Chapter 194: Secret technique
In the face of an enemy much too strong to handle without a plan, Sofia did the best thing that she could come up with, flee. She ran back and let Pareth slow the thing down. It would be lucky if he managed to save himself by teleporting to her. Going by the speed of the monster, there wouldnt be much left of his skeleton by the time she was far enough.
She was soon comforted in her choice to flee when, through Pareths eyes as he struggled to hold out for as long as possible by parrying and dodging, another of the tall zombies appeared from a corner a bit further away.
Theres two of them?!
Sofia kept running, it was best to get as much distance as she could from these things. Pareth succumbed, which was no surprise, and when she had made it back to the large room, she found out that it was currently the necrotic ooze layer.
Necrotic ooze and zombie supposedly on the same layer? Im sensing some kind of a pattern here. Are the layers themed? Guess Ill know for sure if I find more wood monsters on the closed room layer. Though its kind of hard to tell when its changing I think its only when I turn around or go past corners because Ive never seen the change directly.
But I dont know what triggers it exactly It feels random so far.
Sofia found a clean-ish place in the maze to re-summon Pareth in one of the spare Stone Ogre. Luckily thanks to Zereis rampage, she had a few spares, but it was still annoying to lose one. Pareth himself didnt seem too bothered by dying as long as she was safe.
These zombies must be what killed my Paladin scouts last time, I was on the ooze layer too back then.
This time Sofia decided to go in the opposite direction from the zombies, and once again, she found monsters. These were also undead, which she thought confirmed her earlier theory, but they were much less scary. Ghosts.
If Sofia had to say what kind of undead she knew the best, it was obviously skeletons. But if she had to give the second one, it would be ghosts. She had been with Alith enough to know all she needed to know, so she stored her skeletons and just walked in.
With the rune masking her mana emissions, she was as good as invisible to the ethereal beings, no matter how many hundreds of them roamed this part of the maze. There were two types of ghosts that she saw, laborers and knights. They were all drifting around aimlessly, and like Sofias graveyard skeletons, they couldnt actually pass through the walls here.
She was still not out of the ghost riddles corridors when after turning to the right at an intersection, the decor changed. The path ahead was laden with rusty steel spikes protruding from every direction. She turned around, the previous ghost crowds were nowhere to be seen, instead, there were traps. Floor covered in dubious liquids, holes in the walls, spikes everywhere, she thought she could also see some thin wires stretched through the path.
Lovely. I liked the ghosts better.
So, this is some kind of trap-themed layer? I know some nobles like to have a few of them in their residences as protection so its not uncommon to find a few when you explore an old ruin worth looting. Or so the guild said.
But come on.
There isnt even a safe place to step anywhere except where I am right now. This is ridiculous.
The maze around her changed.
Everything was bathed in a hypnotizing blue-purple shifting hue, the same as the statues eyes. It felt kind of like a dream.
Until Sofia looked around.
Actually, like a nightmare
On the ceiling, on the walls, on the floor, hundreds, no, thousands of eyes, everywhere, staring at her.
Her first reflex was to step on one, it moved along the floor, avoiding her stomp. When pareth tried to attack, it was the same. The countless unblinking eyes only stared and avoided the hits.
With no real option except to move out of that one room, she adventured herself through the eye-filled maze. Seeing as nothing happened after a few turns, this looked like nothing more than a creepier version of the empty layer. She still wasnt sure if this was a layer in itself of the empty layer having gone through a change. But at least now I have an orb Yay
Before she knew it, Sofia was back to the large room, there was something inside.
Not the empty layer, then; this is probably its own thing. But whats that?
A weird blob of color squirmed in the middle of the room. Sofia couldnt find a better description, everything was lit in weird deep blue, and that thing was nothing except just that color. If not for it blocking Sofia from seeing the eyes on the other side of the room, she might have not even noticed it being there.
Sofia was still quite a distance away, and stepping back. So far, the monsters in the maze had been pretty strong, there was no need for a confrontation if she could avoid it. Taking her distance, what she was didnt please her, the thing seemed to be developing appendages all over its surface.
Maws?
It was only when the rooms eyes converged around the thing and started to slide up onto it that Sofia stopped looking and ran.
The monster was an agglomeration of a color, countless eyes and gaping maws with sharp teeth. Sofia looked back as she ran. The thing had bloated and was shoving itself into the corridor. Her eyes and the monsters made contact. The monster screamed and the whole maze shook, like a tidal wave, it burst forward.
As a human, Sofia had never once sprinted as fast as she did this instant.
