Chapter 8: A Trap like a Nuke

The air eventually changed. The cold, moist air of the sixth floor gave way to a dry heat that stuck to the throat, like swallowing hot coffee. The smell of clean air disappeared, replaced by the metallic stench of crushed stone, sulfur, and heavy iron dust.

Silvester stepped out from the mouth of the water tunnel onto a wide stone shelf overlooking the seventh floor.

The floor was entirely different from the previous levels. It was a giant cavern forged from dark iron. From the high ceiling hung a massive iron ship fitted with giant brass cauldrons for melting metal. They had remained cold for hundreds of years, yet still emitted a low, lingering warmth. A jagged crack in the floor flowed with molten red lava that radiated raw fire magic.

Silvester adjusted the strap of the magic bag across his chest. He stood quietly on the ledge, his dark eyes surveying the deep chasm through his Locksmith’s Eye.

The seventh floor was a graveyard of ancient dwarven architecture. Tall heating towers, broken crane arms, and colossal workshops stretched as far as the eye could see.

"No mistakes," Silvester said softly, his voice barely a whisper against the low, heavy hum of the cavern.

He knelt and ran his fingers across the stone floor. The black stone blocks were fitted together with such precision that even after thousands of years of seismic shifts, not a single hair could slip between the seams. Human builders used mortar and binding spells to hold their structures together, accepting flaws and disguising mistakes with magic. Dwarven artisans worked with absolute precision. To them, an error was a grave crime.

Silvester appreciated that mindset. It was the same philosophy that had guided his past life as a master lockmaker.

He reached into his sleeve and pulled out the rolled map he had taken from the dead mage’s bag. Unrolling it against his knee, he traced the faint ink lines with a small finger.

The map outlined the primary layout of the upper workshop area. Past the central basalt bridge, however, the markings grew sparse and were stamped with red danger symbols. Near the eastern cliff face, a tiny dwarven tool mark was stamped next to a single line of ancient script: an outpost.

If any location on this nightmarish floor offered a safe haven to rest, clean water, and tools for repair, it would be a dwarven military post.

He rolled the map, stowed it away, and activated his silent movement spell.

Close.

His heartbeat slowed, and his body heat was regulated, preventing thermal signals from radiating outward. He began moving toward the eastern sector.

The creatures here were not brainless scavengers like the hounds of the sixth floor. They were dwarven constructs—beasts of twisted metal and volatile fire magic that had outlasted the fall of the dwarven kingdom.

As Silvester picked his way through a ruined workshop, a pack of metallic prowlers darted across a high iron beam twenty feet above him. They resembled sleek, six-legged predatory cats crafted from overlapping plates of dark iron, their hollow chests glowing with core embers. Eyeless, they tracked prey entirely through air displacements and heat signatures.

Silvester froze beside an eight-foot-tall fallen gear.

He did not duck or scramble for cover. Sudden movement would agitate the air. Instead, he simply stopped, holding his body in absolute stillness. He suppressed the mana flow in his cloth coat, keeping the hot cavern draft from rustling his sleeves.

The lead metal beast paused on the beam directly above him. Its iron jaws hissed as it vented a plume of superheated steam into the air, its fiery core flaring brightly as it scanned the floor below.

Silvester stared straight ahead, his dark eyes vacant, holding his breath.

After three agonizing minutes, the beast let out a metallic screech and leapt to the next beam, leading its pack down toward the lower volcanic paths.

Silvester exhaled silently and resumed his advance.

Twenty minutes later, he reached the base of the eastern cliff.

In the center of the fortification sat the primary entrance: a massive, ten-foot-tall circular door forged from a single slab of solid dark iron.

It featured a pentagonal keyhole.

It had no handles.

Silvester stood before the portal, a genuine smile touching his face for the first time in days.

"A masterwork," he whispered.

Silvester raised his right hand and stepped closer to the massive door.

Locksmith’s Eye.

The dark iron door dissolved in his vision, replaced by an intricate diagram of glowing golden lines.

Inside the nine-inch-thick metal slab sat a mechanical masterpiece: twelve spring-loaded tumblers set within a rotating cylinder. Counterweights of dense star-iron held them in balance, while a core of liquid fire was calibrated to trip the latch if it detected a drill or forced cylinder.

If a thief attempted to pick the tumbler pins without neutralizing the liquid trigger, the fluid would shift, dropping a heavy iron hammer onto the volatile solution and detonating the entire entrance—melting everything within fifty feet.

’They built a metal deathtrap with the yield of a bomb,’ Silvester thought, his dark eyes analyzing every gear and linkage. ’Brilliant and ruthless. Leaving zero margin for error.’

He took a steadying breath. His physical body was only eight years old, but his mind operated with the absolute confidence of a master who had bypassed every lock ever forged by man or dwarf.

He didn’t pull out his cheap iron picks. He wouldn’t need physical tools for the first step.

Silvester extended his index finger, pressing the tip against the central keyhole.

The first step was to disarm the trap.

Close.

Silvester channeled a subtle pulse of mana into the internal mechanism. He didn’t target the gears or the spell arrays. He targeted the liquid fire inside the balance trigger.

The liquid’s surface locked tight. It hardened into a solid, still crystal form, preventing it from moving or tilting no matter how much force was exerted on the surrounding parts.

The real trap was disarmed.

The second step was to stop the magic line.

Silvester focused his eyes on the glowing red spell lines of the Fire-Guard trap.

Unlike well-known human magic locks, which place their spell runes on the outside for easy maintenance, dwarven craftspeople set their spells deep inside the metal plates. To break the spell, you had to navigate through the metal gears first.

Open.

Aperture Shift.

A tiny spatial opening formed inside the inner chamber, bypassing the nine inches of solid, hard metal plate.

Silvester pushed a thin thread of his golden mana through the opening, reaching the middle pin holding back the fire hammer. Instead of cutting the red magic line, he wrapped his energy around the pin to create a jump bridge—the same trick he had used on his stone room door at the Lerwick estate, but scaled up for a level-four trap.

Click.

Now came the difficult part: the eight heavy star-iron lock pins and twelve round gears.

Silvester pulled his small, handmade iron tool from his boot. He inserted the thin tip into the middle star keyhole.

He did not use force. He used sound waves.

Open.

He sent a fine magic wave down the shaft of the iron tool. The wave traveled through the central channel, ringing through the twelve round gears like a tuning fork.