has to be some way out of this death trap and we're going to find it."

Poro-tan took the lead and they slowly left the corpse filled cavern behind. The tunnel they now traveled down was large enough that they didn't need to crouch or anything. It felt good after having to crawl through the crack on her stomach to not feel so closed in.

The steady holy light streaming off of Poro-tan's blade was enough to illuminate a fairly decent sized pool of light around them. Megumi couldn't help but notice that Undine strayed towards the back of them, away from the light, and that Poro-tan was holding the sword out in front of him as far away as he could get it. She had noticed this earlier and it was really bugging her.

Does the light hurt them? I know that it's a holy skill, so it'd make sense for it to hurt if the spell connected, but...

She followed along, sandwiched in the middle of her two companions for a little longer until the curiosity welled up in her enough that she couldn't help but ask. "I meant to ask this earlier, but is the light hurting you? Is it possible for you to cast the spell on that blade and for me to hold it?"

Poro-tan stopped and turned to her, "It doesn't hurt... not exactly. It's more like it makes me feel really uncomfortable in a way. I can't really describe it. As for holding the sword... it's probably too heavy for you to do so for very long, and if we run into trouble, it'd be bad if we have to wait for you to quickly hand it back over to me."

Megumi nodded slowly. He was right, of course. The sword was nearly two thirds her height, and she would probably not be able to carry it long. "I guess you're right. Does the holy light have the same effect on you, Undine?"

The blue haired aquamancer nodded. "I can't really describe it either, it's like it makes me feel sick, as though I need to throw up, but nothing actually happens. It's very uncomfortable to say the least. I want to get out of here already, or maybe even just find a torch or something we can light."

After that, the three of them continued winding their way through the tunnel until they came to a sight that caused Megumi to panic once more. The passageway narrowed to a small crack again. They would have to climb up the large rocks in front of them to get to where they needed to crawl through the smaller passage. At least they wouldn't have to crawl through on their stomachs like before, but she had no idea if it would get narrower after they were inside. 

She began to hyperventilate when she thought about having to go through something like that again. The walls began to close in around her and then she felt a warm hand on her shoulder.

"It'll be okay. This one is big enough that I can go first. We'll go through together, all right?" Poro-tan said reassuringly. 

After a few moments she was able to get a grip on herself and nodded her assent. Just as they were about to climb into the crevice she saw something and grabbed Poro-tan's sleeve. "Look. There's some sort of wire sticking out of the wall near the base of the entrance."

It was really hard to see in the poorly lit room, but it was there. The trip wire was very low to the floor and it looked like just the thing that would catch someone careless who stuck their hand down to climb up. Megumi wondered what kind of trap it would be, but had no desire to be the test dummy for finding out. The three of them backed up several feet and then stared up at the passageway.

"Should we try to disable it somehow?" Poro-tan asked.

"We shouldn't try to tamper with it since none of us know what we're doing," Undine said, crossing her arms beneath her breasts. 

"How about we intentionally trip the trap?" Megumi suggested.

Her two companions looked at her warily. Megumi winced a little under their suspicious glares. She knew that she deserved it, as she had used Poro-tan as a meat shield on more occasions than she could count, but that isn't what she meant. 

"Don't get the wrong idea! I don't mean that I want one of you to go up there and pull on the wire or something. Undine, can you trigger it from a distance using your water magic?"

The two of them seemed to let out a sigh of relief upon hearing that they weren't to be used as guinea pigs. Undine peered up at the crevice and held her palm up. A few moments later a cube of ice rotated into existence above her hand. 

"I need to be able to see what I'm doing, but it should not be a problem. Move back."

"Good idea. Do your thing, Undine."

Megumi stepped back and crouched down low enough that if something shot out of the tunnel, she wouldn't be hit in the face with it and waited as the spell took shape. The cube of ice shot away from Undine's palm and slammed into the rocky area where the wire lie. There was a loud click as the ice impacted the wire and then a moment later several darts slammed against the wall above them with incredible force before falling to the ground. 

Megumi only narrowly avoided having one of the things stick her as it fell. She wouldn't put it past the kobolds to poison their traps, and she cursed herself for not being more careful. Once again, she had to congratulate herself on a good idea, though. They could use this method to trip any traps that they came across, so long as they actually noticed them first. 

"That worked really well. Thanks, Undine. Let's go, I really want to find a way out of here already."

Undine was proving to be an extremely useful addition to her team. She was extremely impressed by the level of control that the Manipulate Water skill provided. She stood up slowly and the three of them climbed back up to the entrance to the tight space. Poro-tan went first and she could see that he was moving extra slow, so as to avoid any other nasty traps that might be in the narrow confines of their new path, and then she took a deep breath and followed him up.

The rocky ground of the cave was hard against her knees, and she winced at every excruciatingly slow step that they made after a couple minutes. She didn't have to look to know that her knees had been cut to ribbons on the sharp rock already. Undine was groaning behind her, and she had a feeling that the aquamancer's knees and hands were probably in as bad of shape as her own.

Poro-tan seemed to be made of tougher stuff, however, and was moving along ahead of them at a steady pace. She cursed herself for not switching to better clothes for this kind of thing, at least some pants would have been a good idea, but there was nothing to do about it now. 

The narrow passageway rose and fell, but it mostly continued on in a straight line. Fortunately, it didn't seem that it was getting any narrower, either, and so she at least was able to keep her panic down to a manageable level. At least there was light this time. 

"It opens up just ahead of me. Wait a second and I'll hop down."

"Okay."

A second later, Poro-tan was on the ground and standing just in front of her. She could see everything above his shoulders, so it looked like it wouldn't be that bad of a drop. "What do you see?"

"It's a huge room. There's something weird though. Come see."

Megumi began moving forward again and soon she was on the ground in a huge cavern looking around. The ground was mostly even here, but there were large spikes of stone sticking up here and there. Encased in the rock of those stalagmites There was the figure of a giant stone kobold. 

The thing was probably fifteen feet tall and held a large stone hammer that was on the ground in front of it. She wondered if these things had an actual society, where maybe this was one of their gods or a former ruler. Poro-tan held up his glowing sword and pointed to three other stalagmites that had similar statues. 

The creatures all looked the same to her, other than their weapons, they were identical. One held a giant mace, one held a sword, and the last one also had a hammer. The group crept closer to the closest statue, with Undine taking up the rear. The carving was intricate and she felt almost as if the stone was alive.

"I'm amazed that such savage little beasts have such craftsmanship," Undine said, reaching out to touch the smooth stone.

"Maybe we shouldn't tou—" Poro-tan tried to say, but it was too late.

The statue began to glow with a dull green light the second that Undine's hand came into contact with it. What was worse, was that every statue in the room had begun to glow in unison. It was a magical trap of some sort, and they had just triggered it like a bunch of idiots.