With Niss striding forward across the northern bridge, the rest of the group patiently waited and watched.
"Wait, maybe he shouldn't go alone. NISS! Wait, let me come too." Siarra ran to catch up, and they entered into the northern room together.
"Yeah, that's probably smart. Thanks for joining me over here," Niss smiled his charming smile, bewitching Siarra right away.
"Yup!" was all she could muster.
'Why am I so nervous around him when we're in the dungeons? It usually doesn't bother me to be close to him and talk to him, unless he does something with that charm of his. Uhhhhggg, Nisssss.' Siarra was thinking it over while Niss gave the large lever a pull.
...Creeeaaakkkkk....
They felt the room they were in start to spin slowly and gave a nervous wave back to the others as the stone slid across the door, cutting them off.
"Well, it spins this room. Curt seems to know how this works. Although it's really dark in here now."
Siarra lit up her flame, giving a warm glow to everything.
She stood in front of Niss, her beautiful long red hair reaching down her back, her whole aura warm and inviting. Being the main source of light in the room, he couldn't help but admire her for a moment. Her new set of red robes seemed to fit much more snugly around her chest and draped down to show the curves at her hips before flowing down further.
'She really is beautiful, but I don't want to get distracted. Plus, its kind of fun teasing her haha.'
Suddenly, the pair felt their room rumbling and sliding again, rotating once, then twice, and finally a third time until they were reconnected to the bridge towards the center.
The five of them reunited on the center platform.
"So, when you pulled the lever in there, it made the connection to the eastern bridge open up. There's another lever in there, but we wanted to get you guys back to the middle before we pulled it just in case. Since the middle only seems to rotate the northern room, we pulled it three times to bring you back all the way around." Curt's ability to make sense of this was really helpful.
At their current stage, they had pulled the center lever a total of four times and the northern lever one time, which rotated the eastern room once.
"So, same arrangement for pulling the eastern lever?" Niss asked Curt.
Curt hesitated for a moment. "Well, some dungeon puzzles have triggers within them, and if a certain condition is met, it can have extremely bad consequences. I'm a little worried about splitting up for the next part." Curt paused again, this time for a lot longer.
"If we all go in, there is a chance we won't be able to go all the way around to come back here. Is that what you mean?" Niss asked.
"Yeah, if rotating the next room from within triggers a condition... we could all die."
Niss began pondering it as the rest of the group grilled Curt with multiple questions about his theory.
'If only one goes, they might die, but the others will live. It seems like that's the logical choice, but....' Niss thought.
"Curt! Are you sure!? What if everyone who stays behind gets killed when someone pulls the next lever?" Siarra asked him in a panic.
"It's possible, but much less likely. This area acts as the center of the puzzle, so I think it's the most safe." Curt looked at each of them for a moment before speaking up again. "The best way is to only send one person into the next room, that way we minimize loss. Now that I think about it, even pulling the northern lever could have been deadly."
Siarra and Niss looked at each other, having just learned they had no idea how much danger their lives had been in only a moment ago.
"So, what you're saying, Curt, is that if we make the lever pulls in the wrong order, the puzzle will trigger a condition and kill all of us?" Niss asked.
"Yeah."
"Well, in that case, I will go pull the east lever." Niss looked at the group. "This is the logical choice. It's the minimum amount of risk to the group."
"Niss, no, don't risk yourself!" Siarra had tears starting to form. Nobody else said anything, knowing he was right, and they didn't want to be the one to take the risk.
"I have to. If we do nothing, we could all die being trapped in here."
"Why!? Can't we just go back and try the other door?!"
Curt interjected with his voice as quiet as a mouse, "I think the only way to open that door is to solve this puzzle."
Siarra just gave up, knowing she was fighting a losing battle against Niss. She knew he was going to do what he wanted, regardless of how much she begged him not to.
"Alright, it's settled then. Wait here and see what changes." Niss headed across the east bridge, with all the eyes of the group focused intently on his back.
Entering into the eastern room Niss noted that it was exactly the same, just a large room with a lever in the middle. Although this time he was acutely aware that pulling it could straight up kill him or his friends, according to Curt.
'Hmmm.... Well it's not gonna pull itself, here goes nothin'
....Creeaakkkkkk...
'Well, I'm not dead.'
Niss looked at his situation. He heard the creaking of the stone moving, but it wasn't his room. Instead, he looked back across the bridge at the group in the center and saw that they were all looking at the western bridge, which was now connected to an open room.
'Huh, I guess Curt was wrong then? Or does this mean he was right that this was the next lever to pull?'
'Ahh, puzzles give me a headache.'
The group looked at the western room together, but they noticed a problem right away, this room had no lever. It also had nothing at all in it, simply a circular room like the rest. Leaving everyone to wonder what the next step would be.
"Curt, why is there no lever in this room?" Niss looked at him, confused.
Curt had a horrified expression on his face, he knew something from studying dungeon puzzles that none of them knew. There was another condition that puzzles like this could enforce, one of the more terrifying concepts he had read about in his books. Something that even high rank strike groups feared.
"It... I-It's a s-sacrifice puzzle."