Arcane Arctic 3 by Peter North

Author:Peter North [North, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Adventure, Fiction
ISBN: 9781990306310
Publisher: anonymous
Published: 2024-10-21T00:00:00+00:00

17

Games in the Laboratory

With the Rattler Run under their belts, the next Challenge Rooms in the catacombs proved to be much less of a challenge, partly because they were learning how the puzzle rooms were designed and partly because they were gaining levels so quickly.

They traversed a room with a river of sludgy water which they had to cross by hopping over lily pads that occasionally turned into carnivorous plant monsters, another with clockwork monkeys that dropped exploding bananas on their heads as they dodged enormous, spiked balls rolling down a narrow hallway, and one that looked like an oversized broom closet, but which was boobytrapped with more mimics.

But the average level of the enemies in the puzzle rooms wasn’t increasing, and after five of them—including two that had no enemies at all—they were getting less experience than before. Lyra and Molly had evened out, both achieving Level 18, while Jay had caught up to Dahia at Level 20.

Strangely, while they continued to increase their base stats and attribute points, they had stopped getting new skills. Though Lyra and Molly each got an upgrade to existing skills once they reached level 20 in Agility and Strength respectively, and Dahlia when she reached level 20 in Intelligence. Jay, since he was attempting to keep his attributes as even as possible, hadn’t reached that next benchmark yet.

He was beginning to wonder if it was time to sacrifice a couple of skills to the Dark Horse spell book after all…

Despite Molly’s accusations that Dahlia’s critique of his leadership skills had come from a place of avoidance, Jay had to admit that having the girls take the lead in the puzzle rooms had given them more confidence in their own abilities and forced each of them to think more deeply about the skills of their teammates. They were working more smoothly as a result, and they were proud of themselves for coming up with some creative solutions to the puzzles.

Molly held the mouths of the carnivorous plants open so that it was safe for the others to pass and then Dahlia had used Siphon Life to weaken the monsters enough that they couldn’t injure the Barbarian once she let them go. Dahlia used her Veil of Shadows to obscure the group from the monkey’s view, while Molly had used her Colossus form to halt the rolling spike balls. Lyra destroyed the mimics with a relentless volley of fire arrows after Molly’s Ghost Weasels ran through the storeroom and triggered them to reveal their hiding places.

While Jay might have chosen to do things differently in each scenario, probably taking a more central role himself, he was happy to take a back seat in the name of progress and team growth.

And the result was that, as Dahlia had suggested, he was much more confident in the girl’s ability to handle themselves. So, he probably could afford to sacrifice a few of his skills. The trouble was, he still couldn’t decide which ones to get rid of.

He

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