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Chapter 198: The Seal House
🕑 Added 2023-05-23 17:36:01 +0000 UTCHey. The ice witch that accompanied Longsword is also present. She was there when they fought the labyrinth guardian, too. I just forgot to mention it.
Enjoy the chapter!
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The trek through the mist remained slow. This time, however, Jack didn’t mind. Better to be careful than take a wrong step when there were traps everywhere.
Everyone else had also fallen silent by now. The first trap had driven home just how dangerous this place was. Jack had survived, but the next person might not—and it could be any of them.
As for the Lords, they were also preparing mentally. Everyone knew they would fight each other soon.
The merfolk guide stopped and thought for a moment, then turned sharply to the right. Everyone followed wordlessly. Five minutes later, a barren hill appeared before them.
It was small, barely thirty feet in height, but steep, rising from the ground like a dropped boulder. On its front was a cave opening leading into the darkness.
“I believe we should pass through there,” the guide said.
Longsword raised a brow. “Through there? I don’t see an opening on the other side.”
“It should appear after we enter.”
To Jack, the guide didn’t sound too confident. Everyone else must have felt the same, because Lady Minerva immediately suggested sending in someone to check. The draconic woman was the unlucky one.
To her honor, she didn’t talk back. One slow step after another, she approached the cave and basically crawled through the opening. A moment later, she was lost in darkness. There must have been magic at play there because, despite everyone’s heightened senses, they couldn’t see inside the cave.
“Are you still alive?” Longsword called out.
“Yes,” a small voice came from inside. The draconic woman—her name was Maylin—didn’t dare shout, in fear of awakening whatever may be in that cave.
Longsword snorted. He reached for his space bag, took out a yellow orb, and tossed it into the cave. The moment it touched the ground, it erupted with light, like a sun had been born. The draconic woman screamed in surprise.
Jack held his breath. The woman in the cave froze, her eyes darting around looking for danger.
There was none. It was just a cave.
“Couldn’t you do that before she entered?” Jack asked.
“Someone had to volunteer first. Otherwise, who would get the loot?”
Jack was left speechless. That had to be the dumbest thing he’d ever heard—even though no retort came to mind.
The orb remaining lit, showing a small cave that resembled an abandoned home. The walls were carved into almost straight lines. There was a door-shaped opening on the far wall, though Jack couldn’t make out what lay beyond it. The walls curved as the cave stretched to the right, outside their line of sight.
“Do you see any other openings?” Longsword asked.
The woman inside recovered. She seemed a bit braver after nothing jumped at her, and she quickly scanned the surroundings with her eyes, even taking a couple steps away from the entrance.
“This is a house,” she shouted. “There is an opening to the right, leading to the bathroom…I think. The door at the back leads to the bedroom. There is a bedframe rotting in there.”
“Well, that explains the smell,” Longsword replied, keeping his voice low. He then shouted, “So, no exits?”
“None! No treasure, either. Oh, wait—there is a lever!”
“Pull it.”
“No!” the guide quickly shouted. “Don’t pull it yet!”
Everyone looked at him questioningly.
“Some mechanisms can only work once. We have records from previous Garden Assaults,” he explained. “If she pulls the lever and another opening is revealed, this one might close. We’ll be stranded here and have to find another way around—a far more dangerous one than this.”
“There is a stone slab above the entrance,” the draconic woman shouted from inside. “It can be used to block it, as the guide said.”
The Lords exchanged a glance of a thousand words. “So, we should facecheck the trap,” Lady Minerva said dryly. “That doesn’t sound prudent.”
“It’s all we can do sometimes,” the guide explained quickly. He seemed nervous.
“And you’re sure it’s not a trap?”
“We can never be sure…but I believe that’s our way forward.”
The Lords looked at each other again. “If we cannot trust our guide,” said Priya, “who can we trust? I say we go.”
“You would gamble your life away like that?” Minerva challenged her.
“Everyone else is doing the same. I don’t mind taking a risk. And besides, the guide will be there with us. You can bet he’s not lying.”
“I agree with Lady Priya,” Lord Longsword said. “Maylin already checked for traps. If that’s the way forward, all we can do is follow through.”
“Very well,” Minerva responded after a moment’s hesitation. “Let’s go.”
Nobody asked for the opinion of anyone else. The Lords were the leaders here, and their word was law. Jack didn’t disagree with them, either. They would all go in together. What were the chances of the entire Garden Assault getting exterminated?
Two by two, the entire group filtered into the cave, all eighteen of them. It was crampy. The smell of rot pervaded Jack’s nostrils, coming from the far room, and a quick glance revealed the rotting bed frame that the draconic woman had mentioned.
He could see that, besides the bedroom and bathroom, there was only the main area of the cave. It was the size of a living room but only had a single, rotting meditation mat as furniture—which did not trigger the System’s scan, so it was not a treasure. Very suspiciously, a thick slab of stone hung above the cave opening as if glued to the ceiling.
There was no way any E-Grade would miss that—could a trap be that obvious?
Besides those, the only point of interest was a lever on the side wall, where you couldn’t see it from outside the cave. It was large and made of iron, seeming completely out of place with the rest of the cave, as if it had been added later.
“Right,” Longsword said, eyeing the stone slab. “So, we pull the lever.”
“Yes, my Lord,” the guide replied. Lady Priya, who was closest to the lever, reached up and pulled it down.
The entire cave shook. The stone slab crashed to the ground with a massive bang. Then, everything slowly calmed down as the shaking stopped.
No new opening appeared.
“...Did we fall for the most obvious trap ever?” Priya wondered aloud. All glares turned to the guide.
“I…” he said, his voice almost a whisper. He was frantically looking around. Still, no opening. “We may have made a mistake…”
“You imbecile!” Bocor growled. “You doomed us all! My Lord, please allow me to slay this disgrace.”
Many others seemed to share his sentiment.
“Calm down, Bocor,” Longsword said. “We aren’t dead yet. Maybe there’s a way out.”
“The lever isn’t going back up,” Priya said, pushing at it. “I’m using my full strength, but it isn’t budging.”
“Let’s try to lift the boulder,” Minerva suggested. “Priya, Longsword, come here. Every Physical cultivator, too. Give it a shot by yourselves before I summon giant beasts in an enclosed space.”
A bunch of people approached the stone slab, including Jack. He tried to grab it from below, but it was deeply pressed into the floor, and its edge was so straight that there was no room for his fingers to wiggle in. He tried digging under it, but it was impossible—the floor here was made of magically enhanced rock, as was the slab.
When even Longsword’s sword failed to scratch the floor, the slab, or the walls, everyone was stumped.
“Let’s grab it from the side and try to tilt it upward,” Jack suggested. “If we can raise it even a bit, we can pop our fingers under it for a better grip.”
They tried what he said. Unfortunately, not only was the stone’s hardness enhanced by magic, but so was its weight. Even with everyone using their full strength, it didn’t budge. A few tests later, they realized that even pushing it to the side was impossible. The slab was completely immovable.
“I don’t like this,” Lady Minerva said, eyeing the cave. “Keep searching, everyone. There has to be a way. I refuse to believe this trap would make us die of thirst.”
They set to it. These were eighteen very bright people. They checked everything there was to check. The lever, the walls, the floor, the ceiling. Even the inside of the bathroom and under the bed frame.
Nothing.
Jack thought that, if he died like this, he would go to the afterlife feeling extremely stupid.
Ten minutes later, Longsword was about to let Bocor go to town on the guide. The guide himself was shriveled up in a corner, probably feeling terrible.
Jack refused to give up. He had a planet to save. He couldn’t fail because of a big stone. He returned to the slab and kept inspecting it, probing its every side for an opening. How would he deal with an immovable object?
When was the last time he’d faced such a thing?
The door leading to the Ancient ruins had been similar. It was far heavier and sturdier than its physical appearance indicated. Back then, he had to pour his Dao into it. He tried the same here, scouring the stone with his perception in search of Dao vacuums that even an E-Grade Dao could infiltrate.
His eyes widened. “Hey!” he shouted. “I got it!”
Everyone turned to him. “Speak!” Longsword commanded.
“Spread your spiritual perception to the rock. Focus on the center of the side facing away from the opening. Do you feel it?”
A moment later, the eyes of the Lords lit up. “What’s that!?” Minerva asked.
“I believe it is a—” Jack almost revealed what it was before realizing that this was dangerous. The Lords were very experienced people. If they didn’t know what a Dao vacuum was, maybe it was something very uncommon. It could draw a connection between him and the Ancient ruins. “A…hole,” he finally said. “I don’t know what it is, exactly, but I can push my Dao inside.”
“Interesting,” Minerva muttered, stepping up. “How did you discover this?”
“I just got desperate and scanned everything very carefully. Anyone would have found it, given time.”
“But you did. Good job.”
“Thank you.”
Jack glanced at Vocrich. The vampire had obviously come along in Trial Garden, though Jack made sure to ignore him. This time, however, even the vampire had to nod at him.
Maybe he hadn’t saved their lives, since they would find it eventually, but he had saved them from the fear they felt. The exception was the guide, who sweated profusely as he bowed deeply in Jack’s direction.
The Lords took their time inspecting the rest of the stone slab, but there was no vacuum besides the one Jack had discovered.
“I believe we just have to pour in our Dao,” Lady Minerva finally said.
“Maybe a specific type of Dao is needed,” Jack said quickly. “Better safe than sorry. Why not try with earth or stone-oriented Daos first?”
Lady Minerva nodded at him. “Very well. Let’s do as Jack says.”
Jack felt like he had just been praised by the teacher. He then immediately squashed the feeling; he was an equal to these people. If he just got a few more levels, and a little more insight, he would become a Lord himself.
Plus, if he wanted to defeat the Planetary Overseer within a year, he couldn’t be subservient to E-Grades. Not to mention how the Dao of the Fist was unyielding.
They tried pouring earth-related Daos into the stone slab. It sucked them up like a sponge would absorb water. Before long, the cultivators with these Daos started sweating.
“It’s a bottomless pit,” one of them—the stone golem—said. “I get the sense that we aren’t even filling it up.”
“Maybe it’s an issue of quality rather than quantity,” Longsword said, cupping his chin. He poured in a sliver of his Dao. “Oh! It absorbs my Dao of the Sword as well, and I can sense it filling up a bit. It’s not meant for a specific Dao, then. It looks like we just have to pour large quantities of high-quality Dao into the slab.”
“What kind of cruel trap is this?” Priya wondered. “If you’re not a Lord, are you supposed to just wait here and die of thirst?”
“Not just a Lord,” Longsword retorted. He had kept feeding his Dao into the stone, and by now, he was sweating, too. “I cannot fill it up by myself. Can my fellow Lords help?”
“Trial Garden is not a game.” Minerva sighed, placing a hand on the slab. “Some traps can threaten even immortals. We need to be careful.”
Priya placed her hand on it, too. Immediately, three streams of energy flooded the cave. Even the little parts that weren’t absorbed by the boulder were enough to rock the world and make Jack feel dizzy. He had to muster his own Dao to resist. Some others were not as lucky—he caught the draconic woman stumble.
A moment later, the Lords retrieved their hands. “Done,” Minerva said, a sheen of perspiration on her pale forehead.
At once, the cave shook again. The slab began to float. Inch by inch, it rose over the ground. Jack, Longsword, Bocor, and every other Physical cultivator quickly reached under it and started pushing up, just in case.
Whether they helped or not was unclear, but the slab rose. Everyone rushed out into the light. The last person to exit was Longsword’s ice witch, who picked up the yellow orb Longsword had thrown in at the start—the only source of illumination they had in the cave.
When they exited, everyone looked back. The cave remained just as they had found it. The stone slab hung over the entrance, the lever had been lifted to its original position, and it seemed dark and empty.
And yet, it was one of the deadliest traps around.
“I saw the back of the slab as it rose,” Lady Minerva said. “There was no vacuum on the outside. It can only be opened from the inside. If Maylin had pulled the lever before everyone entered, she would have been stuck there forever.”
The draconic woman was sweating in terror. She quickly thanked the guide for insisting everyone should go in—forgetting he’d been the one to lead her there in the first place.
“There was no reward,” someone noticed.
Indeed. Though they’d resolved the trap, no treasure appeared. That was unusual. Most traps had a reward.
“Could there be another way to solve this?” Minerva wondered. “Well, if anyone wants to go in and give it another shot, be my guest.”
No one did.
“Sorry about that, Maylin,” Longsword said. “It happens.”
“It’s okay,” replied the draconic woman, who was excited just to leave this place with her life.
“Let’s keep going,” Minerva said, laying a hand on the guide’s shoulder. “And, Farfer… Be more careful from now on, okay?”
“I will try my absolute best, my Lady,” the guide replied, bowing deeply. His fish eyes were wide open.
Leaving the cave behind, they marched into the mist. This time, they were even slower. The guide was double-checking every decision he made, but nobody complained.
Ten minutes later, they were still walking through the mist when a voice came from behind them. “Excuse me, hello.”
