It didn’t work. Fuck! The Mana drain from firing the rifle that third time had been a bit too much. The apes were stirring, and I didn’t have time to wait for my Mana to regen on its own.

I didn’t hesitate.

Sending mana from my center to my arms, I guided it out through my hands by pushing my arms forward. Like my Force Barrier spell, the Ensnare spell was a physical-based ability that used a special kind of energy to form a shock absorbent material. The Ensnare spell was also prehensile.

It gripped onto the apes before they could completely recover from my rifle fire. The spell entangled them, as though they were fish caught within a net.

The beasts roared in anger as they flexed their muscles and pushed their arms upward. Their attempts to free themselves were futile for the moment, but they would soon succeed. My Ensnare spell was both vulnerable to fire and could be broken by creatures of considerable strength.

I didn’t wait another second. I turned back to face the platform and sprinted along the bridge.

When I was less than a stone’s throw from the platform and the core, I felt the bridge give way a little beneath my feet. I heard a loud crack, and I immediately stopped sprinting. I ducked on instinct, and a giant cleaver whizzed past my head.

Traps. Belinda had said that Kyrine was forbidden from constructing them. Much to my misfortune, the dungeon had obviously broken this rule.

“You’ve been a naughty dungeon,” I said as I gritted my teeth. “How many more of those damned things are out here?”

Chapter 9

Again, I regretted that I’d never put time into mastering a decent Detect spell. It had just never caught my interest, but that meant that now I couldn’t discern the location of any other triggers between here and the core. It would be like walking through a minefield.

I glanced over my shoulder. With a roar and a blast of flame and magic, one of the apes broke free of my Ensnare ability and began to lumber to his feet.

So, I was caught between giant Magma Apes who wanted to tear me limb from limb, and a game of Minesweeper where a single wrong step would end in decapitation. I was severely running out of options.

I twisted my fingers in the Force Barrier mudra and summoned a protective dome around my body. Rather than completely seal the dome, I left a small hole just big enough to shoot my rifle through.

Stepping forward and putting my rifle through my new gun loop, I pumped a test shot of Fireball into the nearest stone tile on the bridge, trying hard to be careful not to pour too much mana into the weapon. I wanted enough power to activate a pressure trigger but not so much that it might affect the integrity of the bridge.