Chương 142: Chapter 140: The burial chamber

We get past a few more traps on the way through the passageway. Nothing all that dangerous, thanks to my ability to spot them before we step into them. But despite all the traps, we're still not seeing any actual monsters. I don't know if I'm getting experience for spotting and avoiding the traps, or if we're getting experience for exploring this place, so I'm not sure if everything so far has been a waste or not. But there's definitely been a lot of tension.

I've felt a lot of sweat roll down my back as we move, wondering if I missed a sign or a didn't spot a trap in time or something like that. With every step, I keep expecting to find something that will try to kill us. I don't think any of the traps would actually kill us. Even the slamming together of the wall won't kill us, I don't think. I'm pretty sure that if it tried to crush El, she'd be able to just push the wall aside with more force than it could use to crush her.

I don't know where her strength is right now, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was over two hundred and fifty. Mine is technically over two hundred, counting the bonuses I get for my equipment, and I'm sure hers is higher than mine. A lot of her stats are higher than mine, because I'm apparently the only one who decided to keep things relatively balanced.

But we do eventually get around the outside of the building, with the passageway constantly veering slightly to one direction, like we're going to spiral inwards towards the center of it. We get around the pyramid, and then we come to the main burial chamber. I say main chamber because of the chamber we already passed through, the one with thirty skeletons that I'm pretty sure we're going to have to fight at some point. But this second chamber seems more like the main chamber.

That other one was for servants or guards or something. This one is for the main attraction. This one is the reason the pyramid was built in the first place. It's not overly large, and the ceiling isn't all that high, but I'm pretty sure this is the main sarcophagus. For one thing, it's surrounded by golden statues. If those statues are all made of solid gold, then this is going to be a pretty easy bribe of the dragon. There are about two dozen statues, each one about two feet tall.

The workmanship is pretty impressive. I can see that one of the statues is a lynxith, one is a goar. About half of them are humanoid, potentially actually humans. They are dressed as warriors, and all are bearing weapons of one kind of another. Like terracotta warriors, only made out of gold instead of clay. They stand against the other half of the statues, which are all monsters of one form or another.

We see a couple that look almost like dinosaurs, two that are like saber tooth tigers, and one that looks like a dragon. I say looks like because while it does have the wings and the claws and the snake like body, it's more like what I used to see in Chinese dragons than any of the dragons that I've actually seen since we came to this world. But if these two dozen statues are made from solid gold, then we're going to have a tough time carrying them out of here.

Each of the statues has to weight a thousand pounds, maybe more. Actually, probably a lot more. Our spatial bags reduce the weight, but only by 90%.

"Those look heavy," El says as we stand at the entrance of the chamber, looking a the statues all laid out before us.

"Gold weighs about two tons per cubic foot," Ash informs us.

"So those are probably three or four tons each."

"That's a lot of gold," Gigi says. I do the math real quick. Ten percent of four tons is still eight hundred pounds. Even with our massive strengths, I don't see us taking more than one or two statues a piece out of here. Leaving a whole lot behind. For next time, I suppose.

"If I were setting traps all throughout the pyramid," El says, "I'd definitely put traps on the statues." She's right. The statues are probably all holding down pressure plates. If we move one of them, it will set off a trap. We need to be careful about that. Looking deeper into the chamber, we can see the sarcophagus itself. It looks like whoever was entombed here was in fact mummified.

Weird; the pyramid looked more like a Mayan structure than an Egyptian one, and if I remember correctly, the Mayans didn't mummify anyone. That was purely an Egypt thing to do. But this isn't Earth, and I need to remind myself that the cultures of this world could have any number of different traditions. The mummy is wrapped in cloth, but also in gold and jewelry. There is an amulet with a huge diamond around its neck, and its arms are draped in golden bands and bangles.

There's a fortune to be had here, so long as you're willing to desecrate the dead.

"It's going to come alive," El says.

"You know it is."

"Probably as soon as we start trying to take any of the treasure," Ash agrees.

"Let's be ready for that." Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. We all have our weapons drawn. The problem with that is that our hands are all full; we can't actually pick anything up. One of us is going to have to put their weapons away. And it's going to be me, isn't it? Of course it is. I'm the one with Flame Bolt. So I can still be combat effective without a weapon in my hand. So I have to be the one to disturb the mummy.

I have to be the one to bring down the curse on all of our heads.

"We could just leave," I point out.

"I mean, the magic crystals we have left might be enough for the dragon."

"You scared?" El asks me. But I notice she doesn't offer to do it for me.

"Aren't you?" I ask. I move towards one of the statues. I figure if we're only going to get one, we should get a good one. I pick the statue of the dragon. Maybe the dragon on this island looks like that, and she'll appreciate me getting her the statue of herself. Dragons like things that make themselves look good, right?

"I'm not afraid of anything," El says. But she still doesn't move closer or offer to do the dirty work herself.

"Let's just be ready," Ash says, holding her glowing mace.

"Everyone cast whatever prep spells you have to get ready for combat. When Caleb moves that statue, something bad is going to happen." I can't very well disarm the trap under the base of the statue. From what I can tell, the statue base is completely covering the pressure plate. There's no way to get to it without first moving the statue, which will set off the trap. I look around before I move the statue. I look for holes in nearby walls, or in the floor itself.

I look on the ceiling, looking for holes that might shoot out spikes or for a seam that suggests that the ceiling is going to crash down and try to crush me. The ideal strategy would be to move the statue from a distance. But I don't have any kind of telekinesis. I could tie a rope around it and maybe drag it away, but I'm not sure that would work either. Maybe I could try to roll away as I move the statue. But that would mean taking four thousand pounds of gold with me as I moved. That's going to slow me way down.

I decide to go with the rope. I wrap the rope around the statue, then take several steps back from it and start to drag the statue towards me. It makes a loud noise as it scrapes across the floor. So loud that I almost don't hear the click when it finally moves off the pressure plate. Darts come flying through the air, whipping through where the statue used to be, almost a dozen of them pinging off the statue itself. It's a wonder that they don't leave a mark on the statue itself. Gold is pretty soft.

But if the darts leave any dents, I can't see them. Maybe the statue was always pitted. I keep dragging the statue, and darts keep flying. The darts fly for almost ten full seconds, a small pile of them forming right where the statue used to be. The only good thing about this trap is that it probably can't reset itself. Anything that has ammunition has to be reloaded, and I doubt the trap can do that itself. Once the gold statue is far enough away, El steps forward and grabs it.

She grunts loudly as she strains with it, gradually moving it into her spatial bag. I don't think she actually lifted it. My arms are tired. That thing weighed a lot. Easily a couple tons. Maybe as many as four. I feel like I just pulled a car, only without the wheels. All this time, the mummy doesn't move.

"This is a bit anticlimactic," El says, adjusting her spatial bag to get it to sit more easily on her back.

"Yeah, I really thought we'd get attacked by the mummy," Gigi says.

"Maybe we have to take some of the jewelry from the mummy itself," Ash says. Then she kind of gestures me towards the mummy.

"Really?" I ask.

"Isn't the statue enough? I mean, that things got to be worth a thousand times what we paid Silk. It should be enough for the dragon of this island."

"I want to fight the mummy," El says, her voice a bit pouting. It's weirdly cute. I groan.

"Fine," I say.

"But if I get cursed, it's your fault." I don't know who I'm pointing to there. Maybe it'll be all of their faults. I just hope the curse isn't something permanent. That would suck. I step towards the mummy, and I find that my hand is shaking. Not just from the strain of pulling the one statue, either. I feel like the mummy is watching me. Or at least, that something is watching me. Watching me and waiting for me to do something stupid, to be greedy.

I got my treasure; I should be leaving and counting my lucky stars that nothing bad happened. But we're not just here for treasure. We're here for the experience, and the only way to get that is to kill the monsters. But the only way to kill the monsters is to get them to attack us. Until they attack, they're just corpses. We need to defile them a little bit to get them really animated. To make the dead rise and try to kill us, so that we can kill them first. This is such a bad idea.

I reach for the diamond around the mummy's neck. It's about the size of my fist. Probably the biggest diamond I've ever seen, even in museums and stuff. It's round, it sparkles even in the dim light of Ash's glowing mace, and the necklace it's on is made of gold rings worked so fine that it looks at first glance like a golden string. This necklace is worth more than my old apartment building. This is the kind of gemstone that you sell for millions of dollars.

The kind that has its own name, like the Hope Diamond or something like that. I wrap my fingers around the diamond and give it a tug, hoping that the clasp will break and the whole thing will come free in my hand. That doesn't happen. I could pull harder, but I could just as easily just lift it up above the mummy's head and take it off like a normal necklace. I never understood why people are always ripping necklaces off of everyone. You have to fix the clasp when you do that.

And yeah, I get that it's kind of fun, but it's still not practical. I'm lifting the necklace up when a hand grabs my around the wrist. I'm not too proud to admit that I let out a high pitched scream when that happens. The hand is wrapped in cloth, and though the room is pretty warm, the fingers that wrap around my wrist are ice cold, even through the old cloth. I pull desperately away, letting go of the diamond as I get my wrist free. I pull as hard as I can. At first, nothing happens.

It's like I'm pulling at a mountain. But then, suddenly, all the resistance goes away. I end up falling back and landing hard on my butt.