Gamblers, as the Adventurers call them, are known to operate without any form of safety net. They take high risk jobs that the Adventurer Guild is unwilling to post for their members in exchange for payment multiple times higher than the market value. Most Gamblers will make as much as a veteran adventurer while still an inexperienced recruit. If they live. – History of a New Age, pg 51

He had been right. The pest was back. Once more propped up by that false spine. Just like the first time he had returned, the rat walked like it planned to fight him. How would it attempt to run away this time? In the end it would not matter. He would enjoy watching the nuisance skewered when it inevitably attempted to leap his shield bearers. For now, he would indulge the farce though.

Standing from his throne, Warlord seized the blades from beside his seat and marched toward the pink thing that had kept him awake so long now. As he walked, he swung his blades in practice strikes meant to ensure there were no problems in his arms and that crushing this bug would not be an issue. He stepped forward with large strides, confirming that his mobility was unimpeded by previously unknown damage to his legs. He came to a halt and posed in one of the sword forms granted him at his creation. Nothing had interrupted his motions. He had moved exactly as fast as he had expected. His condition was perfect.

If there was one thing he had to thank his opposition for, it was the way it kept the Deep Power constantly active. It was usually so hard to see anything with any real detail. It forced him to rely on battering through his opponents’ defenses rather than allowing him to bring the full strength of his long-practiced swordsmanship to bear. But this one wore the power across his entire body, like a second layer of rock. Warlord could see everything perfectly and was confident in his coming victory. He might even show off a little before ending this.

After the pest was contained of course.

Warlord raised both arms and charged forward, swinging his blades with the full strength of his magically empowered body of stone so that he might cut this opponent down in the first moment. As the trail of his blades formed an X in the air, he sensed something change. The creature had changed its use of the Deep Power. Its trick was coming.

But the pest did not dive to escape. It cycled the Deep Power in its armor to a far greater level than he had ever seen from it before, crouching down and making itself small. Then it launched itself at him. With more speed than it had ever displayed before, it passed by Warlord’s side. He had, of course, swung at the thing, but he knew he had missed before the blade had even moved an inch. The thing was too fast and too low. As it passed him by, something flickered in his sense for the Deep Power. Then he saw the plane of energy appear in front of his shins.

Nimbly leaping, he bound over the new obstacle in his path. He likely could have smashed through, but the pest had surprised him once. He would not just ignore such a trap.

He spun as he leapt, bringing one of his swords down on the annoying creature’s body. The glow of the blade’s runes intensified, as if sensing the coming resistance of flesh. Only for the edge to be turned aside by another of the Deep Power surfaces. As he stepped forward to continue the assault, the tripping wall no longer present, he heard a plink and felt another flare of magic as something bounced off his chest. The pest would have to do far more than that, such a weak strike would do nothing against his armor.

#

As time passed, he had to admit that the pest was far more impressive then when he had last laid eyes on it. The last time it had shown up, it had been gasping and the glow of Deep Power had dimmed to but a spark by now. The nuisance hadn’t even been fighting that time, simply leaping and dodging. It had been entirely incapable of such movements then too, moving as if it was unsure of its own power. Now it moved with absolute confidence and surety.

Now it might even deserve to display its Deep Power so brightly and walk with such arrogance. In most situations. It should know better than to walk with such surety around him.

None of the strikes the pest could bring to bear left even a scratch on his unblemished surface. Each futile strike served only to annoy Warlord more. Meanwhile his own blows force the creature to use more and more of its Deep Power. Slowly whittling down and exhausting the thing. It was a wily opponent, diving and rolling around his strikes. Such a style was exhausting for the fleshy things to keep up though. Eventually it would tire. Warlord didn’t want to waste the energy for such a slow approach to the fight, but he didn’t have much of a choice. The difference in their speed was not that great, but it was enough to capitalize on Warlord’s general inflexibility. Enough to keep the pest just out of reach of his swords.

For now.

He would win in the end. It was a given.

He regretted bringing them out though. It had cost him and the courtyard so much accumulated Deep Power. If he had known the pest would actually confront him, he would never have made the effort. Just one more frustration of dealing with the nonsensical creature. That was the problem with flesh. Those made from it were always unpredictable.

He continued to pressure the pest, driving it backward and doing his best to knock it off balance. The pressure quickly served its purpose by making the pest desperate. Sloppy. Always on the back foot as it hastily retreated, barely taking the time to balance. Then, it finally happened. The pest slipped as one of the floor’s waves caught it at the wrong time. As it desperately flailed to keep its balance he swung.

A crisp, continuous crack, like a hundred stacked windows being smashed through, broke the comparative silence of the battle. A great cloud of dust was kicked up and nothing could be seen of the two enemies for a few precious seconds until a humanoid form came stumbling out of the crowd while clutching at its side.

#

As the sword swung down at Li, he knew he had screwed up. He shouldn’t have set the rune to wait so long before going up. He had wanted to give himself as much time as possible to build up damage on the statue. To make sure he broke through the thing’s defense when the spell finally went off. Now there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t even try to shove the thing away since all the force would be absorbed. This might very well be the end.

Desperate, he racked his mind for what could get him out of this mess as time seemed to slow down. He distantly felt an alert go off as one of his abilities activated, but he had no time for that. He needed to focus. To figure out a way out. As he thought, he heard a crack emanate from the Warlord in front of him as the behemoth of stone kicked off the ground.

There was no time to think, the sword was coming. He leapt backward. The armor alone wasn’t enough. He activated another spell. Giant’s Punch, but focused on his legs as he shoved himself away. He knew the name. Titan’s Leap. The alert for it was there, just out of sight. Suppressed because he had no time for it. A second crack came as the sword smashed into the ground and scattered the little tiles everywhere.

Then there was a third crack and Li saw the Warlord stumble as something it its side seemed to give. Using Titan’s Leap once more, Li closed with the Warlord and, as the stumbling statue left the dust cloud, he brought his combination spell of Titan’s Punch, Reinforcement Armor, and Force Manipulation to bear. His fist slammed into the spot where he had placed the rune during the statue’s first charge. Right where the kidney would be on a human.

The area, already riddled with small cracks radiating from where the center of the rune had previously been, cratered under the pressure of the hit. Chunks of stone rained down to the courtyard floor and Li was sure he had landed a lethal blow on the Warlord.

Then its elbow smashed into his face.

The blow threw him across the cleared part of the square and sent him bowling into one of the shield-bearing statues. The new golem had quickly reacted by throwing him to the ground with a shake of the tower shield, followed by attempting to decapitate him by smashing the bottom edge toward his throat. Simultaneously, the spear bearing statue behind it tried to skewer him. Apparently, the things worked in tandem.

Thankfully, compared to the Warlord these things were nearly snails. It took almost no effort to read their movements with Motion Sense and roll out of the way with the speed increase from his reinforcement armor. Flipping back onto his feet and turning back toward the warlord, he didn his best to portray strength.

The Warlord had gotten a good hit in. He imagined this must be what it felt like to be shot with a beanbag gun. Pain across the entire front of his chest, almost like he had been run over and crushed flat at the site of the hit. He would live though, and his opponent was probably injured even worse than himself.

It was hard to tell with a statue that had no organs, blood, or internal structure. The thing was moving slowly, though, almost stretching. As if determining exactly how much the damage was limiting its movements. The entire process seemed to be incredibly slow, but that worked for him . More time to recover from his own injuries. To let the dizziness that the blow had left him with fade away rapidly as he watched and waited. He could go a few more rounds.

#

Warlord had not felt emotions stronger than annoyance in decades. This pest though, this pest had managed to infuriate him. He disliked that. It was so fleshy to feel that way. The overwhelming feeling of strong emotion was illogical and an unfortunate side-effect of the sentience granted him at his creation. Annoyance was simple. Ignorable. Fury might make him do something stupid. So he made the decision to step back from the fight.

He hadn’t brought them out for this. Never imagined there would ever be such a need. Not against an opponent he had thought so weak. That was fine, they would still end this. They would serve their purpose and eliminate the intruder. Decision made he raised his right blade. For a moment a red glow built in the weapon, before releasing as a pulse of light and booming like an entire contingent of war drummers all smacking their instruments at once.

Behind the pikemen, a dozen columns rose from the ground. Each was a circle of tiles maybe five feet in diameter and lifted a statue twenty or thirty feet into the air, giving each stone warrior a perfect view of the battle field. The golems on top were armed with bows, slings, or other ranged weapons and glowed far more intensely than their brethren with the Deep Power.

They were far more advanced than the others. They had to be loaded out with comparatively advanced sensor abilities to have any chance of hitting something with ranged weapons. Enhanced flexibility was required to mimic a bowstring, the rope of a sling, or to allow them to properly throw a spear. Each needed an enchantment to make ammo. All of that cost a fortune in Deep Power.

Years of accumulated energy would be draining out of the square every minute these golems were active. During that time though, they would constantly harass the nuisance with bolts, arrows, and all manner of missiles. It was the rare opponent who was capable of avoiding these troops and they were an ace up Warlord’s sleeve.

#

It was up to something. Li was sure of it. Instead of coming after him again, the Warlord was retreating after raising those weird pillars. He seemed to be headed back to his throne, unconcerned with Li’s continued presence. Li could see statues on top of the pillars, but what purpose would they serve? It wasn’t like the golems had any ranged abilities. Then he felt it in his Motion Sense. Something being launched straight at him.

Moving quickly, he leaped to his left just in time to watch the stone tiles he had been standing on shatter under the force of a stone arrow. Half of the missile was buried deep into the ground and he could see the rest wobbling under the force of the impact. He barely had time for a brief flash of fear before his senses alerted him to even more attacks incoming.

Quickly pumping mana into his Motion Sense ability, allowing him to increase his ability to track attacks, he began working to come up with a plan. With the additional sensitivity, he quickly determined that there were twelve opponents using vastly different weapons, but each missile was fired with terrifying speed and precision. His mana reserves began draining away like water in a sieve as he empowered senses and armor to their maximum levels so that he could dodge the attacks.

If I can get close enough, I can take them out with a Giant’s Punch knife toss. I’ll need to watch out for attacks from the pikemen since I will need to get fairly close to the edge of their barricade if I want to break through the ranged golems defenses. Should be doable though. I just need to move fast enough that I still have some mana by the time this is all over.

Plan in place, Li began to move. He ducked and wove his way across the square, aiming for a crossbowman as his first target. His heart pumped wildly as each shot by his opponents forced him to place his body perfectly to avoid the danger. He could feel his control of the Reinforcement Armor improving each moment as precise control of his power was required to avoid being impaled.

It was like a dance. The armor was his partner and the feeling of the arrows flying through his motion sense was the music. As he continued, he began to truly see the greater pattern. Where each statue was aiming from the tells in their posture. When the shot would fly as all motion unnaturally stopped for the perfect shot. It was beautiful, even if every second of concentration on this greater whole set his head pounding like the Warlord was beating his head with a mallet.

The music hit a crescendo as he got within range of his first target and the second row of golem’s spears added to the song. They were a dangerous, building drumline beneath the sharp, staccato cracks of the missiles in flight, but they were slow and his dance accounted for them. For a single moment he paused as everything aligned. With a spike of power, he released his first knife and the chorus lost a voice. Then he dove back into the dance.

#

Warlord could not believe what he saw. His greatest weapons were failing. They were falling! Being picked off one by one as the fleshy coward weaved through a field of death. Even he would be hesitant to walk through that killing ground, but this pest made it look easy. The clinical dismantlement of his troops was almost beautiful in its execution, but it was destroying his property!

The pest couldn’t keep this up for long. Deep Power flooded out like a river and he could see the source drying up. The vermin would not last much longer and without the Deep Power, its fleshy body would be defenseless against him. He couldn’t just let it continue to destroy his ranged troops though. They were a precious resource and restoring just one would tie up the majority of the courtyard’s mana for months.

The pest was about to break, he could feel it. He just needed to apply a little more pressure. Make the fleshy nuisance use its Deep Power a little more quickly.

So Warlord raised his hand, pausing at the height of its journey to release a golden pulse of power. Then he brought the hand chopping down through the air and the courtyard responded. In a massive wave, it sent Warlord’s ground troops charging toward the pest.

#

The seventh of the ranged opponents had fallen when there was a sudden shit in the song. A discordant jumble that threw him out of the dance as a single note drowned out everything else. The courtyard itself heaved and Li suddenly found himself among the Warlord’s troops. Unlike before though, the statues immediately struck out at him. It was like every other time he had dealt with them they had simply been waving him away in their sleep and now they were awake.

Each opponent could only strike two or three times, but that was enough to force him into constant motion. Especially as he was forced to dodge the occasional missile from the golems overhead. They were more limited, now that he could use the troops for cover, but still a dangerous threat he had to spend some of his few remaining dregs of mental power to keep track of each one.

It was in those early moments, as the chaos of the situation overwhelmed him, that the Warlord struck. It came from behind one of the shield bearers, striking through its fellow golem in a surprise attack on Li. While he was unable to fully defend against the strike, he was able to throw up a force shield between himself and the sword’s edge while leaping away from the blow. He escaped with only a bruise across the entirety of his forearms after being flung backwards, into the back of an axe wielding statue.

Moving quickly to avoid the furious troops around him, Li charged back toward the Warlord. He had seen something as the attack blew him away. The cracks from his earlier strikes had grown. He may have been running on the dregs of his mana, but the Warlord was moments away from crumbling. He just needed one more powerful hit. Then his armor guttered out and he felt only a single, small drop of his mana remaining. Too little for any of his spells.

#

Warlord could only frown. The pest should be dead. He had hit the thing head on with his sword. He could still feel that damnable sensation though. It was still here and it was still alive. And he was falling apart. That last strike with his sword had almost broken off his entire left arm. Losing it wouldn’t mean his end, but it would be one more drain on the courtyard’s resources to repair. He would need to quickly squash this nuisance.

Then the feeling blinked out of existence. The pest was trying to run once again! Roaring in rage, he spun around looking for his target. Trying to find the bright glow of Deep Power that had always highlighted the pest with such glaring detail. There was nothing. Nothing stood out in the calm streams of energy that surrounded him.

Where was it? Where was it?!?

Spinning wildly for long seconds he rumbled in rage. Just a moment, he felt something behind him. A sudden flair of Deep Power. Then he heard it. A loud, echoing pop. A rolling crack. A new sensation, like something was fundamentally wrong with his existence. Like the sound of smashing rocks and screams internalized as something foreign invaded into his body. The last thing he saw, as his head fell toward the ground, was a layer of ice forming across the shattered remains of his body.

#

Li had been sure he would die in the final moments of that desperate battle. He was defenseless against his attackers and the next strike would surely kill him. A next strike that had never come. The statues around him ignored his presence and the Warlord was not chasing him down. Just spinning wildly in place as though it had lost sight of him. Why?

No, that doesn’t matter. Not right now. I can use this. I just need to move quickly.

As he began to circle around, he heard the Warlord’s scream. Felt as it stomped around, searching for him. The only thing he could think of was that he was no longer using spells, so it could not find him. That was fine though, his original plan didn’t require him to have mana. Just to get close.

He had already made the preparations when the Warlord had struck him with that surprise blow. Half the reason he had been forced to take the hit was because he had been focused on something else entirely. Throwing a small seashell so that it lodged deeply into one of the cracks on the Warlord’s side. A toss that would have been impossible without his new magic.

Quickly getting behind the giant statue, he drew a second item from his bag. A small wand made of an icicle that radiated bitter cold. The wand could only be used once, which was what had placed it in a price range he was comfortable spending. It still cost him almost thirty points, but that just spoke to how powerful it was.

As soon as he drew the wand, he saw the Warlord stiffen. Out of time, he used the spell contained within the item. Glacial Ray shot forward, and the water that had been spilling from the Ocean Reservoir Shell instantly froze. The water expanded within the statue and chunks of stone began to fall away as the Warlord’s form shattered into pieces.

A blue glow appeared in his vision, alerting him to a pair of system messages. He barely had time to glance at the screen before some last vestige of strength fled from his body. His limbs turned to lead, his vision went black, and he lost consciousness.

#

When he came to, he felt as though the Warlord had been beating him over the head with a hammer. His tongue was swollen in his mouth which tasted heavily of iron, a mystery that was promptly solved when he realized he had managed to leave a pretty impressive bitemark in the fleshy appendage. Sitting up sent his vision swaying and left him feeling like all the blood was rushing to his head. The end result was a sensation like he was one of those clowns that would flip right back up when you punched them, bobbing and swaying, and he had just been put to use for several hours.

It was easily the worst he had ever felt immediately after regaining consciousness. Worse than the morning after his twenty-first birthday, and that had involved a birthday deal at the local bar called “Twenty-one shots for twenty-one dollars.” Worse than the time he had been smacked in the head with a baseball and woke up lying on the bench. He could barely crack open his eyes without moaning in pain at the bright sun stabbing shards of glass through his eyes and into his skull.

A few drinks from his purification canteen, some ibuprofen purchased from the shop, and a piece of buttered toast later and at least he was feeling human again. Just enough to once again attempt opening his eyes and reading the messages he had received during and after the fight.

Hysterical Strength has been activated – Major Boost to Physical Stats for duration. You will suffer severe debuffs when this effect ends.

Well, that explained some things. He assumed that this ability is what had activated when he had tripped and the Warlord had nearly decapitated him. It was probably what knocked me out when the ability deactivated and all those debuffs were applied. I was already on the edge with all the mana I spent, and that was the last straw.

There was also a congratulatory message about learning a new spell. Nothing interesting there. Confirmation that the spell was called Titan’s Leap and notes on how it could be used both offensively and for utility.

The next message was more exciting, alerting him to what defeating the Warlord, which was apparently a Field Boss, had given him.

Congratulations, you have defeated the Field Boss: Stone Golem Warlord! All Golems in the Warlord’s Courtyard will be deactivated until the Golem Warlord is repaired (Remaining time until repair: 2528 Hours, 37 Minutes). You have gained 74 Racial Experience (37 base*2 for Boss Enemy). You have gained 79 Racial Experience (x7 Ranged Golems, 63 Experience; x16 Lesser Stone Golem, 16 Experience). As you have no class, you have gained 0 Class Experience. You have gained 50 Evolution Points.

Congratulations, you have gained an Uncommon Reward from the shop for killing a Field Boss. You have received Potion of Stoneskin – Advanced (Single Use).

Congratulations, you have gained a Scarce Reward from the shop for Solo Clearing a Field Boss. You have received a Rune Harvester – Advanced (Single Use).

Congratulations, you have gained a Rare Reward from the shop for first encountering the defeated Field Boss at Level 1. You have received an Ability Harvester – Advanced (Single Use).

*WARNING* Harvesters are only viable for 24 hours.

Congratulation! You have collected 100 racial experience and leveled up! The core of your existence has strengthened as you pursue survival. You have gained 12 Free Stat Points to distribute. Access your status page to spend these and strengthen your chosen stats. You have gained 15 Evolution Points. As you are in a dungeon, the wild mana is extra dense. Additional Mana has been brought into your core. You receive one Stat Point in Perception and one State Point in Dexterity and 5 extra evolution points.

Panicking at the alert that a number of his rewards had an expiration, he cried out to the system, “Shit, System! How long do I have left on those Harvesters?”

“Your Harvesters still have twenty-three hours and seventeen minutes remaining before they destabilize two-oh-six,” came the unconcerned reply. “Your brief loss of consciousness has cost you no rewards.”

“Oh, good. Thank you. Do you mind telling me more about these things?”

“Of course, Beta Tester. Harvesters are a special type of advanced enchanted device. These items are very difficult to find and are almost universally only available as reward drops. Purchase in the shop is widely considered prohibitively expensive and each created by an artisan is considered a near priceless treasure and pinnacle of craftsmanship. Their quick degradation rate also makes them unfeasible as a reliable product for sale.”

“Alright, I’ll admit it is good to know that I can’t expect to come across these often, but how do they actually work?” The nervous energy of knowing he had such an uncommon opportunity and a very limited time to capitalize on it was making him antsy. Something which came through in his rather excitable tone.

Apparently sensing Li’s impatience, the System quickly provided him with the answer he wanted. On a window it put up a picture of a ceremonial dagger. At the end of the hilt was a gem carved with geometric patterns and glowing bright white. The blade itself had some phrase written in a language Li did not recognize, but it looked like someone had mashed together Greek shapes in a geometric arrangement similar to Japanese.

“To use the Harvester, one must simply stab the blade into the object you wish to harvest from. This means an enchanted item for a Rune Harvester and a corpse for an Ability Harvester. The device will then randomly harvest an ability or rune that is of the same or lower rarity compared to the harvester. This will result in a rune or ability stone. Note that harvesting an object destroys both it and, in most instances, the harvesters.

“Rune stones can apply and power an enchantment on a weapon using ambient mana. When the stone is fully recharged, a new object can be enchanted. Note that the previous object will lose the enchantment. Ability stones will permanently grant one individual an ability upon shattering the stone.”

“Thank you for the help, System. Please close both messages and give me the rewards.”

As he finished speaking, three glowing spots appeared on the ground in front of him. The first two were daggers identical to the image he had seen earlier. The Potion of Stoneskin was a small crystalline vial filled with a brown sludge. It looked entirely unappetizing, but if it granted him the defensive advantages of the Warlord he could deal with a bad taste. When he tried asking about it the system was vague about exactly how strong the effect would be. It had simply said that the effects were “potent”, but could be improved by a capable alchemist.

He had a choice to make. The Ability Harvester would obviously be used on the Warlord. That was simple enough. The Enchantment Harvester though…He could use that on either the Warlord’s armor or his sword. He had only been able to find shards of the Warlord’s carved armor, but the System had confirmed that it was a viable target for the Enchantment Harvester.

In the end he had decided to go with one of the swords. Between his armor (both magical and physical), force wall, his new Giant’s Leap, and his increasing Dexterity stat he felt like he had a pretty solid defense. Besides, like the saying went. The best defense is a good offense.

When he went to actually use the device, he was slightly hesitant. How was he supposed to stab into solid rock? He trusted the System’s advice though, and brought it down on the sword. As the tip of the “dagger” touched the surface, it began to melt into an almost circuit-like pattern that covered the sword. Soon the crystal shifted from its white glow, to a more silver color. The lines of script surrounding it slowly shifted until a single symbol remained. A boulder being split in half. With a final flash, the handle of the dagger dissolved into particles of light, followed quickly by the Warlord’s sword. That was fine, he still had the other one.

Congratulations, your Ability Harvester – Advanced has successfully created a Stonepiercer Rune Stone. This Rune vastly improves the ability for a weapon to cut through defenses. The stronger the defenses, the higher the piercing power added to the weapon.

Guess I made the right decision. Having the Potential Energy Well Enchantment may have meant that he had a way to deal with all the heavily armored enemies in this dungeon, but it was always good to have multiple options. He’d have to find some enemies to test it out on, but he had high hopes for this enchantment.

Using the second Harvester had very similar effects, though the color of the glow was a light blue-silver color and the rune that had formed on the crystal was that of an eye with a spiral for an iris. The pile of rubble mostly disappeared along with the blade as the physical matter dissolved into white light. He assumed what was left behind amounted to the Warlord’s armor, but it didn’t really matter.

Congratulations, your Rune Harvester – Advanced has successfully created a Mana Sense Ability Stone (Single Use). Shattering this stone will instantly grant you Mana Sense. This ability allows one to sense to flow of mana in the world around them with far greater clarity, even making out the Mana Veins of other living creatures or flows in active spells. While rare in humans, this ability is a common sensory tool of many monsters and races more closely aligned to magic.

While he had been hoping for something more impressive, he could hardly complain about a free ability that might otherwise be difficult for him to find. Who knew what kind of advantages it might offer down the line? Motion Sense was not a glamorous skill like his Giant’s Punch or Reinforcement Armor, but it was easily worth as much as those two combined in his fight with the Warlord. Mana Sense could potentially be just as powerful of a tool in his arsenal.

In the end he decided to wait on spending his level up gains for the time being. He felt that he already had enough new abilities he needed to adjust to, and until he was fully comfortable with them there was little point in adding more changes. Besides, he still wasn’t entirely sure where he was lacking. He had spent so long focused on beating one enemy it was hard to say what he might have neglected for dealing with a broader range of situations. Twelve free stat points could be a powerful boost in any stat and he wanted to make sure he spent them correctly.

#

As it turned out, he had been right about the usefulness of his new sense. Traps in the dungeon were often magically powered and his new ability allowed him to easily pick out where he was likely to run into danger. Between Motion Sense to keep him aware of monster and hazards moving around the dungeon, Mana Sense to alert him to magical traps, and the fact that all of the monsters he did run into were nothing compared to the Warlord, Li was able to quickly progress through Archimedes’ Labyrinth.

The most recent room had been a long hallway, filled with constantly moving platforms over what seemed to be a giant shredding machine. While most of the platforms were completely safe and his Motion Sense gave him a perfect model of where any given platform would be at any given moment, the glow of Mana on around a tenth of the platforms had given away the potentially deadly traps that occupied the area. He quickly had a safe route figured out and with the power of Titan’s Leap was able to easily make it from one side of the hallway to the other. This is almost cheating. Is the rest of this dungeon going to be any danger at all?

Sweeping his gaze over this side of the room, he began to notice a number of abnormalities. The path ahead had three obvious doorways, though only one was open to him currently, and above each was a symbol. The open pathway, located on the right, had a symbol composed of three interlocking gears above it. Further down the hallway his motion sense alerted him to a large number of moving components, at least as many as were in his current room. The smash and rumble of large objects colliding with each other carried out through the opening, though the fact that the route veered off to the right made it impossible to actually see what was potentially happening in the next room. The symbol above the left door was a scorpion while the middle was marked with a lightning bolt. It seemed as though the dungeon was giving him a choice.

He could take the currently available path, or he could wait for one of the other doors to open up. It had even been so kind as to have given him a possible hint. Hard to say if the symbols properly portrayed the danger though. This current door seemed to indicate that, given the sounds of mechanical clanging echoing down the hallway and his own sense’s warning. Still, it would mean sitting here and waiting for an unknown amount of time to open either of the other doors. Not that that is a huge deal. I can always meditate in the meantime.

Resigned to a bit of a wait, he decided to explore the area a little bit more before meditating. He thought that there may be a surprise in the area, or a hidden way to open the doors. Even if it didn’t, he wasn’t really out anything for taking the time to look around. The doors would open when they opened.

The first thing he did was search for hidden motion. His first supernatural sense had been becoming closer and closer to feeling entirely natural over the last weeks, and it was almost second nature to conduct a more thorough scan of the area with it. Unfortunately, nothing particularly interesting stood out in his sense. He found an area where a crack in the wall exposed spinning gears, some hatchling birds in a nest that had been constructed in the corner, and what appeared to be a steam vent. The last had surprised him when the rush of heated air and water vapor flipped open the hidden lid, causing him to dive for cover as he believed a trap had been activated.

His Magic Sense picked up a more interesting sight. The doors themselves were slightly magical, along with the symbols that marked them. That wasn’t too surprising. Absolutely everything constructed by the dungeon seemed to be at least partially magical, and anything that moved, was on a schedule, or required regular maintenance seemed to have slightly more mana running to them. The flow of the mana was almost like wiring running through the walls, substituting electricity as a power source.

Then he noticed something odd. There was an area on the wall that looked…odd. All of the lines of mana were avoiding the area, leaving a spot on the wall void of light. Deciding to get a better look, he made his way toward it. Nothing changed as he got closer, not until he reached out and touched that blank part of the wall.

With a flash of color and loud WHOMP of displaced air, he felt his vision flicker. With a feeling like his stomach had been left behind and was only now catching up, he bent over and tried not to vomit. At the same time, he heard scrambling behind him, instantly setting him on guard.

“Fu-,” Li began only to be immediately interrupted.

“Who are you and what do you want?” The voice was commanding and edged with iron. It had a certain weight to it, like the owner knew he was the most dangerous thing in the area and would brook no nonsense.

Putting his hands in the air to show he was no threat, Li called out to the voice. “I’m Li. I, uh, ended up here by accident,” it wasn’t really a question, but his tone was confused and made it sound like one. “Do you mind if I turn around?”

The voice grunted with what he thought was assent and Li did his best to force his stomach under control before straightening back up and turning around slowly. In front of him was a group of five individuals. A man with long black hair and deeply tanned skin wearing half plate, a very pale woman wearing a green robe, a dark-skinned man wearing a grey robe, another woman in a green dress, and a third, shorter woman in what looked like a kimono and carrying a large, flaming staff.

“Um, hello,” Li gave a little wave and hoped he sounded friendly.