Seth Chapter 76

Chapter 76

“A hidden pathway?”

A collective look of surprise and curiosity passed through the party as they all stared at Seth and Rebecca.

“Yes, it's a pathway that was discovered recently and goes even deeper into the ruins. We have explored it a bit and the place is filled with traps and monsters, particularly golems and undead. There are gold coins in every room, but our goal is to retrieve an artifact. More specifically, The Weather Staff which is known to be the main weapon of the Stormweaver.”

Seth explained and couldn't help, but notice the look of greed when he mentioned the gold coins from the members in the back.

On the other hand, Xarth squinted his eyes, “What level of monsters are there?”

“The undead are relatively easy to handle, being at mid and high Rank 3. The golems are all on Rank 4, the highest being at Level 40,” he saw tremors going on in Xarth's eyes. “It's a golem named Stormweaver's Wrath.”

“That seems like quite a tough opponent,” he said with caution in his voice.

“They won't be easy, but Rebecca is a mage of Rank 3 with barriers as a speciality and I'm an assassin in Rank 4. We both would help your party and I won't offer it if I didn't think of you all as capable.”

“That doesn't mean we would walk onto our deaths,” Zacky said from the back, looking dissatisfied. “Ruins aren't easy to explore and if there are Level 40 golems there, then how are we going to deal with them? We would all die.”

“We will deal with them by working together. Zacky, stop with your constant pessimistic attitude,” Zara barked next to him.

“It's not pessimistic. I'm being realistic.”

“No, you are not. You are just scared of diving into the ruins,” Sharan said from the back, looking at him with a mocking grin.

As Seth wondered if a fight was going to break, Xarth stomped his hand on the table and glared back at his party members.

“Stop you all! If you want to argue, go out of the room!” He frowned before turning towards Seth. “I'm sorry for them. They don't know what to say and when to say things. Anyway, what about the reward?”

“We would divide the gold found between each person. For the artifacts, we will take it and we would be putting that on the contract if you agree to participate in the expedition. It's important for us to get the artifact,” Seth said professionally, trying to put each point out as clearly as possible.

“As we would divide gold between each person, your party would get the most of it. I think it's fair enough,” Rebecca said, looking at the expression of Xarth and the others who seemed to have cooled down a bit.

“Can you give us a moment to think about it?” Xarth asked after a moment of silence.

“Sure.”

The Divers left the room after that to discuss the expedition and whether they wanted to be a part of it. Seth felt like the terms they were giving were pretty good, especially because they were the ones having the way to the hidden path.

But, he also knew it was a dangerous quest.

“Do you think they will agree?” Rebecca asked, sitting next to him.

“I think so,” he said. “Although I'm worried whether they can work well with each other.”

“Don't worry. They won't try to argue when we are in the ruins. They underrated that doing so would only risk themselves.”

They waited for ten minutes and the door to the room opened with Xarth walking in with the others following behind him. He had a casual expression on his face, but Zacky seemed to be frowning.

Zara and Sharan looked with smiles and the rest acted normal.

Focusing on Xarth, Seth asked, “So, did you make a decision?”

Xarth nodded his head. “Yes, we agreed to come to the ruins with you. We don't mind giving up artifacts if the coins are distributed equally, and we are looking for strong monsters to fight either way. I just want everything in a contract, so there's no going back on words once we get to the ruins.”

“Of course,” he said, giving off a smile.

After that, they let a staff member work on a contract for them and after confirming that they both agreed with it, they signed it. Most of the time, it was just a reminder for the parties to act according to what was discussed or anyone who's a part of the contract can raise a dispute which would result in an investigation.

Any sane parties would never want to go through it since if found guilty, they could face serious charges.

Once the contract was made, they made their way towards the ruins.

***

In the next few hours, all of them made their way down the stairs. Fortunately, there were no scatterers to deal with this time and Seth wondered whether it was because of the lesser abyssal horrors scaring them away, or they were just taking an evening nap.

Rebecca had already shared all the information with Xarth's party, and all of them looked much more prepared than before.

They wore armour and protective equipment, and he even saw Zacky having a long rope on his side.

Through the way, no one spoke as they looked out for any monsters. It didn't take too long for them to reach the crack going through the wall.

The Divers gaped at it before Seth took the plunge of going forward. Rocks brushed against him as he carefully and cautiously moved forward, before coming out of the other side.

Rebecca and Zara were next followed by Log. The rest came one by one and Xarth was the one who had the most difficulty due to his large body frame and axe getting in the way. In the end, he had to let someone else carry the axe before making his way through the crack.

Even then, Seth saw bruises on his face, shoulder and legs when he finally made it to the other side.

“Is that the golem you were talking about?” Zara asked, gaping at the fallen golem that had killed before. Dust had settled on top of it, but it hadn't seemed to move from the place they had defeated it. “It's huge.”

“You will see bigger ones ahead. Let's not waste time and move,” Seth urged them and they started moving.

While passing by the golem, all of them took a close look at it. The frayed wires, the broken eyeballs and the chipped away sections made it look like it had taken a heavy beating.

As they stepped into the corridor, the lamps lit up, scaring Log and Zacky. They soon calmed and started following Seth. For safety, Rebecca maintained a barrier around them.

“There's no traps around here until we get to the next room,” he said, trying to make them aware of the dangers.

“I don't think we need to worry about traps,” Sharan said from the back. “The whole place looks empty and old, and if you were able to explore so much of it, we don't have to worry too much.”

“You should worry until you have a skill to locate and disarm traps,” he replied, glancing back at him, but the human swordsman just gave back a grin.

“If you forgot, we have been adventurers for far too long than you. It's not as scary as the ruins we were in before. Back then, I managed to even cut through arrows that came at me.” He put a hand on his scabbard and patted it.

Zacky grumbled something under his breath, but Seth wasn't able to hear it. Before he could say anything more, Rebecca tugged at his arms.

“We are here!”

They were standing in the small room which was a trap. On the other side, the door was still open. They had deliberately left it like that to avoid arrows being rained down on them.

“We need to be careful with the room and jump to the other side. The whole room looks to be trapped,” Rebecca explained, looking at the adventurers.

The elf archer, Tran, tilted his head. “How are we going to do that?”

“I can use my skill to carry you all to the other side without any problems. It will just take a bit of time. I have a small range teleportation skill.”

“I don't think we need that,” Sharan muttered, taking everyone's attention. “It's just a small room. Even if there's a trap, we can jump out of the way.”

“It's not a kid's play. The traps in the ruins are deadly and are meant to kill.”

“Like I said, I have dealt with worse places in my career. You don't have to worry about it. I don't want to get carried by you.” He glared at Seth who looked at Xarth for assistance.

The burly beastman grumbled, “Sharan, it can be dangerous.”

“Xarth, I'm the fastest in the group. I can get out of the way. You saw me dodging those traps in our last expedition too and I am pretty sure the room doesn't even have any traps. Even if there is, they would be rusted by time.”

He took a step forward, and Seth glanced at Rebecca who shrugged.

Without wasting any time, Sharan jumped up and landed in the middle of the room. He held his sword in one hand, looking out for any arrows that might fly his way.

Then, he took steps forward and nothing happened. Grinning, he looked back to them, particularly at Seth.

“See? Nothing happened. Now, if you still want to be a meek, over cautious coward, you are free to be.”

Seth twitched at that insult. He hadn't done anything to Sharan, but the man seemed to have a loose tongue. Xarth looked at him with an apology in his expressions, and he sighed.

Tran was the next person who shoved Zara aside to move forward.

“Sharan is right. We can't worry about hundreds of year old traps. The faster we are, the better for us.”

“I still think we should be more care—” Rebecca tried to say, but the elf archer cut her off with a shrug.

“You are free to be careful, but Sharan has walked through half the room and he's okay. There's no danger. We are professionals here. We know what we are doing.”

After that, he followed Sharan, not even bothering to be careful as he quickly covered the same distance as him. The rest of them still stood at the entrance, wondering if they should follow them too.

I think something bad is going to happen.

Seth frowned, looking at Sharan and Tran. Both of them were now moving at the same pace and were ten steps away from the door. He looked at the walls, and they looked normal.

Nothing was strange.

His eyes darted around everywhere before they moved up. The ceiling. He kept a close eye on it and his instincts screamed into existence.

“Are you all really going to wait till I cross the room to start walking? You—”

As he was speaking, there was a clicking sound.

Both of them stopped in their tracks and looked up ahead. The ceiling opened up and flames poured down at the both of them, burning away the surface as their guttural screams tore through the ruins.

Sharan tried to shake it away and get out of the onslaught of flames, but his legs gave up as he fell on the ground, holding his face. Tran was in a much worse state as the flames directly hit his face, burning all of it away as a dreadful cry bursted out of him.

The arid smell of burnt hair filled the room as their face and bodies were singed.

“Sharan! Trans!”

“We need to stop it!”

“How to do that?”

“We don't have a water mage with us. Fuck!”

Their party members shouted out as both of them started to get incinerated in front of their eyes. And Rebecca moved.