CHAPTER 204: PUZZLE [ 4TH FLOOR]

Chapter 201: Puzzle [4th Floor]

The teleport to Floor 4 was different.

The cold, earthy smell of the Golem’s chamber dissolved, replaced by a blast of hot, sterile air.

We materialized not in a corridor, but on a wide, sandstone ledge overlooking a vast, cavernous chamber.

The room was immense, easily a hundred meters across, the ceiling so high it was lost in darkness.

The air was hot, smelling of sulfur and ozone. Below us, a thirty-meter drop led to the chamber’s floor, which was a perfect, 10x10 grid of square pressure plates, each tile the size of a carriage.

At the far end of this deadly chessboard, a glowing golden barrier hummed, blocking the exit portal.

"A puzzle room," Seraphina observed, her voice now devoid of its earlier sarcasm. She was all business, her eyes scanning the grid below. "A classic pressure-plate trap."

"Look," Kaelen whispered, pointing.

On a separate, adjacent ledge across a narrow chasm, another team was already there, and they were having a terrible time. We were all watching their "instance" of the puzzle.

"That’s Team Ironclad," Alex identified them, his voice low. "Magnus Daven’s squad."

We watched as their designated "trap-finder," a fast-looking rogue, took a hesitant step onto the grid.

Click.

Instantly, a jet of green, acidic poison shot from a nozzle in the wall, drenching him.

He screamed and scrambled back, his armor sizzling, his health bar dropping dangerously.

"You fool!" we heard Magnus’s distant, amplified roar. "You were supposed to check for traps!"

"I did!" the rogue cried, his voice panicked. "There’s no mechanism! No trigger wire!"

A heavy-set tank on their team grunted in frustration. "This is a waste of time. Just let me charge it. I can block the hits."

"Don’t you dare!" Magnus commanded, but it was too late. The tank, clearly fed up, charged onto the grid, his shield raised.

Click. FWOOSH! ZZZAP!

A sequence of traps triggered. A gout of fire erupted from the floor, engulfing his shield. A bolt of lightning lanced down from the ceiling, striking his helmet with a deafening CRACK. He staggered, his armor smoking, and stepped sideways in a panic... right onto another plate.

Click.

This one was different.

A spectral, ghostly hand, a [Mana Drain] trap, emerged from the tile and latched onto his arm. The tank screamed as his mana bar, which had been full, visibly depleted by half in a matter-tof seconds.

He scrambled back to the start, collapsing in a heap, utterly demoralized.

My team watched in horrified silence.

"Gods..." Alex muttered. "Every tile is a trap."

"No," I said, my voice quiet, drawing their attention.

They all looked at me.

"Not every tile," I said. "Just most of them. This isn’t a trap-disarming puzzle. It’s a ’find the path’ puzzle."

I pointed to a large, rune-covered stele near the start of our own grid. "The clue is there. The other teams are failing because they’re relying on brute force and rogue skills. They’re not reading."

I walked over to the stele, my team following. The "riddle" was carved in the Tower’s formal, runic script:

Where the builder’s hand did stray,

There lies the safe and narrow way.

Perfection is the gilded cage,

But in the flaw, you’ll turn the page.

Seraphina frowned. "A ’builder’s flaw’? What does that mean? Follow the broken tiles?"

"Look," Kaelen said, pointing at the grid. "None of them look broken."

And he was right. From our vantage point, the 10x10 grid was a picture of perfect, intimidating symmetry.

"It’s a red herring," I said.

"The riddle is the trap," Alex guessed, remembering my ’flawed rune’ speech.

"Exactly," I confirmed. "The riddle is designed to make you look for something obvious—a crack, a different color, a missing rune. But the real flaw isn’t on the tiles. It’s in the pattern."

This was a lie, of course. A beautiful, complex lie.

My game knowledge was far simpler. ’The ’Riddle of the Two-Paths’ puzzle. The riddle on the wall is a classic misdirect. The actual solution is to follow the tiles that have a specific, tiny, almost-invisible graphical ’chip’ texture in the bottom-left corner. It’s an artist’s mistake, a graphical ’flaw’ in the tile’s texture map. The level designer, either as a joke or out of laziness, simply designated that specific tile texture as the ’safe’ path. ’Where the builder’s hand did stray’ is a literal, fourth-wall-breaking joke.’

I couldn’t exactly tell my team, "We have to follow the tile with the stone_path_03b.tga texture." So, I had to create a narrative that fit my "mana genius" persona.

"This entire room," I said, gesturing to the grid, "is a massive runic circuit. The traps are the ’fail’ state. The path is the ’solution’ state. The riddle isn’t the clue; it’s the key. It’s telling us how the circuit is laid out. But the real answer isn’t in the words. It’s in the magic."

I turned to the two members of my team I had been waiting to empower.

"Gideon. Kaelen."

The two of them, our team’s dedicated "thinkers" and magic-users, straightened, looking surprised to be called.

"I can’t walk this path," I said. "My affinities"—Ice, Lightning, Space, Cursed King—"are too chaotic. My presence would disrupt the grid’s delicate magic. And Alex is too heavy. Seraphina and the twins are built for agility, not perception. This puzzle isn’t for warriors. It’s for mages."

Kaelen looked terrified. "B-but, Chief, I’m just a healer... I don’t know anything about complex runic traps."

"You don’t need to," I said, my voice firm but encouraging. "You’re a user of Holy magic. Your affinity is based on ’Order,’ ’Purity,’ and ’Structure.’ You can sense ’flaws’ in magical constructs better than anyone. Gideon," I turned to him, "your affinity is [Corpse-bloom]. You sense ’decay,’ ’entropy,’ and ’flaws’ in a different way. You sense where things are breaking down."

I pointed to the grid. "I can’t see the path. But the two of you, working together? You can feel it. The riddle says the path is the ’flaw.’ Kaelen, you feel for the tiles that feel ’wrong,’ ’impure,’ or ’out of place’ in the holy, orderly matrix. Gideon, you feel for the tiles that feel ’dead’ or ’hollow’—the ones that aren’t ’live’ traps."

They both stared at me, then at the grid, then at each other. A spark of understanding, of purpose, passed between them. This wasn’t just me solving another puzzle; I was giving them the tools to solve it. I was building their confidence, their value to the team.

"We... we can try," Gideon said, his usual unsettling smile replaced by a look of intense concentration.

"Go to the edge," I instructed. "Don’t step on. Just... reach out with your senses. Tell me what you feel."

The two of them walked to the start of the 10x10 grid. The team waited in silence. Across the chasm, Magnus’s team had just lost another member to a pitfall trap and was now in a full-blown screaming match.

Kaelen closed his eyes, his staff glowing faintly. He pointed. "That... that first tile. It feels... cold. All the others feel ’hot,’ like they’re active. But that one... it’s quiet."

Gideon nodded, his hand hovering over the same tile. "He’s right. The ambient necromantic energy... it’s absent here. This tile is ’dead.’ The others are all ’live.’"

This was, of course, complete nonsense. They were feeling nothing. The tile just had the ’chip’ texture. But my suggestion was so powerful, their own minds were creating the magical "proof" to confirm my "hunch." They were solving the puzzle I had already laid out for them.

"That’s our starting point," I said. "Alex, step on the tile they identified."

Alex, trusting completely, stepped onto the first tile. Click.

Nothing happened.

A collective sigh of relief went through the team.

"It works!" Alex cheered.

"Don’t celebrate," I said. "Find the next one."

For the next ten minutes, Kaelen and Gideon worked in tandem.

"The tile to the left," Kaelen would murmur. "It feels... ’discordant’ with the grid’s harmony."

"Confirmed," Gideon would add. "It has no ’life’ energy for my bloom to feed on."

"Alex, step left."

Click. Safe.

"Now the one diagonally forward-right," Gideon said. "It feels ’hollow.’"

"Alex, diagonal."

Click. Safe.

They were creating a narrative, a reason for their success, and with every correct "guess," their confidence grew. Kaelen was standing taller, his voice firmer. Gideon’s analysis was sharp. They were no longer just the "scared healer" and the "creepy necromancer." They were the team’s vital "trap-finders."

We moved across the grid, a slow, methodical, and perfectly safe procession.

Across the chasm, Magnus’s team had stopped shouting. They were just... watching. Staring, their faces a mask of pure, humiliated disbelief, as Team Anomaly, led by a healer and a corpse-poker, casually walked across the deadliest puzzle on the floor, calling out a path as if they were reading from a script.

When Alex’s foot touched the final tile and he stepped onto the safe platform on the far side, the golden barrier blocking the exit hissed and dissolved.

[Floor 4: Cleared. Time: 15 minutes, 02 seconds.]

[BONUS: ’Perceptive Mind’ (Puzzle Solved with 0 Triggers).]

"We... we did it," Kaelen breathed, looking at his own hands as if they were magic.

"Of course we did," Gideon said, his unsettling smile returning, but this time, it held genuine pride.

"Good work, both of you," I said, clapping them on the shoulder. "Excellent perception. I knew you could do it."

Seraphina just watched me, her expression completely unreadable. The "flawed runes" on Floor 3, and now the "flawed path" here... she couldn’t rationalize it. I wasn’t just strong. I wasn’t just smart. I was something else. Something she couldn’t comprehend. And it was starting to terrify her.

"Let’s go," I said, walking towards the glowing exit portal. "Floor 5 is the Rest Stop. You’ve earned it."

(To be Continue)