Chapter 64: No Wonder It Was On Sale

The hooded adventurer finally reached the bottom of the ladder. His boot touched the stone floor, and a quiet click came from beneath him.

Thin streams of green gas immediately hissed from vents hidden between the stones, curling around his boots before spreading across the bottom of the shaft.

Zion sat forward. "Haha! Yes!"

It was the first trap since the rolling boulder that had actually activated, and judging by how quickly the cloud was thickening, it did not look disappointing.

"Come on. Run. Panic. Scream." He chuckled to himself.

The man below did none of those things. Instead, he looked up toward the leader standing at the top of the ladder.

Neither of them moved, causing Zion’s smile to weaken.

"What?"

The poison continued spreading around the man’s legs, but he remained completely calm.

"Oh, don’t tell me you’re sacrificing him for real this time." Zion pointed toward the two hooded adventurers still above. "Leaving your teammate down there is uncool, you know."

Then the leader stepped toward the edge and jumped. The second man followed immediately after him.

"What the hell?!" Zion blurted out.

Both dropped straight down the shaft.

Zion pushed himself halfway out of the throne. The ladder was long. He had purposely made it that way so anyone trying to escape the poison would have to climb all the way back up while breathing it in. Even someone agile should have thought twice before jumping from that height.

Apparently, these people did not.

The leader landed first, bending at the knees as one hand briefly touched the floor before he straightened again. The other man landed a moment later. They barely even stumbled.

Zion couldn’t believe what he was seeing. "These guys are messed up."

The poison had already spread around all three, and for a moment Zion hoped their calm expressions were hiding some kind of panic. Then the leader turned toward the narrow opening ahead.

All three broke out into a sprint.

Zion’s mood improved slightly. "Okay. Good. They’re finally behaving like normal people."

Maybe the poison was working after all. Maybe they were just disciplined enough not to show it.

The next section of Floor 3 was much tighter than the halls above. The walls narrowed until some stretches barely allowed one person through at a time, while the ceiling dropped low enough that taller adventurers would need to crouch.

More importantly, the floor itself was unreliable.

Zion had placed several false sections throughout the passage. Some looked completely normal while others were slightly cracked, but putting weight on the wrong stone would cause the floor beneath it to collapse and drop whoever stepped there into a steep shaft.

Not deep enough to kill them under the protected-floor conditions. But definitely deep enough to ruin their day.

The first hooded adventurer slowed and began testing the path ahead, stepping around one loose stone before carefully avoiding another. The second followed the exact same route, with the leader bringing up the rear.

They avoided a third weak section, then a fourth.

"No. What?" Zion asked, raising his voice slightly. "They’re cheating!"

He narrowed his eye sockets as they continued forward. Some of the false stones were almost identical to the surrounding floor. Zion had placed them himself and occasionally had trouble telling which was which unless he opened the trap overlay.

"How are you seeing those?"

The party kept moving. Another loose stone was avoided without hesitation.

Zion kicked a small rock beside the throne. It bounced once across the floor. "They have to be cheating. It’s the only explanation."

Zion reluctantly followed them deeper, but in his mind he was already writing an angry complaint on the Dungeon Network forums.

Eventually, the narrow passage widened again as they reached the second half of the floor, the maze.

His irritation eased slightly. This was where Floor 3 became more complicated.

Several routes twisted through the sandstone structure, intersecting and splitting repeatedly before eventually leading toward dangerous dead ends, the Glittering Treasure room, or the final stretch of the floor.

Zion checked the instance map. His mood immediately improved. The Shadow Panther was close now, very close.

It had changed direction and was moving toward the maze.

"It’s about time you showed up."

A short while later, the party reached the entrance. Four separate corridors opened in front of them, and the three visible adventurers stopped to speak quietly among themselves.

Zion could not hear everything, but the leader gestured once toward the passages. Then they split up.

One man entered the second corridor. The other took the third, while the leader moved into the far-left passage.

Zion watched them all enter a different corridor.

"Wait, really?"

Three visible adventurers. Which meant the invisible woman had to be somewhere too. His attention shifted toward the remaining corridor on the far right.

He didn’t see anyone, but it only made sense if they were splitting up that she’d go there.

Zion slowly smiled. He wanted to laugh, but held himself back.

"You fools."

The far-right route had one of the highest chances of reaching the Glittering Treasure room. The leader’s path could reach it too, but only if he discovered the hidden section Zion had built into one of the walls.

Without breaking through it, he would miss it completely.

The two center routes eventually connected toward the final stretch, though both twisted through several dangerous sections first.

Zion checked the Shadow Panther again. All four adventurers were separated now, each taking a different path through the maze, and the roaming boss was almost there.

His grin widened.

"Splitting up on a trap floor."

He leaned back against the throne.

"They have no idea what’s waiting for them."

The Shadow Panther wouldn’t need to deal with all four at once anymore. It could stalk one person, attack, disappear, and move on to another. Which was exactly what a roaming predator was supposed to do.

Zion almost wanted to watch all four paths at once. Instead, he chose the leader. If anyone was going to show him what this party could actually do alone, it was probably him.

The leader walked calmly through the left corridor without a torch or any hesitation. The faint wall flames flickered across his black robes as he moved between patches of darkness.

The first trap sat only a short distance ahead. A skeleton slumped against one wall with one bony hand stretched outward, its fingers curled around a small leather coin purse.

Zion watched closely. The bait was obvious, intentionally obvious.

Anyone greedy enough to take the purse would trigger a mechanism beneath the skeleton and release several blades from the wall.

The hooded leader walked past it without even slowing down.

"Can you fall for something?" Zion pleaded. "You’re so boring."

The man disappeared around the next corner and continued through the passage, avoiding one trap after another without slowing much.

Zion’s patience started disappearing again.

"This is supposed to be the hard part."

When the leader stepped over a hidden pressure plate without even looking down, Zion ground his teeth.

"How are you doing that?"

A few moments later, something finally clicked beneath the man’s boot. He stopped as a mechanism activated inside the wall.

Zion’s frustration vanished. "Oh lord, finally!"

A massive axe swung across the corridor, passing close enough to the hooded man’s chest that the air shifted his cloak.

He moved backward as the axe reached the opposite wall and swung back again even faster. The corridor was narrow enough that simply stepping around it would be difficult.

Zion watched with a smile. "Finally. Let’s see if you can teleport through that!"

Then the leader pulled out a dagger.

Zion frowned.

"What are you—"

The man threw it. The dagger flew past the axe head, and for a moment Zion thought he had missed. Then the blade struck the rope holding the weapon.

Snap.

The rope split, and the axe crashed onto the floor. The hooded leader calmly walked forward, retrieved his dagger, and kept going.

For a moment, Zion did not move. Then he slowly stood.

"WHO MAKES A SWINGING AXE WITH A FLIMSY ROPE?!"

His voice echoed through the throne room. He pointed furiously toward the broken trap.

"No wonder that thing was on sale!"

The leader disappeared around another corner. Zion slumped back onto the throne. "Forty percent off my ass."

A faint movement on the instance map caught his attention. The Shadow Panther had entered the maze. His irritation disappeared almost instantly.

The roaming marker shifted away from the leader and started moving toward one of the isolated adventurers in the center path.

Zion slowly sat upright.

A few seconds later, the Panther stopped moving and its marker disappeared.

Zion shifted his attention toward the second hooded adventurer walking alone through the corridor. The man continued forward, completely unaware as one patch of darkness along the wall behind him began to move.

A pair of faint eyes appeared inside the stone, and Zion’s grin returned.

"There you are."