I Was a Sword When I Reincarnated (Web Novel)
chapter-159

159 . Traps Suck

『Alright, you ready to move on?』

「Nn . 」

Today was our fifth day in Ulmutt . We’d already finished all our business in the dungeon’s simpler subsections, and hence, we’d started digging a bit deeper .

We were currently hunting magic beasts around where the 14th floor was located . We could’ve gone a bit deeper given the fact that we had to handle Aurel’s request and all that, but we decided to take it slow in order to avoid injury .

Speaking of which, Fran was currently in the middle of slowly disarming a trap .

The 14th floor was one of the dungeon’s lower floors, and the traps had been modified to match . They were much more complex than the ones we’d encountered earlier . They were made much nastier too .

What I mean by that is that the traps themselves were full of well, traps . For example, there was a trap composed of a bunch of wires . You’d normally assume that it’d activate if you stepped on something, and that you were supposed to disarm the trap by cutting its wires . However, that one was instead made so that it’d only trigger if you tried messing with it . Another example would be a trap that fired an arrow that activated another trap .

Some traps had also started causing teleportation or instant death upon activation . We also started hitting areas that’d seal off our ability to teleport or use Presence Detection — not that it mattered to me seeing as I had the Unsealable skill .

I mean, I knew that the Guildmaster’s managed to get a few negotiations done and all, but this was still technically a dungeon . It wasn’t some sort of training ground for adventurers . It was the real deal, a place in which one wrong step could lead to death .

「Nn… Done . 」

『Really? Lemme see . 』

Yup, looks like she disarmed that one perfectly .

Many of the Magic Beasts that thrived in the dungeon’s lower levels had the Trap Detection, Trap Disarm, and Trap Creation skills . The magic beasts themselves weren’t actually all that strong, but they could make for a deadly force when when working in conjunction with the dungeon’s traps . And that, to me, honestly seemed rather logical seeing as how the dungeon itself was pretty much crammed full of traps .

Absorbing said magic beasts’ magic stones meant a fair increase in the respective skills’ levels . Trap Detection had leveled to 7, Trap Disarm to 4, and Trap Creation to 3 .

The dungeon’s traps served to provide us with a bunch of practice too . The combination of the skill and practice had led Fran to become much more skillful in the art of disarming traps . The difference between her now and her when she tried disarming her first trap was as clear as the difference between night and day .

Two of the magics we’d obtained from Zerais’ golems, Ice/Snow Magic and Lava Magic, turned out to be rather useful when it came to their applications in disarming traps .

Moonlight Magic, on the other hand, had been stuck sitting on the backburner . The only two spells we had at the moment were Moonphase and Night Vision . The former would provide us buffs at night . The latter would allow us to temporarily see in the dark . Neither was all that useful; we probably wouldn’t be able to get any value out of Moonlight Magic until it leveled itself up a bit .

Ice/Snow Magic allowed us to freeze traps and hamper them from activating . In fact, a single activation of the magic would actually even flat out disarm explosion-type traps altogether .

Lava Magic was actually even more useful than Ice/Snow Magic . We could use it to weld a trap’s subsection and just flat out stop it from activating .

Both Magics had quite the potential for practical use even outside of battle-type situations .

That said though, Fran was still far from being able to disarm every single trap every single time .

「Oops . 」

『Short Jump!』

「Whimper!」

Holy crap that was close . We were almost hit by a series of super high speed bullets made of water despite the fact that we’d teleported away . The area of effect was insane . We probably would’ve gotten seriously injured had we not escaped . The bullets were powerful enough to just flat out kill you should they hit your head or some other vital .

「Sorry . 」

『Looks like you’re still a bit shy of being able to disarm the traps here perfectly . 』

「Nn . 」

「Woof . 」

Oh well, can’t really be helped . That trap was the kind that wouldn’t let you go any further unless you did something about it .

Aurel’s request aside, we’d set out to do four other things .

The first was to level up . The second was to finish all the quests required for us to rank up . The third was to git gud and learn how to use all our current skills . The fourth and final was to get our hands on a skill that’d prevent us from being susceptible to skills that’d mess with our minds .

To be more specific, we were looking for a skill that’d prevent us from being affected by stuff like Coerced Camaraderie and Induced Thought .

Skills like those two only guided our thoughts, and didn’t provide us with any obvious indicators like status conditions, hence why they were especially troublesome to deal with .

We ultimately managed to discover that there actually was a monster with the skill we were looking for here in Ulmutt’s eastern dungeon, but it was one that only resided in the dungeon’s deepest depths .

Dias and Solas both claimed that their skills simply didn’t work on said monster .

Hence, we were currently giving ourselves a bit of practice while advancing towards our goal: the area at and beyond the dungeon’s 18th floor . Getting there would allow us to finish Aurel’s request too . It was a veritable two birds one stone type situation .

Our pace wasn’t all that bad despite us actively looking for practice . We’d managed to make our way down to the dungeon’s 14th floor after just 2 days worth of adventuring .

Dimensional Storage made it so that we didn’t really have to worry too much about meals, baths, or bedding . More importantly, both Fran and Urushi still looked fairly motivated . In fact, the stronger enemies and more difficult traps were only getting the two even more pumped up .

Several large magic beasts had been standing in the 14th floor’s first notable room .

「Growllll . 」

「Master . High Ogres . 」

『I guess that means this room won’t have any traps in it then . 』

High Ogres, unlike the dungeon’s other monsters, lacked the ability to deal with traps . None were placed in the rooms in which they were placed in order to avoid the possibility of them killing themselves .

They compensated for that weakness through pure power . They generally considered strong enough to give a D ranked adventurers a fairly hard time .

We could just flat out take them head on though, so to us, their spawn zones were more or less safe because they lacked traps .

『Here we go!』

「Nn . 」

「Grrrrrrr!」

Our strategy was to wipe them all out in one go with a surprise attack . Fighting them for an extended amount of time was a bad idea, seeing as how other magic beasts could come back them up .

Urushi immediately leapt towards one of the high ogres and readied himself to bite it .

「Growl!」

A barrage of arrows flew straight towards us the moment he tried to take action .

『Holy shit! Air Shield!』

「Ruff?」

I repelled the projectiles with a spell as Urushi panicked and dove straight back into the shadows .

Apparently the room actually did have traps inside of it . I looked towards the high ogres only to find that the arrows had simply bounced off their skin .

Ahhh, I see . Traps like this can work with them because they can’t damage the High Ogres at all . That said, they could prove rather lethal if they hit us .

Man, these traps just keep getting nastier .

『Alright, you know what, let’s just quickly wipe them out . Inferno Burst!』

「Grooowl!」

The flame spell I used turned one of the High Ogres into a lump of coal as Urushi impaled another with a spear constructed of pure darkness .

『Well, so much for High Ogre zones being safe zones…』

「Bring it on . 」

Well, I guess at least Fran’s motivated, so there’s that .

『Let’s try being extra careful just in case . It looks like the traps are going to be getting even nastier from here on out . 』

「Nn . 」

『You be careful too, Urushi . We’ll need to avoid stuff like what just happened . 』

「Whimper…」

We discovered a type of trap we’d never seen before shortly after concluding that we’d do best to be a bit more prudent .

「Weird thread here . 」

『Good job catching that . I only barely noticed it myself . 』

「Trap?」

The thread Fran and I saw looked identical to the infrared sensors you’d normally see in movies and whatnot . The fact that it was visible meant that it was likely linked to some sort of magic, but I couldn’t tell what would come out of popping it .

「Want to try activating?」

『Sounds like a plan . It’d be a good idea for us to know what happens when you pop it . You know, just for future reference . 』

We triggered the trap with one of my doppelgangers after moving a fair ways back .

I heard a bit of an odd rumbling sound the moment my doppelganger stepped into one of the infrared-like lines .

「Master . Walls moving . 」

『What?』

It was exactly as Fran described . The walls at the passage’s rear slid along the floor and rearranged themselves . The former straight passageway now ended in a forced right turn .

I see, I see . The trap was on a rather large scale, and honestly, I had no idea how we were supposed to go about disarming . Just looking at it didn’t really provide us many clues; we more or less had no choice but to just give it a shot .

The moment I thought that was the moment the walls started to move again .

「Master?」

『Don’t look at me . My Doppelganger’s already gone . Was it maybe cause of Urushi?』

「Woof woof!」

Urushi frantically shook his head . I guess that means it wasn’t him either . So… who triggered it then? I mean, someone had to, the walls were moving .

My question was answered as the left wall vanished and opened up a passage that revealed a single High Ogre .

『Oh! I get it now! It was the High Ogre that popped the trap!』

It seemed that these traps were the kind that’d trigger regardless of how careful we were . That is, the High Ogres would pretty much just keep setting them off .

Huh, this looks pretty bad . You wouldn’t be able to use a map here even if you had one . The traps would move around, so you’d never really be able to know what was coming at you next .

「Graaahhhhh!」

The ogre caught sight of us as we were thinking about the dungeon’s traps .

『Alright, you know what, let’s just get rid of that first, and then think . 』

Man, this dungeon sure is one hell of a pain in the ass to deal with .