Nina walked up-to-the hinged door looking structure which was barely visible because of the duskiness of the swamp, but Nina's sharp eyes caught whatever little light the metallic handle of the trapdoor was reflecting. The trapdoor was surrounded by the roots of the nearby trees which prevented anyone from opening the hatch, but with her sword, Nina easily sliced through them to release the door from nature's grasp.

"What even is that..." Nina whispered to Arnold who was standing next to her looking intently at the old wooden door.

​​

A short pair of worn-out sculptures were engraved on the entrance which was covered in murky swamp marks. Nina leaned in to open the door but Arnold gently pulled Nina back and call forth an automaton to pull open the trapdoor instead.

'One can never trust these doors, they could either have contents to grant you enormous powers or be a deathly trap and in this case, I think it's the latter. One careless mistake and you're dead.' Arnold thought and nodded at the automaton who immediately pulled on to the circular rusted handle of the trapdoor.

The moment the automaton tried to pull the door open, a cloud of yellow smoke shot out of the door handle and entirely covered the robot. Arnold and Nina instinctively backed away before the smoke could reach them.

The smoke dissipated just the way it had appeared, leaving a destroyed automaton behind. After making sure that the smoke had completely dissipated, Arnold approached the robot, with Nina behind him. Both of them were forced to cover their mouths and noses due to the extremely pungent smell left behind by the smoke.

"The more we stay here, the weirder this place gets..." Nina mumbled as Arnold squatted down to analyse the automaton which looked like it was thrown into a pool of lava.

Most of the automaton's platinum alloy armour had melted away, but its silver wiring was untouched. The colour of the smoke, the pungent smell combined with its reaction with metal were sufficient for Arnold to deduce what the smoke was.

"It was gaseous aqua regia, and is also known as 'royal water' due to its ability to dissolve noble metals," Arnold said and stored the automaton into his domain for repairs before standing up to face Nina, "It's a highly corrosive acid that can melt any metal except silver and iridium."

"Wowie didn't know I was dating a nerd." Nina smirked, "Guessing by the old looking door, It must have been quite an old trap, don't you think?"

"That's not possible." Arnold continued, "Aqua Regia, is prepared by mixing nitric acid and hydrochloric acid, usually in a ratio of one part of nitric acid to three or four parts of hydrochloric acid-"

"Hey hey, professor, no need to give an entire speech about the acid, just tell the moral of the story."

"Kids these days have no patience at all, you'll fail my class this way, Ms Black." Arnold fake sighed which made mind punch him on the shoulder, "Okay okay... the thing with aqua regia is a highly unstable mixture of two acids and rapidly loses its potency after forming, that's why the trap can't be old because aqua regia needs to be freshly prepared to be used in any form."

"Damn those lizardmen, bastards, I'm sure it is their doing! I'll kill each and every one of them, you just wait." Nina was almost ready to jump inside the trapdoor but Arnold once again stopped her.

"Calm down Nina... there's no need to overexert ourselves on such a matter." Arnold said, "And I don't think it was the work of the lizardmen either, if they wanted to harm us that way then they would've simply attacked us using it the moment they saw us, rather than allowing us to defend ourselves but they didn't. Also, there was no guarantee that we would've found the trapdoor by ourselves in the first place and to me, it didn't look as if the lizardman we were following was intentionally trying to lead us here."

"I think it's more than a coincidence that we ended up finding the trapdoor, Mr creationist," Nina murmured and threw a stone inside the opened trapdoor.

"Coincidence or not, I'm not letting you enter inside the trapdoor, who knows if there are more traps like that in there?"

"Yeah, you're right." Nina knew it was dangerous for them to enter an unknown location without preparing beforehand, "Either way, it's getting dark. We should probably head back to LA now."

Arnold agreed, their hunt was successful and there wasn't a need to force themselves to carry on with fighting the lizardmen anymore, not today at least. So Arnold quickly opened the travel portal. Nina jumped in first, followed by Arnold. Not knowing the fact that they were closely being watched, not by lizardmen but by something much worse.

***

Inside a deep cave within the swamps

"Have the humans left?" A snakelike monster asked one of her soldier's, who too had the lower body of snake-like her mistress, their size and colour were the only things differentiating them.

These monster girls had the upper torso of a human woman and the lower half of a snake. Known for living with their own kind in small villages that were spread across the swamp, unlike the lizardmen they were extremely intelligent and individualistic. The only issue was, they were only capable of conceiving females, not a single male naga had ever been born from their womb.

"Yes, mistress. Unfortunately, we had underestimated the male's wisdom... he saved his female companion from our trap." The armoured Naga held her head down in shame.

The mistress was at least twice as big as her servant, her half woman upper body was all a man could desire for, her dark skin and luscious body were more than sufficient to entice any male, human or monster, into willingly being her slave, but so far she hadn't met a human male it was one of her desires to mate with a man but sadly she couldn't fulfil her wishes in the swamp where only the ugly lizardmen dwell. Mermen were said to be a handsome lot but they hated anything that didn't belong to the waters, so there wasn't any hope there either.

She had given up on her desires to have a human male as her husband but it looked like, fate had decided on something else as her scouts reported that they had found what looked like a human male in the swamps, bravely hunting the lizardmen down one after another.

Alleiah, the queen of Nagas, was infatuated with the man her scouts had so vividly described to her, but there was a slight problem... a human female was accompanying the male.

'I have to get rid of the woman... maybe let the lizardmen enjoy her first.'

These were Alleiah's first thoughts when she heard about the man's female companion, but she didn't want to have a confrontation with the man. She had to make a friendly relationship with the man if she wanted to mate with him, that's why they were secretly installing various traps around the swamp to kill the female and then trick the male into mating with her. Alleiah was sure that the man won't be able to resist her charms and give in to his desires.

The acid trap was one such attempt but sadly, the male was had more wisdom than they had thought.

This was also the reason why Arnold had not countered a single Naga in the swamp despite actively hunting the monsters there, the Naga Queen had forbidden them from attacking him or appearing before him, she wanted to be the first Naga that whom he saw, and if someone dared to disobey her command, she would personally deal with that Naga.

'Courageous with a lot of wisdom... there's no doubt, the heavens have made that man just for me.' Alleiah got lost in her thoughts, fantasising about the male.

"No matter what... you have to kill the female as soon as you can and make sure the human doesn't suspect us of doing it."

"Yes, mistress." The servant humbly bowed down to her and slithered out of her chambers.

"One day you'll be mine, human!" She tightly hugged her tail and licked the tip, which was their most sensitive body part and also gave them the most pleasure.

***

Back in Nina's apartment...

"Today was tiring..." Nina mumbled and took off her armour while Arnold was busy tending to this guns, "I don't know how you have so much energy left."

"It's not about energy. creating and maintaining things, helps me focus better." He said and pointed an empty gun at her, "By the way, how's the sword holding up?"

"Not a single scratch on this bad bitch," Nina replied, swinging the sword around, "It's the best sword I've ever used! Sometimes I feel like it has a connection with me and the fact that it allows me to use the abilities of my enemies makes it even better. I always knew your hands have some kind of magic!"

Arnold laughed loudly, got up from his chair and pulled her close, "No, you didn't. You always thought I was some kind of cosplaying pervert."

Nina got to her toes and planted a kiss on Arnold's lips, "Oh you're still a cosplaying pervert."

"Wha-"

She placed her index finger on his lips, "Shhh. You're still a cosplaying pervert, but you're my cosplaying pervert."

At her cringy words, Arnold's face lit up, having a smile that was reserved only for her. He then lifted her, his lips pressed against hers. Nina had her arms around his shoulders, her fingers playing with his long hair.

"Ahem..."

They were so occupied with each other, they had forgotten about the guest they had called over.

"I hope I'm not disturbing you guys?" Nicole smirked, "Seriously, get a hold of yourselves."