Chapter 414: Traps

I felt a wave of frustration as monsters poured out of the building. I hadn’t managed to gather any intelligence at all with my clone.

With my spatial sight, I saw the two wire-men swing down to the ground floor of the building, right as the hornets crossed by my clone’s body.

Sallia dashed in front of us and unsheathed her sword, before I felt essence start to radiate out of her body. Her movements started to become faster and faster, and I realized what she was doing. She had decided to just cut down all of the hornets before they could reach us.

A moment later, Anise summoned a few waves of fireballs, and began incinerating the swarm, while Felix stared shooting blasts of lightning at the metal wire-men. For my part, I quickly reached towards my newest spell, and started using it to wipe out bigger clumps of hornets. The edges of their stingers dripped with bright red liquid, and I was not interested in finding out what that would do to us if it got inside of our body.

I thought that the horde of enemies moving outside of the mall would give us a chance to exploit their weaknesses - after all, the mall didn’t have many exits, and I had been hoping they would clump up in one of the entrances and give me a chance to hit several enemies at once.

The monsters didn’t do that. The hornets continued to swarm out of the entrance of the building, but the two wire men didn’t set a single foot outside. Instead, they leered at us. Waiting. Watching. Grinning.

The bear wasn’t much different. It moved down to the second floor, and then it refused to take a step further. It didn’t look like it was preparing to charge out - it looked more like it was preparing for us to try to sneak into the building from the second or third floor.

I frowned.

These monsters were behaving differently than expected.

The wire-men weren’t charging us, and while the hornets continued to harass us, the majority of them remained inside of the building. It was almost as if they were protecting something - or as if they were loathe to step outside of the building.

My thoughts returned to the way my clone had exploded the moment it set foot inside of the mall.

<The building is probably trapped,> I said. <I can’t think of another reason why the monsters would be so reluctant to leave. They’re hoping we blow ourselves up or spend a bunch of essence dealing with the traps in the building.>

<I suspect you’re right,> said Felix. <Your clone’s destruction is probably a good indicator of what the rest of the building looks like. Which also probably means that the wire-men aren’t that dangerous.>

<Huh? How do those two things relate to each other?> asked Anise.

<Well, first of all, it’s worth noting that none of the other buildings in the Market seem to have been trapped,> said Felix. <This means the traps were probably added after the fall of the Market. Most monsters seem to have a few abilities, but just like with us, there seems to be some sort of limit to how many different Abilities they can have at once. The bear is probably focused around physical combat, much like Sallia. The hornets clearly have some sort of venom - and I’ve also noticed that no matter how many we kill, their numbers never seem to drop. The hornets probably have some sort of ability dedicated to keeping their numbers high - perhaps a queen, or some way to constantly replenish the dead. The wire men seem unusually dextrous - but they also don’t have very strong life force, according to Miria. If they were assassins or something of the sort, I would expect them to start raining ranged attacks on us or sneaking around - but instead, it looks almost like they’re trying to goad us into the building. I could be wrong, but I think they have some kind of ability related to traps.>

I thought over Felix’s words as I wiped out another batch of hornets. Finally, I nodded.

<Your reasoning makes sense to me. Until proven otherwise, we’ll assume the wire monsters make traps.> Then, I grinned. <If that’s the case, I wonder if killing them will remove the traps. I have enough essence to drop one of them, and leave just enough for a healing spell or two. Anise, do you think you could finish off the other with some kind of ranged attack? Felix and Sallia, can you two deal with the hornet swarm for a bit?>

<On it,> said my friends.

A moment later, I unleashed a high-power Extinguish, backed by my {Essence Core}, and one of the two wire men dropped dead.

<Nevermind, I can confirm Felix’s theory,> I said, before I sent information about my new skill to my friends. I also went ahead an added it to one of my skill slots, since there was no reason not to.

<I’ll try to kill -> before Anise could finish her words, the other wire-man disappeared into the mall. A quick glance using my spatial sight confirmed that it had hidden in one of the stores in the mall - and it was now putting something together from scraps of metal and wood.

<Miria, your new skill gives you familiarity with traps, right? Can you tell me where the ones in the building are?> asked Sallia.

I squinted at the entrance to the mall, and to my surprise, I could now see where it would make sense to put in traps. It wasn’t as if I could track them all with perfect accuracy - but I could certainly spot places where it would make sense to put traps into the building.

<I can tell you where they might be, but you’ll still need to test them,> I said.

<Works for me,> said Sallia, before she started to advance towards the building. I squeezed in right behind her, while relying on my much clunkier portals + Spatial Rifts spell combination to keep the hornets off of us. It was nowhere near as effective and efficient as my alteration essence version of the spell, but I wanted to keep my last bits of alteration essence ready to heal Sallia if something went wrong.

Right as we crossed the threshold of the mall, I spotted the first potential trap. It was a tiny panel on the floor that looked almost right - but there was a very subtle oddity to how it was placed. I immediately pointed it out to Sallia, and the two of us avoided it.

With the two of us having set foot inside of the building, the swarm of hornets seemed to grow enraged. A much denser cloud of hornets flew towards us, leaving a few panels on the floor exposed. On the floor, I could see something that looked more like an assembly line than a nest. As I watched, I felt a ripple of essence inside of a dozen different cubes of metal. Then, seemingly from nowhere, little bits of metal, wood, and flesh appeared inside. Then, each cube emitted a burst of essence. A moment later, a new hornet flew out. I glanced at the wasps again, and frowned.

Were the wasps real, organic creatures, or were they some kind of robot made by the wire-men? If the wire men had created this little assembly line for wasps, it meant these things were far more dangerous than I had thought.

I squinted at them, and then pointed them out to Anise through the communication bracelet.

<Blast this to pieces, would you?>

A few seconds later, as Sallia and I worked to tear apart the cloud of hornets, a few blasts of force and fire slagged the miniature assembly lines on the floor.

The remaining hornets seemed even more enraged by that, and this time, every single hornet flew at us. Anise and I ripped the swarm apart, and then the hornets were dealt with.

Then, I felt the ground quake. I looked to the side, and realized the bear had finally descended to our floor. However, it wasn’t alone. The haunted puppet was on the ceiling, gazing at us as one of its arms grasped a device I couldn’t identify or understand. Something about it set my teeth on edge.

The bear charged at us, and the wire-man threw the metal object at us.

I grinned, and teleported the object right back at the wire-man. The wire man clearly didn’t expect that, since it jerked away in panic right before the metal could touch it. The strange device slammed into the ceiling, and exploded. A cloud of gas tore out of the container, and the wire-man dropped off the ceiling.

Sallia stepped forward to engage the bear, and less than ten seconds later, one of its arms flew off. I kept an eye on the fight, but once I saw the bear lose a limb, I relaxed. Whatever was happening, Sallia could handle it.

Anise peppered the monster with a few spells, while Felix tossed a few rounds of metal shards into the bear’s hide. I added in a small extinguish right as the bear was dying, to make sure I got an assist, and a few moments later, Sallia lopped the bear’s head off.

I breathed a sigh of relief as Sallia moved to dispatch the other haunted doll. The fight had been surprising, but it hadn’t been anything we couldn’t handle.

Overall, I got 4,200 Achievement from the fight, which brought me from 237,628.94 to 241,828.94.

I glanced at the gas now filling the mall, before Sallia and I crept back out of the store. I had no clue what the gas did, but I didn’t want to interact with it - especially since it would probably dissipate on its own within a few hours. After that, we would still need to navigate the trap-filled mall to collect our prizes. But I was happy with the outcome of the fight. There had been surprises and dangers, but there hadn’t been a single moment where I felt like the fight slipped out of our control. It had been a satisfying fight, because it proved one thing to me. The dangers of the Market were ever present, but our group was growing to meet those dangers.