Magi Craft Meister 534
16 The Demons’ Mastermind Arc
16-13 Dungeon
“Lightning Magic, huh?”
After seeing those blue sparks, Reiko determined that that was the case. Since purple was the color that represented the lightning attribute, Ann and Alectus agreed with her estimation.
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“Lightning Magic… Or maybe a high-voltage lightning trap?”
On Hourai Island, Jin was curiously following the scene projected on the Magic Screen from Reiko via Laojun.
“There’s no way to know how it was set up, so this trap itself might not even be magical in nature… For example, they could have simply charged a powerful capacitor or rechargeable battery with lightning magic and then used it for this floor.”
A smile appeared on Jin’s face as he thought to himself “I could use one of those”. But then he quickly returned to the issue at hand.
“Ahem… An electric trap, huh? We’ll have to think hard about how to avoid it.”
Barriers aren’t very useful if the floor is under high voltage. This is because they can only spread out to the point where they touch the ground.
“Ann and Reiko should be safe against lightning magic damage thanks to their magical beast leather shoes, but there’s no need for them to take unnecessary risks… Besides, there’s Alectus to consider as well…”
Jin continued to ponder in front of the Magic Screen.
There seemed to be a high-voltage current coursing between the floor and the ceiling.
He had no way to know the exact voltage because there was gas instead of vacuum, and if it was a magical discharge, it could have been affected by Ether. At any rate, it would be in the range of tens of millions to hundreds of millions of volts. He considered it to be comparable to the voltage of any natural lightning bolt.
“Should we short it out, then?”
Jin’s words came out tainted with a mischievous laugh.
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“Father has made something, and it seems he will be sending it to me.”
“What could that be?”
Reiko relayed a message she had received from Laojun.
Ann had received the same message as well.
Incidentally, and unfortunately enough, Reiko and Anne were currently unable to communicate with one another directly. However, by using Laojun as a relay, they would be able to have a long-distance conversation with a time lag of less than 1 second.
Alectus, as usual, was the only one excluded from their apparent telepathic link, and couldn’t help but be the only one having question marks written all over his face.
Then, a minute later, the item in question was sent to them via the transfer machine.
“Is that a Mithril rod?”
It was actually a long pole made of Mithril silver, which had a good electrical conductivity. The plan was to use this pole to connect the ceiling with the floor, ideally causing the trap to short out.
Naturally, it was long enough to touch both the ceiling and the floor, and had a grip in the middle made of an insulating material.
Grabbing the pole with that grip, Reiko placed it so that its lower tip touched the floor, and then slowly raised it until it was almost completely vertical, where its upper tip touched the ceiling.
In an instant, pale blue sparks started to fly all over the place.
With a current of hundreds of thousands of amperes going through it in less than a second, the Mithril rod still withstood the load, even though it had started to turn red.
“I believe the lightning magic that had been coursing through here won’t be a problem anymore.”
Reiko spat another ball of processed food. This time, it fell to the floor and rolled unharmed, which confirmed that the Magi Device that was causing that lightning had burned out due to overload.
Still, just to be on the safe side, Reiko was the first one to step onto the purple floor.
“All clear, it’s safe to walk in here now.”
Thus the lightning trap was disarmed, and they were able to continue exploring the hallway with the scent of ozone in the air.
The purple floor went on for about 3 meters before returning to its usual gray hue.
Then, the corridor took a turn to the left.
“Please wait.”
Ann and Alectus did as Reiko said, and at that moment, the floor that had been right in front of them was gone.
“It was a pitfall trap. I could sense the echo under this section here with my “Sonar”, which lets me explore the surrounding area with more precision. This kind of trap is useless against us.”
The width of the trap was about 5 meters, which was enough for Reiko and the others to leap over.
“Sister, there may be another trap right after this one.”
Ann offered her word of advice.
After all, setting up a second trap right after an easy-to-avoid trap is a common strategy that takes advantage of the false sense of security that avoiding the first trap would give.
“You’re right, we have to be extra careful here.”
Reiko pulled out her “Peach Blossom” and slashed the metal wall, cutting out a metal sheet about 1 square meter. Then she rolled the metal sheet into a cylinder and threw it over the hole.
The cylinder made a clanging noise as it rolled on the floor. But since nothing happened to it in the end, they determined that the floor after the trap was safe.
“Okay, let’s go. Can you jump over this hole, Mr. Alectus?”
“Yes, it should be possible for my enhanced body.”
“Well then, I’m going first.”
Ann jumped right after Reiko. After that, Alectus too jumped over the trap.
A bit after that, they came across another spiral staircase. But this one was heading up.
“…Upstairs, huh? I thought we were going deeper down below? Perhaps this route is a decoy?”
Ann shared her concerns.
“But for now, we have no better route than this one. In case of an emergency, we’ll have to break through the floor and walls. Let’s keep going like this for now.”
Despite offering a rather extreme alternative, Reiko chose to continue on their usual path.
From the length of the stairs, it seemed that they would go back to the same level as the floor where they had been a while ago, but it also looked like they would come out at a completely different place.
First of all, the ceiling was pretty low. Reiko, who was 130 centimeters tall, could barely stand upright, so the ceiling didn’t seem to be more than 140 centimeters above the floor. Ann and Alectus had to crouch in order to be able to walk in there. The corridor severely restricted their movements.
It was also quite narrow, about 1.5 meters wide.
“This looks like a dungeon.”
The word Reiko had learned from Jin’s vocabulary seemed appropriate to describe this place.
“So there must be more traps on this floor as well, huh?”
The moment Ann added her own remark…
One of the walls of the corridor opened up, and approximately a hundred golems about 1 meter tall started coming out of the hole.
“Now they throw golems at us!?”
Without saying a single word, the golem horde attacked the party.
Their power and speed were decent. However, there were many of them. Moreover, it was extremely difficult to fight them because the ceiling was so low.
Because of that, it could be said that the terrain was beneficial for the golems.
Reiko was the only one that could fight properly, but even then, she had little space to work with. She tried swinging her “Peach Blossom” around, but it would get stuck on the ceiling and walls.
Still, she had to try her best, since she had to protect both Ann and Alectus, who could do nothing but crouch in that narrow corridor.
“This is such a bother!”
This situation had Reiko very frustrated. And the same could be said for Jin back in Hourai Island.
“Reiko, I have received permission from my Lord. Please raise your output to 50 percent.”
“Okay.”
Reiko’s power at 50% output capacity was comparable to that of tactical weaponry.
A single punch from her sent one of the golems flying, taking with it 3 more of them in its path.
She had the power to neutralize 5 or 6 golems with a single kick.
And once she did just that, it created a small opportunity.
“‘Induction’”
One of Jin’s original spells, a magic that generates high heat in metal by the principle of electromagnetic induction.
“Ann, use a Barrier to protect Mr. Alectus.”
“Yes, sister.”
Thanks to ‘Induction’, about 60 of the hostile golems had turned red-hot. Then they turned orange, then yellow, and then started to become incandescent before they started to melt.
Those golems turned into lumps of metal in almost no time.
“The high concentration of Ether in this area makes spells much more effective.”
“B-But how are we going to keep moving ahead?”
Alectus seemed concerned about the fact that the corridor up ahead had turned into a pool of molten metal.
“We’ll have to cool it off then. ‘Absolute Zero’.”
Through the use of the spell that robbed substance of its heat, the pool of molten metal solidified in an instant.
“W-What? What kind of magic is that!?”
Alectus couldn’t help but shout out of disbelief of what he had just seen.
“This is our original magic.”
It wasn’t a lie. And nothing more about it was shared with Alectus.
They continued crawling for about ten more meters, where they found a staircase at the end of a turn to the right. This time it was a staircase that went down.
“Let’s go.”
After a quick check for traps, Reiko stepped in.
These stairs seemed to go down for about 10 more meters.
“Let’s see, what kind of interference are we going to find on this floor?”
Reiko still had plenty of juice left, and Ann was just as motivated as her.
“…We’re still not there yet, huh…”
However, Alectus seemed to have accumulated a great deal of fatigue.
