Chapter 29: It's just floating there. Menacingly.

Misa frowned as she looked at the screen. There was something bothering her, and it wasn't the strangely menacing orb, floating in the middle of the room — which in and of itself was rather concerning, considering it should really have garnered all of her attention.

There was something else. She couldn't quite place her finger on what it was, though. Everything seemed fine, and none of the others seemed to have noticed anything...

Misa kept her mind sharp, and her eyes focused. Something about this was ringing danger to her, and the fact that it might be triggering her [Danger Sense] when she wasn't even in the dungeon was worrying.

"Is anyone else's [Danger Sense] going off?" Misa asked quietly. Sev and Kestel both looked back at her, but they each shook their heads; they didn't sense anything.

"It's definitely some kind of trap," Vex said cautiously. "But I've never seen anything like this before. I don't know what it is."

"It's something new!" Unlike everyone else, Kestel seemed rather enthusiastic about the discovering-something-new aspect of all this. Misa suppressed the urge to glare at him. It wasn't that he wasn't concerned about the safety of the team, she told herself; he loved discovery, but that didn't mean he was disregarding safety.

At his command, the delve team approached the orb cautiously. When nothing happened, the captain carefully took off his pack, gesturing for the other delvers to stand back; they each stood a respectable distance away from him, keeping an eye out for any other dangers. He had several tools in the pack, Misa saw — what they were she had no idea,

All in all, a well trained team. They more than likely had their own version of [Danger Sense] — and there was no reason they wouldn't have said anything if they had sensed anything. So was the danger not to them?

Or was it not [Danger Sense] at all that was giving her this sense of foreboding?

Misa had one more skill that she'd never quite been able to figure out — the text on it was vague, it was a passive skill, and as far as she knew it had never been triggered.

[Guardian's Premonition] [Passive Skill] [Grade: Maxed]

You know when the gate might fall.

There were other strange things about that skill, too, like the fact that it was a Unique skill for her otherwise Rare class, and the fact that it had been maxed right from the get-go, no skill leveling needed. There was only one gate that she could think of that it might be related to — the gate into her village, the one that had been trampled and crushed — and, well...

...That gate had fallen a long time ago.

The point was that if it wasn't [Danger Sense] that was pinging her, then it was that skill, and she had no idea what that meant.

"I have another skill that's warning me something might be about to happen," Misa said out loud, just to make sure she wouldn't get anyone killed by keeping this information to herself. "Keep an eye out."

Sev, Vex, and Derivan all nodded; Kestel gave her a bit of a strange look, but seemed to take her warning seriously. "What tier is your skill?"

"...Unique," Misa answered after a moment, and Kestel's eyes sharpened.

"I'm going to link all four of you into our [Mass Telepathy]," he said. "Please consent."

There was a moment of pressure, as a new skill wrapped around her mind and asked her permission to enter. The moment she accepted, that feeling of pressure vanished, and she heard Kestel speaking clearly across the mental link.

We have a Unique precognitive skill warning that there might be a problem in the near future, Kestel said without preamble. I want you to do a full check. Run through all the surveillance skills you have.

Something still seemed wrong. Misa leaned forward with a frown; the others were still talking, but the noise faded into the background. This wasn't even [Guardian's Premonition] or [Danger Sense], just her own instincts coming into play; one of the delvers was moving a little strangely, and something about the movement fired off an old memory —

"Skills are useful when it comes to learning," V'karro told her. "But pit two fighters against one another, and the more experienced one will still win. Skills tell you how to do something, but experience tells you how you can change them. Tweak them to suit your needs."

"Oooh. I bet I can use that!" Misa grinned up at V'karro, her eyes bright. She was eleven at the time, and had a reputation for finding small little tricks that people could perform with their skills. "That means inexperienced fighters are gonna be using the same instincts, right? So if I watch how they move —"

"That's a risky game to play," V'karro interrupted, shaking his head and hiding his small grin of amusement. Misa saw it anyway, though, because she was observant. "If possible, don't fight people at all. And if you do, don't assume they're inexperienced."

"Show me some anyway," Misa demanded, a little petulantly, and he chuckled and obliged.

It was an old, old memory.

But one of the delvers was moving in a way that was familiar to her — a subtle twitch of the fingers, shifting towards the belt, in exactly the way an inexperienced user of the skill would activate [Stealth Bolt]. She knew what V'karro had said; never assume that anyone was inexperienced, and yet...

Even if she was wrong, that delver was definitely activating a skill of some kind, and there was no reason for anyone to be activating a battle skill. Every other delver was looking around cautiously at the edges of the room, and they weren't looking at themselves, at their own team; and —

— and there had been five of them, hadn't there? Not six.

Fuck, she said, and then cursed again mentally when she realized she'd accidentally transmitted the word into the telepathic link. It didn't matter. Convey information in as few words as possible, she told herself. Look out! Headcount!

To their credit, the delvers immediately jolted, glancing at one another — but no one quite noticed the one among them reaching for a crossbow bolt. The captain shouted something that was indistinct through the telepathic link, that sounded like he was demanding for the team to take off their helmets so he could verify their identities, and then several things happened almost all at once.

The man who had been reaching for a crossbow bolt narrowed his eyes, looking not at all concerned, and moved quickly to load the bolt and aim it — not at any of the delvers, but at the orb.

The captain glanced at him and saw what was about to happen — his hand snapped out and he lunged, trying to interrupt the path of the arrow.

The other delvers nearby reacted with startled surprise, then cursed, reaching for their weapons, but by that point it was too late; her warning had helped, but only a little. Only enough that they had the time to watch it all happen, because whoever the sixth delver was — certainly not a delver at all — he was monstrously fast.

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The man's finger pressed down on the crossbow's trigger mechanism, and the bolt fired from the crossbow. It glowed with raw, imbued magic.

The captain's hand brushed just the edge of that magic in his attempt to stop it. His flesh rotted down to the bone almost instantly, like his health didn't even exist. His face was still contorted with determination — he hadn't had the time to react.

And [Guardian's Premonition] finally, finally fully activated for the first time since she'd gained the skill, and she saw what was about to happen.

The bolt would strike the orb, charged with what seemed like necrotic energy. She didn't know what the orb was, or what it was made of, but she saw the way that silver-black mana raced across its surface like fire taking to oil — until the entire thing was enveloped in impossible magic.

Then it would destabilize. It would explode, flinging that necrotic energy all over the room in a wave so intense that there was no defending against it. The entire team would be dead, reduced to bones and a few scraps of rotting flesh, for the few that had defensive Skills that would serve to protect some meager portion of them.

Misa saw this, and she spoke.

"No."

[To Fall Yet Hold the Line]

And there was, perhaps, some part of her that knew that this was a truly ridiculous extension of the skill. That she shouldn't have tried. She felt the skill resist, even as she leveraged her will against it; she briefly saw the blue boxes that speared across her vision.

Nearby, Derivan started, like he'd seen something strange. He turned to her and reached out —

But the impossible happened, and she vanished from the room.

"We need to get in there! That's our friend!"

Derivan was listening to Vex yelling with a strangled sort of panic in his voice. Whatever had happened with Misa, she'd been disconnected from the telepathic network. So had the rest of the delve team, for that matter. The scrying screens had been taken over by a static interference, something that they hadn't thought was possible before they'd discovered the mana feeder; now no one knew what was happening inside the challenge room, or if any of them were still alive.

We can't get in even if we want to, Kestel's response was clipped and through the telepathic network — he didn't bother speaking. He paced, tense, even as he rapidly cast several diagnostic spells to try to restore the scrying magic. You know that. You should know that.

"There has to be a way," Vex argued, but from the defeated look on his face Derivan knew that the lizardkin didn't know of one himself.

Derivan himself was distracted, because one of his stats had increased. He wouldn't have checked, if a brief error message hadn't popped up and obscured his view; it had happened right when Misa seemed to tense, staring at the screen.

And then when he'd checked his stats...

Shift: 2

He wondered. What was a 'shift', exactly?

Vex had subsided, looking frustrated; he had no solutions. But Derivan's mind was racing.

Dungeons became locked off after a team entered. There were other rules, too, governing what locked off a dungeon, but this was the single one that could not be circumvented.

Except. Maybe it could be? Misa had clearly circumvented it. Whatever means she'd used to circumvent it — likely her skill, knowing her — had to be in some way related to the stat gain she'd triggered for him. And there was the fact that he had started this life as a monster, too, and monsters were rarely prevented entry into dungeons. For them, it was the reverse.

The chatter on the telepathy network became about fixing the scry interference. Derivan shook his head; this was nothing he could help with. There was only one thing he could do, as far as he was concerned.

"I am going to try to enter the dungeon," he said. Vex and Sev both looked up at him, startled. "My status might allow me access," he added, and Sev's expression cleared; Vex's expression changed, looking briefly hopeful.

"Can you bring us all through?" the lizardkin asked.

"I do not know," Derivan said. "But we can make the attempt, I think. It is better that we do. But if I cannot..."

He saw the worry in Vex's eyes.

"I will still need your help," he added, partially to try to ameliorate Vex's concerns; the lizardkin looked troubled, but he seemed to try to focus as Derivan spoke. "I trust your knowledge of magic. And I suspect that will be needed, for what we face here. But let us try to enter the dungeon first."

"We'll need to equip you all with the scrying anchors," Kestel said out loud this time. He was staring at them in a mixture of wariness, hope, and interest. "We need to be able to see what's going on in there, and there are spatial anomalies in the dungeon. If you really can get in, then you should be able to follow that path and not have to fight a single monster."

"Hit us with it, then," Sev nodded, and Kestel cast the spell. There was a slight tingle, and that was it, but the three of them were all suddenly visible on the scrying screens.

Nothing to it. They ran for the dungeon, and when they arrived — the guard had already been informed, and stood aside for them — Derivan held on to his friends' hands, and pushed against the barrier.

Access deni—

And then the notification vanished, and the three of them stepped through.

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