Chapter 19: Pit Stop

With the black goop thoroughly cleaned up, and the hallway smelling a bit burnt, Catherine continued her way through the labyrinth. The amount of time she had spent cleaning up that mess left her worried that Rose and Nyoka might catch up, so she had morphed herself into a wolf to move faster.

The increased speed came at a cost that she was high enough to barely get hit by crushing traps, but with her having set off so many on the way down she was becoming proficient in noticing the trip wires and pressure plates. There was one thing she was worried about with her speed, however, and stopped when she came up to it.

The magical symbols on the wall, she was done fooling around and testing traps after the black symbol, but if she wanted to move at her current pace she had to make sure of one thing. She approached the red magic symbol on the wall, barely visible behind the plant life covering it. She knew what this one did, and knew how to avoid it so it was the best one to test.

She lowered herself, approaching it slowly. A working theory she had was that these traps would only trigger for humanoids, as it practically ignored her when she was a slime, and there was no telling how many she passed while not paying attention. If she was right, that meant she could run at her current pace threw the dungeon, if she was wrong then she’d have to be more careful.

‘Worst case, I catch fire again.’ With that thought she walked in front of the symbol, her eyes shut tight as she braced herself. After she walked a few feet, passing the symbol and not feeling anything, she slowly opened her eyes and looked back. Seeing she was not on fire left her pleasantly surprised, she barked, her tail wagging behind her happily as she took off running.

Her increased pace allowed her to reach the next floor, another maze, and her patience was already at its limits. It was bad enough she had lost all that time cleaning up after her mistake, but now to add onto that there was another maze, there had been nothing but mazes since the tenth floor and frankly she was sick of it.

‘If only I had a map.’ She thought ‘how do other people navigate this? Surely they must have…some…thing…oh.’ A sudden realization hit her ‘the other adventurers I passed…It seemed like they knew where the entrance was. And if this place doesn’t change…’ she gulped, laying down on the stone floor and placing her two paws on her head ‘I wouldn’t doubt it if Rose had a copy, how many floors did they say are mapped? Why didn’t she tell me!’

She then shot up, leaning her head back as she groaned ‘why would she tell me… I ran ahead, fuuuuuuck.’ Realizing her mistake, and knowing it was possible Rose just didn’t tell her or did not put much effort into stopping her was purely to fuck with her she groaned even louder ‘that fucking bitch!’ She could imagine it not, Rose’s mocking face as she thought about her being lost in the maze.

She looked back, figuring that’s also why they have not been in a hurry to catch up. If they could catch up effortlessly with a map, all they had to do was wait for her ahead. ‘The other adventurers did mention they passed a party heading down…’ While it didn’t sound like it was Rose and Nyoka they passed, at this point she couldn’t be sure. ‘screw it, thinking about this will get me nowhere.’

She propped herself up onto all fours, trotting in place as a warm up ‘If they are ahead of me then I just have to deal with a smug Rose. But if I make it far ahead of them, even when they had a map? Then I can be smug.’ She smirked, the thought of pissing off Rose filling her with joy. ‘Ok, triple time, nothing on this floor can slow me down!’ She gave a loud howl before breaking into a sprint, avoiding the traps she recognized as she ran.

Sprinting down the halls she kept on a lookout for what she guessed would be a new trap or set of traps. She already passed a few symbols, some were colors she had not seen before but as symbols were on the last floor she doubted that this was the new gimmick. She came across an orc, nothing noticeably new about it so she dispatched it quickly by leaping up and biting off the top of its head.

Despite her rush she stopped to eat the orc, wanting to replenish her fluid stock after losing so much of it on the last floor. She was by no means close to being out, Catherine still had hundreds of bodies worth from the ship but it was better safe than sorry.

Finishing up she continued her mad dash, passing by and killing off ten more orcs, none of which posing a challenge, but they had apparently became a lot more common. When she finally arrived at what she believed to be the new gimmick. Catherine carefully approached a hole in the ground that was big enough to fit a human skull ‘so, how does this work…’

She looked around for any obvious trip wires, giving up when she found none she figured it was just like the last trap set and would only activate it a humanoid walked over it. Having learnt her lesson by playing around with the traps from the last floor she simply side stepped around it.

Nodding to herself in approval she continued, while it would forever eat away at her mind what that hole did, after the fiasco she had grown passed her naïve curiosity at the unknown. Magic traps could harm her and if she was not careful then they could very well be the end of her. It did not matter how much the mystery pulled at the back of her mind, looking back she could only shoot it a pitying look.

She couldn’t care less, a small-ish hole was certainly not as interesting as a random symbol on the wall that casted magic on her. Nor was it as simple as a pressure plate that when pressed caused a section of the wall to try and crush something! Catherine stopped running, looking back at the hole that wasn’t even as complex as a trip wire, something that could cause a wide variety of things to happen! Like blades flying out of the wall or arrows to fly from slits.

Catherine walked back to the hole, sitting down in front of it, the curiosity gnawing away at her better judgment. With a deep sigh Catherine morphed into her elf form and after giving the room a quick look around she took an exaggerated step over the hole. When her crotch was perfectly over the hole Catherine heard a *click* followed by the sounds of rushing air.

Not having enough time to react Catherine was pulled to the floor, her butt landing over the hole as she felt it suck with great force that threatened to pull her inside of it. “Shit! I can’t get off!” she yelled! Palms on the ground she tried to pull herself off of the hole but the vacuum was too great, and as if it couldn’t get any worse, she felt the surface tension of her skin break, her insides quickly being sucked down the hole.

“Ok this was dumb! Oh this was sooo fucking dumb!” She cursed herself, already shrinking from the force she stopped trying to pull away and ripped off her head, the leash quickly transferring itself up her arm and to her head, she then chucked her head down the hallway. Her head bounced and rolled until it came to a stop, stopping in a way that allowed her to watch as the rest of her body was flushed down the hole.

“there goes another bodies worth…” She sighed, quickly gaining mass she reformed herself into her elf body. “I really need to stop that, oh and to be safe.” She raised her hand and with a wave she tried to cut the connection to her body that went down the drain, a motion completely unnecessary and only done for the theatrics. “Huh?” finding out there was nothing left for her to cut a connection to she became confused.

Standing up she looked towards the hole, still seeing the suction on she shook “That thing, completely destroyed what ever it sucked down.” She stared at the hole, finding herself unconsciously taking a step back from it.

‘no more messing with traps…’ She thought as she morphed into a wolf, going down on all fours she turned to walk down the hall. ‘no more messing with traps…’ she repeated, shaking her head and breaking into a sprint. With her increased speed and no more distractions, besides the often merciless killing of an orc, she found the next set down.