1.28 Pest Control

Chapter 28

“So waiting for everyone else will also make things harder for us?” Francis asked, his face down turned into a scowl.

“Looks like it,” I said.

Barry was back on his amulet, talking to the captains, while I took to reassuring Vasquez, Norton, Fracnis and Huwett. We already knew we would have the worst time of it based on our plan, but this was the System kicking us while we were already down.

“How bad do you think it will get?” Norton looked less scared and more… resigned? The large healer might be doing some mana calculations in his head already, figuring out what he could and couldn’t get away with healing as people got injured. It was a grim way of thinking, but one I was wholly behind for the healer. Resource management was key in dungeon runs, and mana was a resource like any other.

I shook my head, “No idea. I doubt it will get to the point that we can’t win. But it’ll be a slog, and based on how willing the System is at killing people even in Tutorials…” I let the thought drift off for the others to grasp on their own.

A series of head nods confirmed they all understood, even Francis.

Barry finished up his calls and put his amulet away, then turned back to us. “We will continue with the plan. This added penalty sucks, but there’s really nothing we can do about it. We just need to trust the other teams and hope for the best. But, I believe in them, we have a good guild.”

“We can at least start moving through this floor, though,” Vasquez said. His tone held an edge of impatience, a mounting frustration with the situation settling onto his shoulders.

We looked out over the vast space. It was wide, with various circular holes or large columns decorating it randomly. Along the walls on either side were sporadically placed levers or pedestals. It didn’t take a lot of brains to understand the floor was as much a puzzle as it was a gauntlet.

Explanations had to be given to Francis.

In the end it was agreed that we could cross the floor, and wait at the entrance to the next one. It wouldn’t affect the floor difficulties for the others, and it would at least give us something to do, to focus on for the time being.

“Adam, Huwett,” Barry said.

“We know, we know,” Huwett rolled her eyes. “Let’s do this.”

***

“Okay, go now!” I yelled, signaling to Barry, Norton and Vasquez to move forward as I held down the lever attached to the wall.

The three men ran across the stones in a carefully chosen pattern. Francis was already ahead of them, the rage warrior standing on a small platform with a depression stick, like that of an old-timey demolition trigger box, pulled all the way down. Huwett was some way behind all of us, holding down a lever of her own.

When they finally made it past the chosen stones, Barry waved his sword high overhead, and Huwett released her lever to dash across the floor herself. Arrows whistled by and exposed pit traps were dodged. She was quite graceful, especially compared to the others. Her high dexterity showing its worth as she moved her body fluidly to avoid the traps.

It was a captivating dance.

She moved ahead, past me and Francis and into the further areas of the floor beyond. Her aim was for another lever deeper in.

As she reached the destination—her arm extended to grab the mechanism—a blade sliced upward from the floor, threatening to sever her limb entirely. She stutter stepped, pulling back as the blade whirred by, then yanked the lever down with an echoing click.

“We’re good!” she yelled over her shoulder.

I shot Barry a thumbs up, even though he also heard her.

The floor was indeed a puzzle. Certain tiles on the floor would trigger pitfalls, or other nasty traps. While sometimes just passing certain distances along the gauntlet would be the trigger for an arrow barrage or swinging, multi-ton stone slab.

As we took our time to assess, we were able to figure out a loose pattern to the pressure tiles and pitfalls, though that changed gradually the deeper we went. Huwett and I going ahead, as we had the best chance of dodging sudden surprises, let us map the distance checkpoints the others needed to weary of.

We also learned that the levers and switches dotted about turned off some of the traps as long as they were held down, making it easier for others to follow as long as we had at least one person stationary to keep the mechanism in place.

Each one only covered a certain, limited area, so we basically came up with a leap-frog strategy.

Huwett and I would be the vanguard, moving through uncharted sections of the floor and figuring out triggers, understanding which traps the levers turned off, and finding safe points for the others. Then we would help the others make their way forward, one staying behind, the other ahead, before repeating the process.

Sometimes, there were three mechanisms that needed to be held down. So Francis became an ancillary. He wasn’t the fastest, but he was the sturdiest, so he could survive an arrow to two should he fail to dodge, as long as he didn’t take any of them to the knee, of course.

He complained a lot about his role in this, but his dissatisfaction was ignored.

This was a very basic strategy, and there might have been a far more efficient way to solve the floor, but we weren’t geniuses. I might be an undergrad that researched atomic radiation and particle physics, but that didn’t mean I knew trap-theory.

I wasn’t some super omni-tool to bust through any and all obstacles the System could cook up. I struggled too, okay.

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Between figuring out the best pathway, mapping out the safe zones, and all the back and forth lever pulling action, progress was rather slow. Even with myself and Huwett taking on the most dangerous parts, it took a couple more hours for us to make it through the entire floor.

And not without a few close calls along the way.

The traps made countless attempts to behead or dismember us. Poisoned arrows, jets of immensely hot flame, even bursts of a misty substance that confused our senses and forced us to rest until the effect wore off.

But eventually, we all made it to the other side, six still intact frogs at the other side of a bloodthirsty street.

Norton patched us up here and there where needed, giving everyone words of encouragement as he did so. The burly man healed our emotions as much as our bodies, and I began to wonder if there was some sort of skill or ability that was behind it.

In the end, I realized it didn’t really matter.

As planned, we settled in at the entrance to the fourth floor, but didn’t yet go inside. Clearing the third floor meant we would add difficulty to everyone else, so we waited.

Another six hours passed as the other teams systematically conquered their objectives, feeding updates to us along the way. Once a team reached the door to the seventh floor of their tower, they also waited. Until, eventually, all three of the other remaining squads were sat in front of their final doors.