Chapter 170: The trees and the walls

Chapter 170: The trees and the walls

She had focused on the map for all of twenty seconds, and it had been enough for both paths to be walled. She turned around, searching for anything useful, but there was nothing other than herself in this isolated straight corridor.

Her first reflex was to check all of the walls for the hard speckled stone. There could be one without it that she could use to escape. She also conjured her graveyard. The two non-moving side walls had the hard stuff behind them. Sofia ran to one of the newly appeared walls and slashed at it with her mithril dagger, same result. So the moving walls come with the hard stuff too She felt some of the graveyard skeletons dissipating behind her right after they emerged from the ground.

Did something kill them?

Turning around, she realized the corridor had gotten much shorter. The skeletons had somehow died from being encased in the wall.

How ironic. But bad.

Is it that they only move when I dont look?

All skeletons stare at your nearest wall. Now if I turn my back to the other one again

Despite giving it ample time, the wall did not move. Maybe its just luck, or maybe I have a solid theory. Now how do I get out of here? I know perception alteration and hallucinations are a thing, but that doesnt look like it. All my senses tell me this is real.

Sofia tried to recall the rats to her, just to see where they would end up and where the boundaries of these new walls were. And the rats eventually did find the other side of these new walls. They were at the same distance in both directions when she stood at the center of her small corridor.

Id say, give or take five hundred meters?

I can already see a way out, but that would take months I do have one full year But there has to be a built-in way to deal with this. Otherwise, too many people would fail here, blocked between four walls. That doesnt seem right.

She tried to think about something most people could do that could get her out. Of course, this was all assuming that everyone got the same ordeal and not a personalized test. What if I splash the hard stone with the water they gave?

The wall was closer, and there was a nice and wide, if crooked, doorway cutting straight through. I dont understand how or why that worked, and Im not going to ask. Finally getting some understanding of how the place worked, she felt safe enough to dispel the graveyard and start getting her mana back up. She considered for a second if she should always have a rat looking in every direction but decided against it. Because what if the path she needed to take was currently blocked by one of those? She might as well fish them out and carve a way through each of them. Eventually, all that was left would become nothing but moving paths.

Moving paths That I control. The lesser dragon was too big to fit in there, wasnt it? Hmm, but it can control stone. If that extends to the black stone, I'm done for. And its not going to idly stand near the entrance to my small corridor waiting for me to poke it to death, either.

Ill explore more and think about it. I still have rats tracking it from afar, anyway. The sad part about it is that its likely a summoned monster like the guys in the test before. His body disappeared after Pareth offed him. So, no bones. Trials are terrible for necromancers

Sofia kept exploring the maze. Now that she didnt feel as pressured by the moving walls, it had become almost relaxing. Nothing happened most of the time. There werent more traps or monsters, only a never-ending ocean of stone bricks.

This is taking too long. And the rats have expired, so I lost track of the lizard. Sofia summoned her book and took out every piece of her map to form one large bone map on the floor. She sat in front of her map and summoned the fifty-four black turvins. Birds are faster than rats. Go crazy, explore every path, fly as fast as you can, and close to the ceiling. Only stop if you find a chest.

Sofia put her hands down on the map and closed her eyes. Ill transfer my current map to the other side just in case this could get messy.

Could she track the movement of fifty-four birds at the same time, all the while drawing a map of their paths? Im not sure. But if someone can do it, its someone with [Fast reading] and [Way of the Fool].

It started easy as the birds separated into two groups, each going to one side of the tunnel. Then they reached the first intersections. At the start, Sofia could still think and draw the map, but when more than twenty birds were going their own way, she had to focus like never before to keep track. Under the control of [Bone dominus], the map was taking shape, thin indents in the bone indicating the tortuous paths of the maze. One of the birds died on the way, supposedly to the lesser dragon. But it was after almost half an hour of intensive mapping that something truly bizarre happened. One of the birds disappeared from one side of the map, and a new one appeared far to the opposite end.

Teleportation?

As time passed, more and more birds disappeared and reappeared. Sofia was starting to get a feeling for the boundaries of the maze. It was a circle. And when you stepped out, youd come back from the opposite end.

Truly a sick way to design a maze. You could walk forever in the same direction and never find an end. But where is the exit, though?

The birds ran out of lifespan; in a bit more than three hours, Sofia had mapped what she estimated to be around 30% of the maze. Percentage subject to debate depending on how many moving walls there were. She would have to move to another starting point for the birds if she wanted to map out the whole place optimally.

Also, one of them had stopped, so I think I have a second chest. Lets get moving.N0v3lTr0ve served as the original host for this chapter's release on N0v3l--B1n.