“Huh. Neat. Want to fight them?”
I laughed. “Nah, I think we’ll get plenty of fighting done on the other path. But if you want a souvenir, I could probably disable the trap and take the sword out.”
“Sure!”
Just scratching out the runes would trigger a form of backlash, which would be bad. I’d learned how to transfer mana from a rune to another rune, but I didn’t have experience at doing it, and this wasn’t a good place to practice.
Instead, I simply touched the activation rune and transferred the mana straight into the air. Some more powerful items had runes to prevent this sort of thing from being possible — basically generating a shield around the item itself to prevent tampering — but this was basic stuff. There weren’t any prevention measures in effect.
It took me just a minute to do that. Then I repeated the process with the other runes.
Moving the mana from the shadow rune felt a little strange. I’d worked with the other types of mana before, but even touching shadow mana made my skin crawl. It felt…wrong, somehow, like it was draining my strength just letting it come into contact with me.
I didn’t let that bother me, though. “Okay, this side is done. Cut the stone on the other side, just in case there are more runes on the other side.
There weren’t, it turned out. We’d gotten lucky and found the trap on the first try. Still, it had been wise to check.
We took one last precautionary measure — we cut the whole stone section in the floor out where the metal piece was anchored, then checked the bottom for more runes. But there was nothing else, as we’d suspected.
Apparently, these teachers weren’t quite as devious as Orden. I suspected that if she’d been running the test, the whole sword would have turned into a monster to eat us or something.
Weirdly enough, that made me miss her a little. Which was horrible, because she was a traitor, but…
I shook my head, dismissing the feeling as quickly as I could. “Okay, should be good to go.”
Marissa drew the sword.
As we’d expected, nothing happened.
“Huh. Don’t even think this sword is real. Feels too light.” She turned it over, then shook it in the air. “Thinkin’ it’s a stage prop?”
I laughed. “Figures. Okay, ready to check that other path?”
“Yep.”
We headed back down the way we came, then took the other fork.
There were no bodies this way.
Just…skin.
Or, more accurately, molted skin and scales.
“Wow.” Marissa ducked down and picked up a scale. It was about the size of her fist. It was hard to tell in the light, but I thought it was a dark turquoise, or maybe just blue.
“That’s…a pretty big scale.”
“Yup! Oooh, I bet there’s a serpent down there.” She slung the fake sword over her shoulder, bouncing on her heels in enthusiasm. “Let’s go kill it!”
I was somewhat less excited. Sure, the idea of slaying a serpent was exciting, but…I remembered.
I remembered Mizuchi, looming over the Soaring Wings headquarters. She took a breath, lightning flaring around her titanic jaws, and then exhaled.
People screamed and fell. Lord Teft’s barrier, maintained by himself and his simulacra, barely managed to keep us from harm — and we weren’t anywhere close to the blast radius.
This creature certainly wouldn’t be as strong as Mizuchi. Almost nothing was; she was the child of a God Beast, and very nearly a God Beast herself.
But seeing that had given me a realistic idea of my chances against any truly powerful monster, and those chances were extraordinarily low.
“We…may want to wait and make a plan first, Mara.”
She paused in her step. “Oh, right, you’re not in the class. Guess you probably don’t know much about serpents, then?”
I shook my head. “I learned a bit when I was researching the spire itself. Tough scales and a powerful shroud. They can exhale bursts of magic. Some of them can change in shape to a humanoid form, but they usually still have some characteristics that make them stand out. I didn’t learn much about tactics for fighting them, though. My plan was pretty much to flee in terror and hope for the best.”
Marissa laughed. “Well, that’d usually work, but not here. Gotta beat this one and get me a good score. Important thing to know — the scales usually tell you the type of breath it’s got. The environment helps, too. Blue scales and water mean it’s probably a water serpent.”
That made sense. “So, fire would be effective, then?”
“Nah. I mean, it wouldn’t be bad, but opposites aren’t usually the best for monsters. Like cancels out like, but that’s end neutral. You want something that has a violent effect. For water, that means lightning.”
I nodded at the explanation. Something about that bothered me, though. Mizuchi was supposed to be a water dragon, but I’d seen her breathe lightning. Was she actually a lightning dragon, or could she actually use a type of magic she was weak against?
Either seemed strange, but I supposed that the children of God Beasts were powerful enough to break all sorts of the normal rules about how monsters were supposed to work.
“Okay.” I pondered for a moment. “We don’t have lightning. Then what?”
Marissa grinned. “When you don’t have the right element, there is one thing every monster is weak against.”
“Oh?” This sounded like useful information.
“Punching.” She made a fist.
I laughed. “Okay. Anything else I should know?”
She shrugged a shoulder. “Serpents can use magic, like karvensi can. Most of them don’t bother unless they’re in their human form, though.”
“What sorts of magic?”
“Depends on the serpent. Usually matches their colors. The older ones get a broader variety, though. The really big ones, like the Tails of Orochi, even have things that work like attunement powers.”
I blinked. “So, there could be serpents that have Enchanter or Guardian abilities?”
“Yeah, sure. But it’s the scarier attunements you really need to worry about. You wouldn’t want to run into a serpent that could use Shadow abilities, for example.”
I wouldn’t want to run into a serpent in general, but she was right. The magic defense abilities of a Shadow or a Shaper being combined with the inherent abilities of a serpent would be terrifying. “Okay, I’ll keep an eye out for any attunement abilities they might use.”
“Great. Let’s get going.”
She led the way further into the tunnel.
We ended up in the largest chamber we’d seen yet. Lit torches were attached to the walls, which seemed strange until I checked them and realized they were enchanted. They’d burn forever, as long as they could gather enough ambient mana.
Maybe it was just for effect, or maybe it was part of the test. I couldn’t be sure.
The center of the room was dominated by a huge pool of water. A waterfall on the right side of the chamber was pouring into that central pool. At a glance, the central pool was too deep for us to see the bottom.
“Don’t get too close,” Mara warned. “Serpent is probably in there somewhere.”
I nodded, keeping my distance. “Do we try to draw it out onto land somehow?”
“Maybe. Let’s keep looking around a bit first.”
We searched the area until Mara found something of note. “Hey, Corin, c’mere.”
There was a wide indentation in the rock near the waterfall. It looked like a slot for something, like a keyhole, but flat and too wide for an ordinary key.