Vin stood within the tunnels of the trogum fragment, his nerves on high alert as he waited for Shia to give Alice the signal to activate her trap. His part of the plan was already done, which meant now he just had to sit and wait until their trap was sprung and the divine warrior was, theoretically, taken care of.

  If only he’d known how much waiting was involved when luring someone into a trap.

  “Anybody got a deck of cards or something?” Scule asked from his shoulder, his voice low despite the fact that the divine warrior was still much too far away to hear them.

  After they’d pinpointed the lizardman’s location thanks to Madam Trebella’s charm and some exceptionally careful scouting on Scule and Reginald’s part, they’d picked a spot further down the main tunnel to set their trap. Vin understood the need to set it so far away to ensure they had everything ready in time before he showed up. Yet after waiting with bated breath for over half an hour, he was starting to wish they’d picked a spot a little closer.

  Hell, there wasn’t even any guarantee that the divine warrior would continue walking down the main tunnel when there were so many branchy paths. But there was clear evidence that trogums had run through here recently, and they were banking on the fact that the divine warrior would be following their trail.

  “Shh!” Shia hissed, glaring at the petian before turning her focus back to her spell. Shia was carefully monitoring a very specific spot down a few twists and turns of the main tunnel, listening to any words that were spoken in the general area with her Whispering Wind spell. They were on the very fringes of the spell’s range, meaning Shia needed to concentrate even harder than normal to maintain her connection.

  Vin had thought the spell needed line of sight to function, but it turned out that was only for the speaking portion. So long as Shia only intended to use it to listen, after the initial cast, she just needed to maintain her concentration.

  “Just trying to pass the time,” the petian grumbled, his voice lowered to barely a whisper. Turning toward Vin, Scule asked what they all must be thinking. “Do you really think this will work? I know we put a lot into our trap, but this just feels… weird. Like we’re not really doing anything, you know?”

  “Alice thinks it will, and she’s the expert,” Vin shrugged, making sure to keep his voice low as well, rather than risk Shia’s ire. “And if it doesn’t, at least we have our escape plan in place. We can always try again.”

  “I admit, I am a fan of the escape plan,” Scule nodded, glancing uncertainly up at the tunnel ceiling. “Though it certainly feels like we’re pretty far underground. Will her spell actually-”

  “She said she thinks he’s close,” Shia said suddenly, silencing the two of them.

  “Do we spring it?” Vin asked, looking toward Alice. He knew he was being hasty, but they had so much riding on this plan that he couldn’t help but want to get it over with.

  “Not yet,” Alice said calmly, the only one of them looking relaxed and completely at ease. She had a small bandoleer of weird looking buttons strung across her chest that Myers had made for her using her strange monster based crafting. Despite all the pressure Alice had to be under for her trap to work, she had an oddly serene ease about her.

  Seeing as she was about to kill a man without even getting close to him, Vin couldn’t help but feel like there should be at least a little blood lust or something coming from her instead.

  “We don’t spring the trap until he shows himself,” Alice reminded him, repeating her earlier explanation of how this was all going to go down that she’d given them while they prepared the trap earlier. “If your friend can do what you promised, she’s the perfect bait.”

  “She can… I just don’t like the thought of putting her in danger,” Vin admitted.

  “You said the divine warrior needs to give his speech to someone before he can activate his sword,” Alice said, giving him a reassuring look. “And even if we’re wrong and he doesn’t need an audience, we’ve prepared for that. Don’t worry Vin, we’ve got this guy hook, line, and sinker. Your friend will be fine.”

  “I know,” Vin said, taking a deep breath and staring off down the tunnel. Despite Alice’s reassurance, he couldn’t help but imagine the lizardman turning the bend and grinning at them, before whipping out his sword and cutting them to bits. “It’s just crazy to me that you threw this all together in a single day. I knew the caveats of divine boons were rough, but to think this would be his entire undoing…”

  “Never make an enemy of someone who specializes in ways to kill you from miles away,” Alice grinned, her smile looking just a bit too predatory. “Now, everyone be quiet. I don’t want to miss Shia’s signal.”

  The Druid gave her an appreciative nod, and they all fell silent once more as they waited for word from their live bait. Minutes ticked by, and Vin felt himself starting to sweat as all the possible ways their plan could fail came to mind. What if the lizardman’s divine boon didn’t work like they thought? What if he lashed out with some more mundane weapon before they could spring the trap? What if-”

  “Now!” Shia hissed, turning and slashing her hand through the air at Alice.

  The moment the word left the elf’s lips, Alice moved. Reaching up, she pressed the first batch of the odd looking buttons on her bandoleer, sending out a minute magical charge and triggering the small detonators she’d planted ahead of time. Immediately, a number of things happened all at once.

  First were the ground-quaking booms as two portions of the ceiling were blasted away on either end of the curved tunnel, allowing the thickest, heaviest Stone Walls Vin was capable of making to drop into place, trapping the divine warrior. Vin had used his new Stone Shaping to hollow out spaces in the roof of the tunnel ahead of time, and after they’d painstakingly raised the heavy walls into the hollow areas through a combination of his stone magic and Shia literally growing trees up underneath the walls, he’d used Stone Shaping again to smooth over the ceiling once more, all the while laying some of Alice’s new detonators on the dangerously thin layer of stone supporting the hidden walls.

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  This first part of the plan was the most important. If they couldn’t manage to trap the divine warrior within the tunnel, the plan was a bust and they’d have to come up with something new.

  Thankfully, that’s why Alice had picked a particularly long curve in the tunnel to spring their trap. When the divine warrior got to their live bait waiting patiently right in the middle of the bend, he wouldn’t actually be able to physically see the two spots they’d rigged to drop the walls, meaning he shouldn’t be able to react in time.

  And speaking of their live bait…

  The moment the walls landed, there was an unnatural tearing sound behind him, and Vin turned to find a grinning Lumel standing in what had been empty space moments ago.

  “He’s in the trap, we’re good for phase two!” The pulmon said, nodding toward Alice.

  “Here we go!” The Trapper grinned, strumming her hand across her chest like she was playing guitar and activating all the remaining remote triggers at once.

  The noise was dulled by the distance and the thick stone walls that had fallen into place, but Vin was just barely able to make out the sound of a few dozen vials of Scule’s own personal creation shattering all along the tunnel. The vials had been painstakingly hidden within the tunnel floor ahead of time, and the moment they exploded they filled the tunnel with the same thick, irritating gas that Scule had accidentally exposed himself to back in the Crater.

  It had taken Scule a couple of hours to prepare so much of the irritant, but as soon as Alice learned of it, she had promised that this was the best way to take down the divine warrior.

  After all, it would be rather difficult for the lizardman to give an entire speech while he was coughing his lungs out.

  “Gas released, go for phase three!” Alice said, snatching one last remote trigger from her pocket and activating it with a wild grin. The previous triggers were all linked to small detonators constructed from bits of the exploding fox monsters, allowing them to shatter stone and glass alike and activating the many facets of Alice’s master trap.

  This last one was linked to a certain glowing gemstone Lumel had happily lent them, sending a flare of mana through it and signaling their hidden strike team that it was time to reveal themselves.

  Vin couldn’t help but grin when he heard Alka’s distant roar as she used her warpick to smash her way through the thin stone he’d used to hide her within the tunnel wall. Completely unbothered by the thick, irritating smoke rapidly filling the enclosed space, Alka carried out the third and final phase of their plan out of view with Blossom by her side.

  Kill the divine warrior while he was trapped, blind, and suffocating.

  Still, Vin didn’t just stand there and do nothing. As soon as phase three began, Reginald and Scule jumped over to Shia as he sprinted over to the stone wall and began casting.

  “Stone Shaping!” he shouted, going around the edge of the wall and creating a perfect seal between the surprise barrier and the tunnel wall, preventing any of the gas from leaking out. As soon as he was done he turned to Lumel, nodding.

  “Mass Dimensional Shift,” she said, grabbing his arm with a gloved hand and summoning a large, purple bubble around them. Vin stumbled as the world twisted, and he suddenly found himself standing directly in front of the wall at the other end of the tunnel.

  Ignoring the wet, hacking coughs coming from within the tunnel and the sound of metal smashing into rock, he quickly sealed this side of the tunnel as well, creating a perfect kill corridor for Alka and Blossom to wear the divine warrior down. With the lizardman unable to activate his divine boon, he wasn’t able to actually inflict any damage upon their two sturdiest members or cut his way out through the solid rock. All he had to rely on was his incredible speed, and seeing as he was trapped within a small tunnel…

  It was only a matter of time before he grew tired.

  “Let’s go back,” Vin said, glancing at his new notification.

  New spell witnessed! Tier 4 Spatial Spell (Mass Dimensional Shift). 4,000 exp gained.

  “Gladly,” Lumel smiled, laying her hand on his shoulder and warping them back to the others. They arrived to find Shia, Reginald, and Scule all worriedly watching the sealed tunnel wall, and a grinning Alice still looking as confident as ever.

  The thick stone made it difficult to hear anything, but thanks to his high focus, Vin thought he could just barely make out the continued wet hacking of the lizardman and the occasional thump against the tunnel walls as he blindly dashed into them.

  “I hate not being able to do more to help,” Shia frowned, wringing her hands together.

  “It’s all up to Alka and Blossom now,” Alice said, looking entirely unconcerned. “Vin, you said the guy would be even more affected by the gas than Scule was, right?”

  “Yeah,” Vin nodded, once again focusing on his newest title and going over the information about the divine warrior’s species that just appeared in his head. “His people are amphibious, and that means his lungs are more… wet than ours are, from what I understand. The information I get from the Common Ally isn’t always super clear.”

  “That means the gas will stick in his lungs better, making the irritant even more effective than we could have hoped,” Alice explained. “Honestly, we probably could have just let him suffocate in there, but I could tell Alka wanted a bit of a rematch against the warrior after he’d killed her.”

  “Not sure how much of a rematch this really is,” Scule muttered, staring at the stone wall as if he could see through it. “The poor guy is basically choking to death, blind, and no doubt just sprinting face first into wall after wall in a desperate attempt not to be cut down by Alka or ripped apart by Blossom. I’m pretty sure I could take him out as he is right now.”

  “I have to say though, having two different members of your party that don’t need to breathe and are immune to stuff like irritants is a Trapper’s dream,” Alice said, grinning at Vin. “And that’s not even including all your guys’ magic and Scule’s poisons. Let me know if you ever want to team up again in the future, going back to my boring old traps at camp is going to suck after all this!”

  “Trust me, you’ll be the first person we reach out to if we have another terrifying foe we need to take down,” Vin chuckled, only marginally more terrified of Alice after seeing her in action.

  Just then, a giant boom of something slamming into the stone wall sealing off the tunnel made them freeze. As a second boom shook the wall, the six of them jumped back, preparing themselves for the worst. Vin could sense Lumel’s mana start swirling around them, no doubt preparing a quick Mass Dimensional Shift just in case.

  But before the pulmon could finish, one final boom rang out across the tunnel, and Vin’s wall exploded outward, revealing a gleaming warpick made of darthsteel. Her eyes flaring green and with red gas still trailing off her jet-black armor, Alka stepped through the collapsed wall, raising the severed head of the divine warrior.

  “It’s done,” she said, tossing the head aside and nodding at them.

  “The divine warrior is dead.”

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