Chereads / Psionic Dragon Reincarnation / Chapter 11 - The Labirinth

Chapter 11 - The Labirinth

While moving through the now molten door, I noticed that the interior was incredibly clean for a civilization of this... caliber. The moment I placed my paw on the ground inside, torches on the walls lit up, to reveal a long empty looking corridor.

As I started walking down the corridor I head another *click* followed by a metal rod, like a spear comming from the celing. My barrier blocked the rod but I was nontheless surprised, as there was no opening in the celing before it whot out.

Another step, another *click*, another trap. This time arrows came from the walls, only to stop at contact with my barrier. This little play continued until the end of the corridor. Spears, pitfalls, boulders, arrows, acid, by the end of the corridor, I had seen almost all traps I could think of, excluding those that required high-tech components that is.

When I arrived at the end of the corridor I looked back, only to see the, once so clean corridor, now covered with holes and acid burns in the ground and little pieces of rubble and arrows covering most of what was left.

Looking back forward there was a staircase. Sending a psi pulse to see where it lead. I decided to move down the stairs, seeing that it wasn't leading too far down. The next floor looked rather natural, simmilar to a cave.

There were humanoid figures in the dark, standing completely still until I set foot off of the stairs. They started moving the exact moment my claws touched the ground on the floor.

The structure became more interesting by the minute. I slowly moved closer towards the figures, as they walked towards me, at a simmilarily slow pace. They seemed mechanical at first but my pulse revealed only solid stone all the way through.

Once I was within their range they swung their arms towards me in an attempt to crush me. Of course that was destined to fail. I slammed the automaton into the wall to the right, hard enough to break some parts off of them.

Only seconds after I had critically damaged one such thing, it began repairing itself while another rushed towards me. I exposed it to the same fate as the previous one and observed the reconstruction process.

I couldn't help but wonder how they were made and how they moved. My pulses only revealed they had a crystal like substance whitin them but there were no moving parts or circuitry. The more I thought about them the less I understood.

In an attempt to understant more I had to test out a few things, like what would happen if i cracked that crystallic substance within for example. As I tried doing exactly that, the automata turned from a humanoid figure into a lump of dirt, so it was probably dependent on the crystallic formation.

I tested around with the figures a while longer and it soon became appeareant that they only functioned while the crystal inside remained intafct. I soon quenched my thirst for knowledge regarding theese constructs and moved on to the next floor.

This floor was more simmilar to a labyrinth, designed to disallow finding a path, so I had to look for the exit first. While looking for the path deeper into the structure, I tried testing around with sound synthetisation using barriers. I could use it to talk, technically, but not while doing anything else, like for example keeping my barrier running.

All I needed was practice, which I felt like getting in that particiular place instead of carrying around the inconvenient characteristic of being unable to talk. I easily wasted an hour looking the the way to go furthur down. It probably would have taken way less time if I hadn't overlooked it twice during my voice synthetisation training.

The sparse sounds and rythms I produced soon turned into melody as I got sidetracked, I soon refocused and resumed training voices. I had moved through the corridors and caves for long enough by now and decided to take a shortcut, as using the intended route would surely take too long.

The creator of this place likely didn't want anybody to get through this maze alive anayways, so it was questionable if a proper way through even existed. Whatever this place's creator had hidden here must be of immesurable value.

I tried melting the ground with telekinesis but the ground was too simmilar to the door at the entrance to the structure, at least regarding the melting point. Simmilar to the situation at the door, I opened a bypass and shot another bright beam of solar plasma out toward the ground. The stone floor melted way faster than the door at the entrance did, but it still took forever, since it was multiple times thicker.