Sinatro
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Chapter 51. How It All Begins
🕑 Added 2025-04-09 14:15:04 +0000 UTCYou will have one minute. You can start on the count of three,” the voice spoke again.
An hour glass appeared at the opposite end of the room through the open door. That wasn't all Rafe saw when he looked through the door though.
“3.”
The three of them, bar Rafe, moved forward to begin running.
“2.”
“Wait!” Rafe said but he was probably too late.
“1.”
They moved without any hesitation. Rafe winced.
Quin tripped over a rock that hadn't been there before, and Devila slid on rocky ground that had suddenly turned muddy. Aska was slower than the other two, so he stopped moving when he noticed their predicament.
Rafe shook his head as he looked down at his teammates with mock disapproval.
“Amateurs. Haven't you been doing this tower too? You haven't come across a trap at the entrance to a room yet?”
Devila gave him an expression that could scare the statue of liberty into running. He gave up on trying to help her up. He lifted his hands and instead went to help Quin.
“You can see the traps?” the girl asked.
Rafe was unsure how he should answer. He could definitely see the traps, as long as they contained stored mana. He also wanted to be extremely careful how much information he gave these images, seeing as how he didn't want to give unknown elements in the multiverse too many of his secrets.
“No? Why?”
“No reason. Trap detection is a rogue skill. I just got curious. You do have an agility based build, after all,” Quin said.
“No, these are magic based traps though. Any mana sensitivity skill will do, I'm sure.”
Quin looked at him askance, but she soon shrugged and looked away, frowning at the room around them.
“In any case,” Rafe changed the subject. “We have a minute, it can't hurt to look through the room first. There maybe clues for later rooms or the like in here.”
It was an almost perfectly cubic room carved out of some kind of grey rock. It looked like someone had found a large cave and decided to shape it into an almost normal looking room. Only, one of the walls didn't seem quite right to Rafe.
“What is that?” he asked Quin .
Quin frowned at where he was pointing. She shrugged. Opposite their current location, the sand fell from the raised bulb into the lower part of the hour glass.
“Seems like a pretty obvious result of rock aging from where I'm standing.”
Rafe looked toward the girl slowly. “Tell me something, Quin, you all are so quick to call me weak and useless, but weren't we all trained by gods. You have a rogue subclass, how do you intend to leverage it if you can't apply yourself and learn the basics? You want to be as great as the enchantress, Devila. Train! Fucking train! Do the simple things. Why must all your first attacks be huge exploding talismans? Why can't you use simple cantrips until you've mustered those? I may be weak, but I didn't waste years of my life training with gods and gaining nothing.”
Quin only frowned at him. “...okay?” she said uncertainly.
“Nevermind,” Rafe said as he walked toward the false wall.
It wasn't even convincing enough as a crack. Why the hell would she say that it was just a crack? Rafe was trying to maintain an upbeat air about him, but deep down he was getting tired of being part of a team. He missed going at it alone.
He bashed the wall in. There was a shiny treasure chest prominently displayed in the middle of a secret compartment.
“A treasure chest?” Devila said. “Good. We'll see what's in—”
Rafe put an arm in front of her, barring her way.
“I suggest we not open the chest. There is a room full of things behind it we can check through though.”
“Not open the chest?” Devila asked. “Why in the void are you telling me what to do anyway?!”
Rafe threw his hands up. Quin was already making her way around his left side, seemingly intent to ignore him as she had been since she'd found out about his origins.
“It's a trap, okay?! I've warned you. If you are eliminated, the trial won't penalise me.”
Quin froze a few inches from the chest.
“How do you know it's a trap?” the healer assassin asked.
Rafe had thought ahead this time. He was proud of himself.
“How do I… look how prominently it's displayed. In the most attention grabbing place in a secret room? And why is it so ornate? Hey look, I'm a super secretive, super rich idiot. Why don't I hide my greatest treasures in a secret room? And while at it, why shouldn't I display them too? Prominently!”
“Oh no, not prominently,” the normally quiet Aska said as he grabbed a dagger from his belt. “You're rather chatty today, Rafael?”
Rafe snapped his mouth shut. He had been more chatty, he realised. Like that one time as Guy when he'd found out about the hobgoblins and wanted to keep it secret from Cynthia and the others.
Like he was trying to distract them from something.
Aska floated the knife above his palm bizzarely. Rafe frowned. Telekinesis? So he was a budding force magic user who dabbled in space magic every once in a while?
Aska scrunched his brow in concentration as he pushed the knife toward the treasure chest. Rafe looked at the giant hour glass showing the amount of time they had. They had already used thirty seconds by the time Aska's knife woke the mimic.
As Devila went ape shit on the poor monster, Rafe dived into the back of the dank secret room. He did not have a storage skill yet, having not used the skill scroll as per Sam's instructions.
Still, there were things he could use. He searched the area, frantic. There were a bunch of daggers in a bucket towards the back.
Quinsia browsed the room, but she didn't seem interested in anything. Devila grabbed everything she could, just touching books and scrolls and watching them disappear.
There was a map on the wall, framed and nailed there. Aska tried to grab it, he could not. He cursed their luck and moved on. Rafe stayed there and studied the map a little more. The room they were in was no more than a welcome chamber, as far as he could tell. The next room seemed like a run through with what looked like ballistae drawn on the map key. The next after that seemed bare, but Rafe started to gather an idea.
“Hey, everyone. Grab a few daggers from that bucket, why don't you?”
“Huh! Why should we do what you say?!” Devila asked even as she went to grab a few herself.
Quin also grabbed some, albeit reluctantly. As soon as Aska grabbed two, a red light came from the hour glass.
“Shit! I think we have ten seconds! Run!” Devila ordered even as she ran towards the exit.
Rafe ran ahead of her, only looking back to have her follow his footsteps as exactly as she could to avoid traps. They reached the door at almost the same time. Rafe hesitated. The hour glass shone red again and a warning sound chimed from it. Devila jumped past Rafe and grabbed the door knob.
She opened the door. Rafe was just a step behind her. He was the fastest, he now knew, even if the others kept claiming he was weak.
He also had a lot of coordination, so he saw what Devila didn't in slow motion.
“Get down!” he shouted to Quin and Aska behind him even as he tackled Devila in front of him.
With a resounding crack, a crossbow bolt bounced off the rocky wall of the first room across from where they now lay in the dark. Quin had tackled Aska as well.
“...thank you…” Devila said quietly.
Rafe blinked in surprise at that.
“Now, if you'd be so kind as to get off me!” she said, her face reddening.
Rafe found blood rushing towards his head. He scrambled off her like he'd received an electric shock.
They did not stare at each other as they went to meet up with the other two who were collecting themselves from the floor. When Rafe joined the others, a screen popped up in front of him. There was no customary ‘ding’! on this occasion.
It also wasn't the customary blue. And the others had gotten similar screens. The fact that he could see their screens told him something was wrong. He looked at the screen in front of him.
“Rankings?” he asked with a frown.
According to the screen, they had been the last to clear the previous room. Even still, apparently they had the most points of all the ten teams, and the last two had been eliminated.
“This is not going to be an easy challenge,” Devila declared, but she was grinning.
According to the ranking screen, they had three minutes to clear this next room. Rafe knew, as did the others by now, that there would be more than just the cross bow bolts to deal with.
“What is this strange screen though?” Rafe couldn't help but ask.
The others all looked at him like he was crazy. He did not believe he was.
“It is the ladder,” Quin explained slowly. She was frowning at him the same way she had when she found out he was from an Essence Desert. “A standard function of the system. One of the celestials. Everyone knows this.”
“Oh,” was all Rafe could think to say.
“But that is a great question,” Devila said. “What would the ladder be doing in the void?”
No one knew the answer. And they were competing, apparently. Andragoth's team had finished second, having run through and cleared the room fast without tackling the hidden objective.
“You lead the way,” Devila told Quin after looking at Rafe for a moment, considering him.
Their time together was almost over, but they were making progress. He would take whatever wins he could get.
“I think if Quin takes the front I should take the rare,” Rafe said.
“Fine,” the self appointed leader said.
She let Aska ahead of her. Rafe noticed she kept sneaking glances his way. He pretended he was very busily studying their surroundings as they trotted along.
This room was a mystery to them. They were in a circle of light, and when they moved forward the spotlight followed them. They didn't even know which way was forward as beyond the light lay a dark and roiling darkness. Like a lake of darkness. It was somehow more intimidating than the void. They'd all seen the void. Were used to it. Or at least the colonised part of it.
The crossbow bolts came from everywhere at irregular intervals. When Quin was asked to go ahead, she just trotted toward the direction they thought they had been heading toward. There was still no door one minute seconds and ten bolts later.
“Down!” this time Rafe was the one giving the warning as the bolt came from behind him.
“I don't like this,” Devila complained, looking around warily as they got back to their feet.
“Yeah, well guess how I feel about it,” Quin started to shoot back, turning to stare at Devila.
“Shit! Quin look out!” Rafe started but it was too late.
