The Viper didn’t make any attempt to evade Serenity. That made him suspicious, but this was fairly obviously going to be one of those traps he found by stepping on it; figuring things out in a dungeon was all too often a matter of surviving doing things you shouldn’t but not knowing how to avoid them, especially the first time anyone explored the dungeon.

Serenity was nearly to him when the Viper disappeared. A glance backwards showed Serenity that his friends had also disappeared, which meant any of several things, but the most likely in a fight with teleporters and an invisible boss was a teleport trap.

Before he took the time to look around, he’d better tell the others what happened. Serenity shouted, “Teleport trap! Where are you?”

There was no response, which could mean a number of different things. For now, he’d assume they were fine, just too far away. He took a better look at his surroundings and saw there was one of the fake Vipers on the island with him; it was behind him, but he’d still missed it. That was dumb of him; he knew they were around and that they would hide if he let them. It was already throwing a dagger at him, but either it hadn’t hit yet or any he’d thrown were so poorly thrown he hadn’t even noticed the impacts. He really hadn’t taken that long with the shout, so it was likely it had only just gotten in position.

He dodged the next one and detoured over to the weak monster and dispatched it. There was no reason not to.

Serenity took a good look at the ground beneath where he appeared. It wasn’t obvious, but there was a slight discoloration that was about the right size for one of the teleporters. That was sneaky, especially if they were triggered somehow.

A good look at the ground around where he appeared showed Serenity that there were a lot more of them. It was clear that the dungeon had tried to hide them in the “natural” variation of the stone but hadn’t quite succeeded; they were too regular. Serenity could see them, but he had to stop and look. Fortunately, he had help for that.

Aide, can you highlight these while we’re in this fight?

Yes, but it may not be in time if you run at the speed you were earlier over an area you haven’t examined.

Thanks!

It was too bad no one else had an Aide to watch out for the traps; he could avoid them without spending much attention on it with Aide’s help, but the others would have to concentrate.

Not that they could, until they knew what to look for. The others needed to be warned, though they’d likely have guessed when they saw him disappear. Serenity took a wider view of the area around him; he seemed to be on one of the “island” shelves.

From the edge of the island, Serenity could see the arena floor; he was on a third-tier island quite a ways away from where he first encountered the Viper. He couldn’t even see the others from here; if they were still on the island they had been on, they were above him as well as well to the side. Fortunately, he now understood how the teleporters worked; unfortunately, he had no way to communicate with them. Shouting might work, but he doubted it.

Still, there was no reason not to try. It might not have worked last time and he might not expect it to work this time but it cost nothing to try. “It was a teleport trap, watch out for areas that are slightly lighter than the surrounding stone!”

Serenity waited but didn’t hear a return shout, even an unintelligible one. The distance was simply too far. He definitely needed to add communications gear to his list when he got back to Earth.

Worse, he couldn’t even determine their direction; what if they’d been teleported the way he had been? It was almost enough to make him wish that at least one of the other three was a believer in him as a Dungeon Deity; most of the time he was happy not to be surrounded by believers, but it would have let him know where they were. Ita’s presence would have been useful for that, though admittedly he could also talk to her telepathically which would have been plenty on its own.

There was no better option than to head towards where they’d been when they were separated. If they were also teleported, hopefully they’d do the same thing. They might even encounter each other before they reached that island. In that case, they could head towards the Viper again. They’d have to be careful of the traps, but unless they were more common than what Serenity was seeing here, that would only slow them down a little. There was enough space to move around them once you knew they were there.

Serenity trotted towards the teleportation circle he wanted. He couldn’t move at a run and still identify the circles in time to avoid them, but he could move faster than a walk.

It was a lot faster to move directly to a particular island than to try to catch the Viper, but Serenity still had to cross several islands to get there. Three of the four had monsters left; two had one, but one had three.

That one was the only one that was a real fight; without Zanzital, he had to take the fight to the enemy instead of simply defending as he’d done for the teleporter delay earlier. Even so, it wasn’t difficult; the duplicates were fragile and not particularly good at self-preservation. They seemed to think that dying was worth it if they got an extra attack in and Serenity hadn’t yet found one that could penetrate his scales.

When Serenity reached the island he’d disappeared from, he found a trio of people that were carefully not looking at each other. They were watching for enemies, but even Serenity could see that they weren’t happy with each other. “What happened here?”

Raz was first to react. “I told them where you were, but they didn’t want to go after you.” He sounded resentful, but Serenity didn’t think he was truly upset. Serenity was going to have to ask him how he was detecting things in the dungeon, but he’d wait until they were out. He wasn’t sure Raz wanted to talk about it in front of Zanzital.

“I told you, if we’re going to head to islands we haven’t been to before, we might as well follow the boss. But no, you wanted to let him get away.” Zanzital, on the other hand, actually did seem upset.

Blaze chuckled; he seemed to be trying to suppress a smile, but couldn’t manage to completely banish it. “I still don’t know who you wanted to lead the way. You can stop arguing now; Serenity’s here and we can move forward.”

Unlike the other two, Blaze sounded amused. Serenity’s best guess was that he’d walked in on an argument between Raz and Zanzital that Blaze had won by getting them to stay put. He couldn’t be certain that was what had happened, but it probably wasn’t important now that he’d caught up with them.

Serenity turned to Raz; he was in some ways the most important person in this fight because he had the ability to make it much less frustrating. There was probably some way built into the battle to track the real Viper; even at Tier Ten, Vengeance had never seen a fight where a boss was allowed to simply play keepaway. It did become possible at higher Tiers but by then almost everyone had some way to either limit the available area or locate the boss. Serenity knew the Voice wouldn’t allow a dungeon to set up a fight that wasn’t reasonably winnable at the Tier it was intended for.

If this fight were more closely based on something original, it might be more possible. The Last Refuge of the Deathless dungeon back on Tzintkra was one like that and it was impossible for anyone who didn’t have a specific way to deal with the Deathless. Even there, it was noted as Unrated, which was clearly the Voice’s way of saying it wasn’t possible to assign a solid Tier rating.

“Which way is the Viper now?” Serenity waited for Raz to point, then headed in that direction. Two steps later, he stopped as he started to move around a hidden teleport trap. He hadn’t mentioned them yet, had he. “Watch out for circles on the ground that are slightly off color, they seem to be teleport traps. There are a lot of them, but I’m not sure how they’re triggered.”

“The Viper-” Both Raz and Zanzital spoke up at the same time, before Raz waved for Zanzital to finish the sentence.

“The Viper triggered it. There was a flash of mana from him as it activated; it was very fast.” Zanzital glanced at Raz, then sighed. “Raz says he also made a pulling gesture with his hand.”

Serenity remembered seeing the gesture, but he’d missed the manaflash. It was probably lost in the disorientation of the teleport, but it was entirely possible that he hadn’t been paying attention to his magesight. Even though he could see mana all the time, he could still miss something quick if he was paying attention to something else.

He’d definitely been paying attention to the Viper, which made missing it odd.

Aide? Could the enhancement you’re using to make the invisible things solid interfere with my magesight?

The answer took just long enough for Serenity to know that Aide hadn’t expected it; he must have needed to compare the images he had to what he displayed.

If the magic used is between you and the enhanced object, the enhancement will interfere. The method I am currently using is a simple overlay; it would make magic far harder to notice. I am uncertain if I can fix that easily, but I shall look into it.

That wasn’t the answer Serenity wanted, but at least it explained what happened. His senses were interfering with each other, more or less. The normal solution to it was to work with others, since learning how to focus on more things at the same time meant dropping other capabilities; it was possible up to a point but not past that point.

What it really came down to was that Serenity had too many sensory options. He wasn’t willing to give up on them, which meant he needed to deal with them better. For now, that meant paying attention to the ones most likely to give useful information; in time, perhaps Aide would be skilled enough to manage that for him. It was certainly a task better suited to an AI than to a near-human mind.

With that, they set off after the Viper again. This time, they managed to catch up in “only” ten islands instead of twelve. Six of the islands were ones that either Serenity had crossed on his way back to the group or that they’d crossed on their original trip to the Viper and were empty; one other had been cleaned out before and had only one minion. Two of the other three had three, while one had gotten all the way up to four minions.

As distributions went, it didn’t make much sense; in fact, it made so little sense that Serenity wondered if there was more to it than they knew. Was this how they were supposed to find the boss if they didn’t have someone who could just point at him, or was it really just the coincidence it seemed? Serenity had seen odd dungeon mechanics before, and limiting boss movement to make him findable wasn’t unusual in large layouts.

Lillene

For those who might wonder - yes, the pattern Serenity has noticed is how a group without Raz could do it. Kill all the minions on a platform with area spells then move on; more minions generally means you’re closer to the boss. Eventually kill him with area spells or some sort of sense other than sight; ONLY sight is blocked, and that’s allowed at the roughly Tier Six that the dungeon is set at.

For the boss, it’s a bit more complex: he has limited use of the teleportation circles. He can trigger the trap ones, but only for someone else; like anyone else, he has to use the normal teleporters to move himself. Worse than that, which ones are active is set when he steps foot on a platform; if the platform has a minion, the teleporters for any connecting platform that has the same number of minions or fewer is active. If it does not have a minion, the teleporters for any platform that has more minions is active. 

This means that he’s only trapped on a platform if all connecting platforms have been emptied of minions or all connecting platforms have strictly more minions and the platform he’s on isn’t empty. Note that this is set when he arrives - having an enemy clear a platform won’t let him travel there if there were originally more minions there when he came to the one he’s on. Either condition can happen, though smart pathing can avoid the second circumstance, especially since there will usually be outsiders killing minions.

I believe I mentioned I had fun designing this dungeon. This battle felt really clever but we still aren’t going to spend much more time on it. It just figures that Raz of all people can break it!

Seriously, though, having someone in a group that can break many dungeon scenarios is actually common. People who can do that have quite a bit of value to delvers, and the Paths are well regarded - as long as you don’t use them to break things you shouldn’t.