To my credit, I almost made it.
My feet caught on the bottom of the hole, flipping me forward onto the stone floor. I hit the ground hard, the jolt of pain forcing me to drop my sword. My feet were stuck inside the slime; immobile, but fortunately not yet burning.
My shield sigil had activated, and it was repelling the acidic goop, but the slime was looming over me and about ready to crash down and crush me to a pulp.
A blur of movement. First from a humanoid figure in front of me, then the slime behind me.
I felt a tug on my feet as the slime wrenched backward, and then I was free.
I rolled over to find the slime flying backward, as if shoved by a giant hand, and then exploding when it hit the rear wall of the chamber.
Two more green gems fell to the floor as remaining slime goop vanished.
And, weirdly, a pickaxe also appeared amongst the slime’s remains.
Derek was standing over me, grinning broadly. He reached down to offer me a hand, which I grudgingly accepted.
“Not a bad jump there. It was a good reflex, even if it didn’t quite work. You kids did good for your first fight in here.”
I winced. “Thanks, I guess.”
He sounded genuine enough, but I couldn’t help but assume he was probably being snide about the whole thing. Maybe I was just too biased in my assumptions about his motives, though.
I reached down and picked up my sword, sheathing it and pointing at the pickaxe. “That’s a little weird.”
“Oh, that?” Derek walked over and picked up the pickaxe. “It’s for breaking stone.”
I sighed. “I know what a pickaxe is. I just was surprised to see one falling out of a slime?”
He laughed. “The tower provides. If there’s a need for a specific tool to solve a certain puzzle, or if there’s a secret passage nearby that a tool could help us find, you’ll find that tool somewhere. In this case, we’ll probably find a hollow wall—”
“Here.” Vera tapped a wall on the eastern side of the room. “Thinner than the ones in the other room and no mechanism on the other side.”
Derek turned to Vera. “Nice! I’d usually have to tap on every wall to hear what sounds hollow. Believe me, that’s a pain. You’re going to be very useful.”
He walked over to the wall, ignoring the green gems — and, by my logic, tacitly giving me permission to take them immediately.
I picked up the gems, and then handed them to Sera. “You did the heavy lifting on the big one. You should probably take these.”
She waved a hand. “Nah, aren’t those mana crystals? I can’t use them like you can.”
I shrugged. “They’re worth money, though.”
“I’m sure I’ll find something else in here I can actually use. You should hold onto those for an emergency.”
I nodded at the logic, tucking them away with the other one. Then, after thinking for a second, I pulled one back out. “Vera, can you check what these do?”
She accepted the gemstone. “Life mana crystal, class 3.”
I whistled appreciatively. I’d never owned a crystal of that level of quality before. I took out the other two. “They the same?”
“Yep.”
Nice.
Derek slammed the pickaxe into the wall Vera had indicated. A chunk of stone fell away, leaving a sizable enough gap to see that there was a passageway on the other side. “I’ll clear this. Check the other door real quick, though. Secret passages are usually better, but it might lead to something we don’t want, like the stairs up.”
Professor Orden led the way to the other door, opening it.
I caught the briefest glimpse of purplish scales before Orden slammed the door back shut, immediately tracing a series of runes over the wood with her finger. As she moved her hand, a line of mana burned the runes into the door. When she had finished, a glowing barrier manifested over the wood.
“Was that...?” Sera asked.
Orden stepped away from the door. “Mizuchi. I’ve never heard of her being this close to the tower entrance. That is not a good sign.”
I scratched my chin. “Any chance she’s there to guard the stairs down, and has orders to let us through? Maybe Katashi is doing us a favor?”
“Extremely unlikely,” Derek called in between swings of the pickaxe. “It’s more likely she’s a sign that we’re not supposed to go that direction. Even I wouldn’t take the risk of tangling with someone like her by myself. I don’t think she’s ever even been injured.”
Given what I’d seen from her fight with the Soaring Wings, I’d call that likely.
“We can explore that route if all others are exhausted,” Orden decided. “In the meantime, let’s wait and see where Derek’s passage leads.”
It didn’t take Derek much longer to clear the way. Even without his obviously enhanced strength, the stone in that section didn’t seem particularly solid. I picked up a small rock and put it in my pouch. It felt far lighter than it looked, and I wanted to figure out what it was made of at some point. I thought about asking Vera, but it didn’t seem sufficiently relevant to the situation.
Derek led the way down the thin hallway that he’d cleared the way into. After stepping a few feet in, he held up a hand to stop us from advancing further. “I’m going to open up the next door. Step back out of the hallway in case anything happens.”
“Lemme check for traps first,” Vera offered. Most of us backed out of the hallway, but Vera stepped in deeper, shouldering her way past Derek. I couldn’t see her, but I heard her say, “Door is unlocked. I don’t detect any traps, but I wouldn’t be able to tell if it’s triggered by something too far away, like on the other side of the room.”
“Should be good enough. I can take a hit or two, anyway — but thanks. You really are very helpful.” Vera slipped out of the hallway with the rest of us, then Derek opened the door.
No traps. Or at least nothing that made Derek explode outright.
Derek stepped into the room. I saw him take a deep breath, mumble something, and then wave for us to follow.