Rose laid with her head on my chest as we chatted about mostly inane things. Until she changed the subject, asking, “How many more bosses do you think are left?”
“I’m not sure. We know there is at least one more, the Lich,” I answered.
“Think we’ll find a treasure vault?” Rose asked.
That was a nice thought. Though I would imagine if Reksoni has been dead for as long as had been suggested, any obvious vaults the dragon had were more than likely already looted. It meant we would need to be diligent in looking for hidden rooms. “I hope so,” I finally said.
Rose hugged me a little tighter and I noticed her breathing had deepened. She was sound asleep. I joined her a few minutes later.
Night passed too quickly and before I knew it, we were standing in front of the door to the inner tower.
“Tanks to the front,” Olaf ordered. “Everyone else, take up position. We don’t know what’s waiting for us from here.” It took less than a minute for everyone to get into position. “Fitz, any traps on the door?”
The Gnome scuttled up to the door to check it over. “All clear,” he said, then ran back to rejoin the midrange damage dealers.
“Heavy, door,” Olaf ordered, sending the lowest leveled tank forward.
The metal shod tank nodded. Heavy took hold of one of the large rings on the left door and heaved back, pulling at the door. It didn’t budge. Heavy tried again but got nowhere.
“Ollie, I think one of us should do it,” Micaela said. “We’re the strongest in the raid group.”
Olaf reluctantly nodded.
Micaela jogged up and took hold of the ring Heavy had been tugging at. The door slowly creaked open. As soon as it did, a hail of arrows streamed out, turning Micaela into a pincushion before anyone could even cry out a warning. Worse, as soon as Micaela let go, her body fell backward, and the door slammed shut. Just that quick, Micaela was dead from a trap that Fitz said wasn’t there.
“Fitz, what the hell? I thought you said there were no traps?” Olaf demanded, rounding on the small Gnome.
“There weren’t,” Fitz insisted. “I swear it, there were no traps.”
Olaf growled. “Check again. Healers, resurrect Micaela.”
I watched Fitz scurry all around the door, checking every edge. He even climbed up the tower walls to examine the door around the top. He still came up with nothing.
“I don’t know. This doesn’t make any sense,” Fitz complained, pulling at his longer hair. “There are no traps. I swear it. And yet . . . Bah, this is a puzzle.”
“It’s a puzzle,” I repeated. “Olaf, it’s a puzzle.”
“What? What are you talking about?” Olaf asked.
“The doors, they’re a puzzle. We need to solve the puzzle to open it,” I said, jogging up to the door, looking for any writing or symbols. It was on the handles. I read aloud, “Two is one.”
“And what does that mean?” Olaf asked.
I frowned then mumbled aloud, “Two is one, two is one.” I looked again at the double doors. There was a ring on each door. Both rings had the same Draconic inscription. “Not two is one. Two as one,” I said. My translation was fine, but the instruction wasn’t clear. “Two opening the door as one. Olaf, you and Micaela need to open both doors at the same time,” I said.
Olaf frowned then asked, “Are you sure?”
“Mostly,” I replied.
Sighing, Olaf moved over to one of the rings.
“At the same time,” I repeated. “I don’t know what will happen if one of you opens faster than the other.”
“I got it,” Olaf said. “Mic, count it down.”
“Three, two, one, heave,” Micaela shouted, taking a single step back with the door. Just opposite her, Olaf did the same. “Heave,” she ordered, taking another step, mirrored again by Olaf. “Heave, heave, heave,” she ordered, taking a step with each call out. An action mimicked by her husband until the doors were both fully opened. They heard a loud bang sounding from inside the tower as both doors seemingly locked into place.
With the doors opened, it looked like two large slabs had been moving inside along the back wall, covering what I assumed were the arrow shooters. That was fine. I was more troubled by the two staircases on each side of the tower, both going up, circling halfway around the inner wall of the tower then cutting the tower in half through the center, before circling back around. I moved toward one stairway and looked up. It appeared the two sides were separated by a solid stone wall going up as far as the eye could see.
“Do we all go up one side?” Olaf asked.
I shook my head, “Doubtful,” I said, walking over to one of the staircases and looking for another hint or clue. “Left helps right,” I read. I went to the other stairway and read, “Right helps left.”
“More puzzles,” Pwn complained. “I hate puzzles.”
Pwn might hate puzzles, but I love them. It was kind of my bread and butter.
“We need to split the party. Half goes left with me, half goes right with Baby,” I said. Baby was highly rated in the Puzzle Box. It meant she would be ideal to solve whatever puzzles came up on the right path.
“I know I’ve asked this a lot, but are you sure?” Olaf asked.
I answered confidently, “I’m sure.”
Olaf quickly began splitting everyone into two teams. Sending Rose with me and both Rock and Heavy with Baby.
Rose didn’t look happy about being split from Baby but at least she understood why.
“Heath, you’re with Baby, Fitz, over here,” Olaf finished. “You two will help your respective parties up the stairs. The name of the game is traps. If you get to a puzzle, it’s up to Bye-bye or Baby to solve.”
“Right, right,” Heath said, waving Olaf’s concerns away and he began lazily strolling up the opposite stairway.
“Okay, Fitz, let’s go,” Olaf said, directing the Gnome up the stairway in front of me.
We went up without any traps triggering or even being seen. At the top of the second flight we hit our first puzzle. It was a door without a handle. On the wall next to the door was a lever. This time, there wasn’t any kind of clue. Just the door and the lever.
I reached for the lever when our door suddenly opened, and Fitz quickly moved through, only for the wall next to him to suddenly pop out and send him careening out into the open air, where he swiftly fell to his death. I didn’t even have a chance to stop him or warn him.
A moment later the wall opposite our door settled back as if it hadn’t just popped out to push Fitz to his death.
I heard Olaf sigh behind me. “Bloomin, please run down and resurrect him.”
“Sure thing,” Bloomin replied.
I studied my lever and the space on the opposite side. I looked farther along the stairway to see another lever when our door suddenly closed again.
“I bet they’re linked,” Olaf said, speaking what I was already thinking.
I nodded, “That was my thinking. We’ll need to check with the other team to be sure. If we hold levers open before the doors open in each stairway, both stairway doors will open, and the traps will be disarmed. That second lever we saw up the stairs probably acts the same to hold the doors open and disable the traps from that side of the door. In other words, at the same time, we need to use the levers before the doors until everyone is through then use the levers after the door until the people using the lower lever can also come through.”
“You got this lever?” Olaf asked, nodding to the lever next to me.
“I got it,” I said, pulling the lever and holding it down. I heard a distant scream from somewhere below us and saw Bloomin and Fitz both suddenly die in my UI.
I quickly let go of the lever. “Hmm, another trap. Apparently, no one can inhabit the ground floor while a lever is held down,” I said. It was just a hypothesis, but a fairly good one.
Olaf sighed again. “Alright, I’ll go down with Teak and see what we’ve got.”
Suddenly our door ope
ned again only to close again almost instantly as several people from the other group just died as well.
“I think the other side just figured out the same thing,” Olaf said.
Ten minutes later everyone was revived and healed. We found out that when the lever was pulled, ten-foot-long spikes thrust up from the floor.
With everyone back on the ground floor, Olaf explained what we thought we figured out. “So, at the same time, both levers before the doors, need to be pulled and held to open both doors and disable the traps. Additionally, once everyone is through, the levers after the doors need to be used until the people that used the first lever can also come through. Clear?”
There were no questions.
Olaf quickly added, “Oh, and no one lingers down here. Now, let’s go.”
I pulled my lever as soon as I got to it. A few seconds later, the door in front of me opened.
“Fitz, go,” Olaf said, ushering the Gnome through.
Fitz glowered at Olaf, clearly feeling some trepidation about stepping through the door again. He stepped one foot through then the next, only relaxing when the wall didn’t jump out at him. He continued up the stairway, cautiously checking for traps as he went, bypassing the lever.
“Okay, everyone through. I’ll get the lever once everyone is up,” Olaf ordered, waving the rest of our group through.
A minute later, I swallowed nervously as Olaf pulled the next lever, causing a loud rumbling to run through the tower.
I let go of my lever and it was locked in place. I ran up the stairs to Olaf.
“I think that’s the first puzzle solved,” I said.
Olaf nodded and released the lever which also remained locked in place. “Yeah,” he agreed. “First puzzle solved. But I get the feeling we’re now on our own. No more talking to the other team.”
“Probably,” I said with a nod of agreement. I really hoped Baby was her best Puzzle solving self.
The next barrier came two floors later. On the wall next to the door was a wooden box on a pedestal with several oddly shaped, unmarked wooden blocks. Inside the box were more of the unmarked wooden blocks carefully fit together. Except there was one piece that was charred black.
“It’s a puzzle box,” I said, carefully removing the wooden blocks from the box, trying to remember where each piece was. I pulled the charred piece out last. At the bottom of the box, the wood was clean and unblemished except for a square in the center that matched the charred piece.
The goal was to fill in the box with the wooden blocks while leaving the charred block in the very center.
“This might take a few minutes,” I said just as there was a growing noise from below us.
Olaf groaned as he pulled out his hand-cannons and cocked the firing pins back. “I’ll deal with that. You solve this puzzle.”
I nodded.
“Let Rose through to pick up whatever that is on our heels,” Olaf barked, pushing his way through the players, trying hard not to push any of them off the ledge as he went.
I wanted to see what was coming but I knew the puzzle took priority. I started moving blocks in and out of the box, memorizing their shapes and how they fit with other blocks around them. I started building a 3D model in my head, similar to what I did for the map of the outer tunnels. Once I was able to mentally picture all the different pieces, I started combining them in my head. Rapidly running through various permutations until at last, I had the solution. My hands moved quickly, grabbing one block after another until all the pieces were in the box and the charred piece was at its center. But nothing happened. Our door didn’t open. I pushed on the charred block, thinking it might be a button and I even heard a click. But still, our door didn’t open. Then I remembered what happened with the first door. I just opened the door for our counterparts.
“Our puzzle is solved,” I shouted. “But I think it only opened the other side. They need to solve their puzzle.”
Rose quickly shouted back, “Great, then get down here and help.”
I could barely see Rose, even from my elevated position. I took a risk and jumped out into the open air. I finally got a good look at Rose and what she was trying to hold back. It was a veritable horde of lizard-dog-things, or as their nameplates informed me,
I jumped off the air, landing a little too close to Rose and almost knocking her off balance.
Rose snarled, “Watch it, Jack!”
“Sorry,” I quickly apologize.
Rose grunted, “Its fine, just . . . do something.”
I channeled ‘Boar Charge’, letting my sounder of spectral swine plow through the dog monsters.
Spell: Boar Charge
Level: 30
Experience: 0.47%
Description: Summon a stampede of spectral boars.
Blessing of the Boar Spirit (Charm Earned): +10-Endurance, +10-Stamina
Spell Damage: -750-950-HP per second
Spell Cast Speed: Channeled
Spell Duration: 5-seconds
Cooldown: 29-minutes
Range: 35-yards
Spell Effect (Active): Spectral boars will charge a targeted area dealing damage and knocking down anyone in the area of effect.
Mana Cost: -800-MP
They moved down through the beasts, ripping and tearing through them with relative ease and giving Rose some much-needed relief.
A hunting horn sounded somewhere, and the draghounds all froze, then as quickly as they appeared, they turned and ran.
Someone further up the stairs yelled out, “Door’s open!”
I breathed a sigh of relief. The other side solved the puzzle.
“Fitz, start checking for traps,” Olaf ordered. “Everyone else, MP, SP, and HP recovery.”
Thankfully, there was nothing on the other side of the door. I don’t know what we would have done if Fitz had been sent off the ledge again.
“That’s two puzzles. How many more?” Olaf asked, looking up toward the top of the tower. We could finally see a ceiling.
“Two to four,” I answered. I guessed that based on the number of flights of stairs. If the pattern continued with one puzzle ever two flights, we would only see two more puzzles. If the difficulty increased, we’d have one puzzle per flight.
Looking down to where we came from, Olaf added, “If this was the real world, how many of us would have died of exhaustion trying to climb these stairs?”
I say flights of stairs only because that was how I was mentally counting each time the stair circled half the tower and then cut across the center. In the real world, we probably already climbed forty . . . maybe fifty flights of stairs. It honestly could have been more than that.
Thankfully, the next puzzle came two flights later. This one was a trap puzzle. Dozens of traps that needed to be disarmed in a specific order. It was up to me to determine the order and for Fitz to disarm them.
“Expect something from below as soon as we disarm the first trap,” I warned.
Rose just said, “We got this, Jack, you focus on that.”
The traps were spread out on the door, one on each of the three hinges, two where the lock would be, four along the bottom of the door, one at the peak of the rounded top of the door and two more in the center of the door.
On the wall next to the door was a word puzzle that needed to be solved to determine the order in which the traps needed to be disarmed.
‘A door of
death and destruction –
Start at the bottom and end on the top.
Do not be so quick, for the bottom needs help from up, down, and center.
Right has no middle and can only be undone in pair with the bottom as this is the key.
Before the top can be unlocked, halve the door.
You will spawn your own destruction with the first mistake you make.’
If I was reading this correctly, the bottom needed to be disarmed before the top. At least it bluntly told me the top was to be done last. However, to disarm the bottom, did I need to disarm everything else? Or did I need to disarm part of the bottom then some of the middle, then bottom, middle, bottom, middle top?
I looked again at the placement of the bottom traps. There was one on the far left of the door. I guessed that was related to the hinge traps. There was one in the middle in line with the two in the center of the door and the trap at the top of the door. The last two on the bottom were to the right of the door and lined up with the two traps by the lock.
The second line said not to be so quick, to me that meant I shouldn’t disarm the far right and the hinges first. If the top was to be the last thing unlocked, then the middle of the bottom would be the last of the bottom traps to be disarmed. Which only left me with the far right which said they needed to be unlocked as a pair.
If I were to unlock the far right first, which did I start with? The clue did say this was the key. One of the bottom traps was in line with a trap where the keyhole would normally be. But did I start with the bottom or the key? But the keyhole was in the middle of the door, wasn’t it? And the clue said the right has no middle.
“Bottom, second from the right,” I said.
Fitz nodded and went to work. Within a few seconds, the trap disarmed with a click and nothing happened.
World Tree Online: The Order of Epic Grinders: 4th Dive Page 55
