CHAPTER 208: BATTLE

"Gideon," I said, pointing to the pillar. "There’s a mana signature under there. It’s faint, but it feels... contained. Not a monster. An item. Can you move this?"

Gideon, my quiet ’necromancer,’ stepped forward. He placed his pale hand on the concrete. "[Corpse-bloom: Rapid Decay]," he whispered.

The spell wasn’t designed for stone, but its entropy-based magic had the same effect. Cracks spiderwebbed across the pillar. The concrete didn’t explode; it just... un-made itself, crumbling into a pile of fine gravel and dust in a matter of seconds.

The team stared, freshly impressed by the sheer utility of Gideon’s "creepy" magic.

Beneath the dust lay a small, F-Rank-locked chest.

"Loot!" Alex said, grinning.

"Stand back," I said. I knelt by the chest. The lock was a simple, three-dial runic combination. ’In the game, the dev-note for this puzzle was ’The beginning of all things.’ The answer is always ’3-1-4,’ a developer’s inside joke about pi.’

I "studied" the runes, my brow furrowed. "It’s a harmonic lock," I lied smoothly, tapping the dials.

"Based on the elemental primes. Fire... Ice... Wind. The sequence is... 3... 1... 4. There."

Click.

The chest hissed open. My team, especially Seraphina, who had just arrived from her perch to investigate the noise, stared at me.

My "flawed rune" deduction on Floor 3, and now this... my "academic" knowledge was proving to be impossibly, suspiciously good.

Kaelen peered inside. "It’s... just a map."

Alex reached in and pulled out a single, rolled-up piece of old parchment.

He unfurled it. It was a crude, hand-drawn map of this very sector, with a red ’X’ marking a "Hidden Cache" in a location two kilometers off the main path: an old, bombed-out Water Treatment Plant.

"A hidden cache?" Kaelen breathed, his eyes wide. "Like the Golem on Floor 3? Is this another bonus?"

"It must be!" Alex said, his faith in my ’hunches’ absolute. "Look, Chief! More loot!"

I took the map, pretending to study it, my mind racing. This was the moment. The lure.

"No," a sharp voice said.

We all turned. Seraphina stood there, her arms crossed, her face a mask of cold suspicion. "Absolutely not. This is too convenient."

"What do you mean?" Alex asked, his optimism faltering.

"A map. Just... sitting in a box. In a library. Pointing to a ’hidden cache’?" she sneered. "It’s the oldest trap in the book. It’s obvious."

The tension snapped tight. The team looked between their suspicious, high-strung archer and their silent, infallible leader.

My internal thoughts were a perfect echo of hers. ’She’s 100% correct. It is a trap. It’s the ’Ambush Alley’ quest, a breadcrumb trail laid by the Tower AI to funnel aggressive, loot-hungry teams into a designated PvP kill-zone. And I know exactly who is waiting at the end of it.’

My mind flashed to the rankings. Magnus Daven. His "Ironclad" team. They were the most aggressive commoner-faction team, desperate to prove their worth after my public humiliation of Magnus in the Rest Stop.

They would have seen this "opportunity" on their own map, analyzed it just as I had, and decided to use it.

They wouldn’t be taking the treasure; they would be camping it. Waiting for a weaker team to walk into their ambush.

I had to convince my team to walk into that ambush.

"You’re right, Seraphina," I said, my voice quiet.

She blinked, her argument dying in her throat. "I... I am?"

"Yes. It’s painfully obvious," I said, tapping the map. "So obvious, in fact, that no real trapper would bother with it.

It’s clumsy. It’s inefficient."

I used her own logic as my pivot.

"Look at the path," I said, tracing the red line. "It leads away from the main exit portal. What kind of trap wastes your time by sending you 2km in the wrong direction? A trap is a shortcut. It lures you onto the ’faster’ path, then springs. This... this is a diversion. An inefficient lure."

She frowned, processing this. My logic was... sound, in its own twisted way.

"And look at this," I said, pointing to a tiny, barely-visible rune scrawled in the corner of the map, near the ’X’. "It’s the artisan’s sigil. The same family of marks that were on the [Runic Steel] ingot we got from the Golem. This isn’t a random player-trap. This is a developer cache. Just like the last one."

This was the lynchpin of my lie. It was a gamble. I had no idea if the rune was the same—I was counting on the fact that she wouldn’t know, either. I was using my own past, "impossible" success as evidence for my new, equally "impossible" claim.

Alex was completely sold. "He’s right! It’s another bonus! Chief, we have to go! Think of the loot!"

Kaelen nodded, his greed for powerful, safe rewards outweighing his fear. "If it’s like the Golem, it’s worth it."

Seraphina was the only one left. She was still biting her lip, her instincts warring with my logic. "It... it still feels wrong, Michael."

I played my final card. I turned to her, my expression open. "It’s a risk. But the reward... Runic Steel. E-Rank crafting materials. Maybe even a C-Rank core. That’s a new bowstring for you, Seraphina. That’s upgraded armor for Alex. That’s a new staff for Kaelen."

I gestured back towards the main road. "Or... we can play it safe. We can walk the main path. We’ll fight thirty more swarms of F-Rank bats, waste our mana and our time, and arrive at the exit with nothing but dust in our pockets. Just like Leon’s team. Just like Eric’s team."

I had framed the choice perfectly. High-risk, high-reward... or the "safe," inefficient, and boring path of the other "heroes." For a team of misfits desperate to prove they were better than their rank, there was only one real answer.

Seraphina’s jaw clenched. She hated being inefficient more than she hated being tricked.

"...Fine," she bit out, her voice tight. "This is on your head, Wilson. If this is a trap and we walk into a field of spears..."

"Then I’ll be the first one to be impaled," I said, my voice flat. "I promise."

"Hmph." She turned, nocking an arrow. "You’d better be. Now let’s go. We’re wasting daylight."

My team formed up, their apprehension now forged into a greedy, focused resolve. They thought they were heading to another secret treasure.

I walked at the front, next to Alex, the crude map in my hand. My mind was already leagues ahead, moving past the "why" and onto the "how."

’Okay. The lure is taken. Magnus’s team, "Ironclad," is already there. They’re strong, C-Rank commoners with high morale, but they’re arrogant. They’ll be expecting us to walk right into the main courtyard of the Water Treatment Plant. They’ll have a tank blocking the front, archers on the water towers. A classic, textbook ambush.’

’A classic, textbook ambush... for a classic, textbook team.’

’They’re not expecting us.’

We approached the rusted, chain-link fence of the Water Treatment Plant two kilometers later. The place was dead silent. The air was thick with the smell of chlorine and rust.

"Everyone, stop," I whispered, raising a hand. We halted in a ruined street, a block away, concealed by a collapsed building.

"What is it?" Alex whispered back, shield up.

"It’s too quiet," I said, my voice a low, tense growl. "No patrols. No monsters. Not even bats. It’s a ’cleared’ zone."

I saw Seraphina stiffen out of the corner of my eye. Her realization was dawning.

"That’s a classic sign of an ambush," I confirmed, my voice grim.

"So I was right," Seraphina breathed, her voice a mix of fury and fear. "It is a trap."

"Yes," I said, finally confirming her suspicion, and in doing so, paradoxically cementing her trust in my perception. "It’s a trap. And they’re waiting for us."

I could feel their mana signatures, amplified by my [Quantum Analysis Mind]. Seven of them. Just as I’d predicted. Two on the east water tower. One on the west. Four on the ground, hunkered down behind the main gate, waiting for us to walk into their kill-box. And Magnus’s signature, burning with C-Rank power, was right in the middle of them.

I turned to my stunned, terrified team. My expression was no longer that of a guide. It was the cold, hard mask of a commander.

"They’re waiting for us at the front gate. They have snipers on the towers. They’re expecting us to walk in blind."

"So we... we run?" Kaelen stammered, his face pale.

"No," I said, a cold, sharp, predatory smile touching my lips for the first time. "We’re not walking into their ambush. They’re walking into ours."

I pointed, not at the front gate, but at a large, rusted, cylindrical sewer main that ran beneath the plant’s perimeter fence. "We’re not going over. We’re going under. We’ll come up inside their compound, behind their main force."

My team’s eyes went wide with a new, dawning, terrifying light.

"Gideon," I ordered. "Your decay magic. That sewer grate. Open it. Silently."

Gideon’s unsettling smile was back, wider than ever. "With pleasure, Chief."

I looked at the rest of them.

"Stay alert," I whispered, my voice a blade in the darkness. "Stay silent. We’re no longer the prey. We’re the hunters."

(To be Continued)