Chapter 192: Let’s Go Team

“If we get the door open, that is,” Kasia said.

“No,” I said. “When we get the door open.” I walked up to the one with the blue rune and knocked on it. “I have a feeling this is going to be the one.”

“How can you tell?”

“Well. It’s easy. Because there are nine doors, and this is the first one. It would make sense to start at the first door, no? I imagine this is a kind of test door. The door that is hard, but not too hard, so if you die here, you know you shouldn’t try the next doors.”

Kasia raised an eyebrow. “But you’d be dead. So you wouldn’t be able to try the next door.”

“Exactly!” I gave her a wink and made finger guns at her, clicking my tongue.

“So then it wouldn’t be a very good test?”

“I mean, depends on how you look at it. If you survive, you know you’re good enough and you can try the next one. If you’re dead, you know you probably shouldn’t have tried it in the first place.”

“Riiiight. Wouldn’t it be better if the test door let you off with a warning instead of killing you?”

“Nah.” I waved her off. “Then you might get cocky. You might think ‘This demon-infested hellscape didn’t kill me, so why would the next one?’”

Kasia looked a bit worried. “It’s a demon-infested hellscape?”

“I don’t think so. Vitek seems to think so, but I don’t remember if he said that before or after the mushroom tea. I imagine the place will be something special, though. Something we’ve never seen before.”

“Like a demon-infested hellscape,” Vitek said.

“Oh…” Kasia said. “I hope not.”

Vasil cleared his throat. “Ahem. We will never find out what is inside if we do not open it. Now, Hecate, since you are so certain this is the door, I assume you have thought of a way to open it?”

“Gosh, Vasil,” I said, rolling my eyes. “What do you think? Obviously I have a plan. A plan that has never failed me before, in fact.”

“You are planning on shooting the door.”

“I am planning on shooting the door. I’m going to shoot it right off its hinges and we are going to stroll right inside.”

“What if it does not work? It clearly is protected by strong magic. None of us here are capable of dispelling it.”

“By Her Pale Grace, Vasil! Haven’t you been listening? I’m going to grab my pistol, shoot the door really hard, then it’s going to either explode or fall over, just like everything else. Not everything needs an [Archmage] to dispel it. Bullets work. They always work.”

“What if it ricochets?” Bogumir asked. “Won’t the bullet explode us?”

“Guess you better stand aside then.”

Bogumir grabbed his head. “You’re gonna do it right now?!”

I threw my hands up in frustration. “Why do you think we’re here, man? I asked you if you wanted to join and you said yes! You said, and I quote, ‘yes, that sounds fun, Hecate, I also need the experience because I am bad at picking skills and didn’t anticipate getting shrunk down to the size of a tiny doll.’”

“I didn’t say that. That’s not how I talk at all.”

“You are right, you usually complain more and swear more, but I made it sound more friendly, because Kasia is here.”

“That’s not what quoting is. Quoting means you literally say what the other person said.”

I summoned both of my revolvers. “What did you say? I couldn’t hear you over the sound that my ridiculously powerful guns are about to make when they tear this door to shreds.”

“That’s also not how that works! You haven’t even made the sound yet!”

Right as I was about to show this door who’s boss, I saw movement in the rune. It flickered, then grew brighter.

“Hecate!” Kasia said. “The rune! It’s reacting to one of your weapons! I see a connection.”

“What does it look like?” I asked.

“It looks… like a thread of mana connecting your weapon right to the middle of the rune.”

“This one?” I waved [Bies’ Wisdom].

“Yes.”

Interesting. Maybe that’s why those runewords were in the book. Maybe there was no other way of opening the door. Maybe Bies’ Wisdom would open this specific door, and maybe another of her runewords would open another. Or maybe certain combinations of her words would open certain doors. Perhaps you’d need all four of her runewords to open the final door? I was sure it had to be something like that. That also meant I’d have to find some more runestones or I would not be able to open all of the doors. If this door even opened…

I walked up to the door and stopped in front of it. As soon as I reached it I heard a click. I didn’t even have to do anything. Standing in front of it appeared to have been enough.

“Was it this easy all along?” I wondered.

“Easy?” Vasil asked. “You had to find a very specific runeword, that I am sure very few people in this world even know exists. Then you had to gather the correct runestones to craft it. Then you did craft it and brought it back here. I do not believe easy is the correct way of describing it. You exerted a significant amount of effort to get here. Blood, sweat, and tears.”

“When you say it like that it does sound like it wasn’t all that easy. I guess it wasn’t that easy, and we still don’t have all the other runewords. Which I think we will need to open the rest. I really hope Bies didn’t also create nine different runewords, one for each door. That would be a major hassle.”

“It would indeed. But you have opened one door. Let us start with that, and worry about the others after. We first need to survive this.”

“You’re immortal. I don’t doubt that you’ll survive this.”

He gave me his signature flat stare. “Fine. You and Kasia need to survive this.”

“What about me?” Bogumir asked.

“We’ll be fine,” I said, taking off Mateusz’s head and replacing it with Sambor’s.

[Headhunter - Sambor Kurek, Tvardziel]

Gear modification:

You can link with a party member. A percentage of damage is redirected from them to you.

+12 Barrier

I immediately linked with Kasia. “Do you notice anything different?”

She looked down at her feet, then at her hands, then at me. “I don’t feel any different, but I see there is a new thread of mana connecting us. What did you do?”

“Just a little risk management. If you take damage, some of it will now be redirected to me. I’m sure you will be fine, though. It’s just for my own peace of mind.”

“Hecate… I don’t know what to say. You would do that for me?”

“Of course. I do have a kind of unrelated question, though. Do you just see mana always now?”

She nodded. “I do. I don’t think there’s a way to turn it off.”

“Sounds overwhelming.”

“Not really. It was the first two seconds, then I immediately got used to it. I think it’s the skill, and I’m thankful for it. Having to adjust to… this… would be, I don’t know. I think it would take a long time. I wish you could see what I see. It really is a magical sight.” She laughed softly. “I guess literally and figuratively.”

I smiled at her, then I was about to tell everyone we were heading out, but I saw Vitek was touching his face with both hands.

“Everything alright?” I asked.

“Yes,” he answered.

“Good. I guess.”

I probably should have asked the chochliki how long the effects typically lasted. The fact that Vitek willingly drank from the tea was kind of crazy now that I thought about it. I also kind of wanted to ask how much of the tea he had, but I let it go. He probably knew what he was doing.

Bogumir was patting Vasil and Vasil looked quite uncomfortable.

“Should I just put Bogumir in my satchel for now?” I asked Vasil.

He sighed. “Yes, please.”

I carefully picked up Bogumir and placed him in my satchel, then turned back to the door. “I guess this is it. I guess we’re doing this.”

That maybe wasn’t the best pep talk to give a team going off into the unknown, I realized. I should have said something cool and inspirational. Something to get them excited. Maybe if I came up with something quickly, they’d forget I said what I said before.

So I clapped my hands twice, then thrust my fist in the air. “Yeah! Let’s go team! Let’s kick some possibly soon to be determined hostile entity ass! And then we’re going to save a goddess—if she actually was one!”

I lowered my fist. “Wait. That’s not entirely accurate. We’re going to save a little piece of her.” I thrust my fist back in the air. “But that’s still cool! I think. We will also maybe find super good loot! Yeah!”

I gave Kasia a confident nod. She just smiled and shook her head.

Then I kicked open the door and jumped inside.