Chương 59: Chapter 56: The Bait and Switch

We turned our attention to the gaping entrance and peered into the darkness.

"Does anyone else besides Mike and I have dark vision?" I asked.

"You know I do," Alex replied from the center of the group.

"Yes, but you're not a front-line fighter," I countered.

"You're a casting and support mage, so you need to stay in the middle or toward the rear." Neither Joe nor Pete spoke up to claim the skill.

"Alright then, here is what I suggest," I said.

"Instead of a traditional wedge formation with Joe and Pete out front as our primary shields, Mike will take point, followed by myself. We will move in a staggered formation, left and right. Joe will follow directly behind us, then Alex, and Pete will bring up the rear. Mike's passive perception is better than mine, and he has a dedicated trap-finding skill, so he will lead the sweep while I do my best to spot anything he misses.

With his dexterity being higher than mine, he'll also be able to react and avoid sudden threats faster than the rest of us. Does that sound reasonable?"

"Sounds good to me," Joe replied, and the others nodded in agreement. Joe reached down and unclipped two heavy flashlights fitted with red lens filters.

"I brought these along. They'll help illuminate the path for Pete and me without casting a massive white beam that would draw attention from a mile away."

"It's still a minor risk," I said, looking at the filters.

"But it's a much lower risk than you two walking in blind. Let's use them." Joe handed the second light to Pete, and the team fell into our staggered intervals, stepping carefully past the threshold and into the cave.

Upon entering the cave, the team received a notification: [System Notification: Regional Objective Discovered] Dungeon Registered: The Sunken Basin: Primordial Depths Current Location: Floor I: The Hissing Hive Party Size: 5/5 Dismissing the notification and fully moving out of the natural twilight, my dark vision kicked in, brightening the blackness into manageable shades of gray. But what caught me completely off guard was what happened when Joe and Pete clicked on their lights.

A red lens filter is meant to cast a subdued, highly localized glow because red wavelengths don't scatter or travel as far through the dark as white light. Ever since the initialization, my dark vision had made flashlights entirely unnecessary, but looking through the magical enhancement now, the small amount of red light flooded my vision, making the tunnel look as bright as a sunlit corridor. The phenomenon immediately reminded me of my time in the military during night operations training.

I hadn't been an infantryman or assigned to a direct combat arms classification, so strict light and noise discipline wasn't something I had to execute every single day. I had still done my absolute best to maintain proper protocols, but there were specific nights when I had to drive a transport vehicle back to our unit's encampment, while deployed to Iraq, completely alone while wearing night vision goggles.

If I activated the vehicle's blacked-out infrared or red lens systems, the terrain would instantly illuminate through the goggles like broad daylight. Looking over at Mike, I could tell he was experiencing the exact same vivid overlay. He caught my eye and flashed a quick smirk. I motioned for him to lead out, watching as his form grew faint under his active sneak proficiency before he slipped into the shadows.

I activated my own sneak skill, letting my physical outline meld into the darkness along the wall as I moved forward. I stored my sword into my ring and drew my bow, nocking an arrow to the string. Joe, Pete, and Alex followed several paces behind us, maintaining a deliberate distance just in case Mike or I accidentally triggered a trap or missed a pressure plate. Roughly fifty yards down the corridor, Mike suddenly came to a halt. He had spotted a trap, and to be honest, it wasn't even close to being hidden.

It was a blatant tripwire woven from raw plant fibers, running across the dirt and up the stone wall toward the ceiling, where it connected to a heavy, spring-loaded iron grate bristling with rusted spikes. If triggered, the mechanism would swing downward on a heavy hinge, impaling anyone walking through the center of the path. Given the video games I had played and the fantasy books I had read, I felt a slight twinge of disappointment.

I had expected elaborate, mystical defenses, not a primitive trap that anyone with decent eyesight could easily spot and step over. Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. But a second later, a cold chill shot straight down my spine. I watched in horror as Mike suddenly dropped completely out of his sneak, launching himself backward through the air toward the very tripwire he had just bypassed as the solid earth beneath his feet completely vanished.

Fortunately, his reflexes were incredible. Mike cleared the tripwire on his backward leap, landing heavily right beside me. Just two feet past the obvious tripwire, the solid floor had given way entirely, revealing a massive pitfall that stretched twenty feet across and dropped down into absolute darkness. Staring over the edge, I could see rows of jagged wooden and metal spikes lining the bottom, coated in a thick, shiny fluid. It was clearly a lethal dose of poison.

I breathed a quiet sigh of relief that Mike's high dexterity had allowed him to escape the plunge. Joe, Pete, and Alex moved up behind us, staring down into the sudden void.

"What's the play here?" Joe whispered, looking at the distance.

"Looks like we're going to have to jump it," I replied, measuring the gap.

"It's going to be a rough leap because we need enough clearance to completely avoid hitting that tripwire on our approach. We're looking at a twenty-two-foot jump at least."

"We could just spring the tripwire manually from a distance and bring the spiked grate down," Joe suggested.

"That would give us a few extra feet of solid ground to work with," I agreed.

"But a heavy iron grate slamming into the stone is going to make far more noise than we want."

"I think we should just take the leap," Alex said confidently.

"I can manifest my vine whips from the stone wall to catch anyone who doesn't quite make the full distance."

"I can clear it easily," Mike whispered.

"Let me cross over first so I can secure the far side and check for any secondary triggers." The rest of us backed up into the tunnel, giving Mike plenty of room to build up a running start. Instead of sprinting straight toward the edge, he took off at a sharp angle toward the right wall. He leapt out over the chasm, his boots striking the vertical stone face, and used the momentum to push off, launching himself across the remaining gap to land perfectly a foot past the opposite ledge.

He turned back toward us, flashing a wide grin. I just shook my head, silently reminding myself that I needed to invest a lot more stat points into my dexterity attribute. Once Mike ranged forward a few yards and confirmed the landing zone was entirely clear, Alex decided to go next. He took a running start and threw himself over the pit. Mid-flight, a thick vine whip erupted from the side wall, wrapping securely around his waist and pulling him the rest of the way across until his boots hit solid ground.

The vine uncoiled seamlessly, snapping back toward our side of the ledge. Joe went next, utilizing the exact same vine assistance, though it was visually obvious from his powerful leap that his strength attribute would have carried him across the distance completely unassisted. I shook my head a second time, realizing I needed to balance both strength and dexterity if I wanted to keep up with the physical builds.

I took the leap next, followed closely by Pete, both of us crossing safely with the help of Alex's magical vine. I was relieved to note that the vine didn't inflict any physical damage when it grabbed us, despite the sharp thorns lining its length. Looking back over the chasm, I had to admit the trap was far more insidious than I had initially given it credit for. It was a classic bait-and-switch.

A simple, obvious tripwire that any basic scout would feel proud for spotting, followed immediately by a massive pitfall just inches ahead. If a person got complacent and casually jumped over the wire without thoroughly inspecting the landing zone, they would leap straight to their death. We reformed our staggered intervals and continued our march down the descending tunnel.

As we pressed deeper, the floor grew noticeably steeper until the corridor finally opened up into a massive cavern roughly fifty yards past the pitfall trap. The chamber was immense, stretching at least one hundred yards across and half as wide. The walls were surprisingly smooth, bearing distinct, repetitive tool marks that made it perfectly clear this wasn't a natural formation; something had deliberately excavated this space out of the mountain.

As we advanced into the open air, I noticed a dense network of uniform holes, roughly five inches in diameter, bored into the stone walls and ceiling starting halfway down the chamber. Upon entering the chamber, we were once again hit by a system notification: Now entering: [Floor I: The Hissing Hive] Our collective instincts flared. The team immediately pulled into a tight, interlocking defensive formation, with Joe and Pete raising their shields out front as we stepped slowly into the heart of the cavern.