SSS Rank: Spellcraft Sovereign
Chapter 122: Drift Core (3)

Chapter 122: Drift Core (3)

Lucen muttered, "I listen. Just not to walls."

Varik stepped back, eyes scanning the ceiling next.

"It’s randomized. No reset pattern."

"So if we move wrong again?"

"We get tested harder."

Lucen folded his arms, thinking. "So this place doesn’t just throw traps for fun. It’s gauging response time."

"Yeah."

"Like it’s scoring us."

Varik turned toward the center again. "Not a dungeon. Not a core. Not anymore."

Lucen raised a brow. "Then what?"

Varik looked at the hallways.

Then said, "It’s an examiner."

Lucen went quiet for a second.

Then muttered, "I hate being graded."

—

The first room wasn’t labeled.

No grand arch. No glowing challenge glyph.

Just a hallway that stretched thirty meters before turning sharply right. Smooth stone. Inlaid lines across the floor, faintly glowing like veins under skin.

Lucen squinted. "That looks like a pressure grid."

Varik nodded. "Probably."

"So it’ll collapse if we step on the wrong tiles?"

"Or trigger a delay trap. Spikes. Fire. Something less polite."

Lucen tilted his head. "Can’t wait."

Varik stepped forward. Clean. Calm. No flinch in his posture.

He didn’t walk fast.

Didn’t test with a rock.

Just... moved.

One foot in front of the other, straight down the center path, stepping only where the glow ran weakest.

Lucen stayed still. Watched.

The second Varik’s boot touched the seventh tile, a panel in the ceiling opened.

Three spinning blades dropped down.

No warning.

Just whirrrrr, clank—

Lucen’s mouth opened.

Varik ducked and swept low, pivoted under them with a movement so fluid it looked planned.

One hand touched the wall, pushed off, launched him into a roll. He came out of it five steps further, still walking like it hadn’t happened.

Lucen blinked. "You rehearsed that."

"Nope."

The next three tiles lit in sequence. Blue. Then red. Then blue again.

Lucen raised a brow. "That looks like a puzzle."

Varik stepped on the first blue.

Then the red.

Then stopped.

A thunk echoed behind the wall. Stone grinding. Something unlocked.

Lucen frowned. "Wait. That was a puzzle."

"Probably."

"You didn’t know the pattern."

"I guessed."

Lucen stared. "You guessed right."

Varik shrugged. "I’m not a puzzle guy. But dungeons always reuse color logic."

Lucen muttered, "So you played color Sudoku with our lives."

Varik kept walking.

The next tile triggered a gas burst, hissing from vents just behind the glyph lines.

Lucen tensed.

Varik didn’t.

He pressed two fingers to his palm, muttered something low, and the gas stopped mid-air. Not neutralized. Frozen. Like the whole cloud got caught in a net.

Lucen stepped to the side, careful not to trigger anything. "Okay, that one’s not just fast reflexes. What was that?"

Varik said, "Diffusion lock. Old technique. Doesn’t work on humans."

Lucen blinked. "You’ve tested it on humans?"

Varik didn’t answer.

Lucen coughed once. "That’s comforting."

The hallway ended in a wall.

Flat. Blank.

But the moment Varik stepped close, a seam appeared across the center. Horizontal.

Then another across the middle.

Lucen said, "Don’t say it’s a sliding door."

Varik said, "Looks like a mimic."

Lucen stepped back. "Even better."

The wall lurched forward, snapping open like a mouth. A dozen limbs flicked out from behind the false panels, not arms. Not tentacles.

Glyph-etched chains. Fast. Whipping like snakes.

Lucen’s hand moved.

Varik was already inside the mouth.

He didn’t cast.

He cut.

The sword came down clean, quiet, no glow, just motion. Every chain that moved snapped in half.

One.

Two.

Three—

The mimic let out a sound somewhere between a cough and a mechanical shriek.

Varik drove his boot into the edge of the opening and pushed.

The mimic folded backward. One more slice and its rune-core cracked in half.

The doorway retracted.

Silence returned.

Lucen stepped forward, frowning.

"You good?"

Varik adjusted his collar.

"Fine."

"Let me guess. Not your first mimic."

"Fifth."

Lucen muttered, "Right. Of course it is."

Ahead, a second hallway opened, narrower, darker.

Lucen glanced toward it.

Then said, "You gonna keep clearing or are you tagging me in?"

Varik looked at him for a second.

Then gestured forward.

"Your turn."

—

Lucen stepped through the second archway, Varik close behind but hanging back. The stone under his boots felt rougher, less polished than the last room. Like it had seen more wear.

The air smelled... dry.

Wrong kind of dry. Not desert. More like attic dust left under a heat lamp. The kind that clings to your tongue.

He muttered, "Okay. That’s not a red flag or anything."

The second he crossed the midpoint of the room, the doors behind them slammed shut with a loud clunk.

Lucen glanced back. "No exit until I pass?"

Varik didn’t answer. Just crossed his arms and leaned against the wall.

Lucen turned forward.

The floor ahead was flat. Circular. Roughly thirty meters across.

In the center stood six figures.

No flesh.

Just bone.

They weren’t slumped. They weren’t crawling. They stood upright, each holding a different weapon, sword, axe, hammer, spear, whip, and one with a long, curved blade that looked like it had been welded together from regret.

Lucen muttered, "Great. An entire party of mid-tier Halloween decorations."

The skeletons didn’t roar.

They just moved.

All at once.

Fast.

Lucen didn’t flinch. "Alright then."

He flared [Shockweave Bolt] wide, angled slightly to catch the fast ones. Lightning cracked across the room, dancing up the spine of the axe-wielder and through the whip skeleton’s legs.

The whip skeleton locked mid-step, body convulsing once before it crumpled.

One down.

Lucen stepped sideways, hands already forming the next glyph. [Frost Spire.]

A spike of ice slammed into the hammer skeleton’s shin. It didn’t stop. Just shifted weight, and launched its weapon at him with a surprising amount of leverage for someone without muscles.

Lucen rolled under it.

"Okay, they’ve got instincts. Or whatever the skeleton version is."

He snapped a finger. [Ignition Burst] fired dead center at the spear-wielder, fast flame with a twist pattern. The spell hit ribs, burst open, and knocked the thing back hard.

But not out.

Spear-boy staggered. Adjusted. Started forward yet again.