Chapter 220: Book 4 Chapter 4.1: The Money Trap

“You know, I actually kind of don’t want to watch a movie,” Vell said. “Anything else we could do?”

“You don’t want to watch ‘a movie’,” Cane said. “You opposed to the entire concept of movies now?”

“Cane, I didn’t leave my house all summer,” Vell said. “I have watched all the movies I want to watch.”

“Oh. It was really that bad?”

The universe provided an answer to Vell’s question before he could even speak. A fellow student in a lab coat walked up to the table he was sitting at and sat down uninvited.

“Hi, Vell, I know you’ve said no before-”

“Probably going to say no again,” Vell said.

“There are relatively non-invasive ways to do a spinal tap nowadays-”

“No.”

“The hell do you even mean a non-invasive spinal tap,” Luke said. “You’re tapping a spine, how do you do that non-invasively?”

“Well you use magic to briefly isolate the portion of the spine from-”

“Definitely no,” Cane said. He grabbed the lab coat student by the shoulder and forcibly lifted him away from the table. As they retreated with their tail between their legs, Cane turned back to his friends. “Okay, it was that bad.”

“At least here on the island its just scientists,” Vell said. “Back home I had reporters and paparazzi. Fucking paparazzi!”

Vell had tried his best to live a life where paparazzi would never be a factor, but that was all out the window now.

“Did you get the cultists?” Luke asked. “I got some cult invites.”

“I got some prayer circles outside my house, but not much else.”

The dramatic reveal of the world’s last actual capital-G Goddess had naturally involved some shakeup in the religious community, on top of all the other problems. Vell had mostly kept his distance from any such nonsense. He’d dealt with cultists before—quite frequently, in fact—but only in the context of the loops.

“Maybe we should join the cult,” Cane suggested. “That’d be a good way to hang out. They’d probably just do whatever Vell said.”

“As much as I love exploiting people for my own benefit,” Luke said, incredibly sarcastically. “Let’s just do something more normal. Can’t we join that bocce club Hawke and Kim are in?”

“Maybe later,” Cane said. “I’m still trying to figure out my school schedule, I’m not adding some club meetings on top of everything else.”

“Good point,” Vell said. He also had a lot on his plate. “Maybe we just grab Freddy and play cards?”

“Works for me,” Cane said.

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“I am continually baffled by your inability to bluff, Frizzle,” Cane said.

“I think I studied the math too much,” Freddy said. His attempt to improve his poker abilities by researching the probability involved, and it had backfired spectacularly. “I know exactly how fucked I am all the time, and I can’t hide it.”

“That mindset would explain why Vell is so good at this,” Cane said. “My man is always the same amount of fucked.”

“It is kind of hard to be stressed about card games with the life I live,” Vell said. He could stare down the worst possible hands without blinking. “Speaking of-”

Vell checked his phone. He’d killed time all the way to six in the evening, and while he enjoyed the break, it was starting to run long. While it was possible that the apocalypse was simply starting late today, it was also possible there was a smaller disaster he’d somehow missed.

“I should probably go check out campus,” Vell said. “I don’t keep an eye on things, this place will blow up.”

“Or your people will,” Freddy said. “I don’t want to put even more pressure on you, but one of these days could you convince Alex to be less...Alex?”

Since the two worked in the same department, Freddy was forced to be around Alex a lot more than most. She was a pain in the ass to deal with, and Alex actually liked Freddy. Or respected his intelligence, at least. Apparently most of her asinine behavior was predicated on thinking herself smarter than everyone around her.

“Believe me, it’s a work in progress,” Vell said. “Thanks for the games. See you all later.”

Vell waved goodbye, grabbed his bag, and headed out the door of Cane’s dorm. He got as far as opening the door, and then heard a “click”. Three years of looping had given him the reflexes and the cynicism necessary to dive for cover as soon as he heard a suspicious noise. The instincts proved correct as Vell jumped to the side, narrowly dodging an axe hurtling through the air where his head had just been. The spinning battleaxe sailed through the air and embedded itself in the table Vell had just been sitting at, slicing the stack of playing cards in half as it landed.

“That is not how you’re supposed to split the deck,” Cane said.

“Cane,” Luke said sternly. “Vell almost died.”

“Vell almost dies like thirty times a year, man, I’m over it,” Cane said. Mortal terror for his friend had turned into moderate concern around near-death incident forty, and then into apathy at incident eighty-five.

“I know, but you have to at least pretend to be sensitive about it!”

“Nah, It’s fine,” Vell said. He had watched everyone at that table die at least seventy five times (each), and he had worked past the emotional stress of it. “Real question is why the hell it happened at all.”

Vell walked over to the battleaxe and pried it out of the table, then checked it for identifying markings. There was nothing special about it that he could see; it was a bog-standard battleaxe, of the variety that had been launched at his head many times.

“You know, with all the attention you’ve been getting,” Freddy said. “Should we be worried someone is trying to assassinate Vell?”

“Maybe,” Vell said. “But I feel like most of the people who’d want to kill me could do better than a spring-loaded battleaxe.”

Vell dropped the axe and headed back out the door to examine the rest of the axe-launching mechanism. He saw what was left of that trap -and a whole lot more.

“Oh, okay,” Vell said. “Good news, nobody was trying to kill me. Bad news-”

Freddy, Cane, and Luke stepped up to poke their heads out the door. The long hallways was lined on every side with doors, in front of which were rusty bear traps, cartoonish bombs, rope snares, and even the occasional tank of water with a shark in it.

“-somebody is trying to kill everybody.”

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“Alright, on three,” Vell said. “One, two, three!”

Vell grabbed the doorknob and immediately leaped to the side, as did his friends. A large battering ram slammed down from the ceiling and swung through the air where they had just been, to no effect. Cane raised his head and then tapped his knuckles against the heavy wooden beam.

“Well that was a bit dull,” Cane said.

“They can’t all be flaming chainsaws.”

“Nor should they be,” Freddy grunted. He was missing a chunk of hair from a close call with said flaming chainsaw.

“The variety worries me as much as anything,” Vell said. He stepped outside the dorm building and took a quick look around. He could only see a handful of buildings from here, but every single door he saw was trapped, just like the dorms inside. “How is every single door on campus booby...trapped and why?”

“Why’d you pause like that?”

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“I think subconsciously I was giving Harley time to giggle at the word ‘booby’,” Vell admitted.

“I miss her too,” Freddy said.

“We need to focus, though,” Vell said. “Something on this scale could only be done with magic.”

“Well then we go to the expert,” Luke said. “Do you want to call Lee, or should I?”

Vell bit his tongue. The silence lasted long enough that Luke got the point.

“Come on, man.”

“Local problems need local solutions,” Vell said. “Lets go see Alex.”

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“Alight, everybody get ready on-”

“On three, Vell, we know,” Cane said. “This is like the seventh door we’ve gone through.”

“Excuse me for trying to ensure no one gets an axe in the skull,” Vell said. “Fine. One, two, three!”

Vell ripped the door open, and everyone hit the deck. A massive nothing sailed overhead, followed by a barrage of jack shit and a followup of nada. Cane raised his head to look at the absence of booby traps.

“Get off the floor,” Alex said. “I already disarmed that door’s trap.”

The four men stood up and tired their best to pretend they hadn’t just been flopped on the floor like idiots for no reason. Alex ignored their attempted recovery and continued her work, as Goldie handed her another stack of reference materials.

“So I see you’ve noticed the booby trap problem.”

“It’s fairly obvious, yes,” Alex said. “So far I have determined that the traps were manifested by magical means. I still have a few Malignancy Confluence tests running, but I’ve mostly ruled out curses as a point of origin, and Directional Mana Flow analysis seems to indicate that all of the traps were summoned from another location.”

“Okay. So our next priority is figuring out where that location is-”

“It’s beneath the island,” Alex said. “Unfortunately I can’t narrow it down any further. Between the senior labs and the school’s numerous storage basements, there’s too many magical anomalies to precisely locate anything.”

“Very thorough,” Vell said. Apparently Alex had some kind of unique magical gift, but Vell hadn’t seen much evidence of that until now. The only acumen she’d demonstrated so far was in being a jackass. “Any potential workarounds for that location problem?”

“Triangulation,” Alex said. “My tracking spells are pinging too many different magical signatures in too many different directions to be useful. With additional points of reference, I could identify the errors and locate the actual origin point.”

“Let’s, uh, do that then,” Vell said.

“Understood. Ms. Falkenberg, can you finish up here? Do I need to write the instructions down for you?”

“I’ll be fine,” Goldie grunted, in a way that made it very clear she had become well-acquainted with Alex’s unique “charm”.

“Excellent. We’re located on one of the westernmost points of the island, so readings from the southeast and northeast points should be our best references. Do any of the four of you actually know how to do a directional mana flow analysis, or will I have to do everything myself?”

“I’m a neurologist, lady,” Cane said. Though he didn’t need that expertise to know there was something wrong with Alex’s head.

“Well, divide and conquer is generally the best approach, but if I’m the only expert, we’ll make do,” Alex said. “I’ll trust the rest of you to escort me through the booby traps.”

Alex grabbed a few of her things and set out. She did not look over her shoulder until she hit the first booby-trapped door, and when she looked over her shoulder at her “escort” she found that it consisted of exactly one person.

“What happened to the rest of your friends?”

“Uh, had something else to do, I guess,” Vell said. Freddy, Cane, and Luke had all dropped out at the first sign of actually having to spend time with Alex.

“Well, it’s not as if we needed their expertise,” Alex said. “Though it might have been nice to have the extra bodies.”

“Please do not think of my friends as cannon fodder.”

“Only in a temporary sense,” Alex said. “We sacrifice our own lives often enough.”

“We make an informed choice,” Vell said. “Non-loopers don’t have the same context.”

If Alex heard anything Vell said, she certainly didn’t act like it. She simply gestured towards the booby-trapped door, beckoning Vell to open it. He did so, but he glared at Alex the whole time, even as a shotgun blast fired into the empty air.

“Hold on a minute before we head through any more doors,” Vell said. “I’m going to have Hawke and Kim get our third triangulation point ready. Samson’s not responding, I’m assuming he’s either busy or blown up.”

“Maybe his phone is just damaged,” Alex suggested.

“That counts as blown up,” Vell said. “Anyway, they’re getting ready, let’s keep going.”

It only took them a few seconds to reach another booby-trapped door on the way to their destination, which Vell disarmed and opened.

“Man,” Vell said. “You never think about how many doors you walk through on a daily basis until they’re all trying to kill you.”

“Given everything you’ve been through, is this really the first time doors have tried to kill you?”

“Oh, obviously I’ve been killed by a door before,” Vell said. “Building mimic, hidden portal to hell, weird door-guillotine, but those were all singular doors. It’s never been every door on campus before.”

Vell dodged a flurry of poison darts from the ceiling as he passed through another door.

“So now all of a sudden I’m hyper-aware of every door I walk through, you know?”

“Don’t you have more important problems to focus on in this situation?”

“I’ve been doing this a while, Alex, I can dodge death and make small talk at the same time.”

A point Vell demonstrated by snatching a spear out of mid-air and tossing it aside. The spear was thankfully the last booby trap they had to contend with before exiting the building and stepping onto the quad. They walked across the completely doorless grass to get Alex to a good spot for her next round of magical detection. Alex picked an open field on the far side of the island and started drawing a ritual circle on an open piece of sidewalk. Vell stepped back and took a video of the circle drawing, to send to Kim.

“Anything I can do to help?”

“You can avoid unnecessary distractions,” Alex said. Vell shut up and let her do her thing. She finished drawing the chalk circle, placed different spell components around the area, and then started performing the elaborate hand gestures intrinsic to casting spells. Unlike a lot of mages Vell had known, Alex performed no flourishes, added no dramatic touches to her casting. She simply made stiff, rote motions until she had finished casting.

The thoroughly unimpressive style was compounded by the fact that Alex’s magical energy manifested as a dull gray color. Every spellcaster had their magic manifest a different color -Lee’s was a bright violet, Skye had a faint cerulean sparkle, and even Kraid’s had a sickly green-black glow. Vell had never seen gray magic before. He wondered what that said about Alex, and assumed it said nothing good.

Though her magic was not impressive, it was effective, and Alex finished her ritual in moments. Dull gray magic surged out of her hands and traced lines of ley energy across the campus, soaring towards anomalies and magical hubs before returning to Alex’s hands. She hummed with casual interest at the feedback and started to take notes. Vell waited patiently for her to finish the process, knowing that asking any questions now would just get him a scathing comment.

“Alright, ready to move on,” Alex said. She tucked her pen away and put her notebook back in her backpack. “Where is Kim setting things up?”

“Just outside the botany lab,” Vell said. Alex started pacing that direction immediately. “So, any leads on where this is all happening?”

“There are some solid indicators, but nothing concrete yet,” Alex said.

“Well, any leads we can start to follow?”

“To what end? You’ll need my skills to defuse the situation either way.”

“Right, forget I asked,” Vell said. He followed along to the third ritual site, which had been prepared in advance by Kim. The chalk circle was a precise recreation of the one Alex had drawn, perfect in every way -a far cry from its creator. Kim’s metal body was dented, scuffed, pockmarked by acid, and slightly singed.

“Hey Vell,” Kim said. An accumulation of injuries that would’ve killed any human was a minor inconvenience to the resident robot.

“Kim. I see you haven’t been disarming any of the traps.”

“Why bother? All this shit is designed to kill humans,” Kim said. “I’m fine.”

“You’ve got a little bit of sword in your shoulder.”

“And I’m doing great,” Kim said, as she plucked the metal shard out of her shoulder joints. “No problem at all.”

“Fantastic, you’re walking in front when we go wherever we’re going,” Vell said. Kim gave a lazy salute and did not protest the order.

“Very, very far ahead,” Hawke added.

“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” Vell said.

“No, I’m not letting Kim out of my sight,” Hawke said. “We made a bet on how many traps would just launch swords and axes.”

“So far, I am losing,” Kim said. “I was expecting wackier shit from this school, like, come on, where’s the live eels?”

“I did get a snake dropped on me earlier,” Vell said.

“Yeah, so did we, but that’s as creative as it’s gotten,” Kim said. “Whoever made these traps really lacked imagination.”

“Are you all implying that you want to be murdered with more panache?” Alex asked. Apparently she saw fit to interrupt her own spellcasting to criticize them.

“Yeah, I am,” Hawke said. “If I’m going to die horribly I want it to be done with a little ‘panache’.”

“Same,” Kim agreed. “I want a little style.”

Kim’s head tilted to the side, to examine Alex’s dull gray spellcasting.

“Clearly I won’t be getting any, though.”

In a completely boring finale, sluggish gray light flowed out of Alex’s hands and raced across campus before returning, just as they had before. Alex started taking notes as the flowing rivers of magic returned to her. Vell waited patiently as she went through an even more complicated series of calculations. It took even longer this time, due to Alex’s need to cross-reference with two other sets of data. Vell checked his phone and checked in on a few friends while she worked, and had wrapped up multiple conversations by the time she finished.

“Follow me,” Alex said, as she put her notes away and started walking. Kim put some eyes on her facial screen just to roll them.

“Follow you where?”

“The source of the traps is in the school’s basement,” Alex said.

“Which basement?”

“Does it matter?”

“There is a live chimera in one of the basements, so yes, it does matter,” Kim said.

“Why did you leave a chimera in the basement?”

“It’s Craig’s house,” Hawke said. “He lives there!”

The loopers avoided Craig the Chimera for the sake of politeness, not fear. No one was entirely sure how his house had ended up embedded in the school’s sub-level, but they knew he liked to be left alone.

“I have no way of knowing which of the many basements it is, nor what threats might be in them,” Alex said.

“Well then maybe don’t go too far ahead of us,” Vell said. “There’s also a lava trench somewhere down there.”

“Why are you not negating these threats?”

“How do you want us to handle the lava trench?” Kim snapped. “You want us to empty it out with a bucket?”

“We handle what we can handle,” Hawke protested. “We turned off a robot tiger, disabled a laser grid-”

“Save it for after we deal with today’s problem, please,” Vell said. “Alex, lead the way, Kim, you go through all the doors first.”

“Fine. But keep track of what I get hit with, Vell, I want to win that bet.”