Kyle glanced back over his shoulder at Hal as they ran back down the tunnel to the entrance.

“Hal are you sure that you don’t want to dispel that armour?” he asked seeing that his friend was still using his Mountain’s Armour spell and was already starting to fall behind.

“Yeah it’s fine,’ Hal gasped in reply. “If any Scorprats somehow manage to get past Zerah I’m going to want the extra armour.”

“That won’t help us if you exhaust yourself before anything happens,” Amy pointed out. “Besides, I’ll sense any monsters following us.”

Hal blushed slightly and looked away from the others as they ran.

“Well that’s actually only part of the problem,” he admitted. “If I deactivate this spell, I won’t be able to use it again for half an hour.”

Though Mountain’s Armour was a powerful defensive spell it had limitations to it making it a spell that should only be used when absolutely necessary which was why Hal had used it when they had thought that they would have to fight their way through the pack of Scorprats to get to the Scorprat Lord. However, to his embarrassment Zerah had interfered when the panicked Scorprat Lord had burst out of the tunnel meaning that his use of his trump card had been for naught if he deactivated it now.

“Jeez, don’t worry about that sort of thing right now,” Kyle replied. “If you can’t keep up I won’t be able to use the traps we passed on our way here like I planned if we get followed you know, not without waiting for you to catch up and that’s if the monsters don’t catch up to you before we reach one that’ll be safe to use.”

“Eh!?” Hal gasped. “You were planning on doing something like that?”

“Well yeah,” Kyle replied noting that his friend was lagging further behind now that he was using energy talking as well. “I’m the party leader, it’s my job to keep everyone alive no matter what and the easiest way to do that is to make sure of that is to use everything at my disposal to keep you guys safe, even if that means using the traps in a Dungeon against it. Now hurry up and shed those extra pounds, you’re slowing us down!”

Rolling his eyes at the way Kyle had said it Hal reluctantly deactivated his spell and increased his pace so that he was level with the others sighing as he saw the smirk that wove its way across his friend’s face.

“Well when you put it like that, I can’t refuse can I?” he grumbled as the others struggled not to laugh at the look on his face. “Jeez.”

“Alright, let’s get a move on,” Kyle said. “Amy, Fi you two make sure we don’t accidentally activate any traps please.”

Kyle himself remembered the placement of most of the traps that they had already passed, including one that he was hoping to use on any monsters following them, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

Amy nodded, even if she was trying to detect anything following them, she should still be able to notice any traps that Fi and the others missed or forgot about and started to point out the traps that it looked like someone was about to spring as they ran along.

Not long after this a huge wave of Mental Energy blasted Amy from behind causing, he to almost lose her balance. It wasn’t technically an attack but the aftershock of the death of a more powerful Mental Energy user, she knew that if it had been Zerah to perish then she wouldn’t have gotten off o easily and it would’ve even affected Kyle who didn’t have a Sub-skill that allowed him to sense the use of Mental Energy. He could sense effects that targeted him directly but everything else went over his head, when it came to things like this it wasn’t exactly a bad thing but if he had the ability to sense the use of Mental Energy like her they might have been able to figure out that the Scorprats were being controlled earlier.

“Kyle, it looks like Zerah’s taken out the Scorprat Lord,” Amy reported turning towards him as she floated along. “I’m also sensing something following us from behind but there’s still a bit of time before they catch up.”

Kyle nodded at this, he didn’t know what was going to happen when whatever the Scorprat Lord was running from fought Zerah but he knew that if there were monsters following them close enough tat Amy could detect them they would have to deal with them before they left the Dungeon or the time difference between inside the Dungeon and outside would allow the monsters to attack them before they could prepare.

“Sasha did you bring that poison that you used on me the other week?” he asked, they were making good progress through the tunnel but the more space they made between them and the monsters the more time they would have to set an ambush for them.

“Uh, yeah I did,” Sasha said glancing at Fi who nodded. “It’s in Fi’s Inventory, I brought it in case of in emergency.”

The poison that Kyle was talking about became gaseous on contact with air and ha a paralytic effect that made it perfect for use against fast opponents like Kyle, slowing them down and removing their biggest advantage against a more well-rounded warrior like her. Naturally this would also make it effective against weak but agile monsters like Scorprats, it wouldn’t stop them completely, but it would slow them down for a couple of minutes.

“That’s perfect,” Kyle replied giving her grin. “Fi could you go back and use the poison on the monsters following us?”

“Sure,” Fi nodded as she took to the air and flying back down the tunnel as fast as she could.

“So, we’ll be counting on you to remind us if we forget about any traps,” Hal chuckled looking at Amy. “Luckily now that we know that there are monsters following us you don’t have to worry about what’s behind us so much.”

“You say that,” Amy grumbled. “But I’m still worried about Zerah.”

“Don’t worry about her,” Kyle chuckled. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned since becoming a student at the Adventurer’s School it’s that the teachers are almost as powerful as my parents, Zerah included. Don’t think that she’s not capable in combat because she’s the one who teaches the healers, she teaches the classes for the students who use the Mana and Enchantment schools as well after all!”

“Heh!” Hal chuckled. He wasn’t in any of Zerah’s actual classes, but he had gone to couple of the lectures she had taken over the past few months as well as hearing a lot about her from Kyle. “Yeah, I’m going to second that!”

Meanwhile Zerah had been spending the past few minutes preparing a trap for whatever the Scorprat Lord had been running from and she was just now hearing it running down the tunnel towards her.

‘Took it long enough,” she grumbled, she had been using a string made of her own Mana to make a trap that should slow down all but the most powerful of monsters that could be found in this Dungeon. With a single gesture the string that she had woven over the entrance of the tunnel went taught creating a vicious web that would slice into the flesh of anything that ran into it.

The thing bellowed as it got closer and ran headlong into the strings which tore into its flesh, holding the massive beast back for all of a second before giving way as it roared in rage and pain.

“Oh?” Zerah grunted as she leapt back to avoid a swing from the beast’s claws. “A minotaur huh?”

Despite this monster bearing the name of the mythological beast from earth it was rather different from the descriptions of its namesake. In the legend of Theseus and the minotaur the monster was described as half man, half bull but the beast in front of Zerah was more part bull, part great ape, part demon with long claws at the end of its fingers and a mouth full of uneven fangs. The minotaur blinked short-sightedly as it sniffed the air, drool dripping from its mouth as it turned towards the gnome who sent a wave of needles flying at it that lodged themselves in its thick hide drawing a snarl from the nearly blind beast. Though a minotaur’s sense of sight was poor even the best rogues would have difficulty sneaking up on it due to its incredible senses of smell and hearing making it a very dangerous opponent for those who relied on stealth to avoid damage and launch surprise attacks.

Zerah leapt back as the beast swung its clawed hand at her, before stepping to the side as it followed up with a lunge that would’ve left her a smear on the Dungeon wall if it had connected. Zerah estimated that she was still at least 10 Levels higher than the minotaur but as it was a monster with high Strength and Constitution, and she was a mage-type she had to be careful not to allow it to get her into close combat as there was no way that she would be able to take more than one clean hit and even one hit would injure her badly enough that she wouldn’t be able to avoid another.

The minotaur was bleeding from a myriad of shallow cuts caused by the threads that it had torn through in its desire to attack but that didn’t seem to have done much to slow the surprisingly agile beast down and Zerah found herself desperately avoiding its vicious attacks while launching largely ineffective counterattacks of her own.

While Zerah was best against lone monsters due to the nature of her weapon she would also usually have at least one party member to keep the monsters’ attention the situation now was different and with the minotaur’s high defence her normal attacks using her needles barely penetrated a couple of inches into the beast’s flesh before stopping. Of course, it wasn’t like Zerah didn’t have other ways of dealing damage and as she dodged the minotaur’s attacks, she once again formed her mana into a string that threaded its way through the eyes of the needles sticking out of the massive monster.

“Take this!” Zerah shouted as she cast a high-level Enchantment spell that sent a massive surge along the thread of mana and into the needles causing the monster to scream in rage and pain and the smell of burnt meat to fill the air.

The monster fell to the floor twitching as Zerah bent over trying to catch her breath before conjuring a Mana Barrier just in time to catch a surprise attack from the downed minotaur. The Mana Barrier shattered under the attack allowing the minotaur’s claws to tear into Zerah’s right arm causing her to swear in pain and anger at herself for letting her guard down like that. Anyone who knew her back when she was an active Adventurer instead of a teacher would’ve been surprised that this had happened as she was known for being careful as befitted a healer but it would seem that the years of working as a teacher had made her soft.

“You little shit!” she shouted using her telekinetic abilities to bind the monster with the thread she had used to electrocute it as she stitched the wounds on her arm shut with a smaller needle and more mana thread to make sure there was no lasting damage before healing it completely with a spell.

As the minotaur struggled against the lightly glowing thread Zerah calmly checked her injury, this wasn’t her letting her guard down once more, she knew that the minotaur didn’t have enough leverage to break her mana threads with the way she had bound it. After checking her injury, she sent a needle into one of the minotaur’s eye sockets and snapped her fingers as it thrashed in pain causing the needle to burst into flames causing the minotaur to spasm once more before dying.

Zerah eyed the smoking corpse for a few seconds before turning towards the tunnel it had come from and launching several large blasts of magical energy at the rocks surrounding it causing the roof to collapse in on itself. It wouldn’t hold something like another minotaur for long if it really wanted to get through, but it might make any monsters trying to exit the Dungeon try a different route instead of this one, at least until the Dungeon repaired the damage.

“Well I suppose I’d better follow my students,” Zerah sighed. She knew that with Kyle in charge not only would they be fine to fight the monsters that had managed to slip past her but the crafty young man had probably set traps to slow down any pursuers which would unfortunately include her although it was unlikely that the traps that they had set themselves would have any real effect on someone as strong as her if one of the Dungeon’s traps had been set off that could be a different story, even on this floor. She shook her head in exasperation as she started down the tunnel to the entrance, while Kyle did have a lot of impulsive tendencies they only really came out when he was surprised and it was obvious that this had been something he had been working on recently as while he hadn’t perhaps handled the earlier situation as well as an experienced party leader might have but he had handled it better than any beginner adventurer could be expected to.

IN

Back down the tunnel Fi had returned after using her Shadow Bolt spell to break the vial that the paralytic poison had been from a safe distance to discover the party waiting for her in the area that they had fought against the first group of Scorprats.

“Alright, so the poison worked,” Fi reported as she landed on Kyle’s shoulders.

“Excellent,” Kyle replied. “Now I want all the empty potion bottles that you’ve been storing in your Inventory.”

“Uh,” Fi hesitated glancing at Sasha who nodded her agreement with Kyles’ request. “Alright, but why?”

“Another trap,” Kyle replied absently as though he was thinking about something else. “Sasha how many doses of poison do you have left?”

“About 12,” Sasha replied her eyes widening as she realised where Kyle was going with this train of thought. “You want to poison that broken glass as well?”

“Yes,” Kyle nodded. “This is just the first part of the main ambush I’m planning; do you remember the trap just outside this room?”

“The giant blade that nearly took me out at the ankles?” Hal asked. “Yeah I remember it.”

The others felt a chill run down their backs at Hal’s words, that had indeed been a close shave due to the trap being hidden in a way that made it difficult even for Amy to detect without it being activated in fact it was so well hidden that Kyle suspected that the other traps were set up the way they were to trick someone that either lacked a trap detection Skill or had s low level in a trap detection Skill, making it a truly vicious trap that maimed its victim instead of killing them outright. This trap’s existence also seemed to be why the Scorprats had chosen this area to hunt in as anyone who was injured by the trap would likely be in no shape to fight. In fact, now that they thought about it the existence of trap that dangerous on the first floor of a low-ranked Dungeon should’ve been a dead giveaway that something was wrong.

“Well I’m planning on setting that trap off when the first Scorprats come out of the room,” Kyle said. “They’re already panicked and if we poison some of them as well, we should be able to decrease their numbers significantly before we even have to fight them.”

“Alright, but why aren’t we just getting Amy to make stone spikes to use for the trap instead?” Fi asked.

They only had a few potion bottles that would be effective for this sort of inventive thinking as using a potion bottle that had contained a healing potion or antidote wouldn’t work for obvious reasons.

“Oh, we’ll be doing that as well, but it’ll be harder for the Scorprats to notice the glass in the dark which should make it more effective,” Kyle replied glancing at the small glowing orb of magical energy floating nearby.

“Well if Sasha’s ok with it,” Fi sighed bringing the two empty bottles that used to contain poison and one full bottle of poison out of her Inventory. “Are just these going to be enough though?”

“No, bring out another poison bottle, we’ll make sure that any injuries that we inflict on the Scorprats following us will be poisoned by overdoing it a little, even if it means that the chances of us being poisoned because of this,” Kyle said after thinking about it for a couple of seconds and the others nodded in agreement, Sasha still had antidotes.

The group quickly went about smashing the bottles and spreading the razor-sharp shards around the floor as Sasha poured the contents of the two bottles of poison over them and smashing the remains when she emptied them, this was followed by Amy summoning some stone spikes out of the ground and retreating down the tunnel.

“Thanks for letting us use the potion bottles Sasha, I know those are expensive,” Kyle said once they had reached a point just past the trap that they were planning to spring, from what Fi ad told him the Scorprats following them weren’t that far off so they started readying for combat.

“It’s fine, getting out of here safely is more important than a couple of bottles,” Sasha replied as she checked her gear. “Besides, the poison glands we’ve already managed to harvest from the Scorprats that we killed earlier will pretty much make up for the cost of the bottles by themselves and besides that I Levelled Up earlier which more than makes up for anything else.”

“That’s true,” Hal agreed, and Amy also nodded at Sasha’s words. “Besides if Fi’s right about the number of monsters following us then we need to have as many advantages as possible since Zerah’s not here to bail us out if something goes wrong.”

According to Fi there was a group of between 10 and 15 Scorprats following them with Levels ranging from 3 to 6 meaning that not only were they outnumbered but out levelled which was why she hadn’t argued when Kyle was outlining his plan to ambush them. If things went well they should be able to take out at least 5 of them with the combination of the poison and the trap which would make the fight close enough to fair that they should be either to hold them off until Zerah caught up or defeat them by themselves though considering that even the lowest Level monster that Fi had seen was a higher Level than them that would be difficult.

For a final preparation Amy summoned a pair of low walls made of earth on either side of Hal, they wouldn’t hold back any monsters that really wanted to get over them, but it would slow them down allowing the other three to do something about them.

“Here they come,” Amy said as she started to sense the monsters following them and soon the others could hear the pained shrieks echoing down the tunnel as the monsters encountered the first part of the trap.

Reaching out with his mind Kyle found the pressure plate that would spring the trap, sending a spring-loaded blade into the monsters that were following them, as these monsters lived in the dungeon it was unlikely that they would spring the trap themselves but thankfully this sort of thing was precisely what his telekinetic abilities were for, Amy could’ve also done it but he had told her to recover as much Mana as she could while they were waiting and she was still meditating.

As the first of the monsters staggered into the light provided by Amy’s Mage Light Kyle pressed down on the pressure plate and all hell broke loose.