Novel Full Chapter 1951 A Break Room after a Break
Chapter 1951: Chapter 1951 A Break Room after a Break
— Kat —
The group pushed on. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve, further perhaps. There wasn’t exactly any clocks but they weren’t too tired so they kept pushing on. Kat ended up with her own puzzle box and difficult tower climb, though the box had a different solution to it sharing essentially none of the parts. The tower… was pretty much the same actually. A bit of a disappointment perhaps?
Lily and Hedera ended up with a puzzle where you had to dig a rock out of small beaker where yes, using your shadows to simply grab was considered cheating. They also encountered a room filled with cabinets where they were forced to find a pair of matching rocks. After the damned room with the key they weren’t too happy with that.
They went through about six more rooms each before they started to feel the weight of the trials. The mental effort finally getting… to Lily mostly. She’d been regularly emptying her mana and constantly active to help Hedera out with the challenges with no real rest other than that break in the pool room, and she didn’t dare actually fall asleep in the water without Kat around. Hedera was in a similar position, a bit worse, and a bit better.
Hedera was well used to focus additional effort on searching for little details as her team’s scout. She was used to the strain… which meant she didn’t realise until it was too late that she was putting way more effort into examining everything then was necessary. As an example, back at the key room, Lily could guess the keys size roughly with a glance, and then sorted them out by placing them next to each other. Hedera however, was taking in enough information to identify any random keys place in the setup with just a single glance. Useful perhaps… but extremely mentally draining and completely unnecessary at the time.
Kat noticed as much when she managed to get ahead of them in rooms. *We can take a break if you two want.*
[It’s fine, we can keep going.]
*Yes but we don’t NEED to. We have enough charge on our bracelets that we CAN make it through the next announcements without issue. We’re not yet in a rush, we’ve got more time then it seems.*
[Hmmm… hang on, just give me a moment to talk it out with Hedera.]
That ’one moment’ ended up being closer to twenty minutes where Hedera and Lily argued in circles, neither really agreeing with each other… but both constantly swapping stances. In the end, the argument was ’won’ when they both got stuck in a yawn loop where one would try to argue, start yawning, the other would try to use that to ’win’ the argument but instead start yawning themselves. It took about twelve yawns in a row before Kat made the executive decision for everyone to rest, and that Kat herself would rest as well, just to make them feel better. This, would turn out to be a mistake.
The first reason, was that after everyone had settled down for the ’night’ and about an hour had passed, a big announcement came over the speakers. “Hello? Are you asleep? Would you like a bed or something? My sensors can detect you’re not dead so you must be right?”
Which, sure, maybe a bed would’ve been nice but not only did they have no idea how to request one, as Kat’s “Yeah sure” didn’t miraculously manifest a bed for her to sleep on, Hedera’s “Yes give me a bed” wasn’t any more successful. The announcement wasn’t quiet either, even managing to wake Lily… for about a moment where she proceeded to go right back to sleep.
That wasn’t what really ended up pissing them off though. When they finally got around to finishing their rooms, Kat’s was something like ski ball where she had to get a series of different scores at each of the stations, and for Lily and Hedera it was an underwater maze with minimal air pockets. They weren’t the hardest challenges so far, and getting through them wasn’t too bad… it was what happened when they got into the next room. Kat managed it about thirty seconds before the other two but she was just so shocked she didn’t properly react until they caught up.
Inside the next room, was a break room. Not only that but the room was connected to multiple other paths, perhaps not all of them but the important thing was that it connected Kat with the other two. Annoyingly there was also a bunch of couches around that… when Kat eventually crept over to them with some amount of horror… opened up to reveal they were pull out couches you could sleep on. Not only that but there was a fully stocked kitchen with a bunch of snacks in it.
Kat wasn’t sure how trustworthy they were, as about two minutes after Hedera and Lily entered the room a video started playing. “Welcome! Congratulations! Everyone currently in the room has finished one of my ’Trap Paths’ and survived! I mean, I think they weren’t lethal but if you really struggled I suppose starvation might’ve been an issue?
“Regardless, I’m happy you made it to the end. If you want to do more puzzles, just press the button below this screen, it’s all fancy and glowing! It will open two doors, one on either side of the room, where you can either go for more puzzles of the same difficulty or some harder stuff. Alternatively, walking up to the door on the opposite side of where you entered, an exit will open up taking you out of the facility.
“Normally, I’d be here to thank you all personally for participating in my setup but… well… if the video has gotten to this point I’m probably dead. I should’ve stopped it before now. That also means the food might not be good. I did put preservation enchantments on it all and there should be a large stockpile. It’s probably fine… but just check it carefully alright? I’d hate for you to have survived all my traps only to die to a bad bit of canned fruit.
“I… I don’t really know what to say. I have ideas sure, but this is a recording. On you should only be hearing if I’m dead. What does that mean? For me… for you… what would future me want you to know? Ah! Yes! If you do decide to go through the harder routes twice you should be able to reach my main workshop!”
The face on the screen turned into a big frown. “Though… the traps in that second ’advanced’ layer are potentially deadly. I went through a few waves of paranoia and eventually decided that making the last layer of traps capable of killing people somewhat easily a fair compromise. Anyway, come and find whatever I was last working on if you want, or get confirmation I’m dead I suppose. Good luck with whatever you decide to do…”
With his piece said, the screen vanished back into the wall but the button notably remained. Kat let out a long sigh. “What the heck am I meant to think of that?” asked Kat.
Hedera shrugged, “I have no idea.”
“So we’re not bothering with that right?” asked Kat.
“I…” Hedera grimaced, before nodding while looking slightly pained. “I really want to say YES we should look. It was basically spelling it out to us that something good is down there but we’re low on orbs, we don’t know where the heck this is going to spit us out… and it said TWO layers. Sure we slept but it still took us over twelve hours of work to get here, or there abouts. Two more layers… technically doable but if they’re meant to be harder? I’m not sure we could manage it,”
Hedera glanced down at her bracelet. Showing that they had about fourteen or so hours’ worth of time left. Of course, Kat did have some orbs still to hand out… but not enough to get them both past the 24-hour mark. “We also, didn’t even GET anything, or at least, nothing we’ve seen yet. Perhaps there’s something out the exit even if I doubt it we just… didn’t get anything but a warm place to sleep. Even if there’s something amazing at the end of the tunnel… what about before that? Is there anything after the first round of traps? If there’s still no orbs, and maybe no exit that time? We’d be screwed. Might even be throwing away the win just from that alone,”
Kat nodded, “Yeah that really is the big worry. The fact we didn’t get any orbs is really weird. I don’t know how many other teams, or even people alone could manage these. They weren’t all that hard individually, but the time investment for each one, especially the puzzle ones? Like imagine if you didn’t know the answer at all. Nobody to help like because I doubt anyone else has a link like I do with Lily…”
“Suppose you could say the whole place is a trap,” offered Hedera with a grin.