Chapter 93: 5.17 – What Lies Beneath

Robin staggered as he came back to himself. He blinked, unused to the normal light after what had seemed an extended period in the purple-tinted dreamscape. Right. The plan.

He needed to delay the party while Ruprecht made a few fast alterations to the chamber roughly to the east. On the one hand, the secret door leading to it would be the third and final one that Drev’s spell would unveil. The good news was that made it easier for Robin to figure out a way to delay the process. Unfortunately, that also meant Robin had to come up with a solid reasoning why they needed to go through that door first.

If the party went through either of the other two it would be a disaster, and Ruprecht would probably have to attack them to drive the party out of the dungeon entirely. That would reveal he was not, in fact, shattered, and possibly inflict some grievous harm on them in the process.

If it weren’t for Savra and Wulfram, Robin might try to bring Drev and Jhess in on the secret, but there was no way he could trust those two. No. It was better to trick the whole party.

‘I’m ready when you are,’ Drev called.

‘Be right there,’ Robin replied. He moved as slowly as he reasonably could.

Once Drev began the spell, they had to make it all the way around the cavern. If they were too slow, Robin risked the party not uncovering the door they needed most to go through. So the delay needed to come either before or after Drev cast his spell.

Before, Robin decided. After the spell was cast he’d be busy trying to convince the party that the right door was…well, the right door. Even if it was to his left at the moment.

The delay would have been easy if Ruprecht had left a mimic or two in here. Not that Robin really relished the idea of another fight. Especially now that he was getting to know Ruprecht as a sentient being. It made it a lot harder to think of the mimics as monsters. They were in Ruprecht’s care in a way, and that just really complicated the whole mess.

Empathy wasn’t always a helpful trait in a dungeon-diver.

Fortunately there was another simple option. It relied on Robin knowing which of his teammates’ buttons to push, and how. The coming ‘distraction’ would be about as much fun as fighting a couple of mimics, but hopefully there’d be less bloodshed.

Hopefully.

‘What do we do about Khavren’s share?’ he asked. ‘Do we still assign it to him and his family?’

‘What? No!’ Jhess looked outraged. ‘Do you have any idea how much money that family has already? Even if we hauled the lot of this back to the surface—and it was all real—it wouldn’t even register to them as more than pocket change. I say we split it evenly amongst surviving party members.’

‘That’s hardly in keeping with guild etiquette,’ Drev protested.

And the argument was off. Distraction achieved.

Savra shot Robin a measuring glance as Wulfram heaved the largest sigh Robin had ever heard and settled himself back to lean against the wall, hammer still in hand.

The former warrior legend had probably heard more than his share of these loot disputes in his time.

Frell, Robin had been involved in more of them than he cared to remember. Some gamers got unhealthily obsessed with treasure. It made even less sense in that context now that he’d lived a version of the real thing. Imagine fighting over imaginary gold now, having fought for his life to the centre of a dungeon and actually won some treasure.

Hard won. That was probably a lot of it. Jhess didn’t want to see her hard work go to lining the pockets of someone who hadn’t done a thing to help.

Well, that and she was naturally avaricious.

Robin kept the argument going, siding first with Jhess and then with Drev, prodding it along until he judged that Ruprecht had had enough time to get the target room prepared. Then he verbally reached out to stall the argument. Now that he’d unleashed it there was no way he was just going to resolve it. No, he’d have to suffer through this discussion all the way back to Noviel.

‘I think we should table this for now. You know, until we actually have the gold safely in hand,’ he said.

‘Yes, I agree,’ Savra chimed in instantly, shooting him another veiled glance.

‘Is your spell ready?’ Robin asked Drev, firmly shifting the conversation into standby mode and refocusing the party on action.

‘It is.’ Drev drew himself up and began limbering up his hands.

‘Then let’s do this.’

Robin took out a piece of chalk and passed another to Jhess and Savra each. Drev cast his detection spell and began striding around the perimeter of the room. When he neared the first of the hidden doors (roughly where Robin had expected it to be), the wall lit up.

Jhess quickly used her piece of chalk to trace the outline of the door itself whilst Savra and Robin used their to quickly note down the runes and sigils that revealed themselves. This way they’d be able to get the maximum use out of Drev’s spell.

Though, if all went according to plan, they wouldn’t need to study this door or the next one at all.

‘Hurry! Hurry! I can’t hold this focus forever!’ Drev shifted from one foot to another as the trio quickly chalked up the wall.

Robin nodded when they were done and the mage proceeded around the edge of the cavern. They repeated this process twice more, to roughly the same effect.

The second door was different, more layered with runes and sigils. It wasn’t an extreme difference, but it was enough to convince Robin that Ruprecht’s true form was hidden behind that door with its extra security.

He deliberately left out a few runes in his chalking. No reason to make selecting the third door any more difficult. And Ruprecht would probably appreciate it.

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If the dungeon noticed.

They were in the midst of chalking up the information from the third door when the magic began to flicker and fade. Drev swore.

‘Hurry up! I won’t be able to hold it much longer. Not without recasting.’

That would be a waste of magical energy, and they would definitely need Drev’s shields to get them back to Noviel. Robin focused on the smooth motion of copying the sigils. Smooth is fast.

‘Almost there,’ he called. ‘We’ll get it.’

They’d better get it. If they didn’t, he knew the party would want to try one of the other two doors. They had the info for those. At least so they thought. Likely the whole team would end up trying to go through the first door they chalked up, but that room likely still had a replica of Ruprecht’s core and a horde of mimics in it, as well as a hoard of fake coin and who knows how many still-armed traps.

Robin’s fingers flew across the stone, copying runes and sigils. Savra’s did likewise. Jhess, having already outlined the door, stepped back to give them room to work.

The seeress finished the last rune several seconds after the spell faded away entirely.

No one spoke, afraid that a slight sound might disturb her concentration and cause her to forget the image she was holding in her mind.

The silence held a good few moments past the final pass that her hand made across the stone wall with the chalk.

‘Did you get it?’ Robin asked finally, breaking the silence.

‘Of course I did,’ the seeress said primly. ‘I maintain concentration on flickering visions as part of my profession. Remembering a few simple lines is child’s play compared to that.’

Fair enough.

Robin stepped up to examine the wall. With his experience with the last hidden door, he was easily able to figure out the passcode for this one from examining the runes threaded through the structure.

It was definitely another decoy room. The first of the decoys, according to the numbering scheme. Robin thought back to the first door they outlined. That put the party currently in the third decoy room, all three of which must be in a ring around the dungeon’s true centre. Which meant the second door they had chalked out definitely led to Ruprecht’s inner sanctum. That one only had the alpha designation. There was no additional number.

‘I recognise most of these runes,’ Drev was saying, ‘but not all. How can you tell the passcode from studying them, however? I don’t see what gives it away at all.’

‘Who cares how as long as he can get it open?’ Jhess had a dagger in each hand. ‘As long as he can open any of them.’

‘I have an ability that allows me to understand the meaning behind a piece of written information,’ Robin said absently. ‘Between that and what I know of magic, I should be able to guess the passcode correctly.’

‘Should? What do you mean should? Can you open it or not?’ Jhess asked, exasperated.

‘Let’s find out, shall we?’ Maybe the easiest way to make sure the party went through the right door was just to open it.

Robin spoke the passcode and the door opened.

It was into a room that looked nearly identical to the one they were already in. Pillars with treasures upon them, coin and gemstone in piles and in chests scattered throughout. There was one obvious difference, however, and that was the noticeable lack of a dungeon core gem floating above one of the plinths.

There was a central plinth, to be sure, but in place of Ruprecht’s core (or another exploding duplicate) there was an exquisite golden chalice.

‘I’ll bet you a handful of silver that thing magically poisons whatever drink is poured into it,’ Jhess said sourly

‘I think it’s more likely to transform into a serpent,’ Drev said, ‘considering all the shapeshifters we ran into in these tunnels.’

‘I can sense that it is magical and that its power does somehow involve transmutation or transfiguration,’ their party seeress observed.

‘Drev, use your magic to find the obvious magical items. Jhess, go with him and keep an eye out for traps. I wouldn’t put it past this dungeon to leave us a few more surprises.’ Robin glanced around.t

I had Am—my minions disable the more lethal ones. I did leave a few. It would hardly be convincing otherwise. You can handle those though, I trust?

Robin muttered assent resentfully. He understood the necessity, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. Traps were a lot less fun when on the receiving end, he’d noticed.

‘There’s still a lot of fake coinage,’ Jhess complained. ‘I think this—’

‘Jhess! No!’ Drev called.

There was a muffled bamf as something exploded!

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