[420] 5.44 Oceandepths Manor V

When we pass through the entryway and into the main castle, the scenery shifts from a cityscape that wouldn’t feel too out of place in a modern Earth city into a palace that looks more reminiscent of a bygone age.  Although much of the artwork on the walls and pillars have been worn down by the appearance of eons of decay, the broken sculptures of stone and bronze alike paint the picture of a land that was once lavish before having fallen to the sea.

“There’s something that bothers me,” Lindsey says.  “Do you think the two of them have already cleared this dungeon?”

“Probably,” I say.  “And yes, I think I know what you’re getting at.  But I think they would have been able to get past the barrier through other means.  There could have been another way in, or maybe Hyun-Jun’s anti-magic abilities would have been effective just like Chloe used her luck to beat the dungeon’s AI.  You or I might have been able to disable the circuit somehow or maybe your command of the [Insight] element would have allowed you to break through with brute force.”

“I suppose that makes as much sense as anything else.”

Chloe wanders off down a hallway with purpose.  Lindsey and I follow a few paces behind.  Lindsey traces Chloe’s steps exactly with her own Skills, I do so inexactly through measured movements unaided by any System ability.  All the while, the two of us are shifting eyes back and forth, ever vigilant for any traps or monsters that might be in lurk.  None approach the three of us before Chloe heads into a room.

It’s a library of some sort.  Unlike the ruins of the foyer before, the archives here are meticulous.  The tomes here cover a variety of genres, everything from steamy romances to the natural sciences to treatises on philosophy, ethics, and rhetoric.  Nothing immediately stands out of place or otherwise catches my eye, but Chloe continues looking around.

“Is there something in particular that you’re looking for?”

“I’m just…  No, there’s nothing in particular.  Just my [Lady Luck] guiding me toward something in this room that might benefit us.  Sadly, the Skill is still Rank I, so I only have a vague sense that there’s something that might be useful in this room.”

Something that might be useful.  That’s two levels of vagueness with nothing concrete to point us in an actual direction for where we might want to begin our search.  But it’s in this room, and if Chloe says there’s something, I’ll damn well believe her, even without that earlier display.

I scour through more of the books in the hopes that there might be something of value contained within, but all the pages are blank.  I pour a thread of my [Ether] into them, thinking that maybe doing so might reveal some hidden message or another.  I fail.  Once twice, thrice, ten and even fifty times in a row, nothing but pieces of thick vellum that had never been written upon.

There are no hidden passageways behind the books.  I pay attention to the creases between each shelf for signs of some hidden mechanism, but there are none present.  Nor is there some hidden passageway under the large rug underneath the table and desk that leads down into an underground treasure vault.  As for the painting on the wall and the idea that there might be some safe hidden behind— we tried, and that wasn’t it either.

I peer into subspace, looking for perhaps some sort of teleportation array or secret passageway not visible in this layer of reality and again that wasn’t it either.  For a moment, I get to wondering if maybe the System or the dungeon is playing a trick on Chloe, having somehow managed to hijack her Skill to use to waste our time.

A roar comes from the hallway, and heavy footsteps follow, loud enough to echo through the otherwise silent library.  All three of us freeze in our tracks and retreat behind one of the aisles in the middle of the room.  The door opens.  Immediately, my heart is racing and my palms are soaking and every muscle in my body is telling me that I need to get the fuck out of there as fast as possible.  Not since my time in the Tower Gauntlet when faced with the Ultimate Weapon have I been so thoroughly outclassed in every capability by a creature which must be in at least the fifth ascension and who might just be in the sixth.

If Lindsey or Chloe or I shine brightly when I stare at the [Ether] we each contain, this humanoid shadow absolutely blazes with the white-hot intensity of the sun, overpowering [Veilsight] and forcing me to look away.

The harbinger of death looms, strolling with a casual nonchalance befitting one who needs to fear nothing this dungeon or this world can throw at it.  Now I understand why [Lady Luck] was telling Chloe to be in this room.  Had we been out in the open, or should we be spotted, all three of us would die with the same certainty that the sun will rise each morning and set each evening.

The monster tilts its head in our direction, with only a single bookcase between us and obliteration.  I pray to all the goddesses that its senses are not as sharp as mine.  It pauses as it passes the aisle right before mine.  Then it continues on.  The three of us move as stealthfully as possible, sneaking through the other side of the chamber and toward the open door back into a hallway.

The moment we’re out of that room and into something that resembles safety, tension melts off my shoulders and I finally exhale the breath I’d been holding for over a minute, but still careful to avoid unnecessary noise when at all possible.  We head further down the hallway at Chloe’s insistence until we make our way to another room in which is a plant conservatory.

I take the lead for a moment to search for any signs of hostility.  Some of the plants are magical in nature, although I can’t tell if they are motile.  Despite this potential threat, we head inside all the same— the potential danger lurking among these flowers and grasses and miniaturized trees is nothing compared with the absolute death that awaits on the other side.

Some of this stuff looks rare and valuable, the sorts of biological treasures that a [Potioneer] would pay a veritable fortune for.  I do not touch even a single leaf, lest some heretofore unknown security system activates or the plant makes a noise; our lives are in jeopardy, and while I have long said that ‘not taking a risk is itself a risk,’ no treasure is worth exacerbating this particular one.

This time around, Chloe walks toward something that looks inconspicuous on its face.  A deep blue sphere made of what I think is lazurite, and which radiates the eerie neon blue of something radioactive.  She summons forth golden light from her hand, only to stare bemused when she is unable to draw the item into her [Inventory].  That alone speaks far louder than any analysis I could conduct to try to identify the object.  It is important, and I cannot imagine it is the only one.

The hairs on my chin stand up.  In the quietude of this mansion, the gentle thumping throughout the structure could be my heartbeat and could be that monster on its way to claim its meal for our trespass and could be any number of other threats that have yet to reveal themselves to us.  We slip out a door off in the corner of the room that Lindsey noticed earlier and escape into a different hallway.

None of us make a sound anymore.  Chloe and I hover rather than walk to avoid the sound of our metal boots touching against the tiled floor.  Lindsey has some [Silent Movement] Skill to avoid detection.  Her stealth ability also causes her appearance to blend into the walls of this dimly-lit castle, nearly invisible to untrained eyes and even masking a portion of her [Ether] signature.

We proceed down the next hallway, never remaining stationary, always watching for signs of encroachment, making sure we have multiple escape routes and rooms to sneak off into if the need arises.  The dread of impending death subsides but does not fully vanish.  The monster is not nearby, but it walks the mansion, and we are its unseen and uninvited guests.  We hope to remain the latter for as long as is needed to figure out whatever it is that we’re supposed to be doing here.

Chloe’s [Lady Luck] provides her with another impulse.  I trust it absolutely, but we still exercise every scrap of diligence and caution as we follow the path her skill prescribes.  No threat just yet as we enter the next chamber.

We arrive in a study and the first thing I notice is that unlike in the first two rooms, there is, in fact, a secret passage in this room.  One behind the false fireplace that leads to a descending staircase into a basement and from there someplace that I cannot discern.  Safety or perhaps a cage where we can be disposed of at the master’s pleasure.  A path to be taken in an emergency, one I suspect is coming, and coming soon.

There’s another orb in this room, hidden in a small box among a bunch of intricate glass figurines of various animals, any one of which would probably shatter if someone looked at them funny.  Chloe reaches down for the stone, guided by her Skill.  I ask her to stop through our bond.

“There’s something I want to try,” I say.

“Is there a risk to whatever it is you’re going to do?”

I stop for a moment.  I’ve done it before in practice a few times, but never in such perilous circumstances.  If I can pull it off, I’ll get one Skill Rank almost for free, and probably two or three.  But I have to concede that the technique is not flawless just yet and that I’d rather rely on Chloe’s luck than my dexterity after the former has already served us so well thus far.

“There is, and upon reflection, I think it’s probably safer if you do so after all.”

She doesn’t say a word, but her lips curl up by the slightest amount in positive acknowledgement of her Skill and her abilities.  Time seems to freeze as fingers I know to be exceedingly nimble from experience slither like garter snakes between a glass menagerie of cats both great and small, feral and domesticated.  My breath again stills as my heart continues to race.  Lindsey slinks against the side of the wall, right by the secret tunnel that I had noticed and she had found independently of my discretion.

I nearly jump out of my chair as I hear something I do not recognize, quiet, out in the distance.  Something jingles.  My eyes dart toward Lindsey; she is unflinching.  My mind might be conjuring phantasms out of my fear.  Chloe feels the same fear as she slips past the final two figurines that are guarding the second treasure.

Movement catches the corner of my eye.  Just a fly.  That’s my first thought.  I reject the nonchalance; in this house of horrors, anything and everything is a confirmed agent of the Enemy until confirmed otherwise.

I use the technique of [Recall] that I had meant to try earlier and did not wish to risk, reaching my arm through spacetime and catching the winged fucker before it can cause any further trouble.  A single point of [Ether] into a basic [Lightning] glyph is sufficient to electrocute the would-be saboteur before it can relay any information to those who ought not to have it.

“I got it,” Chloe says.

We have no time to celebrate.  The brief respite we had had while in this room had ended; the feelings of death that had been blinding earlier focus upon us.  Lindsey senses it as soon as I do.  Within the span of three seconds that might as well be an eternity and a half, the mechanism opens just wide enough for all three of us.  Chloe goes first, then Lindsey, then I bring up the rear.  Not soon enough does the mechanism close back behind us, leading us trapped in the dark in a stairwell that leads to an unknown destination.

Death above is a certainty, but perhaps if we follow this path, there is still a chance of survival.