Chương 93: Penicillium - Chapter Two

Chapter Two On arriving at the long tunnel leading in the next room, Cavendish raised a gauntleted hand and we all paused. Without being prompted, George the trap-checker slipped his pack off and pulled out a stick from within it, then another, and another. I watched, mildly fascinated, as he screwed the ends of the sticks together, turning them into a much longer pole.

"This one's usually got three to five floor plates," George said with confidence.

"One section of the floor is always a pitfall, with decently sharp edged, but minimal depth. No foes, but plenty in the next room."

"Nathan, second," Cavendish said. He half-turned towards our little group.

"Phillipe, what are you acting as today? And the kids?"

"Tyro wants to be a striker," Phillipe said with obvious pride.

"I can work as fortress."

"Alright," Cavendish said.

"Kid, pay attention. Phillipe, I want you centre. Nathan and I will take your flanks. Tyro and Grace will take... right and left respectively. You okay off-handing for a bit, Grace?"

"On this floor?" Grace asked.

"We'll take it seriously, if only to show the kid how it's done." Grace shrugged.

"That's fair." She tugged a short sword out from a sheath by her hip. It was a lot fatter than any sword I'd ever seen before, more like a gladius with a thick middle than anything else. George moved into the corridor without waiting for anyone. He had a small lamp clipped to the front of his chest with an incandescent bulb in a cage on it and a large switch that he clicked on. It provided very little light, but it was enough to see by. The others in Cavendish's group pulled out their own lamps and held them up.

None were all that bright, except for Nathan's, which was an oil lamp affixed to the centre of his shield and which shone through a set of gratings on the front of it. Phillipe and Tyro pulled out their own flashlights, both of them cranking them on quickly as they followed. I missed the LED lights from before. For that matter, better batteries. I bet they were working with the local equivalent of D-cells and that they wouldn't last more than an hour.

George was ahead squinting at the ground with his pole gently scraping on the floor. He walked low to the floor, a crab-walk that let him trace a line on the floor with a piece of chalk.

"We don't want to leave traces for the others," Cavendish said.

"Next team down won't be Reece, not on this floor," George muttered back. His voice echoed in the tunnel. It was long enough that the light of our collective lamps didn't reach the end. I could still see it though, maybe the [Blackbottle Night Watcher] was finally kicking in. I knew the mushroom's effect wasn't instantaneous. It was like taking pain medication. The effect grew over the course of an hour, then eventually started fading again. We stayed on the chalk line as we followed George.

He plotted a zig-zag path through the room, sometimes turning at sharp angles for no apparent reason. Eventually, halfway through the room, he stopped and placed his chalk stick down and pulled out a tin can with a spout. He used that to lay a line of chalk powder down which glowed a surprisingly bright green.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Radium chalk," he said.

"To let people know there's a pressure plate." I blinked. He was just casually carrying that? In powdered form? Did he want to die of radiation poisoning? while It was, admittedly, effective, I now wanted nothing to do with the circle he'd just drawn. He placed two more down before we reached the end of the tunnel, and no one commented on it. George just plugged the spout back up, brushed a line of glowing chalk off on his pants, then stood.

"Clear to the end," he said.

"Right, next formation," Cavendish said. Phillipe nodded, then pulled out a small shield from his back. I hadn't noticed it, being squished against his back as it was. It was tiny too, no bigger than a dinner plate. He buckled it to his forearm and then held his hammer out to the side. Tyro did the same, but with a bit more fumbling involved. The formation built up, five people up front, three of us behind. Myself, George, and William the ranger who pulled out a crossbow with a large boxy top half.

"Will we be allowing the kid the honour of doing all the work?" William asked. He had an accent that I wasn't familiar with, every word pronounced far more delicately. Stolen novel; please report.

"Let's not put the whole burden on Tyro," Phillipe said.

"Unless you want to pay him for the honour." Cavendish chuckled.

"No, that's alrightalready. When Grace steps up, do the same, follow her example, alright?"

"Yes, sir," Tyro said. He sounded like someone desperately trying to seem like they were confident in themselves. We stepped into the next room carefully. It was one of the smaller cave rooms, though it was still more spacious than the tunnel we were just in. The light pushed across the entire space, illuminating large stones and walls covered in veins of brown and red and pale grey stone. Were those iron veins? The ground was littered with stones and, above, webs.

"Rats," Cavendish said.

"Nothing unusual," Grace replied. I shuddered. I'd had a face-to-face meeting with the rats from this dungeon, and I wasn't terribly fond of them. One came skittering out from behind a stone, its eight beady eyes locking onto the group before it hissed and backed away into the shadows.

"Alright, move up," Cavendish said.

"William, first easy shot, take it to enrage them."

"You got it, sir," William said. We started to move with slow, halting steps, always holding the formation we had. Then William's crossbow twanged and a rat's body went flying out of the air where it was hanging by one of its spider-threads. Rats across the room hissed and clicked, and soon a dozen of them came running out from behind boulders, all eight of their legs creating a tap-tap beat across the floor as they charged. Phillipe met the first one with the heel of his boot.

There was a hard crunch as he crushed its skull into pieces. Then the fight was on. It wasn't on for very long though. The spider-rats attacked by jumping in and biting. More often than not, they were smacked out of the air by sword or hammer, or just punted aside by a quick kick. Every delver, I noted, was wearing thick-soled boots, some with metal caps on the top which ended in sharp points. The few rats that got through bit into armour-covered legs and were soon grabbed, shaken by the neck, and tossed back.

I kept my camp knife in hand the entire time, in case something came through and jumped me, or fell from the ceiling. There were some rats that tried that. They all ended up dead a split second after William's repeating crossbow thunked. Sooner than I would have expected, we were across and at the end of the room.

"Alright, rear, into the tunnel, we'll finish off anything following us, but it's unlikely that they'll keep up."

"They won't?" Tyro asked.

"They seem fast enough."

"Spider-rats are territorial. They don't leave their room unless they have to," Cavendish said.

"Their bodies aren't worth anything, not unless you own a meat-processing plant. Let's keep moving." The room had had two exits on my map, but I'd only seen the one we headed straight for. Was the other hidden? I wasn't going to go and check, not when I knew there were more of those rats left behind. The next stretch was another tunnel. George took the fore again, this time only glancing at the ground before he started waving his pole through the air in front of him.

Again, he plotted a zig-zag course after telling us what kind of trap to expect.

"Loose stones above, connected by spider-webs to head-height triplines." His pole snagged one near-invisible wire and a few rocks as big as my closed fist came crashing down onto the ground. That... could have killed someone, if they hit just right. They'd concuss someone, at the very least. Sir Nibbles shifted around my neck and glanced at the ceiling, but it was too far above for me to make anything out. Which also meant that anything falling from so high up would have time to build up to its terminal velocity.

The tunnel forked ahead, but we immediately turned left and arrived into a strange room, one which had a dirt floor and large cocoons hanging off the walls.

"Alright, wait here," Cavendish whispered.

"Just a few seconds to prepare for this one. Better to take the time than be caught off-guard." Then he removed his pack, reached into it, and pulled out a pair of what looked a whole lot like Molotov cocktails.