“Their weakness is…” the man began, then realised we had already finished ours. “My apologies, I should have been quicker to say. Looks like you figured it out. Strange though…” he said, looking around. “There are usually more signs of those things, or I would have given you a warning to be alert…”
“Common threat?” Beatnik asked as he finished extracting himself.
“I wouldn’t say common, they are enough to be known, but not enough that people don’t get caught unawares.”
Most of the valuable components got stripped out of the head and tail. On Clark’s suggestion, we left the majority of the scrap on the marked route. It wasn’t far away, and it was common practice to leave scrap where others could fill up their inventories if they needed to, and this was better-quality scrap for a party heading back up.
“Are you all mages?” Chango asked Darksider once we were moving again.
“We can all cast spells, but Aenara is the only one who is really a mage; the rest of us are more dabbling,” he replied.
“That’s dabbling?” Chango asked incredulously.
“Compared to what I’ve seen her do? If you are interested, the mage school is near the place the main quest takes you…”
“I usually like magic in games, but the videos I saw made it look slow and weak.”
“Yeah… then you see what someone who actually gets it can do and you realise the early videos were made by people rushing who didn’t take the time to figure it out.”
“See, told you both to take your time in the tutorials for the better experience,” Beatnik told his friends.
“Aenara and a few others in the guild did that. We’ve been playing catch-up with them ever since,” G declared.
“You’re not that far behind me, G,” I called back.
“That’s just because you are lazy,” he laughed back.
“Some people refer to these as trap rooms; others think they should have their own category of challenge room,” Clark said, as he drew a triangle on the door frame in chalk. “Either way, there is usually some nice loot in the centre of the room, if you can get to it.”
The room in question looked to be a large pool filled with some unknown liquid. Large metal balls hung suspended over the pools, and arcs of lightning spanned between each other and the contents of the pools. There was a platform which circled the room, weaving around the balls before getting into the middle of the room, where a ladder led to a raised platform with a chest on it. Parts of the platform were missing, gaps just wide enough that a running jump would easily cross. Other long gaps had thin bars like a balance beam, or large, round barrels that looked like they would spin if you stood on them. It looked like the only safe route was along the platform.
“Usually there is a way to make the room safe in the middle… but it is not a guarantee,” Clark told us.
I looked up at the platform… it was in range of my
“Rock Paper Scissors for who gets first go?” Chango asked.
“I…” I started.
“Sounds good to me,” said G and Darksider.
“Me too,” said Ant.
Peachy pulled me away from them with a shake of her head.
“Let them try,” she said. Jacobs and Clark both joined us in watching the five of them shake their hands at each other. Three chose rock, two paper. The two papers shook their hands, and then the winner, Ant, stepped up to the door.
“You can teleport straight to the platform, can’t you?” Jacobs asked me.
“Unless there is something stopping me… yeah.”
“Keep it to yourself,” Peachy recommended quietly.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
We watched Ant clear the first few gaps with ease.
“You have demonstrated that teleport ability in combat…” Clark said. “If they choose to ignore that, in order to challenge themselves, it is their choice… I should say, though, that some think the prize is reduced in challenge rooms if you find ways to bypass the difficulty. I don’t know how you could possibly prove such a claim. There seems to be no consistency with the rewards.”
Ant took a moment to centre himself and then, with confidence, walked briskly over the first of the balance beams. His friends started cheering him on. We all joined in when he cleared the spinning barrels like it was a stable bridge.
“He wants to go on Ninja Warrior!” laughed Chango as we lost sight of Ant behind the platform's base.
“He’s been training for it for a few years now, keeps applying and not hearing back,” said Beatnik.
We caught sight of Ant as he came swinging into view on a rope and kicked off a wall to redirect himself towards the next platform. We cheered when he used the momentum to kick off a small wall and made it over the gap onto the last platform, landing just before the ladder.
Ant climbed up the ladder quickly, and we could see him looking around for a moment, spotted something and then stepped out of view. A moment later, the lightning between the balls and liquid stopped, and a staircase extended from the platform, creating a path to the door. Clark nodded in satisfaction and put a cross through the triangle he had drawn earlier.
We joined a smiling Ant up on the platform. He pretended to buff his nails and took the back pats from his ecstatic friends with good cheer.
“What are we looking at?” he asked Clark, pointing at the three floating crystals which were hovering in the middle of cylinders of light.
“Ahh, that is one of the best loot options we’ve found in these sorts of chambers. They are crafting recipes. That one is for an armour piece,” he pointed at the green one. “That one is for a weapon,” he then pointed at the red one. “And the yellow one is some kind of support item, but you won’t know until you pick it up.”
“I choose one?” he asked.
“No, all three usually. They opened up when you pulled the lever?”
“Yes…” Ant said.
“Grab 'em, dude. No point in discussing need until we know what they make. Might as well be the one to take your spoils,” Jacobs told Ant with a grin.
“Ha, true,” Ant reached out and grabbed the red crystal first, then the green and finally the yellow. “So the red one is for a Sentinel Longsword, the green is for something called a Guardian Heater Shield, and the yellow is Magitech Bracers of Interface, not got a clue what that is.”
“I wouldn’t mind calling need on the bracers, haven’t got a clue what it does either, but it would complete a set for me,” I said. Ant looked around. No one objected, so he tossed me the crystal. I looked down at it, ‘Crafting Crystal: Magitech Bracers of Interface.’
“A Heater shield is sort of like what I’m using,” Peachy said, raising her arm and waving the large body covering shield she used. “Might be an upgrade, might not be… how do we find out?” Her question was directed at Clark.
“We’ll need to find a working autocrafter. We could head to the stairs and see if anyone found one and has left a note on where to find it, or we could keep exploring and hope we get lucky.”
“So we need to keep exploring before we can find out how good the items will be?” G asked.
“Pretty much. The actual quality of the item also depends upon the quality of the crafter. I’ve heard of people using recipes from floor 5 on floor 10 and getting an item like you would expect from floor 10…”
“Keep hold of them for now, then,” Jacobs said. “We’ll make a need-greed decision if we can find a way to craft them.”
We opted to carry on exploring our way to the stairs. The next door opened up into a round, arena-like chamber. Clark stopped us from even setting foot into it.
“Death trap,” he declared, as he drew a skull on the door frame. “We find these rooms once a week at least. The door closes a few seconds after someone goes in. It then opens up around thirty minutes later. We don’t know what happened to any of the people who go in…” he left the ‘we presume they die’ bit unsaid.
He stopped us again at the next chamber, but this one for a very different reason. The door opened with a gust of warm, moist air and the earthy musk of a tropical forest.
“Look up,” Clark said, encouraging us to check out the ceiling of the chamber. It wasn’t the industrial metal I was now used to seeing, but organic-looking. Pink vines hanging from what looked like puckered lips. I could also see the ripples as wings slowly flexed and moved from creatures resting between the puckered shapes.
“We call them maws. Those things dangling are effectively really sticky tongues. If you get within range, they will try to grab you or impale you and then drag you up to be eaten by the thing.”
“The winged creatures?” I asked.
“Possibly worse. They are referred to as bewitchers. They snare people’s minds with their smell and lure them and other creatures to be eaten by the maws. One of the masters claims they are the same species, just different stages of their life cycle.” There was a crunching sound, and then one of the puckered lips opened up. White bones fell from the open mouth and scattered on the ground. I never did find out if it was a human skull that rolled out of sight.
“Flammable?” asked Peachy in an unusually dark tone.
“I don’t know… not sure I have heard of anyone trying to ignite them,” Clark admitted.
“Shall we find out?” she asked me, a very un-Peachy look in her eyes.
“Sure…” I said, before my eyes flickered to Jacob. He gave me a slight shrug.
There was space for the two of us to stand side by side at the door. I raised my staff, and she raised her hand. A moment later, the pair of us were sending a stream of fireballs around the large room. The thin wings went up very quickly, and they didn’t stir much after hitting the ground. The sticky tongues were very flammable, and if the fireball didn’t ignite the creatures' bodies, the flame rushing up the tongue like it was a wick definitely did.
“We normally ignore these rooms…” Clark said as we looked around the chamber after letting the smoke clear. “Usually more hassle than they are worth…”