Jane refused to let go of me for several minutes after that close encounter. The little mouse girl clung to my chest and shook while her tail wrapped around my waist like a rope. We all stood well back from the wall while Kassandra wove healing magic into my wound, sealing up the chitin of the claw in short order.

  “That was a wicked dangerous trap for something that we thought was a school,” Rieka said while I continued to comfort Jane.

  “Yeah, and that is why we are being careful. We didn’t run into any traps in the Shadow Mountain facility, but you never know when you might find something elsewhere,” I answered while I held Jane securely. I’d changed my left arm back into a regular arm so it was more comfortable for her, and the trembling was slowly leaving the smaller woman.

  “This is making me think that we did find the right building,” Kassandra muttered glaring at the plain stone wall. “I don’t like this. At least at the other facility, we could see the magical traps to disarm them. That was entirely mechanical and I had no idea it was there.”

  “Did you, Liam?” Shayla asked, turning her large dark eyes to me. But I had to shake my head in the negative.

  “No, I didn’t know at all. I was just keeping an eye on Jane while she inspected the wall and heard the click. Instinct took over from there,” I answered. Jane’s tail squeezed my waist reflexively at that and I heard the small mouse kin woman mutter something.

  Bending my neck to listen closer, I heard a muffled and teary ‘thank you’ being repeated again and again, so I gave her waist another reassuring squeeze and continued to hold her against me.

  “How do we get through the wall? Can you shape it, Liam?” Rieka asked, staring at the secured structure.

  “It basically ignored my attempts to sense past it. It would have stood out if I was looking for false walls earlier simply because it refuses to be penetrated, but I don’t know,” I answered. “Everyone back into the study hall, I want you out of line of sight before I try again.”

  The girls didn’t argue, and since I had Jane in my arms, she defaulted into coming with me wherever I went. Only once everyone was out of reach did I extend Manipulate Element back towards the wall. It was a bit of a stretch given the distance, but I was able to reach it.

  While I’d felt a number of different responses when using that particular power, this was the first time that I bumped up against something that simply rejected the magic. It was as if the wall itself was already full of mana and refused to take any more in.

  Spreading my power over the door, I could feel three more distinct locations that other traps were at, as well as the slot for the blade trap that I’d broken. Attempts to manipulate the stone and seal those openings were futile though, as the stone itself refused to accept the mana necessary to alter its shape.

  I was about to give up when my improved cognitive abilities suggested something that I hadn’t considered until now. So I spread the mana out into the floor and the pedestals, everything around the section of wall that refused influence, sensing deeper.

  The wall extended backwards as an inviolate column of mana-infused stone, so either it capped off a tunnel, or was just one solid brick—which I doubted. But the pedestals and the floor had no such problems, and I was able to sink my mana into them, locating ancient mechanicals hidden within the stone and preserved from time and wear by lubricants.

  It took a bit of tracing, but I was able to locate the different activation levers for the wall, like the bit of molding that Jane had messed with earlier. With that done, I mentally marked them and then pulled the senses back into myself.

  “I can’t get through the wall, but I know where all the levers are to trigger effects on the door,” I said quietly. Those words made Jane tense up in my arms, so I gave her another reassuring squeeze.

  “Do you know which ones are safe?” Rieka asked, and I shook my head to her.

  “No, but now that I know where they are, I can manipulate them from a safe distance. You girls stay here, okay?”

  “Liam!” Jane protested, looking up with an extremely worried expression and wide, wet eyes. “You have to be careful.”

  Smiling gently, I leaned down and booped Jane’s nose with my own lightly. Her eyes widened as I approached, but when I just bumped noses with her, she snorted and then hiccuped before rubbing at her eyes to scrub the tear marks away.

  “I’ll be safe, Jane. Can you stay back here with the others?” She nodded and finally unwound her tail from around my waist to slip back down to the floor.

  Jane scampered over to stand beside Kassandra, who slung an arm around the smaller woman’s shoulders comfortingly.

  “Trust in Liam, he’s gotten us through more scrapes than anyone has a right to,” Kassandra said reassuringly, her lips twisted in a broad smile. Jane nodded and clutched her spell rod tight, not responding verbally.

  “She’s right, Liam. You have no idea what those levers might set off, so be very careful,” Rieka added with Shayla nodding in agreement too.

  “That’s why I’m not going to be standing in front of the door when I poke them. Now, back out of sight you four.” I urged with a smile and sidled up to the doorway. After a moment of focus, I began to modify my body for the new task.

  <><><>

  Shape-Shifting came to the rescue once more, and I was able to shift my scorpion-tail arm into a long grasping appendage that extended up the hallway to the plinths. It took a bit of careful navigating to find the spots from this distance, but I was able to poke, prod, twist, or lever the different activators and figure out what they did.

  Every response was non-magical in nature. The blade trap apparently rearmed itself, as it whined when I pulled on the bit of molding again, but no blade came out. A carved flower on the plinth made a sharp twang-snap noise and rusty metal bolts fell from the top of the door as the strings that had once been armed to fire them broke under sudden strain. The third piece, a plain corner of stone, made three spears shoot out of the door at chest height before retracting into the door again.

  The fourth bit I manipulated, which was a back corner of the armor’s base, finally triggered the release on the wall, which gave several loud clunks before swinging back into a recess by several inches.

  A sudden gust of energy washed through my body, but I couldn’t trace its source, so I focused on the door. A bit of prodding with my extendable arm got the concealed door to swing fully open and reveal a dark hallway on the other side. A hallway so dark that even my eyes couldn’t pierce it more than about twenty feet of length.

  “Shayla?” I asked, and my lovely moth immediately launched one of her light spells down into the pitch darkness.

  The orb of light sailed down into the darkness for a good thirty feet before it impacted a wall to reveal an ancient, spiraling staircase that descended down into the ground.

  “Well, there are your stairs, Jane,” I teased, glancing back at the mouse kin woman with a smile that she returned tentatively. “Now we ask, do we keep going and head down?” I glanced at each of my girls, who all had thoughtful expressions on their faces.

  “With the presence of deadly traps already there, it’s going to be dangerous,” Rieka began. “None of us have the skills to find traps, so it would be reliant upon Liam.”

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  “Then I think the decision goes to Liam,” Shayla said after Rieka paused, and my moth girl shifted over to lean into my side, her wings fluttering against my back gently. “I am curious and want to know more about this place, but I don’t want you to get hurt just to satisfy my curiosity.”

  While Shayla’s antennae bonked me softly in the side of the head and she leaned into me, I considered her words. It was already clear to me that the System had an interest in this place, and that it wanted me to go deeper. There was a lot of SP on the line as well as the power unlock too, which could be even more valuable than the SP.

  I glanced at the other girls to check their opinions, and each had that hesitation that I could feel from Shayla as well. So I shrugged and gestured to the hallway.

  “I’ll be fine. Kass has patched me up from worse. I just need you four to be safe, okay? So only step where I step and keep careful watch. I know you will be excited to see what is down there, but we have to be careful. I also want to see what there is.”

  “If you are sure, Liam,” Rieka asked and I nodded to her firmly.

  “Now that I know there are traps, I can use my spell to scan for irregularities, and that’ll help me spot traps ahead of time. While none of us have practice in finding traps, it’s gotta start somewhere. Just give me plenty of space, okay?”

  All four of my girls gave nods before we started down the hallway.

  Altering my form with Shape-Shifting again, I returned to a bipedal shape and my regular height, but stole the armored iron scales from the iron-foot snail again, this time covering my whole body. I did put on pants though, to spare the girls the blushes of my butt now. I kept the shield-claw and returned my right arm to the scorpion tail.

  I really must look like a monster, I thought while edging down the hallway, sending several pings over the surfaces with Manipulate Element, but felt no sign of more traps. Seriously, all of my skin is covered in natural iron scales, while I have a claw and a tail for arms. But my girls don’t even seem afraid of me.

  Glancing over my shoulder, I found all four of the girls twenty feet back, standing by the still-open concealed door while I scouted the hallway to the stairwell.

  Giving them a nod, I got tentative smiles in return and various gestures of affection. Rieka’s tail began to wag, Kassandra smirked and cupped her breasts as if to remind me of why I needed to stay in one piece, Shayla’s antennae wiggled and balled up slightly like they were beckoning me to come back, and Jane’s tufty tail danced nervously over her head.

  “Looks safe to the stairs, girls.” I said and beckoned them to follow me.

  The spiral stairs were built of stone, large solid slabs that were worked into the walls and central pillar. While they were weathered with time, they felt sturdy underfoot, so I proceeded downwards in the spiral without hesitation. The walls continued to reject my Manipulate Element ability, but would at least give me an impression of the stones.

  I found two traps linked to specific stairs, which I carefully triggered once I traced them to their origin. Both sets were a whirling blade trap that I caught and broke with my shield-claw that I had further reinforced with earth magic.

  Odd, these blades are in better condition than the one above, I thought, pausing to inspect the most recent one. It was shaped a lot like the blade on a grass scythe, but longer and the metal gleamed with blade oil. I set the blades down on the stairs, calling back to Rieka to let her know about them in case she wanted to throw them in her storage pouch.

  Reaching the bottom of the stairs, I found a room that was easily thirty feet across and was in absolute shambles. There were shattered tables, ruined cabinets, fractured stones, and scattered scraps of ancient, decaying cloth. The air felt thick and heavy, almost like it had a texture to it or was dense with humidity, but it felt dry against my skin without a single hint of mold or pooling water anywhere within sight.

  A single large doorway with a pair of heavy iron doors sat against one wall with a series of levers beside it. Runes were carved into the door, but were dark. The upper corner of the left door was crumpled inwards with large tears in the metal showing where it had been compromised before.

  “Come on down, ladies,” I called up, scanning the room and the ruins that lay all over.

  I didn’t see any bodies lying about, but this was clearly more than just the passage of time that ruined this place. The weight of ages pressed down on me once more, that same sensation of a moment frozen in time that I remembered from the Shadow Mountain facility filled the stuffy air.

  My girls filed down the stairs with Rieka in the front and Shayla taking up the rear. As soon as she arrived, the moth woman sent several of her light spells racing out to illuminate the room.

  “Liam?” Rieka asked, holding out an arm to keep the girls at the base of the stairs.

  “It’s safe, just stay in this room,” I said after giving the entire place a once over with my Manipulate Element ability to sense irregularities in the floor or walls. The piles of trash were harder to gauge, but nothing felt out of place there and while they resisted the penetration of the pulse ability, it wasn’t as strong as the walls and I could sense through them if I pushed hard enough.

  The girls spread out, keeping well away from the door as I moved to put myself between them and it. I kept watch while the girls searched through the wreckage for anything useful, studying the door and trying to figure out the mechanism to open it from the levers beside it.

  Every time I pushed with my Manipulate Element ability, the walls, floor, and door pushed back. The sonar-like effect did help me to sense layouts of things, but the entire situation confused me. Even down in the Shadow Mountain facility, there wasn’t this much mana imbuing things. The walls themselves were soaked in it, and I couldn’t help but wonder how that would have happened.

  Spurred by the thought, I checked my interface with a quick blink and discovered that, despite the fact that I had been using Manipulate Element almost constantly for the last hour, the level of my mana had not dipped in the slightest, it still read a steady fifty out of fifty mana. I pulsed the spell out again and watched as the current mana dropped to forty-nine, before blipping back up to fifty.

  That… okay so that is weird. I know the power said that it draws mana in based on my environment, so does that mean that the mana in the air is so thick down here that I’m basically regenerating it as quickly as I spend it? I thought for a moment.

  I wanted to experiment, so I focused on the most mana-intensive thing I could do, which was channeling the Entropy school of magic through Manipulate Element rather than earth like I’d been using.

  A bead of darkness formed in front of my face before zipping over to the closed but compromised door. It sank into the metal with a sharp fizzing noise, eating away at the iron of the door and burning through the locking mechanism.

  Keeping my focus on the bead of entropic energy, I quickly carved through the breadth of the solid door and evaporated the lock before releasing the spell to fade.

  Checking on my mana reserve again, I saw it sitting at a twenty out of fifty, before that twenty rapidly began to spool upwards once more, ticking up about a point every half-second or so until it sat full.

  Neat, might give me a chance to work on the entropic magic then, I thought before an alert interrupted my thoughts.

  Power Mana Reservoir (Lesser) has achieved Mastery 1000/1000.

  New Powers available in the System interface.

  Congratulations, Traveler.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” I said with a grin before opening up the interface quickly to check on it. The only new power option was the next rank of the same ability, but it was good to know my options.

  Mana Reservoir (Moderate) - Cost: 4,000 SP - Grants the Traveler a moderate mana reservoir equivalent to 100 mana. This mana will regenerate at a fixed rate, depending on ambient mana of the environment. Spells cast by the Traveler will pull from this reserve first, then any other mana reservoirs in the Traveler’s possession.

  “Cool,” I muttered before opening my eyes. “That’s one step closer to being able to lend the reservoir to the girls… now just to see if the next rank of the Grant Power ability will alter how much it reduces the power I give them.. That or I just take the moderate for Mana Reservoir and train it up. Why not both,” I sniggered before turning my attention back to the door, reaching out with my stinger-tail to push on it.

  The door shifted with a sharp squeal, swinging out into the hallway that was punctuated by several shrieks from the girls.

  “Gods, Liam!” Rieka growled from behind me and I glanced back at her to find my princess clutching one hand to her chest and glaring at me. “That scared the hell out of me!”

  “Sorry about that, love,” I called back. “Just checking on a theory. Find anything?”

  Rieka shook her head, a faint blush on her cheeks from my affectionate teasing, but she turned back to sorting through the debris.

  Turning back to the door, I continued to stare into the darkness while the girls talked behind me, expressing excitement or confusion at the different objects they found. While I stood watch, I focused on the entropy magic again and manifested another orb of consuming darkness to continue to poke holes in the door, focusing on hollowing out the area around the lock so it wouldn’t be as obvious what I’d done.

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