The middle tunnel was eerily silent as Ruth, Rave, and the other participants ventured deeper.
The walls were lined with strange, glowing seaweed, and the water had an oppressive, almost suffocating feel to it.
"See? Nothing to worry about," Rave sneered, glancing back at the others. "Argent's just a scaredy-fish."
But just as he finished speaking, the ground beneath them rumbled, and the walls shook violently.
The participants froze, their eyes widening in fear as the tunnel seemed to come alive around them.
Suddenly, from the darkness ahead, a massive, multi-tentacled creature emerged, its eyes glowing with a malevolent intelligence.
It was a Sharp Armed Trench Octopus, a rare sea beast known for its ferocity.
"Scatter!" someone screamed, but it was too late.
WHOOSH
WHOOSH
WHOOSH
WHOOSH
The octopus lunged forward, its tentacles lashing out with terrifying speed and precision.
The participants fought back desperately, but their attacks seemed to have little effect on the monstrous creature.
Ruth and Rave found themselves separated from the others, their hearts pounding with fear. "What do we do?" Ruth cried, her voice trembling.
---
Meanwhile ...
As Nereus, Jonny, and Triton made their way through the left tunnel, the water grew colder and colder.
Along the walls thick and slimy patches of algae seemed to pulse with a faint, bioluminescent glow.
The path twisted and turned, and the trio swam steadfast, ready for any danger that might appear.
Triton, swimming slightly ahead, paused at a fork in the path. "Which way should we go?"
Nereus closed his eyes, focusing on the sea essence around them. "The right path seems to be the more dangerous one, but it's also the one that leads us to the sea serpent's chamber. Let's take it carefully."
As such, they proceeded down the right path.
It's narrow passageways further twisted and turned, leading them deeper into the maze. After quite a while of uneventful swimming deeper within the innards of the maze.
They soon approached a section of the tunnel where the walls were covered in strange, glowing hieroglyphic looking inscriptions.
The strange symbols seemed to pulse rhythmically with an eerie blue light, and the water around them seemed to hum with a barely perceptible energy.
"A-Are these actually runes?" Jonny asked, his eyes wide with curiosity as he quickly moved to get a closer look, "I've never seen one up close before!
Runes?" Triton asked somewhat confused. Because of his background, higher tier boons and techniques of the Sealocke world were still relatively unknown to him.
This was of no surprise to Nereus, as most of these aspects of Sealocke cultivation, even back in his original time were closely guarded and kept secret.
"Mhm Runes are crafted from raw basically hardened sea essence by Runic Masters and can be engraved on various objects, surfaces, even spaces to achieve specific instructions left by the crafter. If engraved upon weapons' they could be strengthened and when engraved on surfaces like we see here they can be used to craft stealthy traps." Nereus explained expertly.
"Y-yeah what Argent said basically" Jonny added as he looked at Nereus with an inquisitive stare.
'How does Argent know all this...' he thought to himself briefly.
"I'm pretty sure within the Vorteesi sect we only have a handful of Runic Masters, but none could be old enough to have left this here" he finished.
Nereus then swam closer to the runes and studied them carefully. "They appear to be part of an ancient sealing technique. We'll definitely need to deactivate them to pass through safely."
"Well we should turn back right?" Triton asked with a scratch of his head, " Last I checked none of us here are Runic Masters so there's no way we can contin-"
"No worries I'll take care of it..." said Nereus absentmindedly.
He then looked closer at the assortment of runes, mentally breaking down their collective purpose and structure. "I think the sequence involves these three runes. They just need to be realigned correctly."
Beckoning to Triton and Jonny to watch carefully, Nereus then began moving the runes while carefully explaining to Jonny and Triton their original purpose.
"You see, these two runes here respectively mean "Stop" and the other means "Freeze", as they're located in the crux of the runic array one can tell they are what Runic Masters call, 'action runes' so to speak. Their meaning pretty much dictate the main purpose of the whole Runic Array. The structure is a whole other ordeal but reading this altogether this is an ancient ice based sealing Runic Array."
"So that's how these things work huh, it's so simple!' Triton exclaimed.
"Not quite though, because if you look at these four runes over here, they effectively come together to mean "Conceal" now because these runes were located on the fringe but still close to the original action runes, they are known as 'secondary action runes'. They pretty much give the runic array a secondary purpose. So say even if the first actions fail or are dismantled, there's still a secondary set of actions hidden."
"Ah I see!" Jonny beamed excitedly.
After the brief teaching moment, Nereus managed to arrange the runes in the correct sequence.
Suddenly the passageway's walls around them started moving as a hidden door was revealed, seemingly leading to a new passage.
The massive, ornate door was covered in intricate carvings depicting sea serpents and ancient battles.
It pulsed with a powerful sea essence, and Nereus knew they were close.
"Let's keep moving."
Pushing past the massive ornate door with hardly any effort, Nereus led the trio further into the maze.
After a few moment of swimming, they encountered a corridor lined with rows of ancient stone statues, each holding a bow and arrows.
As they slowly swam past the statues, one of the figures moved, quickly shooting a projectile towards them.
WHOOSH
Nereus reacted quickly, pushing Jonny out of the way just in time.
"Watch out! These statues are armed," Nereus shouted. "We need to disable them or find a way to avoid their attacks."
WHOOSH
WHOOSH
WHOOSH
One after the other, the other statues began to shoot volleys of arrows as Nereus, Jonny, and Triton tried their best to successfully dodge.
'These things don't even stop to rest and their accuracy doesn't suffer at all! ...Damn it, there's gotta be a trick to these things...Wait!'
Jonny thought just as he noticed a pattern in the movement of the statues. "Guys! I-I'm pretty sure these are mechanical constructs, which means there's definitely a mechanism behind these. If we can find the control panel, we might be able to shut them down."
Triton pointed to a small alcove on the side of the corridor. "That could be where the control panel is."
Nereus swam over to the alcove and discovered a series of levers and gears. "This looks like it. Let's see if we can disable the traps."
Working quickly Nereus manipulated the levers and gears, finally managing to disable the statues. The arrows stopped flying, and the corridor was safe to pass through.
They swam onward, only to find themselves facing another challenge.
The water level in the next chamber began to rapidly lower, revealing a series of sharp spikes on the floor. Triton gasped as he noticed the spikes and shouted, "We need to find a way to stop the water from draining, or we'll be impaled!"
Nereus scanned the chamber, his eyes catching sight of a set of valves on two opposite sides of the wall. "Those valves must control the water level. We need to close them."
Jonny and Triton quickly swam to the valves, struggling against the force of the draining water.
Together, they managed to turn the valves, stopping the water from draining further. Soon enough the water level began to stabilize and the spikes were safely submerged once more.
"That was close," Jonny said, rubbing his shoulder where an arrow had grazed him during the earlier ordeal. "Hopefully those were the last traps we'll have to deal with."