Chapter 128 Puzzles
Dave used [Immortal apparition] and teleported himself toward the next rock. He turned his character and used [Vertical Slash] taking the advantage of the backflip animation to gain enough distance and land on the platform at the other side of the room.
"That was close…but I'm not going to take this crap lying down! ALFRED!" The AI appeared in response to his summons.
"You require assistance?"
"There's a glitch in this puzzle."
"I reviewed the logs. Everything is in order."
"Waddaya mean 'in order'? That was completely random! I understand this is a game and the rooms are trapped puzzles, but that thing deliberately tried to kill me."
The dapper AI merely adjusted his sleeve cuffs and replied. "Yet you responded appropriately to the situation meeting the challenge and completing the puzzle."
"So I am the guinea-pig for the Underworld content. Conquest is not supposed to give a player quests that are impossible for to finish, right?"
"That is correct" said the butler.
"Then these rooms should only have traps in them."
"Why would you think that?" said the butler.
"I received a quest from Du'Rhaza to clear this area. It is a B ranked quest, so it should be doable by me as my character stands now. "
"You are attempting to make me divulge the content of this area. I cannot do that, it would be unfair to other players. You have the aptitude to unlock all the doors and survive what is behind them. If you fail it will not be because the game is broken but because you did not fully utilize your potential." The butler disappeared before Dave could give his rebuttal.
"Doublya tee eff," Dave stared at where the tuxedoed-clown had been. "Potential? What a load of bull."
He turned and opened the door. Another Crimson Box was sitting on the floor. He grinned, his eyes gleamed with avarice, his hands making grasping motions.
"Okay, this does make up for the bullshit. A little."
Dave opened the treasure box and found another rune.
Chaos Rune (fifth of a set of five).
Tier: Legendary
A portion of raw chaos was captured inside this shard of obsidian-crystal to create a rune of destruction.
[Hidden]
"This is the fifth piece, So I just need the first three now."
Dave turned to go back to the main room. The orbiting stones were in the aligned position and had stopped moving.
He looked at the puzzle room suspiciously. He wasn't going to trust the floating stones. No way. He waited until his skills were off cooldown and then quickly jumped from stone to stone to make his way across, prepared to Skill-leap at any time should the stones try any more tricks.
But the stones behaved, he didn't have any trouble reaching the other side of the room.
Dave went through the fog and reappeared in the main room. The door locked and the rune on it dimmed.
Without pausing he went to the next door and walked through the fog curtain.
This time the door led to a very long hallway with a tiled floor, the room stretched for hundreds of meters. Torches lined both walls to the side and halfway to the end of the hallway he could see a pedestal with another Crimson Box on it.
.
Each stone tile was perforated with six thumb-sized holes. In the middle of the stone tile, between the two lines of holes, a rune was carved.
"The tiles will have spikes that shoot out of the holes then retract. The runes are probably the way to solve this puzzle. But I can't see how, there is no pattern to follow."
Dave looked around for more clues. There were three types of runes on the floor. One of the them was the same rune that was on the door that led to the hall.
Dave's gaze moved farther down the long hall, to a skeleton sprawled across the stone tiles, some of the ribs were cracked.
The skeleton's feet lay on a tile with one of the three kinds of runes, different from the door rune.
"Stepping on that type of rune is suicide then."
He didn't want to risk stepping on any flagstone without some indication it was safe, he kept looking around the room for more signs.
"I know one of the three types of runes will activate the traps in the stones. The second type of rune is the same room on the entrance. It would be too easy for that one to be the sign for the 'safe' stones. But maybe that is what the AI wants me to think, so that I will step on the third kind of rune which I don't recognize at all.
His face tense, Dave decisively stepped onto the first stone with the door rune carved into it.
"Ha, I guess right! Take that Alfie,"
As he walked farther along the path of runes his expression eased.
He was about a third of the way to the pedestal when he heard a sound from behind him.
He looked back, and saw the tiles behind him were turning and flipping.
Dave's eyes widened and he increased his speed, rushing along the long path of tiles.
Then a tile flipped just as Dave stepped on it, changing the rune.
Dave's heart sank as he heard a metallic clicking sound.
He jumped as a hedge of metal spears erupted from the holes of the tile and the tiles around it.
Then things got worse. The torches began dying down and the light in the room dimmed, making the path harder to see.
Like all Undead he had a passive trait to see in the dark, but he still couldn't see far ahead.
A cacophony of metal screeches started up behind him. He didn't need to turn to know that every spear-trap starting from the one he'd triggered was activating in a wave rushing toward him.
At one point Dave found himself stuck, the tile he stood on was surrounded tiles that didn't have any safe runes, and he couldn't see the tiles beyond them.
He could jump over the tiles but wouldn't know what was waiting for him to land on.
There was a 33% chance that any tile he landed on would be a safe one, but Dave didn't want to risk it.
Dave summoned a [Spectral Skull] and moved it forward of his position, then snapped his fingers to blow it.
The explosion lit the way ahead for just a fraction of a second!
"THERE!" He jumped, reaching the safe tile he'd seen in the flash of the Skull's explosion. He kept moving forward until he finally reached the Crimson Box.
Reaching the the pedestal at the halfway point his heart relaxed as the wave of spears stopped.
Breathing heavily he stopped for a moment to rest on the dais, then reached for the box.
But just before his hand touched the box he stopped.
There was an almost invisible seam around the stone pedestal the box was resting on. .
"The moment I touch the box or take what's inside the trap will activate and ruin my day."
He really wanted to loot in the box, but activating the trap under the box would undoubtedly be bad for his health.
Then he heard a creaking sound behind him. He turned and saw the wall was a hidden door that was opening to reveal a small secret chamber with a Crimson Box in it.
Dave searched carefully for traps, but this Crimson Box was safe, so he opened it.
Inside was another rune.
Chaos Rune II (Legendary)
A fragment of the chaos power coalesced in this insignificant ember creating a rune of destruction.
[Hidden]
"Then what's in the one on the trapped pedestal, is it a real Crimson Box or a fake?" He turned to look at the box sitting on the pedestal in the midpoint of the hallway.
The torches flared back up to their original brightness, but he noticed that the traps still weren't deactivated.
Dave needed to cross back to the door without making any any mistakes. But he refused to give up a Crimson Box. He knew taking it will make for a dangerous situation but that didn't deter him.
He summoned a [Spectral Skull] and sent it toward the pedestal and snapped his fingers.
The explosion pushed the box off the dais.
The Contraption holding the box sprang up and the room trembled.
The entire floor rose 30 degrees where Dave was at the lowest point, then a portion of the ceiling next to the entrance door opened.
A cylinder the size of the entire width of the room fell from the ceiling and started rolling down the small slope activating all the traps that it rolled on and crushing all the spears.
Dave shuddered as he saw the rapid approach of the stone cylinder.
The moment the cylinder crashed into the dais, it crushed it and bumped up reaching all the way to the end of the hall. Smashing into the door of the stone room where Dave hid.
A loud bang issued and Dave felt the whole room shake form the weight of the cylinder.
"I would have been turned to paste if I stayed outside!"
Dave slowly got to the stuck cylinder and climbed out as there was still a small opening enough for him to leave.
Dave looked at the situation of the room and saw that the whole traps were destroyed.
However, the strangest thing was that the crimson box was unharmed.
Dave made his way over the bent spears and crushed tiles and grabbed the box and opened it.
Chaos Rune I (Legendary)
A portion of raw chaos was captured inside this shard of obsidian-crystal to create a rune of destruction.
[Hidden]
"This can't be right?" Dave's brows furrowed.
"There are still two rooms left, but there is only one rune missing. Chaos Runes only fit into armors, Gauntlets, Greaves, Chest-Piece, Cape and Helmet. What's in the last room?"