The Land: Forging (Chaos Seeds Book 2) (30 page)

Richter checked his prompts and saw:

Congratulations! You have learned the subskill: Trap Disarm. You have learned how to disable the mechanism of traps. Through careful application of your new subskill, you can make the world a safer place. This is a subskill of Traps. As you have learned this subskill, you have also learned the skill Traps.

Congratulations! You have learned the skill: Traps. You can set traps that will harm unwary enemies, but use caution lest you harm the innocent as well.

“I guess I did,” Richter said. “Let’s get to work.” Yoshi handed him a pair of lock picks.

You have received: Lock picks
. Durability 5/5. Item class: Common. Quality: Average. Weight 0.01 kg.

Before getting started, Richter pulled out and activated his Wand of Magic Illumination. The blue beam of light didn’t show anything on the
floor
though, thankfully. Even with having been shown how to disarm the traps, it still took
Richter at least
fifteen minutes to disarm the next one.
Unfortunately,
the shape that hid the disarming holes varied. The release
mechanism that Richter found was under a triangle. The only hint seemed to be that it needed to be near the circle. One of his picks also got caught when trying to withdraw it because Richter was moving too fast. The durability decreased by one. When he asked Yoshi if he had any more picks, the sprite told him no and called him a
gyoti
. Richter thought about snapping
back but decided distracting
Yoshi while he was disarming deadly traps was a bad idea.
At least while Richter was still working next to him,
that is.

Richter realized he would have to slow down even farther
. If he messed up too many times, half of their total number of lock picks would be gone. He looked out at the hundreds, no
thousands
of small circles set into the floor and sighed. He got back to work. Hours passed as they slowly made their way across the floor. The good news was that Richter got a small amount of experience for each trap that was disarmed. His skills with Pierce the Veil, Traps, and Trap Disarm improved as well.

Congratulations! You have reached skill level 2 in Pierce the Veil. +1 to perception.

Congratulations! You have reached skill level 3 in Pierce the Veil. +1 to perception.

Congratulations! You have reached skill level 4 in Pierce the Veil. +1 to perception.

Congratulations! You have reached skill level 5 in Pierce the Veil. +1 to perception.

Congratulations! You have reached skill level 6 in Pierce the Veil. +1 to perception.

Congratulations! You have reached skill level 2 in Traps. All traps 2% more effective.

Congratulations! You have reached skill level 3 in Traps. All traps 2% more effective.

Congratulations! You have reached skill level 4 in Traps. All traps 2% more effective

Congratulations! You have reached skill level 2 in Trap Disarm. +2% more likely to disarm
trap
.

Congratulations! You have reached skill level 3 in Trap Disarm. +2% more likely to disarm
trap.

Congratulations! You have reached skill level 4 in Trap Disarm. +2% more likely to disarm
trap.

Richter could only reason that Pierce the Veil leveled faster than the other two because he was using that skill directly, whereas all of the points going towards Traps were actually coming indirectly from leveling its subskill, Trap Disarm. It meant his Trap Disarm skill might have risen higher, but its growth was limited by the fact that subskills could never be a higher level than their main skill. He thought about examining the logs to see exactly how much his Traps skill leveled in proportion to his Trap Disarm
skill
but then decided that would be about as interesting as watching paint dry. He got back to work

As they had moved deeper into the room
the level of the traps had increased as well. This was initially a problem because the mechanism was more complex, but Yoshi was again able to show him what to do. After that, it was just back to rinse and repeat. The good news was that the higher level traps gave a
commensurate higher level experience and seemed to level his skills faster.

The hours of focus required to get to the middle of the room had taken their toll. Richter was mentally fatigued. His actions were getting sloppier as well, and he had fumbled disarming another trap. Thankfully he didn’t trigger the trap, but it did remove another point of durability from his other lock pick. He told Yoshi that he thought they should rest. He had expected some ‘Goonies never say die nonsense’ from the sword adept, but instead the
swordsman agreed. At seeing Richter’s confused
expression, he said, “There is no honor in pushing through a bad position.”

As they were walking back to the hallway, Richter muttered, “Yeah, that’s why I always put their legs in the air.”

CHAPTER 17

Richter was about to lay down when a stray thought that had made his heart pound in fear. He called out to Futen, and asked what would happen if neither of them was in the village to pay the upkeep for
Confusing Mist
. Richter was already recriminating himself for putting his village at risk again. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t
foreseen
being gone so long. He should have! He was ready to risk running across the trapped floor when Futen soothed his panic. The remnant told him that the upkeep was automatically
paid
as long as there was enough mana. Since neither of them
were
accessing the village’s mana pool, the spell would continue with no issues. Also, the remnant
reminded
his Lord that they were still within the boundaries of his domain even though they weren’t in the village proper which meant Richter could still access the village’s mana.

Richter had breathed a sigh of relief. He hadn’t been thinking clearly. His mental fatigue had combined with physical exhaustion, letting panic take over. Once he let go of that
worry,
though, he laid down on his bedroll and passed out almost immediately. He didn’t sleep
long,
though, thanks to a boot nudging his ribs. Yoshi was
waking
him to stand watch. Richter made the argument that they didn’t need to keep watch as Futen could hover in one part of the tunnel and the other part was protected by the trap floor. Yoshi wasn’t hearing any of
it,
though, and they all spent one shift awake.

When everyone had slept, Richter and Yoshi got back to work. Walking back to the center of
chamber, they had a decision
to make. The room wasn’t perfectly round, and the angle of one wall meant that the bone door closest to them. Richter wanted to keep going straight to reach the metal door.
Yoshi, on the other hand, argued that if their picks broke before they got to a door, then they would have to try to run the gauntlet
of the floor. Better to reach any door than to get stuck, the adept reasoned.

Richter didn’t have any better counterargument than, ‘Good god! Not the bone door. It’s creepy!’ or ‘Why is it a shit idea to go towards the bone door, you ask? Because it is so OBVIOUSLY a shit idea!’ Needless to say, they ended up disarming traps towards the bone door.

It took another day and a half to disarm the increasingly difficult traps, but Richter took his time and didn’t lose any more durability on his lock picks. While they were working, Richter asked something that had been on his mind for a while, “How did you become a Warrior? How did you get your Profession?”

Of course,
the adept didn’t answer at first. That would have been too easy, Richter thought. He did end up
answering,
though. “If you have reached level twenty and have a journeyman skill level in a combat skill, you are given the opportunity to prove yourself. If you so choose to take that opportunity, you will be taken… elsewhere. There you must defeat the challenges set before you. If you succeed, then you will be assigned a Profession.”

“What if you don’t defeat the challenges,” Richter asked.

“Well then you come back,” Yoshi replied irritably.

“There aren’t any consequences?”

Yoshi gave a long-suffering sigh
and looked at the ceiling as if begging for strength. When he
spoke,
he enunciated each word like Richter had a mental deficit. “If you do not pass the challenges, then you lose a personal level and one skill level in every skill you have.”

Trying not to let Yoshi’s attitude get to him, he just reflected on the information he had just learned. Soon, Richter would reach personal level 20. Except for Herb
Lore,
though, he was far from a journeyman in any of his skills. He would have to start skill grinding sometime soon. He knew he was pushing it, but decided to ask another question, “All Professions require you to be a journeyman and reach level 20?” He was remembering that Gloran had the Profession of Crafter despite being only level 14.

“Yes,” Yoshi snapped. He went back to disarming his
traps
but then picked his head back up. “Except for noncombat Professions. Those you can reach at Level 10, but you still need to be at least a journeyman in a related skill. And in answer to your next questions, Yes, you are a
gyoti, and no, I won’t kiss you for a copper
.” Yoshi gave a
bright
garish smile, which swiftly fled his face leaving behind only a cold glare. Richter took the hint this
time and got back to work himself.

By the time they reached the bone door, he had reached level ten in his trap skills and level eleven in Pierce the Veil. He got the normal bonus experience from reaching level ten (plus the 25% bonus), but unfortunately only received half the experience for leveling his subskill. Total, it was 6,250. He deserved every point, he thought, massaging his aching back.

While Yoshi went back to lead Sion and Daniella through the disarmed traps, Richter looked at his status page.