Serenity followed Gabriel out of the tent, then told it to collapse itself. For a Tutorial reward, the tent was coming in surprisingly helpful. Admittedly, Serenity remembered Vengeance’s rewards as being useful, even if he didn’t entirely remember what they were. Knives or something, probably.

Whatever it was, it worked until he was able to get something better later. It had to have lasted more than the year-and-change it’d been since the start of the Tutorial in this timeline, but it definitely hadn’t lasted until Vengeance was Tier Eight. That took decades.

Once the tent was away, Serenity watched the others pack up. They’d probably eaten in their tents the same way he had; either way, they weren’t eating now. None of the others seemed to have tents quite as convenient as Serenity’s own, so he changed his mind about waiting; he could see, more or less, and that was useful. The process wasn’t even close to silent.

Between the curses, Gabriel explained his plan. Serenity chipped in a few times, basically repeating what he’d told Gabriel, and it was settled by the time they moved out. Serenity would lead and watch out for danger; Naomi would bring up the rear in case something stumbled into them. The monsters on the level seemed to have some sort of sense like what the vibration charms gave, but just like the charms, it was inaccurate at anything but very close range.

For something developed off the cuff, Gabriel’s plan was really pretty good. At least half of the hazards of the seventh level were easily avoided if you could see them. Serenity’s ability to track people by their footsteps was fairly poor, but the three Silver Blades had no trouble following Serenity. It was obvious they’d done this before.

The seventh level was a flat plain, so completely flat and devoid of ordinary variation that it was obviously artificial. The top two inches of the ground were packed first, but below that was stone. Serenity got to see the difference every time he walked them around a pit trap; the packed earth would collapse a bit at the edges, while the stone stayed clear and sharp. Several of the pit traps actually held insectile creatures; they were easily avoided, since they didn’t act if no one fell into the pit.

Unlike some of the other details, the Silver Blades had remembered to tell Serenity how to reach the exit to the seventh floor: they just had to travel far enough and they’d be offered an exit. They were pretty sure it was a ring quite a ways from the starting point, which meant they had to stay more or less straight. Serenity had worried about that when they explained the level, but according to the Silver Blades, it wouldn’t be a problem.

Now that they were in the level, Serenity could see why they weren’t worried and also why the Silver Blades hadn’t been able to explain it better than “you’ll know when you’re there” over dinner. There were grooves in the ground; he could see the depressions and he was certain that someone who couldn’t see but was paying attention would be able to feel them as they felt their way forward. The depressions formed arrow shapes that pointed away from the level’s entrance.

Serenity did walk into a couple of minor magical traps early on, before he worked out exactly what to look for; they were far weaker than anything the Final Reaper would have worried about, which made them easier to hide. Neither the flame nor the lightning actually injured Serenity, but they both attracted monsters that could have been troublesome if they ran into a hurt party that didn’t know they were coming.

After the first magical trap, something bothered Serenity, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. These monsters weren’t like the first two groups they’d run into, more by accident than anything. Those monsters were insectile; they reminded Serenity more of spiders or ants than mammals. These looked like mammals, but that couldn’t be all it was. They were more like giant rats than anything, or perhaps truly humongous mice. Mice and insects living on the same dungeon level wasn’t weird at all.

After the next trap, Serenity realized part of it; these monsters had come from a notable distance when the trap went off, yet the traps hadn’t really moved the ground that much. What the traps both did was make a lot of noise. Serenity took a closer look at the dead monsters; they really did look a lot like mice, but mice with comically oversized ears. “I think I know what’s attracting them.”

Aide? Were there some noises like the ones a bat makes when these were coming towards us? Serenity wasn’t sure if he’d heard anything or not; he hadn’t been listening for it and he’d seen the mice as they ran in. He might simply have dismissed the noise as something else.

There was. You believe they are using sonar?

It seems likely.

“Setting off the traps attracted them.” Daryl sounded dismissive. “Don’t set off the traps and you don’t get these. They’re easy to kill if you can find ‘em but they’re fast; I’ve had to stop long enough to heal more than once because of these critters.”

Serenity sighed. Did Daryl have to be an ass about everything? Or was Serenity just overreacting? “Yes, I know it was the traps. I’m talking about how the traps attracted them; I think it was the noise. I think that’s how they’re navigating, too, like bats.”

“I don’t know what bats are, but are you sure? An animal that gets around with just sound sounds pretty unlikely.” Gabriel clearly didn’t believe Serenity either, but at least he said it less confrontationally.

“Takinat isn’t exactly good bat country, is it? I guess you’ve never seen them. They’re night hunters that eat insects. They can hunt even when there’s no light. I think there are some night birds that do the same thing, and I’ve heard of blind people that can too. I don’t know how accurate that is, though.” Serenity couldn’t remember if he’d ever actually known someone who was blind from birth on a personal level, which probably meant he hadn’t.

“Does it matter?” Naomi moved towards Serenity, testing each step as she went since she couldn’t see them. “Do we need to keep quiet or something?”

Serenity paused. He wasn’t actually sure it did matter. “Not if they normally only attack after a trap. At least, not unless you want to hunt them down; I bet that if we were quiet, then made noise when there was a group close, we could attract them without triggering a trap.”

“Let’s not do that,” Daryl said. “The fewer things I have to fight with a dagger while I can’t see, the happier I’ll be.”

Serenity nodded, then realized no one could see it. “Got it. Not too loud, not too quiet, avoid the monsters. I’ll try to avoid more traps; I think I see what to look for, now.”

There were a few more individual monsters that stumbled across the group, but they really weren’t a problem; they were simply too well prepared. Serenity set off only one more trap in the six hours it took to reach the exit. He saw it, but he saw it just barely too late. It was another fire trap, but as far as Serenity was concerned it was basically just a noisemaker.

The giant echolocating mice weren’t really a problem anyway.

When they reached the eighth level, the Silver Blades took off their blindfolds and Serenity released the spell protecting his eyes. Gabriel insisted on checking everyone for damage from light leakage; the blindfolds weren’t perfect and he had to perform a little healing. It wasn’t much, but it was enough that all three of the Silver Blades had difficulty focusing on anything until they were healed.

The eighth level started in a cave. There was a noise that reminded Serenity of a freight train coming from the other end, but it was continuous. When they left the cave, the source was obvious: the wind.

The eighth level was a series of floating platforms, almost more like small islands than the sort of thing you’d see in a platforming game, but it was still all Serenity could think of. It was definitely the reason the Silver Blades brought climbing equipment; they weren’t going to be climbing anything but they would be helping their allies not fall. They’d actually described this challenge well; Serenity simply hadn’t really appreciated it until he saw it.

They stepped back into the cave so they could talk and Serenity asked the obvious question. “Why can’t we just follow the ground, then climb out on the other side?” Many dungeons would allow solutions like that; there would be effectively two paths and you could pick whichever one suited your strengths. Serenity wasn’t enamored of the idea of jumping around with strong, variable winds blowing past him.

“Two reasons,” Gabriel spoke up before Daryl could, even though Daryl was clearly getting ready to. “First, the ground descends as the islands go up, so it’s a really high cliff; worse, it’s sheer and you have to climb backwards while you’re climbing up. I’m not up for climbing that, even if you are. There are a number of places where you can start going up islands, which shortens the distance if you fall, but that doesn’t really help. Down there is where the monsters are; it’s just not a better route.”

This was technically a two-path dungeon level, then, but Serenity had to agree; that didn’t sound like a better route unless there was something hidden down there. With how fond the dungeon seemed to be of hidden areas and the fact that a monster-infested area that everyone skipped was the perfect place to hide things, Serenity suspected that there was indeed something there.

On the other hand, there was no point in saying it like that. “There might be something there” was never the best argument unless it was something they wanted to do anyway. Serenity had a better argument. “Shouldn’t we clear the monsters out? This is the last level we’re going to clear, so the monsters here are the most valuable for preventing dungeon breaks.”

The three Silver Blades stared at Serenity. He wasn’t sure what was so hard to understand about that; they were the monsters with the most investment from the dungeon, so if the dungeon was overpopulated, removing them would help the most.

“But these never get out unless there’s a mass breakout. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of them getting out,” Naomi protested.

Naomi was Tier Seven. How did she not know this stuff? It didn’t matter that much in really low-Tier dungeons, but it did matter at Tier Seven. Serenity wasn’t even sure where to begin.

Gabriel shook his head. “I’ve heard that theory, but it’s not the way we do things here. Dungeon runs are enough; we don’t have to cull the population more than that. Sure, there’s occasionally a low level break, but there hasn’t been a big one since … I’m not sure. Longer than I’ve been a Silver Blade.”

“Twenty-seven years,” Daryl said with finality. “I was here for it. I was a Tier Eight then, one of the stronger people on the field, and there wasn’t anything over Tier Six in that break. We were lucky; Zany said he was getting worried about the dungeon and made all the strong groups stay overnight instead of heading back to Takinat, then it broke in the morning right before the first group went past the wall. Perfect timing.”

That did sound lucky, though Serenity couldn’t help but wonder a little at how completely perfect it was. Was it possible someone had arranged for the perfect timing or was he simply being paranoid?

Lillene

Is Serenity being paranoid?

Eh, he’s probably not paranoid enough.