Chapter 18

A Trap Sprung

Climbing down the rope, Jay soon reached the bottom of the shaft and looked up. Seeing the rope's silvery gleam against the now darkened sky, he tried using the Magic Rope Spell and forced the rope to coil in on itself. As soon as the rope was completely taught, his body was lifted from the ground and his Mana depleted rapidly, but now he was sure he could use the Magic Rope Spell to manipulate the rope to lift his own body, if only for a few seconds.

Releasing the Magic Rope Spell, Jay activated his Nightsight Spell and everything grew bright enough for him to make out things in his vicinity clearly. Though everything around him was without color and could only be seen as either darker or lighter gray, it was enough for him to feel he didn't need any extra light. The Nightsight Spell was truly useful in dungeons and other dark places.

He sat down and brought out the barrel filled with oil, a few torches and the gatherer's knife. The torches were all exactly alike, as if someone had made them with a machine. The top five centimeters bulged out slightly and was a darker shade of brown than the rest of the torch. The bulging part was where the torches burned, but since they could burn for such a long time Jay had figured that there was some sort of fuel inside the torches' handles that made it possible for them to burn for a longer period of time.

The gatherer's knife's whitish yellow blade shone slightly in the darkness as Jay fed it some Mana. He slid the ephemeral blade through the top of the torch, cutting it off without any resistance and looked inside the torch handle. And as he had predicted, inside the handle was a black waxy material, it looked a lot like black bee's wax. It was fortuitous that his guess had been correct, as it would increase the likelihood of success. Cutting away thin slivers of the handle and the waxy material inside, Jay put the pieces of torch-fuel inside the barrel filled with oil. He was going to give the Black Ooze a fiery first attack with this large barrel and needed it to pack as big of a punch as possible.

While filling the barrel with pieces of torch-fuel Jay remembered something, and directly contacted Bluth, hoping to gain back some control from the contract they had earlier signed. “Hey Bluth. I need some Mana Potions, could you come get me 20 or so?”

“What?” Bluth asked. “Why didn't you buy them from me earlier?”

“To be honest, I forgot,” Jay feigned hopelessness in an attempt to make Bluth help him once more. “You remember the hole in the Magician's Guild you helped me up from? I'm there right now, just bring me the Mana Potions, okay?”

“Why should I do that?” Bluth asked. “It's not as if we agreed on me getting you consumables.”

“Ah...” Jay said, stalling for time to think. “...That's just semantics. Consumables are equipment too. Come on, I just need a few potions, how difficult would it be for you to get those for me?”

“I'm busy too you know,” Bluth said. “I'm currently planning out a trading caravan route to transport crafting metals from this town to a city.”

“Well,” Jay said, knowing of a way to get Bluth to do as Jay wanted. “If you can't help me, that's fine. I'll just refuse to sell anything to you after I've shown it to you, or maybe I should take a slightly higher price than what you offer every time? There are many loopholes in our contract I can use to make it pretty much invalid, except having to give you the Map-pad data, you know.”

“You...” Bluth sounded speechless at Jay's shamelessness. “Fine, I'll help you. I'll be there as soon as possible.”

“Good,” Jay couldn't help but smirk. He knew he could use that semi-blackmailing tactic against Bluth since Bluth wanted to have a good relationship with him. And Jay also felt it was best they cooperate, but there was no reason to be on the worse end of their deal. “I'll be waiting then.”

“What is it you're doing down there anyway?” Bluth said. “I didn't think you would go back to a place where you were earlier trapped. Is there some sort of treasure there? Or a Boss?” Bluth suddenly stopped talking as if coming to a realization. “It's a Boss isn't it. Hey, let's kill it together?”

“You're right,” Jay said, not very happy about being figured out. “But I can't agree to kill it with you. I was gearing up for this confrontation, and I can't have anyone else ruin my plans. I need to get something worthwhile from the Boss and I can't go around sharing my loot just because you're willing to help. I want to try and kill it myself. And anyway, it's probably low level compared to you, and it's a Slime-boss. You wouldn't be of much help anyway since I figure you use physical attacks? It doesn't really take damage from physical attacks. I'll tell you where the Boss is if I fail to kill it and you can have a try at it.”

“Fine,” Bluth sounded a bit disgruntled. “I could have brought a Magician friend though. It would be much easier to kill it that way.”

“Yeah, it probably isn't very difficult to kill it for those at your Level, but that also means you wouldn't get as great a reward as me. I can't believe the Boss gives more than a few thousand Experience Points. The Quest it involves only gives 10000 Experience.”

“Is that so? True enough, 10k Experience isn't much,” Bluth said. “But there might be some good loot from it. Ah, you'll have to show it to me afterwards anyway. Good.”

“Yeah, I'll show you what I got first, so don't worry.”

They broke off contact after that and Jay went back to his preparations. When the barrel was filled with slices of torch-fuel he put the cork back in the hole and lifted the barrel, shaking it around in the air to disperse the lamp oil, blending it with the torch-fuel, then brought down the barrel to the floor again and took out a few meters of ragged cloth. He opened the barrel's tap again and pushed the cloth inside until only a little bit of it was protruding outside, then pulled the now oil-soaked cloth outside the barrel again. The barrel was finished. Now he only had to place it as close to the Black Ooze as possible.

Putting away everything in his Inventory, Jay once more crawled into the ventilation shaft that went towards the Black Ooze. When he passed the small crack in the wall he noticed it had slightly widened, and beyond the crack there was nothing but darkness. He couldn't see the green glowing lights or the large snake. Could it have gone somewhere else after I took the ring? He thought to himself.

Maybe, Claudine answered. If it was a Guardian Beast compelled to guard the ring, it might try to find where the ring went.

Doesn't that mean that I now have a humongous snake trying to find me? Jay asked, startled about this new information. How could he have known that? Why didn't you tell me this earlier Claudine?

You never asked, Claudine answered with a tone that said she thought that answer was too obvious.

Jay couldn't even continue to talk to Claudine. He didn't know how to get her to be more helpful.

Continuing down the ventilation shaft he soon was about a meter away from the Black Ooze's lair. Slowly, without making any noise, Jay took out the barrel of oil from his Inventory and placed it on its side so it would roll down the ventilation shaft and into the lair. He then took the oil-soaked rag and pressed it into the gap between the barrel and stone floor, forcing the barrel to stay in place by laying a small mound of oil-soaked cloth in front of it. Now he only needed to set it on fire and it would roll down and hopefully break when landing inside the Black Ooze's lair, creating a large conflagration. If this didn't work he had a back-up plan, but his back-up didn't have even half the possibility of success as his complete plan.

When he was done with positioning the barrel at its right place, Jay crawled backwards up the ventilation shaft until he was back where the ventilation shaft was vertical. He took out his rope from his Inventory, using Magic Rope to stiffen and control it, sending it up the shaft, and with some effort he made the rope coil itself around the grate's metallic hinges, making a knot of sorts. Then he used the same method as he had used earlier to pull himself up, but forced a lot more Mana into the rope at a rapid pace, making the rope coil in on itself and pulling Jay up the shaft in less than two seconds. This action spent more than half of Jay's total Mana, but he didn't mind. It only showed how useful it was to have more Mana. And Jay was finally convinced to use almost all his available Stat-points to increase his Wisdom.

Without any hesitation he opened his Status Window and increased his Wisdom by 41, giving him a total of 100. With his increases from equipment and his stats he now had 100 Wisdom and 49 Intelligence, which gave him a total of 3490 Mana with a Mana Regeneration of 4% per minute, more than double what he had earlier. It was a significant increase in power from what he had earlier, and with the Skill 'Forceful Mana Regeneration' he had gotten from the Minor Absorption Training Pendant he had another 1% Mana Regeneration per minute for one hour. He was truly ready and finally done with all his preparations.

“Bluth, are you here soon?” Jay asked Bluth through a mental message.

“Yeah, soon there, a few minutes at most.”

“Okay, I'll wait here then,” Jay said, sitting down and Meditating to replenish his Mana quicker. He was also very close to leveling the Skill to level 16, but the Skill percentage was stuck at 99%, which made Jay believe that something special might happen when he got to Skill Level 16. The only problem was that the Skill Level percentage had been stuck at 99% for a little while from what he could figure out.

Focusing his all on Meditating, Jay felt the world darken around him, his head slowly lowered and without him knowing his body slumped forward. And he only realized that he had fallen to the ground when his face planted itself in the soft earth. He rolled around, lying on his back looking up at the dark sky; stars had begun to show themselves, and at the horizon was a small green moon. This reality was more beautiful every time he actually took the time to take a breath and look at it, but it was also more cruel and difficult to live in from what he had experienced. But now he felt that everything was going his way and after he had killed the Black Ooze he would try to go outside the town and explore some of the mountain forests. He looked forward to the future. It felt great.

“Hey,” Bluth's voice came from behind Jay. “Here's the Mana Potions.” A thin belt with twenty small bottles attached to it soared through the air and hit Jay in the face. “You don't need to pay for these. Let's just call it a gift. But the string attached to this gift is that you won't try to blackmail me again. It isn't really fair. And I have things I need to do this week. I'm close to having gathered 3000 kilogram of expensive crafting metals that I need to transport to a Dwarven stronghold city on the other side of the mountain.”

“Thanks,” Jay was delighted at this turn of events. Jay had proved that he was calculating too; Bluth wasn't the only one that could make others work for him, and Jay was pleased to have shown that to Bluth. This way their relationship would be a lot smoother and with a more mutual respect. A partnership instead of Jay working for Bluth, which was a great step in the right direction. Jay wanted to have a Merchant to easily trade with and this way he had gotten one.

Standing up, Jay stretched out his hand to Bluth. “Let's shake on it. You treat me well, and I'll treat you well. Let's help each other as much as we can. Good enough?”

Bluth stretched out his hand and smiled at Jay. “Fine. You're smarter than I thought, but I also don't want unwilling workers, so it's all good. Send me an info-dump about the things you find when you've killed the Boss, okay?”

“An info-dump?” Jay had never heard of such a function. “How do I do that?”

“If you open your friend's list and drag my icon onto a piece of equipment or other item the information about it will be sent to me. It gives me a holographic image of the item which I can use Identify on and see what the thing is in more detail. Quite an ingenious design. And easy to use.”

“That's great. I wasn't looking forward to having to come see you every time I found something. That would limit where I could go.”

Bluth laughed at Jay. “You actually thought you had to meet me and show every item to me? And you still agreed to our deal? Such a thing wouldn't be worth it for me. It would take to much time.”

“Yeah, but I had no real choice. I needed things you had and didn't want to spend money. I need all the money I can get to buy Spells from the Magician's Guild. They are very expensive, and I don't think I could trade items with them for their Spells.”

“Well, then we both gained,” Bluth said. “I need to go now. See you later.” Bluth walked away after saying that, not looking back.

“Sure, bye,” Jay answered, moving away in another direction as soon as Bluth had gone a few steps.

Jay soon found one of the openings down into the sewer that he had earlier jotted down on his make-shift map and went down into the sewers.

The two upper floors were easy for him to move through now, he didn't take his time to find any creatures to kill and just ran through anything that would take time to kill. Once in a while he shot a Magic Bullet or two, killing creatures, but the Experience Points he got from them were not worth the time anymore. Soon, he had gone down the stairs to the third floor.

On the third floor there were nothing special, everywhere he went he encountered no creatures whatsoever. The Slimes didn't appear as they had before. Had he killed them all? Jay didn't know, but felt it was worth his time to look around anyway. If there were Green Slimes around when he tried to kill the Black Ooze it would hinder his plan.

After walking through the third floor of the sewers for about an hour he only found two Green Slimes on his way to the Black Ooze's lair. It truly seemed like the Slimes that were here earlier had all been killed by him. Jay had hoped he would get another harvest of Mana Crystals from the Green Slimes when he went down here, but he didn't have that much luck.

When he arrived at the corridor where the large crack in the wall lead into the Black Ooze's lair, Jay began the second part of his plan. He took out ceramic bottles from his Inventory, pushed down a piece of cloth in their bottlenecks and placed them on the floor every few steps. He couldn't carry them all while backing away from the Black Ooze, so he had no other choice but to leave a trail of bottles standing on the floor.

A few meters away from the Black Ooze's lair he activated his 'Null Presence: Scent', breathing out a reddish brown smoke that curled around his body; he then slid against the wall until he could look into the lair. A quick peak showed that the large Black Ooze was inside, laying in its indentation on the floor as it had been earlier, but it didn't gurgle as loudly as before, almost as if it was still recuperating from its earlier injuries. As he looked at the Black Ooze he got the Fear Status Effect, making his legs grow weak and his body sluggish. But Jay knew of this and wasn't as alarmed as he had earlier been, he could only to endure.

However much it seemed like the Black Ooze was dormant, Jay was still extremely cautious. This was the first difficult part of his plan. He had to go to the other side of the crack without being noticed.

With a quick leap and a roll he swiftly traversed the two meter opening and came to the other side of the crack, and found to his delight that the Black Ooze still didn't make any sudden movements. It seemed his 'Null Presence: Scent' was a lot more useful than he had thought. Or maybe he was just lucky. He didn't really know, and didn't care. All that was important was that he could now complete his fire-trap.

Pulling out fifteen torches from his Inventory, Jay placed them on the floor in a row and poured lamp-oil all around the torches. This was to create a wall of fire and make the Black Ooze go in the direction Jay had planned out. And now all his preparations was done.

He once more looked into the Black Ooze's lair, closed his right eye and used Scope Sight, increasing his ability to see. He looked at the ventilation shaft opening and barely saw the ragged cloth. A thin tendril of oil was flowing down the ventilation shaft from the cloth. It was perfect.

Jay took a deep breath, trying to calm himself, and sprung into action. He used his Mana Manipulation to send out a tendril of Mana and pulled on the cloth, loosening the barrel of oil. At the same time he brought out three match-sticks and sent them flying at the tendril of oil; they all struck the rough stone and flared up, lighting the oil on fire. The fire spread quickly, engulfing the barrel, and Jay pulled out all of the now burning cloth, giving the barrel freedom to roll down.

He quickly ran to the other side of the crack in the wall again, taking up a bottle of oil from the ground. He then struck a match on the wall and lit two torches and tossed one of the torches to the other side of the crack where the corridor continued. As the torch struck the row of torches on the other side a wall of flames sprung up in that part of the corridor.

Jay felt the heat from where he stood, backing away from it. He then heard a booming noise, and a flash of flames rushed out from the large crack in the wall. He only barely escaped the fire. He activated the Forceful Mana Regeneration Skill and backed away slowly.

From within the Black Ooze's lair a sloshing gurgling sounds was slowly turned into the hissing of steam and Jay saw dark black smoke run up against the ceiling from within the Black Ooze's lair. He got an idea from this and thrust up his torch into the black smoke, hoping it was as flammable as the Black Ooze had been earlier in its gaseous form, but to Jay's surprise the torch was instantly snuffed out and the torch itself started melting from the black smoke.

Hey, what's this now? Jay thought to himself. Hadn't the Black Ooze's smoke been flammable earlier? He quickly tossed the melting torch to the ground and walked backwards another few steps, then lit a new torch. He looked at the black smoke and used Observe, but got no information whatsoever. Is that smoke not part of the Black Ooze?

To Jay's surprise and annoyance, Claudine didn't answer this most crucial question. He really needed to understand how she worked.

While Jay was contemplating this new development that he hadn't anticipated, a fierce gust of putrid air assailed him. And from the large crack the Black Ooze was coming out with strings of red numbers floating up indicating that it was constantly taking damage and a slower string of green numbers showing it was regenerating itself. It was steaming with black gas that slowly rose to the ceiling, advancing towards Jay. It seemed the Black Ooze had more attacks than Jay had seen earlier.

But Jay wasn't discouraged, he knew that he had done a lot of damage with that exploding barrel and now he only had to chip away at the Black Ooze until it died. He backed away a bit quicker until he came to another bottle of oil. Now with two bottles in hand he was going to start his assault.

He lit the rag on fire on one of the bottles and threw it at the Black Ooze that was slowly coming towards him. The bottle flew through the air, slowly rolling around in the air, and when Jay saw that the rag was below the flask Jay flipped a metal pin into the air and charged it with a small amount of Mana, instantly shooting it, hitting the bottle of oil, shattering the bottle and a large splash of flames flew at the Black Ooze.

The Black Ooze didn't seem to have any intelligence, and it just slid into the fire coming at it. Its only reaction was to retract the tendrils it had sent out to investigate its surroundings. It continued sliding towards Jay.

Jay continued backing away. His plan was working. From the red numbers that was streaming up from the Black Ooze Jay could see that he was doing a lot more damage than it could heal. He threw another bottle of oil after lighting it and once again shot a metal pin at it when it was in the right position, shattering the bottle and creating another large swath of flames that struck the Black Ooze. A shrieking hiss came from the Black Ooze and it increased its speed, billowing black gas that rose to the ceiling.

Jay looked up and saw that the black smoke was slowly increasing in volume and scope, it was already almost overtaking him. That made Jay a bit fearful, and he increased his speed, backing away a bit quicker, tossing the bottles of oil at the Black Ooze from a bit further away. After he had tossed the twentieth bottle the Black Ooze sent out a hair-raising shriek and a hissing that made Jay want to run away.