Predator - Chapter 27

Bruce shook himself, ridding his body of the last hints of disorientation from ascending the staircase.  Finally, after what felt like weeks of struggle and flight, he was on the second floor.  There were still auras that marked traps, illusions, and accumulations of psychic energy, but all of them were muted.  After seeing the dangerous tapestries of light and power in the lower levels, the second floor was almost a disappointment.

Almost.

He reached down, rubbing his shins, trying not to think of the pain from the traps on the third floor.  Bruce’s healing factor had returned him to perfect health, but it was hard to forget the agony.  Almost worse than the pain, every time Bruce closed his eyes he could feel himself reliving the moment where he first looked down and noticed that he could see through his arms.  There was something about the realization that he was turning translucent that really hammered home how close he had come to dying on the third floor.

Energy thrummed through his body, and an eyeblink later Bruce’s glowing equipment appeared on his body.  He jumped up and down twice, acclimating himself to the feeling of carrying the armor, shield and hammer simultaneously.  None of the gear weighed anything, but there was a slight resistance as the psychic constructs passed through the air.  Not enough to truly slow him down, but it was just enough of a distraction that it made sense to prepare himself.

A couple practice swings of his hammer later, Bruce felt confident enough to continue.  Eyes of the Void easily mapped the floor in every direction.  The second floor was much emptier than the monster and trap rich environment of the third floor.  What was surprising were the number of false surfaces generated through illusory auras concealing the handful of traps he could spot.

Eyes of the Void did its work, burning through the illusions hiding traps and concealed passageways around him in a fraction of a second.  It didn’t take much work to step past the infrequent foot long squares on the floor and walls that served as trap triggers.  None of them seemed particularly strong, but the patches of green energy covering the angry red of the traps were more than enough to fool most beginners.

He kept scanning the empty Labyrinth, keeping his mental eyes peeled for a monster or sanctuary.  Seconds blended into minutes, all with nothing to show for it other than a mental map detailing the dozen or so traps that dotted the path Bruce had taken from the staircase.

Bruce stopped, squinting for a second.  He pulled his attention backward, dragging it over a piece of wall some two hundred feet and a side passage away.  The green tint of the illusion stood out as plain as day, but that wasn’t what drew his focus.

Underneath the illusory wall, three monsters hid in a narrow crevice.  Their shapes were indeterminate, almost squished together, but Bruce could tell by slight differences in their auras where each of the squamous creatures began and ended.  Barely.

“Kassar,” he said quietly.  “Are the monsters on this floor supposed to be hiding?”

“Yes,” the alien replied promptly, a note of pride in his voice.  “Not all of the creatures in this section of the Labyrinth stood out to me, but I distinctly remember the chameleon slimes.  They are more or less as strong as the shades from the first level, but they don’t have a definite form.  That makes them a critical threat to lower level travelers, but with Eyes of the Void, they’re more or less free EXP.”

“Anything I need to worry about?”  Bruce asked, walking toward the hidden monsters.  “Poison?  Fire breath?  Anything interesting like that.”

“It can turn part of its body into a spike and thrust it at its opponents,” Kassar said dismissively.  “I didn’t really worry myself too much about it.  Most of them literally died when they touched my battle aura.  I didn’t even need to use a weapon to kill all of them.”

Bruce rolled his eyes as he cocked an arm to throw his hammer.  “Must be nice,” he muttered.  “I wish I could just strut through here listening to music without having to worry about monsters ripping my soul out of my chest and feasting on it.”

Kassar didn’t respond, but somehow, even the alien’s silence managed to be smug.

He chucked his hammer at the false wall and was rewarded with a burst of colored energy as his attack dispelled the illusion and killed the slime beneath.  The other two monsters plopped out of the hole, slithering across the floor toward Bruce.

They weren’t moving all that quickly, barely faster than a jog, giving Bruce plenty of time to recall his hammer and slay another one.  By the time the last slime was finally within ten or so feet all he needed to do was walk up to it.

Part of its body hardened into a narrow cone, lunging upward toward Bruce.  After his fights on the lower floors, the attack felt like it was moving in slow motion.  He angled his shield, deflecting the strike easily before killing the monster with a swift blow from his hammer.

Bruce looked around the hallway a second time to make sure.  The fading purple mist that had been the slimes dissipated, leaving him alone except for the foot deep crevice scooped out of the wall where the monsters had been hiding.

He reached up and scratched the back of his head, fingers passing through the back of his glowing helmet as he contemplated the situation.  Finally, he shrugged and checked his HUD.  Forty five new EXP.  Not a huge amount per monster, but fifty percent more than he had earned fighting shades on the first level.

“Is that it?” Bruce asked, restarting his walk down the hallway.  There was nothing but a couple traps and a false wall hiding a hallway visible with Eyes of the Void, but that didn’t mean he was completely safe.  The ability would reveal everything on this level, but that didn’t mean he would notice it.  Almost as important as the pattern itself was the ability to keep pace with his perception.

“Seriously,” he continued, senses scanning back and forth over the Great Labyrinth.  “They were almost cute.  The battle was over so quickly that I almost felt bad for the slimes.”

“They wouldn’t be cute if you didn’t have Eyes of the Void,” Kassar replied.  “If you know exactly where they are, it’s easy to defeat the slimes with ranged attacks because they can’t move that quickly and their aura stands out.  If you turn the ability off, you won’t be able to see their hiding spots.  Their appearance is almost as bad.  They’re the exact same color as the walls and floors of the Great Labyrinth.  Even if the slimes are out in the open it should be hard for a low level traveler to tell where they end and the tunnel begins.”

He scanned the passages again.  They snaked and twined together, forking and circling back on each other to confuse and disorient the casual explorer.  One more trap popped up on his search, but no new monsters.

Bruce bit back a groan of frustration as he took a right turn that seemed to lead away from the part of the maze that surrounded the stairwell down.  Eyes of the Void made sure the second floor was safe for him to travel, but more than that.  Without the ability to scan hallways hundreds of feet ahead of him, in all likelihood it would have taken Bruce hours to even make it a half mile through the snarl of tunnels.

Realization hit him like a bowling ball tossed from a window.

“Hey Kassar?”  He asked.

The ghost replied with a short grunt.  A wordless assurance that he was listening even if the alien warrior didn’t really have anything to say.

“Was part of the reason you had me activate Eyes of the Void first to prevent me from getting lost in these mazes?”  He pressed.  “Obviously being able to see monsters and traps helps, but without the Eyes it would probably take me hours if not days to exit any particular portion of the Great Labyrinth.  Even then, it seems like it would be super easy for me to accidentally wander back into a section that I had already escaped from without a proper mapping pattern.”

“It was part of the reason,” the alien agreed.  “Young warriors walking the path of the neutron star are shepherded toward Eyes of the Void early.  Not as early as you.  Not every apprentice can count on a soul transfer from a master after all, but once basic combat patterns are learned, we push them toward perception skills as soon as possible.  For you, it was essential to avoid monsters when you were on floors far above your level, but it is easy for a new explorer to spend days mapping a floor.  Time like that wears on the psyche, and an appreciable portion of deaths among new warriors can be traced back to them losing their focus because at some point, walking through the same gray hallways over and over again drives you a little crazy.”

“Highway hypnosis,” Bruce replied, nodding thoughtfully.  “You can only pay attention to the same thing over and over again before your brain starts to shut off.”

“The theorists suspect that the great predator has turned its interior into a labyrinth for two reasons,”  Kassar responded.  “First, to force travelers to stay in it long enough for the monsters and traps to kill them.  After all, the death rate would be much lower if we simply needed to walk down empty hallways to travel between worlds.  Second, for exactly the purpose we are discussing.  Boredom will kill a warrior as assuredly as a blade, so it makes sense to make the exploration process as boring as possible.”

Bruce opened his mouth to reply, scanning the area around him with Eyes of the Void again.  In the distance, he spotted another two chameleon slimes hiding in a false panel on the roof of a passage.

Two of them meant thirty EXP.  Given that he only needed a hundred and fifty five more before he could ascend to the next floor, that meant he was putting a pretty good dent in the numbers he’d discussed with Kassar.  Still, when he’d committed to two hundred EXP, he hadn’t expected the monsters to sit still and wait for him.  Frankly, killing them was almost too easy.

“Kassar,” he said thoughtfully.  “I just spotted a pair of monsters.  I thought you said it would probably take a couple of days to gather two hundred EXP on the second floor.  At this rate, It’ll only take one.  I was wondering if it would make sense for me to spend a little more time here polishing off my skills.”

He walked around a corner, entering a long straight hallway with a number of turn offs including a hidden passage that curved in on itself before finally turning into a dead end.  After about five seconds, the alien replied.

“True.  The actual fights on this floor were never hard, but I also wasn’t seeking out the monsters.  Before my fall, fifteen EXP was a rounding error.  It simply wasn’t worth my time to seek the slimes out so I traveled past them and descended the stairwell.  I killed one or two in passing, but the only real mental note I made about this area was that the slimes were fairly rare.  I thought that it would take you much longer to find clusters of them, but that appears to have been an incorrect assumption on my part.”

“I think you have a point,” Kassar continued.  “Hunting on this floor with Eyes of the Void appears to be remarkably simple.  We have no idea how strong the borelites and their allies will be once you reach the first floor, so it makes sense for you to be prepared.  Spending a little extra time to improve your patterns isn’t a bad idea, plus.”

He paused, letting Bruce stew for a couple of seconds.  Finally, he prompted the ghost.

“Plus?”  He pressed.

“Plus there is a noticeable jump in the patterns that are available after you hit ten in your attributes,” Kassar finished.  “You can use general skills without passing the thresholds, but new patterns get much more powerful and expensive at ten, twenty, and twenty five.  It might take a bit for you to be able to afford a new pattern after you unlock the first threshold, but I doubt that you’ll regret it.”

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