The hallways in this labyrinth were boring. Yellow stone blocks stacked in a staggered pattern for stability, lit by more of those weird  green torches that had sparked up as soon as we got down here. As we  moved further into the hall, we crept carefully. Lies or not, Cicero's  mention of stealth had definitely put the idea in our heads, and it was  obvious that we'd be less likely to be attacked if nothing noticed us,  so we slowed our steps along the rough stone floor tiles to erase as  much of our presence as possible with each step.

I grabbed  a hold of Callie's hand as we snuck, the two of us sharing the stealth  burden, and allowing the other to hear when we spoke. I still whispered  when I asked. "OK, I'm assuming there will be traps here. I absolutely  won't let us get blindsided if I can help us, but using Seek Hidden to  search for traps is pretty damn general. I might be able to force it if I  beat the skill into shape, but it'll be a huge strain, and I won't be  able to detect anything until we get right up next to any traps. You're  going to have to keep us safe while I do that."

She gave  me a reassuring smile. "Of course. You know I can handle it. I can use  my ability to cloak us even more than the stealth skill does. The wells  are far enough away that there are plenty of darker spots between the  islands of torch light. Leave it to me." She squeezed my hand, and we  both focused hard, reaching for our skills. Seek Hidden flared to life,  and I was barely able to force it to search for something as broad as  traps by massively reducing the area it could detect any targets in.

As  we walked, I saw the telltale red glow start to spark up, and pulled  Callie to a stop. "Wait." She looked at me in confusion. "This entire  corridor is riddled with traps. Even within a few feet of us, I can see  at least five of them. I...I think there are some behind us too. From  what I can tell, this place is set up so once we pass a certain point  all the traps trigger at once. I don't know WHICH point, but if this  density is consistent there could be dozens of the damn  things around  here."

She froze, not daring to take another step, and I  glared down at the ground near us. I was pretty sure the walls might be  rigged too, but the trigger mechanisms looked like they were in the  floor. I cursed. "Just within sight I can see some spike traps on the  floor, a few swinging blades in the ceilings, and what I'm pretty sure  is some kind of shaft that carries boiling oil. This whole place is a  death trap. Forget combat prodigy, Abel had the skills to walk through  this that power of his is scarier than I thought."

I  wondered exactly how his power worked. Spatial lubrication was weird,  but paired with sufficiently high Focus, it would essentially be slowing  down time. At least thats how I thought it would work. The thought was  terrifying, but not as terrifying as all these fucking traps. I was  seriously going to hurt Cicero over this. We could have died down here.  We could STILL die down here. I doubted that bastard even cared, he was  probably just focused on getting whatever Abel had left down here for  safekeeping.

Callie frowned, but then here eyes flew open  wide. "Hah! I wish I had a Beginner Trap Mastery skill!" I blinked.  That...holy shit, I hadn't even considered that. I wasn't entirely sure I  had the stats to make that happen, but I had gotten a huge bump  recently so it might be possible. Before I could respond, she bit her  lip. "Wait, payment...I need to give you something. I'll offer enough of  my stealth knowledge to get your Skill to Lesser." I blanched at that.  Giving me that much was going to damage her stealth Skill. Maybe not  enough to bring it below Beginner considering the huge gap in scale  between ranks, but it would be A LOT of memories to lose, and it would  HURT.

The familiar lines of rolling purple flame spiderwebbed across my vision, scrawling out a series of words.

I confirmed, curious to see exactly what this would cost. I'd never given anyone a Beginner Skill before.

I  almost fell over at the numbers. Over seven hundred points needed to  make this work. I was pretty sure it was only even possible because Trap  Mastery was an extremely basic Skill too. Something complicated like Balam Mastery or one of the more esoteric skills wouldn't have been  possible for me yet. I was pretty sure I'd need over a thousand points  to make those happen.

The conversion for Skill creation  got steeper every rank, which made sense considering how much more  potent and insane Skills got as they ranked up. Still, this was enough. I  squeezed her hand. "You're sure you want to do this?" This was going to  be agonizing for her. She just nodded, and I sighed, resigning myself  to seeing her suffer as the Wish began to build under my skin. Purple  electricity danced over me, building and whipping over my skin, rolling  across me, gathering power as it went. It was denser than it had ever  been, brighter too, but I just wanted it over with. No matter how  gorgeous the lightning was I didn't want to drag this out.

The  wish broke with the snap of a rubber band releasing its tension and  spilled down my hand and into Callie. I pulled her against me, not  wanting to let her slip and fall into the corridor to trigger a trap,  and covered her mouth as she started to scream. I closed my eyes, hating  this, and rested my forehead against hers, closing my eyes. Oddly, our  heads touching seemed to make transferring the knowledge easier, with  her memories flowing in faster than any wishes I had made before.

It  lasted for a while, and while less painful than usual, the longer time  kind of made me wonder if this was the best way to do things. It might  have just been a factor of a much larger wish however, and it showed me  there was still plenty of things to learn about my power. When it ended,  I was holding Callie up, and we were both exhausted and shaking. I'd  never channeled that much power before, and my head was killing me.  Apparently the larger the wish compared to my stats the more it took out  of me to grant it, though it was still well within my power.

I  stood there, holding Callie up, until she came back to herself,  groaning in agony. "Ow. Ow. Ow. That was...awful. There's so much  nonsense in my head now. Things I never knew, or really cared that much  about even. I know so much about traps. Like...an absurd amount. I can  probably build most of the ones in here myself at this point. My stealth  is still Beginner, but only barely. I feel like I'm missing part of my  skillset. It's going to take me weeks to shore up the weird gaps in my  brain. How about you?" She looked at me questioningly, wincing as the  light speared into her sensitive eyes.

I hadn't checked  my stats in a bit, and the new Creation bump was definitely nice at  least. I needed to shore up Fantasy, and Vitality was a close second.  Still, when I checked my skills I found what I was looking for. "Yup.  Lesser Stealth. That's going to be a huge help going forward." I set her  down on her feet, being careful to keep my hands near her in case she  wobbled or fell so she wouldn't be in danger from the traps. "So, how  about we take a minute to let you head settle and my energy shore up,  and we can take a crack at these traps?"

She nodded  slowly, steadying herself. "Yeah, sounds good. I'm sure I can take apart  any trap made by anyone G rank or below. The Skills from wishes are  always so damn comprehensive." They were, though I wasn't sure that  would continue to be the case. From what I could tell as Skills improved  they required more individual conception to grow. Less foundational  knowledge and more what the person felt was the right path, changing and  shaping the Skill as they went to make it their own. I had no clue how  that would work going forward. I knew it would still be possible to wish  for Skills, but I suspected past Beginner they would start getting much  more expensive to grant to others.

It  didn't matter though. My three times modifier should make it easier to  keep up with that as I went along. I'd worry about the rest of it later.  I put a hand on Callie's shoulder. "Alright, are you ready? My energy  is back where I need it to try Seek Hidden again." My skill had dropped  when I was distracted, so I'd need to use it again if I wanted to help  her track down the traps. "It's your show, so just let me know exactly  how to arrange the skill. What kind of radius do you need? And should we  look for something specific?"

To  my surprise she just grinned and shook her head. "Not necessary. With  my perception I can pick up the small discrepancies in the stones here. I  just need you to list the traps that you already saw and I can compare  them to my read on the situation. If they match up then it means the  traps here are within my capability to find and disarm. Luckily this  Skill relies heavily on Perception and that's my most impressive stat.  Go ahead and list out the different traps you saw and point to them."

I  began pointing out spots where I had seen traps, mentioning the  specific dimensions and placement in detail. My high Focus made my  memory crystal clear, even without using the Seek Hidden skill again,  and I was able to give her accurate descriptions of every trap I'd seen  down to shape and structure. The more I spoke, the more excited she got,  and I could tell that my skill had found exactly the same things she  had noticed. I was pretty sure she was actually resonating Perception  with the Trap Mastery Skill itself in order to detect them, because no  matter how much I stared I saw nothing, but that wasn't really  important.

Once  I'd listed everything out, Callie closed her eyes and exhaled. "Alright  then. That should be everything I need. Looks like this is exactly the  Skill for this problem." She grinned and began to stretch. "Now there's a  few ways to do this, first off I can slowly deconstruct each trap to  open a way up for us, but that'll take hours. So we're going to do it  the second way. Use Leaf on the Wind and cloud step to get back to the  entrance so you're out of the way." I cocked my head, not understanding  what she was getting at. She didn't mind clarifying though, and her grin  got predatory as she responded to my unspoken question. "I'm going to  set all the traps off all at once." Huh, maybe there was a reason we  were so compatible. She was just as crazy as I was sometimes.