"Guilty as charged!" Inxialot yelled at the screen while preparing the sensors and a new serving of popcorn. "Now move that ass and let me go home."
Yet the group advanced with caution, taking their time to search their surroundings and finding some small tags marked "Placeholder Trap".
"Cut that part from the footage." Inxialot said to Zolgrish. "If the Council finds out I half-assed my job, I'll be in big trouble."
"On it, boss." The other Lich couldn't remember which button was which and forwarded a copy of the footage to everyone involved instead.
Much to Inxialot's dismay, when the youths reached the end of the corridor, they became even more cautious. The room in front of them was a perfect cube with a side of over 30 meters (100 feet) that was empty except for a stone altar at its center.
"I don't like this one bit." Temania said while pointing at the huge pile of purified Adamant that rested on the altar. The flow of world energy through the metal was so powerful that it almost blinded Life Vision.
"By the gods." Henya said in disbelief. "It's true what they say. If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys."
The billboard-sized tag marked "Huge Ass Trap" in ancient language coming out of the Adamant made them advance even more slowly.
"Zolgrish, I told you to remove the tag after we placed the Adamant!" Inxialot said.
"Ratpack, I told you to remove the tag after we placed the Adamant!" Zolgrish said.
"No, you didn't." The small undead replied while showing them the recording of the Liches sending lesser undead to place the Adamant and ignoring Ratpack's pleas to remove the tag.
That day, they had been so busy discussing a groundbreaking magical theory that several apprentices had almost died in a trap that the Liches had failed to deactivate in time. Ratpack had tried to enter the corridor to do it himself, but the protective arrays had almost destroyed him.
Meanwhile, Athung's group searched far and wide for the alleged "Huge ass Trap", but to no avail. Athung's Earth vision, Henya's Absolute Guard, an Awakened version of Full Guard, and Temania's frost spells couldn't find anything.
"I'd like to think that, just like the placeholder traps, the guy who built this place didn't put the huge ass trap either, but that Adamant is purified. No one, not even a Lich, would be so stupid as to leave it unprotected." The two Liches deeply resented Temania's words.
"Agreed." Athung nodded. "Let's go all out. Get ready to Warp to the city plaza. Once you are done preparing your spell, Temania will seal the entire room and Henya will seal the corridors with her shields."
The two Awakened followed her orders, respectively by covering the entire room with a mix of ice and earth magic that would serve as a protective barrier and by conjuring six shields big enough to cover the tunnels' entrances.
Henya's tier five spell, Spinning Death, created round constructs that spun at high speed. That together with their sharp edges and the spikes in front of the shields made them into omnidirectional buzzsaws.
"Are you ready?" Athung asked, obtaining a nod in reply.
She then released the array on her left hand, placing it on the Adamant. The Warping array was linked to the one she had previously left outside, moving the magic metal to a secure position without the risk of even getting close to the altar.
For a few seconds, nothing happened. The missing Adamant didn't seem to have triggered a pressure plate nor any of the arrays in the corridors. Then, the entire room started to shake and the over one meter (3') thick ice wall that Temania had created cracked.
The gears behind the stone walls were trying and failing to change the room's shape by rearranging the stone blocks they were comprised of, but the rest of the structure had no such problem.
Both the corridor in front of them and that from which they had come from started to open, revealing the presence of what looked like air ducts in between the blocks. A thick multi-colored mist poured out of the gaps, flooding the corridors and leaving the Awakened no way out.
"What the fuck is that thing? A spell?" Henya asked after unleashing a river of violet flames that the mist effortlessly smothered as if it was a candle in the wind.
"Not a spell." Temania replied. "If you look carefully, amid all that mana flow there's also life force. It's a living thing."
"Then why don't my darkness-infused shields even slow them down?" She pointed at the rainbow mist that entered the room from all the side corridors, ignoring Spinning Death.
Athung would have liked to keep following the changes in the room with Earth Vision, but the mist had forced them to enter the square room and she had no doubt that the moment they reached the altar, something bad would happen.
"Warp?" The other two asked her with a begging tone.
"Not yet. If we bring this thing outside, it will endanger the expedition. On my mark." She switched from Earth to Life Vision, studying the mist as they kept stepping back.
"Shit, I was right." Athung released the arrays that she kept on her right hand and behind her back, linking them to each other and to the magical formations in the corridors.
"Now!" The group Warped away a split second before reaching the altar, after the mist had completely filled the square room.
Athung's arrays triggered those that Inxialot had set in the side corridors, starting a chain reaction that made the underground structure collapse. The first explosions sealed the underground chamber so that the following blasts bounced off the walls, increasing their destructive power by several folds.
The group of Awakened, instead, arrived in the city plaza safely and put the loot in their dimensional amulets while alerting the other members of the expedition of the threat at hand via their communication amulets.
"Do you really believe that thing is still alive?" Henya asked.
"Things, plural. And yes, I doubt we are done. With all the water that Temania left and the weeds in the soil, it will take them seconds to recover." Athung replied while using Invigoration and conjuring three new arrays at the same time.
Yurial and all fake mages would have died of envy witnessing Raagu's technique that by combining multiple casting methods allowed Athung to greatly reduce the time needed to complete an array.
"What do you- Oh, shit!" Temania said as the ground throughout the city started to crack, letting out what looked like brightly colored vapors.
Some people ignored Athung's call because they were too busy collecting their own loot. Others, like Lith, started to weave their spells.
"What is that thing?" He asked while the mist turned into a bursting geyser as the cracks in the pavement became wider.
"A swarm. I believe we're facing several swarms. Let's assemble in our fortified base." Athung replied while placing her darkness conjuring arrays right on top of the fissures, making the mist wail in pain.
'Gods, I wish I could stay here and admire them all day.' She thought as the detection array that she had hidden amid the other two allowed her to pry into the nature of their enemies.
