Chapter 50: The perks of being made of stone
“Well…this room looks ominous.”
The Zhen Clan team had been walking for quite a bit of time down what felt like an endless hallways, until they had finally reached a door that was shaped like an intimidating demon mouth.
Throwing caution to the wind the group flung open the door to reveal an oddly empty room. However, the entire room was covered in these weird looking tiles with faces of various emotional expressions carved into them. It made for a rather unsettling sight.
On the plus side, the exit was right across from them and only about fifty feet away.
“Huh…weird place to suddenly have the hallway expand…whatever! Let’s just go straight through.” Zhen Hai was all set to run forward, but was stopped by Sullivan and Zhen Yue, who pulled him back by the shoulders simultaneously.
“Hey! What gives?!”
“Hold on Zhen Hai. We don’t have any idea whether or not this place is booby-trapped or not. We have to approach this carefully,” Zhen Yue insisted.
“Trapped? It’s clearly an empty room.”
“Oh really?”
Sullivan positioned himself to the front of the group and punched the wall to the left of him, extracting a sizeable chunk of stone. He bounced in the palm of his hand a few times before throwing it into the empty room.
The stone landed with a loud thunk on a random floor tile, which was followed by a strange clicking sound.
The sound of several puffs of air followed by metal hitting against blunt stone echoed throughout the room as several needles came flying out of various points in the wall and struck against the rock and floor.
One of the needles bounced off the rock and went spinning through the air and towards the group, which Zhen Yue promptly caught.
Noticing an odd aroma, Zhen Yue sniffed the needle before turning her head away in disgust.
“Not aether infused, but it is poisoned with Wind Viper venom. We might be able to fend off a dozen or so needles, but I have no idea just how many of those tiles are trapped.” With her analysis done, she flicked the needle back into the “empty” room.
“Well shit…how the fuck are we suppose to get through all this then?”
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[Hey Nepherage.]
[Yes milord?]
[You’re technically made of stone, right?]
[Crimson Jade, but yes. Technically I am.]
[And you’re basically immune to most physical attacks, yes?]
[As long as it’s not enhanced by a high ringed Aether Master, yes.]
[Uh huh…I have a plan.]
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“Well, we could just sprint across and hope for the best.”
“No way, we’d probably get hit with over a hundred needles before we even get half way across.”
“Quit being such a cow-”
“YEET!”
“Wah!”
Before Zhen Yue and Zhen Hai could continue arguing about their next course of action, Zhen Liu did a throwing motion into the room, followed by Nepherage throwing herself into said room soon after.
“What the fuck are you-”
“Wait for it.”
Nepherage purposely flopped onto the room’s tiled floor and set off a whole bunch of the trapped tiles all at once.
Over a dozen or so poisoned needles came flying out of the walls at breakneck speeds, ready to pierce the flesh of foolish victims and tear apart their internals with their horrible venom.
Instead, all of the needles proceeded to harmlessly bounce off of Nepherage’s body.
Zhen Yue, Zhen Hai and Sullivan all looked stunned at the moment, followed by shock once they saw Nepherage proceed to lay on the ground and roll around, setting off even more trapped tiles. A literal rain of poisoned needles came pouring down on Nepherage, who shrugged it all of like it was no big deal.
Zhen Yue was the first to recover mentally.
“Huh…I guess that solution was obvious in hindsight…one of us control something that can set off the traps with no consequences.”
“This…this feels like cheating,” Zhen Hai muttered.
As for Sullivan, he was unusually silent. Physically at least. A whirl of thoughts was going through his head right now.
‘This room…wasn’t here before. Last time it was a pit room full of insects. What happened?’
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[How you holding up Nepherage? Does it hurt? You okay?]
[I’m doing just fine milord. This is actually kind of fun,] Nepherage responded as she kept rolling around the room. Over a hundred needles had come flying out of the walls and struck at Nepherage at this point, but not a single one had managed to even make a scratch on her.
[Oh…okay. Just tell me when you’re feeling tired and I’ll make an excuse about running out of aether or something.]
[No worries milord, I’m sure I’ll have drained this room of all of it’s needles long before that’s needed.]
[Right on, guess I’ll leave you to it then.]
[Aye milord.]
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A few moments later
[Milord, I do believe I have finally gotten rid of the last needle.]
“Yo! I think Ne-my puppet’s done y’all. No more needles…I hope.”
Over fifteen minutes had passed before the trapped room had finally released every single poisoned needle that it had stocked up in it’s hidden mechanisms.
While the Zhen Clan team wasn’t inclined to count up just how many needles were used for this rather insidious trap, they couldn’t help but notice the sheer amount of poison needles that now covered the floor.
One was enough to start numbing limbs, ten would’ve stopped their hearts, and so the near thousand or so needles now covering the floor…needs no explanation.
Nepherage picked herself off of the floor and proceeded to make her way back to the exit on the other side of the room. Every step she made was accompanied by the sound of mechanisms activating and puffs of air.
She had indeed, empty out every needle trap.
Once she was at the opposite door, Nepherage gave the group a thumbs up.
“It’s safe y’all, let’s go.”
The team was still a bit hesitant at the situation, so Zhen Liu decided to put his money where his claim was and proceeded to walk across the room.
When they saw that nothing had happened to him, the rest soon followed.
“This still feels like cheating…”
