Stumbling Up: A Loser's Guide to Progression - Chapter 51: [Detect Trap]

Before I could reject the guy's offer, Meredeath smoothly interjected, giving me green-eyed side eye to shut up.

"You're looking for a child?" Her eyebrows raised.

"Yes, I'm a [Wayfinder]." Andrew raised his chin, as though being a [Wayfinder] meant something. Meredeath looked at me, and I shrugged. Andrew looked between the two of us, incredulous. "A finder of the lost? Protector of children?”

“Someone give the man a gold star. Why does that matter?” Meredeath was not hiding her loss of patience.

Andrew’s eyes grew sharp at Meredeath’s rudeness. She just picked at her fingernails, ignoring his look.

Andrew lost the battle of wills, finally just explaining, “[Wayfinder] is a specialization for [Adventurer] — I find the lost, not just kill monsters for experience."

"And this [Quest] to find a child?" Meredeath asked, unimpressed.

Deflated, the man explained, "Yes, I work with orphanages. The Ashlight Haven requested assistance. Once I have the kid, I’ll be out of here."

I realized something in that moment. It was some combo of body language, insight from [Heartbeat], and intuition. Andrew'd been on a quest to find a missing child and was ill-prepared to take on a dungeon. He needed us as much as we needed him.

This time, I cut Meredeath off.

"Look, we need to work together. Meredeath and I are not joining your [Party]." I held up my hand, forestalling his protest. "We're already in a [Party] and we're using our [Party] functionality to find our teammates. So how about you join us?"

Meredeath looked at me like I'd gone crazy, but I was pretty sure we weren't going to beat this dungeon without Andrew's help. I sent over the mental command, inviting Andrew into [Your Mom's Party].

He looked at me, considering. I could feel his hesitation, so I sweetened the offer.

"We'll help you find the missing child." That offer was easy. None of us would leave a child down here. "No need to share the quest with us, you can keep the award for yourself."

Andrews’ bushy eyebrows raised. Meredeath again looked at me like I'd lost my mind. Maybe I had. I had a good feeling about this guy, and a bad feeling about the dungeon. We needed each other.

[Andrew Ashborn has joined [Your Mom's Party]].

I could almost hear Tandy yelling, 'Who the hell is Andrew Ashborn?' from here. A little chaos was good for her.

"Welcome to the party, Andrew," I said, the words with more confidence than I felt. Examining his general attributes in our team interface made it pretty clear that he was a veteran, and we were noobs. Thankfully, Tandy was still listed as the [Party Leader]. "If you bring up your [Party Map], you can see that we've got a ways to go."

The map revealed a maze of connected sewer pipes that the team had already traversed, with pink, yellow, and green blinking dots at the outer edge of the revealed territory. We were represented by black, gold, and grey dots.

"They're going in the wrong direction," Andrew said, frowning with the distant expression of someone who was looking at their interface. "Are you all…" he paused as though searching for a kind way of saying it.

"Complete idiots when it comes to being [Adventurers]?" Meredeath chimed in with her natural charm. "Yes."

"Well, I was going to say, 'inexperienced,' but yes. Okay, well, let's go get your friends before they get killed."

Andrew started moving back towards the junction we'd come from. His legs ate up the ground quickly. Meredeath and I exchanged a look. She was angry with me, and I just shrugged. Andrew might have been a mistake, but we weren't prepared for a dungeon either. I'd rather die trusting my gut on someone than getting eviscerated by a trap I hadn't seen.

The man pointed down at a trigger at the next junction, one of the plates we'd caught moving through it the last time. Once he was sure we'd seen him point out the trigger mechanism, he turned left towards the rest of our [Party].

"Okay, he's growing on me," Meredeath murmured, following Andrew a little closer. The guy had his double-bladed axe slung around his back. The dark axe's edges gleamed in the dim light of the tunnels.

Andrew kept walking, pointing out more traps that we would have likely caught. If it weren't for our interface map, I'd have gotten lost. Each juncture and tunnel looked remarkably similar.

Meanwhile, Leo, Tandy, and Richard’s position had changed. They were in a large room and hadn’t moved for a good ten minutes. This wasn’t a good sign.

"You two ready for some action?" Andrew had paused at the next juncture, as though he'd spotted something we hadn't. I peered over his shoulder, trying to spot what he'd seen.

"I don't hear any raccoon bandits, and nobody’s died right here. What are you seeing that we're not?" Meredeath asked, studying the juncture herself.

"Normally you'd have to pay a [Dungeon Guide] big bucks for this, but since we're a team," he smiled, taking the bite out of the words. "We'll call this a teachable moment. Do you see any difference between the tunnel we're standing in and the one on the other side of this juncture?"

I looked, and it had the same brown, rusty floor. The walls and ceiling were made of concrete, with moss and cobwebs clinging to them. The recessed light strip ran across the middle of the ceiling. Everything looked the same to me.

"It's wetter." Meredeath pointed out. I squinted at the floor. It didn't look that much wetter than our tunnel, but she was right. The floor did look damp. The leaf detritus that had haphazardly littered the floor behind us was completely absent ahead.

"Good, and do you see the trigger mechanism in this juncture?" he asked, with the patience of a born teacher. Meredeath stepped forward, examining the ground. She started to lean into the juncture to get a better look, and Andrew pulled her back, giving us our first clue.

I knelt to get a better look, spotting just a few cobwebs trailing from the ceiling.

"Is it the cobwebs? Is a spider going to drop on us?" I was not too keen on meeting the widowmaker's sewer cousin.

"Yes, good job, Cole." It was hard not to beam at his praise. Maybe I could excel at trap finding? "It's common knowledge that dungeons can be tricky like this. They'll give you trap after monotonous trap, then," he clapped his hands together, making both of us jump. "You'll die to a sophisticated switch-up. It's one of the most commonly made arguments for dungeon sentience." Eyeing the two of us critically, he didn't bother holding back his final thought. "It's also why you shouldn't be trying a dungeon without a guide."

"Good thing we've got you," I said cheerily.

"I just hope your friends are still breathing by the time we reach them."

"They're still on our map, aren't they?" Meredeath was less amused by the situation.

"Sure, but they could be suspended above a pit of alligators, or hiding in a hole while a boss monster waits for them to pop out. There are a million ways a dungeon might trap you or stretch out a kill." He spoke, not unkindly, but straightforward. It gave his words an emphasis of experience.

"Alright, duck here. Be careful not to touch any of the elements in the environment we're in. Anything can and will be used against you. The threat isn't just a monster."

We moved more slowly, and my perspective on the environment changed. Andrew pointed out a moss trigger, more cobwebs, and suspicious patches of dirt. At some point, fake rungs were leading up to a painted maintenance hole, all built to cause someone to back up and fall through a false wall into an acid pit.

We were getting close to Tandy, Leo, and Richard. They hadn’t moved in the last hour, and I tried not to think about what it meant. Eyes on the environment, I tried to stay focused.

"Stop!" I called, freezing everyone. "Andrew, step back."

I'd seen the carefully spaced moss that indicated recessed water jets of death. So there was a trap here. But I hadn't found the trigger mechanism. No mysterious plate, no cobwebs or draping moss. No wobbly stone that sent an errant hand into a wall panel. Nothing in line with the water jets. Maybe it was a delayed trigger?

I began examining Andrew. His hair was pulled back in a warrior's knot, free of any filament that would have indicated disaster. This leather armor creaked as he stood doing his own study of the hall, his pack secured tightly with his axe hanging free. The metal of his boot glistened, reflecting off of something.

One of the first rules of trap finding is to look for differences in the environment or patterns that are too regular. Andrew's wisdom echoed in my head.

"There's a spot of light on your boot, that's got to be it." I traced the spot of light back to a pinhole in the wall. I was beginning to get the hang of finding traps.

The [System Notification] agreed:

[Skills Acquired: You have gained new skills.

[Dungeon Diver] - This [Adventurer] skill acknowledges a rudimentary understanding of dungeons and grants the user a passive bonus to awareness within such environments. Further associated skills and specializations may become available.

[Detect Trap] - This [Dead Wrong] skill is a passive that increases the chance of identifying traps by 25%.

[Detect Trap - Dungeons] - This [Dead Wrong] skill is a passive that increases the chance of identifying traps within dungeons by 25%. This stacks with other non-environmental skills.]

"Ah, yes. A light trigger.” His voice was taut as he took a step back. The beam of light kissed a pinhole on the far wall. Seven jets of water screamed across the tunnel, cutting deep grooves into the stone like knives through butter. Instant death for a mortal, [Wayfinder] or not.

“Good job, Cole. I haven’t seen one of these before.” Andrew’s voice shook as his facade of calmness broke. I’d caught something he’d missed, and it shook him. This highlighted more than the [System’s] recognition of the progress I’d made. Maybe I wasn’t just stumbling along anymore; I finally had a chance to catch myself before I fell.

“Wasn’t this supposed to be a white bread dungeon? Not a five-course death trap.” Meredeath’s voice cut through my ego stroking. She knelt, waving her hand through the light, causing the trap to go off multiple times.

“I agree, it’s too sophisticated for a [Basic] dungeon. Most of these traps would be at home in a [Challenge] dungeon. I haven't been in an [Unnamed] dungeon before, so it could be messing with the classification." His words trailed off. "We've only seen the raccoons, and even for a [Basic] dungeon, they're meant to overwhelm rather than kill. By the Ashborn! I bet this is an [Unclassified] [Trap] dungeon."

"Is someone going to tell me what that means?" Meredeath was unimpressed.

"This dungeon might be [Basic], but it’s not new. If it’s been feeding on the underbelly of Eddie’s Mill, then it’s developed an appetite. Dungeons are predators. This one’s laid a trap, and your friends are the bait.”

I checked the map. The team still hadn’t moved.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. For once, it wasn’t Richard creeping me out.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that the dungeon was watching us, waiting for the right moment to strike.