D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad - Chapter 2018 Getting Through One Room
Chapter 2018: Chapter 2018 Getting Through One Room
— Kat — (Early in the evening)
“Alright, so assuming everything goes well you’ll be entering in near the barracks. They aren’t well kept and nobody likes to use them so the entrance should be empty…” explained Ramor.
— Kat — (Later in the evening)
Kat and Lily had found themselves at the door to the training area. Not ideal, but it was early in the evening and hopefully nobody had set up shop in there just yet. The door wasn’t enchanted, but sneaking inside was going to be a problem. Kat moved a few parts of her body into the room before shifting to the corner. She didn’t have long, and didn’t want to trip anyone up. So, for a split second Kat formed a singular eyeball to take a snapshot of the whole room before snapping it back into mist.
The pain was immense. She’d had to cut a lot of corners and it turns out creating enough of your eye to see, and somehow have it all register as an image meant leaving some very sensitive nerves out in the air for a few moments. Worse still, Kat’s eye managed to locate three people in the training room. Two of them were sparring and the third was resting in the corner. Nobody seemed to have noticed her but that was a little unclear.
Annoyingly, both sets of doors were just in the middle of the room so sneaking one open could be an issue. *Alright Lily what’s the plan?*
[Well… it’s a bit of a risk but I could maybe try shadow travel? The advanced version involves hopping from shadow to shadow but the simpler version I can probably use involves stretching my shadow out and then sort of… inverting things? Swapping my position? It makes it so I end up on the other ’end’ of my shadow.]
And that’s safe?
[Theoretically.]
Hmm… I don’t love the idea. Kat looked back at her mental image of the room. There were a few different weapon racks around as well as various gymnastics equipment things. *I could maybe knock over the weapon racks or something?*
[Right, but opening the door and slipping through is still going to take time. Plus, there’s three people and they’re all training to be thieves and spies. The chances that at least one looks around to see what else weird might be going on is pretty high in my estimation.]
*Dammit. Alright. Where are you thinking of swapping to?*
[Probably under that weapon rack you were talking about. It’s hard to see the lower area and I think I’m small enough to fit between all the weapons. The problem is making it to the other door is still going to be a pain.]
*Should we backtrack? The original plan was to try and get through the barracks, and we could still do that.*
[Hmmm… my pride is telling me that it would be giving up… but hmm… I’m not sure. The barracks might be more in use because of what happened. The maze was pretty busy and a lot of people did seem to be heading that way. It’s why we didn’t bother in the first place.]
*That’s a good point. If they areas are busier then we thought. Shit why didn’t we think about this?*
[I think it’s because we were expecting them to be at a different location? I guess? Then again we were surprised by the army. It’s possible they were previously camped out in other underground bunkers. So the question is, do we think the barracks are going to be busier then this room?
*Dammit yes. So… I guess you’re going to try for the swap?*
[Yes. If I take it slowly there should be almost no possibility of me getting injured. It will either work perfectly or my shadow should snap back. There’s a risk of detection, but not a large one and likely no injury.]
Alright then. Kat gave her agreement and Lily got to work. It really was simple. Lily stretched her shadow out and then changed the shape to make it seem like she was casting the shadow from the other end, before doing… something Kat barely understood with her mana. Suddenly, Lily was on the other side. Kat had no idea how she managed to make it underneath the door because it didn’t even seem like she’d sunk into the shadow.
Of course, on Lily’s end of things while they were smoother it was still disorientating and she wobbled a bit after the transition was done. *FREEZE!* Lily froze in place at Kat’s command. [Why?]
*Your horn is barely a millimetre away from the end of that spear next to you.* Lily carefully edged away from the spear in question using Kat’s… odd view of things. It was hard to really process, but simply taking note of which direction to move so as not to knock over any weapons wasn’t too hard. Lily also made sure to reinforce the shadows hiding her a bit.
The spar in the middle of the room was still ongoing but none of them had obviously noticed the swap. In light of this, Lily decided to keep moving. Stretching her shadow along the edge, using the corner between the wall and the floor as a way to hide her shadow, she stretched it about as far as it could go and then swapped to the next obstacle. This one was a box clearly designed for people to leap up and over. The box itself even had a great hollow.
Lily continued these jumps until she was hiding under an oversized basket filled with balls. They were a bit larger then a baseball, but smaller then anything else in that size range she could think of. They were probably intended as a non-lethal dodging tool. Whatever their actual purpose, her current spot right next to the door was perfect for the next move. Except for just, one tiny problem.
The corridor it connected to was clearly well lit. Slightly more so then the training room. Now that she was right next to it, Lily could see the light spilling into the room through the cracks in the door. It was a miniscule thing, and perhaps not something a mortal could recognise. The problem was of course, that nobody in the room was mortal if what her senses were telling her was correct.
[Ah shit. How are we going to get past?]
*Why not just wait until someone opens the door? Presumably they’re waiting for a teacher of some kind. I can duck through and make sure two people aren’t coming and you can just use their shadow.*
[Hmm… I suppose if I make sure I’m facing the wall, which would be the back of the hall, my eyes aren’t going to stand out. If I’m careful with my shadow manipulation it’s possible… but people can often feel if I’m messing with their shadow. So that’s a worry.]
*Are you messing with their shadow though? Aren’t you simply using it to hide your own form? If you really have to… why not create a slightly larger shadow around their shadow to hide yourself in?*
[That… that might just be crazy enough to work.]
Kat moved most of her mist body into the other room, and checked that it was empty. The place was annoyingly well lit, but it seemed like that was actually because on of the enchantments was on the fritz. Only the area closest to the door was so bright. A good thing for them. Hopefully. Though it also meant they hadn’t thought the plan through all that well. Whatever shadow the person walking through cast, the light from the back would eliminate it for the most part.
*Shit. We didn’t think about this. Unless…* Kat spread herself out further down the hallway and didn’t encounter anyone. *Ok new plan. If I simply manifest my body in the corridor, you can swap with MY shadow. I should be able to block at least some of the light coming through the door. It’s a bit of a risk someone will notice but are those two still fighting?*
[No but I think they’ll start again soon.]
*Hmm… the issue is that we don’t know who might be on the other side of the next door. The corridor leads into a bunch of other smaller training rooms, and if there are people camping out in them or even just walking through…*
[Annoying… but I suppose that just means you’ll need to scout a bit. I’m quite safe here and I can just sneak into the ball basket if need be. The whole thing is made from rope so I can just slip inside. Might be a bit of a worry if they use all the balls but it should be fine.]
*Seems like a silly risk… but we don’t have that much of a choice and if I spend my time arguing with you that’s more chance you can be found. Fine. I’ll see if I can chart a good path out of the training area towards the main room. If we want to get to the labs we need to go through there anyway.*
