Chương 31: Two Shadows, Matching Pace

Lio's eyes turned deathly cold, a sudden chill in the air.

"Say that again." William stiffened, unnerved at the sudden intensity.

"I—I said those two were talking about the pot in a tavern. A few days before we descended." Lio stared at him for a long moment. Of all the things he had anticipated from Lupin and Acacia, this was not one of them. He had assumed they were standard organization operatives, following Ophila for the same reason the others had, because of what she knew and where she was going. But… Was there a chance that they hadn't followed Ophila into Ghenna? Had they come down here for the mural? Lio hastily turned to William.

"Activate your rune," he said.

"Right now. Tell me what you hear behind us." William frowned at the sudden order, but still complied, closing his eyes and furrowing his eyebrows in concentration. He began tilting his head this way and that, making minor adjustments to hear better. A few seconds passed. Then the color drained out of William's face, and as he opened his eyes, there was a look of nervousness to them.

"There's two sets of footsteps," he said quietly. Lio nodded, understanding William's unease. He may be useless, but he ain't stupid. And to confirm his thinking, William muttered, "Is that them? Those two from the Checkpoint?"

"Yes," Lio said. There was no point in hiding it.

"They… they may have been following us this whole time…"

"Since we entered Floor 2," Lio agreed. William blinked.

"You knew?"

"Yes." William sighed, turning away.

"Of course," he grumbled.

"Okay. So what do we do?"

"Follow me." Lio strode forward, and Ophila and William briskly followed after him. He hadn't wanted to reveal too much of his knowledge this early on, but he had no choice this time. And it wasn't just because of the two operatives following them. No, they were on a strict time limit because of something else. If it only wasn't for that guy I wouldn't have to do all this…

Lio turned left with hesitation, leading them away from the route they'd been taking, and pushed through the knee-high water toward a collapsed archway. Ducking through it without slowing down, they emerged on the other side, where there was a narrow passage between two buildings whose walls had partially collapsed inward toward each other, leaving a tight alleyway. Lio slid through it, easily finding all the places where the stone was steady and not wobbling.

Behind him he heard William squeeze through after him, then Ophila following in a couple of seconds later. Soon, the narrow passageway opened up into a completely submerged courtyard in fairly good shape, its central space and large decorative marble statues still largely intact. In the far left corner, nearly invisible beneath the water's surface, there was a low opening in the base of one wall. Lio went straight for it.

"What is that?" William asked behind him.

"Can we even fit in?"

"It's a drainage channel," Lio said.

"Don't worry, it's bigger than you think." William made a sound of great suffering. Once inside, the drainage channel forced them to get down and crouch, and even then the ceiling barely cleared their heads. The water here was shallower luckily, and the footing was stabler than the open ruins, the original stone floor of the channel still being intact.

Lio moved through quickly, nearly running, taking intersection after intersection without slowing down a bit, always choosing the same passages he had chosen across hundreds of previous loops. He had first started mapping it in Loop 203 when he got bored, and further refined it across the following two hundred loops until it was as efficient as it was going to get. In fact, it was so efficient that it could shave roughly four hours off of the Floor 2 transit time.

After some time they emerged from the drainage channel into a submerged plaza whose central fountain was still standing, though ironically, its stone basin was bone dry. William straightened up, closing his eyes as he concentrated. His expression turned sour.

"They're still there," he said, opening his eyes again, bewildered.

"How are they still following us?"

"They're good," Lio said simply.

"They're going through the same drainage channel we did," William said, shaking his head.

"Who are these people?"

"Trained operatives sent by the slavers for Ophila," Lio lied.

"They're almost certainly rune users. It's likely that at least one of them has something that helps with navigation or tracking."

"So all of that," William groaned, "didn't even work?"

"It slowed them down," Lio said.

"That's useful." William looked at him with doubt.

"Is it?"

"Of course", Lio replied without any hesitation, and turning around, continued forward. He took them through a collapsed building whose interior had been sectioned into smaller rooms by walls that were still standing tall, requiring them to climb over two separate sections of rubble to get to the other side. Then after going through a gap in an exterior wall so narrow that William had to turn sideways to fit through it, they rushed down a section of street where the water level was deepest they'd come across.

As they moved, Lio glanced at Ophila, who had been moving through all of it without speaking once. She had been rather quiet ever since the mural. She was clearly deep in thought, so deep that she was following Lio without any questions, and he doubted that she even realized the strangeness of the shortcuts they were taking. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. Well, Lio wasn't complaining though. Wasn't this an unexpected, but welcome, side effect?

He had also noticed that she was continuously touching her coat pocket. The one with the folded cloth in it. She did it unconsciously every few minutes, and every time she did so, a deep frown would crease her lips. Clearly deep in thought. Next to him, William activated his rune again without having to be asked.

"They're still there," he reported.

"Same distance actually."

"How same?" Lio asked. William frowned, listening more carefully.

"Very same. Like, exactly the same distance as before." His frown deepened even more.

"How? They should be further back or closer, not exactly the same."

"They're matching our pace deliberately," Lio said.

"They don't want to close in and they don't want to lose us."

"Why not close in?" William asked. Lio shook his head.

"I don't know." They moved through one more shortcut, a long submerged corridor running along the base of what had once been a large institutional building—maybe an academy? At the end of the corridor, Lio promptly stopped, holding up a hand. William and Ophila stopped behind him. At the sudden movement, William's eyes closed automatically as he listened for perhaps ten seconds. Then he opened his eyes, blinking.

"Why… why do I hear gears turning in the walls?" Lio sighed.

"Death traps." William's eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets.

"Did you just say death traps?" Lio nodded, as he shouldered off his pack, letting it fall to the ground. William stared at him aghast.

"You led us into a corridor with death traps?!"

"Don't worry. The traps can be disabled," Lio said.

"Stand back." He turned to Ophila, who was looking at the corridor ahead with a distant expression. She blinked, the fog of thoughts disappearing from her gaze as she noticed Lio's piercing stare.

"Stand back," he ordered.

"Mhm. Okay," she said, taking two steps back without asking why. William looked between them, rendered speechless.

"That's it? Okay? You know he's saying that for us to stand back because there are death traps right?" Ophila looked at him mildly.

"Well he seems to know what he's doing."

"He led us into a corridor with death traps!" William protested.

"And now he's going to disable them," Ophila said, looking completely poised and self-assured. William turned to look at Lio, his mouth gaping open and closing, until he finally groaned. Leaning against the wall, he folded his arms over his chest, pressing his lips tightly. Lio nodded, then turned back to the corridor. It stretched around forty meters, its stone floor still intact beneath the shallow water. To the untrained eye it looked nearly identical to every other corridor they'd passed through to get here.

However, Lio could already see the different trap triggers in the floor even from here. After all, he had catalogued all of it across enough loops to know where everything was. He touched [Mach Heart], power immediately flooding his legs in a single explosive burst. And soon, he was moving at inhumane speeds, crossing the first five meters in less than a fraction of a second. Then, the first trigger activated.

The corridor erupted as sharp metal spikes punched out of the left wall, a horizontal row of them spanning the full width of the passage, so fast that if its target had been a normal person, they would've been skewered through before they even registered the sound of the mechanism firing.

But Lio was already past them, ducking into a low spin that brought him under the second trigger—a volley of arrows that crossed the corridor diagonally from two separate slots in opposite walls, their trajectories designed to cover the evasion angle from the spikes.

Prepared for this, he quickly came out of the spin and activated [Mach Heart] again, the burst launching him forward in a diagonal that took him over the third trigger, a pressure plate that released a cloud of something greenish and acrid from vents in the ceiling. The cloud billowed outward behind him as he cleared it, making sure not to breathe the fog in. Poison darts followed next, firing from the right wall to catch anyone who'd successfully avoided the cloud off guard.

To counter this, Lio had scrambled over to the right side instead, the burst from his rune having placed him in the gap between the dart trajectories. But as he did, the floor beneath him burst open, a section of stone three meters wide dropping away, revealing dark water below. Lio quickly planted his left foot on the last stable stone before the edge and kicked off sideways, activating [Mach Heart] mid-jump to extend his trajectory, clearing the gap entirely and landing in a crouch on the far side.

He then finished two more trigger plates in quick succession, both of which he simply ran between. Then he was at the far end of the corridor, standing in the shallow water beyond the last mechanism. He wasn't even out of breath, nor was he harmed in any way. He looked back at the corridor, watching as all the mechanisms reset. Then he crouched and began examining the cobblestones at his feet.

Quickly finding the second stone from the left wall, he scratched at it, revealing the mineral deposit pattern on its surface which was different from its neighbors. He drew his Adamantine knife in quick succession and drove the blade into the narrow gap beside the stone's edge, working the tip into the mechanism beneath until he felt a gear tooth snag the edge of the metal. The master trigger. Maintaining that grip, he carefully rotated the blade forty-five degrees, until a soft click came out.

He retrieved his knife, stood up, and walked back through the corridor at a normal pace. Nothing happened, as the traps had been disabled. He quickly emerged on the other side and looked at William and Ophila. Ophila was leaning against the wall, staring up at the ceiling as she nibbled on a small saltine cracker she must've dug out from her pack. William meanwhile, was clearly shocked, but this wasn't the first time Lio had done something crazy after all.

His mouth wasn't gaping open like the last times, though Lio could practically feel the questions radiating off of the other boy. Lio sighed.

"Ask away." William straightened up, glancing at the corridor.

"How many more of those are there?" he asked.

"On this floor? None," Lio said.

"We're past the administrative district."

"Right," William said. He pointed at the corridor.

"The spikes. What triggered them?"

"Pressure plates in the floor," Lio said.

"So you knew where they were?"

"Yes."

"And the floor that opened""Third trigger from the far end," Lio said.

"It's the second plate from the left wall." William stared at him.

"And the poison cloud?"

"Ceiling vents. They activate after the arrow slots." William stiffened.

"There were arrow slots?"

"Yes."

"Wow. I didn't even see the arrow slots."

"They're designed that way," Lio said. William nodded silently. Then he gestured outwards.

"And… you knew all that, right?"

"Yes," Lio said. William looked at the corridor one more time. Then he pushed off the wall and shouldered his pack with an expression of "I found the answers unsatisfactory, but I'll let it go."

"Let's go then." Lio paused after him. He had thought the boy was going to ask much more questions than just that. Just a few minutes ago, William Bone had nearly a panic attack just because Lio had guided them to a dangerous place. Now he was acting completely fine. Wow. People sure adapted fast. Lio cocked his head, his brows furrowing. Maybe letting William join their party wasn't such a bad idea after all.

As they headed forward, Ophila fell into step besides Lio, tucking the remainder of her cracker back into her pack. Meanwhile, William continued to activate his rune while walking. Lio noticed that the other boy had easily slid into the routine, checking every few minutes with quiet diligence. But then, unlike the other times, he stopped. The unfocused expression on his face changed into one of deep unease. Several seconds passed until he opened his eyes.

"There's a third one," he managed.

"I don't know how, but they're somehow closer to us than the other two. But I was certain they weren't there just a few minutes ago!" At the report, Lio's expression didn't change. But internally it was different. Damn it. They were too late. He had pushed them hard through the shortcuts, and it still hadn't been enough. He was catching up. Scowling slightly, Lio kept walking.

"Just keep moving," he advised.

"And no matter what, don't look back."