Chapter 177: Chapter One Hundred Seventy Eight

The hallways in this labyrinth were boring. Yellow stone blocks stacked in a staggered pattern for stability, lit by more of those weird  green torches that had sparked up as soon as we got down here. As we  moved further into the hall, we crept carefully. Lies or not, Cicero's  mention of stealth had definitely put the idea in our heads, and it was  obvious that we'd be less likely to be attacked if nothing noticed us,  so we slowed our steps along the rough stone floor tiles to erase as  much of our presence as possible with each step.

I grabbed  a hold of Callie's hand as we snuck, the two of us sharing the stealth  burden, and allowing the other to hear when we spoke. I still whispered  when I asked. "OK, I'm assuming there will be traps here. I absolutely  won't let us get blindsided if I can help us, but using Seek Hidden to  search for traps is pretty damn general. I might be able to force it if I  beat the skill into shape, but it'll be a huge strain, and I won't be  able to detect anything until we get right up next to any traps. You're  going to have to keep us safe while I do that."

She gave  me a reassuring smile. "Of course. You know I can handle it. I can use  my ability to cloak us even more than the stealth skill does. The wells  are far enough away that there are plenty of darker spots between the  islands of torch light. Leave it to me." She squeezed my hand, and we  both focused hard, reaching for our skills. Seek Hidden flared to life,  and I was barely able to force it to search for something as broad as  traps by massively reducing the area it could detect any targets in.

As  we walked, I saw the telltale red glow start to spark up, and pulled  Callie to a stop. "Wait." She looked at me in confusion. "This entire  corridor is riddled with traps. Even within a few feet of us, I can see  at least five of them. I...I think there are some behind us too. From  what I can tell, this place is set up so once we pass a certain point  all the traps trigger at once. I don't know WHICH point, but if this  density is consistent there could be dozens of the damn  things around  here."

She froze, not daring to take another step, and I  glared down at the ground near us. I was pretty sure the walls might be  rigged too, but the trigger mechanisms looked like they were in the  floor. I cursed. "Just within sight I can see some spike traps on the  floor, a few swinging blades in the ceilings, and what I'm pretty sure  is some kind of shaft that carries boiling oil. This whole place is a  death trap. Forget combat prodigy, Abel had the skills to walk through  this that power of his is scarier than I thought."

I  wondered exactly how his power worked. Spatial lubrication was weird,  but paired with sufficiently high Focus, it would essentially be slowing  down time. At least thats how I thought it would work. The thought was  terrifying, but not as terrifying as all these fucking traps. I was  seriously going to hurt Cicero over this. We could have died down here.  We could STILL die down here. I doubted that bastard even cared, he was  probably just focused on getting whatever Abel had left down here for  safekeeping.

Callie frowned, but then here eyes flew open  wide. "Hah! I wish I had a Beginner Trap Mastery skill!" I blinked.  That...holy shit, I hadn't even considered that. I wasn't entirely sure I  had the stats to make that happen, but I had gotten a huge bump  recently so it might be possible. Before I could respond, she bit her  lip. "Wait, payment...I need to give you something. I'll offer enough of  my stealth knowledge to get your Skill to Lesser." I blanched at that.  Giving me that much was going to damage her stealth Skill. Maybe not  enough to bring it below Beginner considering the huge gap in scale  between ranks, but it would be A LOT of memories to lose, and it would  HURT.

The familiar lines of rolling purple flame spiderwebbed across my vision, scrawling out a series of words.

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