A/N: Here's Omake 3, a bit later than I wanted to get it out
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A casual observer might have noted that the Ninth Prince was miffed. Some would have even called him peeved. The daring few who managed to get close enough to him to read his expression would have been so bold as to say he was annoyed.
Of course, none of these answers were correct. The Ninth Prince was not merely miffed, or peeved, or even annoyed. The Ninth Prince was furious.
There he was, standing grumpily with his arms crossed in the middle of a small sandstone room. To the Ninth Prince's right, Ulo was curled up into as small of a ball as the large snake could make, gently rocking back and forth. To his left, Kha, Li, and Ya were fighting among each other, biting, snapping, and hissing, all while shooting bolts of venom that barely missed each other, instead splattering against the carved sandstone walls of the room. On top of the Ninth Prince's head, Raj was commanding his snakes to form various fractal patterns that seemed to be created with no rhyme or reason, with the patterns being changed almost as soon as they were formed. While all of this was happening, the room was slowly filling with sand, in what appeared to be an attempt to suffocate all of them.
And, worst of all, some fool had forgotten to provide the Ninth Prince with a stick! This was UNACCEPTABLE!
What's that, imaginary person in the Ninth Prince's head? You're wondering how the Ninth Prince got into a situation such as this? Well, the Ninth Prince is glad you asked. But to explain that, the Ninth Prince is going to have to start at the very beginning.
The entrance to the desert tomb was, as you would expect, sandy. This wasn't exactly a noteworthy event, since nearly everything in the desert was sandy in some way or another. That was the thing about sand. It was coarse and rough and irritating – and it got everywhere.
But that was enough musing on the nature of sand. The Ninth Prince was not here to muse! The Ninth Prince was here for GREAT JUSTICE! And treasure. Mostly treasure actually.
After an unfortunate run-in with a Foundation Establishment cultivator working for Flying Poison Dagger, in which the Ninth Prince was moderately injured, his genius intellect realized something, something important.
The Ninth Prince needed a lifesaving treasure!
Yes, lifesaving treasures, those brilliant baubles that were created for the express purpose of saving one's life through a variety of forms. Unfortunately, they were incredibly rare, for obvious reasons. As such, the only true way to obtain a lifesaving treasure without negotiation was by either killing somebody who possessed one before they could use it, or by using the method the Ninth Prince was currently using, adventuring in hopes of finding one.
His year long search had lead the Ninth Prince to this quaint little burial chamber, called the Temple of Scales. According to his leads, there was a lifesaving treasure perfect for Qi Gathering in these ruins, one known as the Jewel Eyed Snake.
Now was not the time for thinking however. Now was the time for action!
Hopping off Ulo but still having Kha, Li, and Ya on his left arm and Raj on his head, the Ninth Prince took his first step into the dusty tomb, carefully moving forward in order to not set off any traps.
Theoretically, the Ninth Prince
could send Raj's minions in front of him in order to search for and/or trigger any traps that were hidden in the dark corridor, but he was the Ninth Prince! The strong had obligations to the weak, and the Ninth Prince would not trample over said obligations by having Raj's minions potentially die just because he was afraid of a little danger!
Besides, his 10th heavenstage cultivation base would most likely be enough to protect him, and if not? Well, that was what he had Ulo for. The large python walked side by side with the Ninth Prince, ready to use his adamant hardened scales to block anything that the Ninth Prince couldn't dodge. It wasn't exploiting the weak if the one you were relying on to keep yourself safe was stronger than you.
The Temple of Scales was supposed to be unusual among temples, mainly for being essentially one large corridor that led to a singular treasure room. There was none of that 'branching hallway' or 'multiple floor' nonsense that was so common in other such tombs, making it quite a popular spot for treasure hunters to try their luck.
Of course, there was a reason the Temple of Scales was still unbeaten. What the ruin lacked in complexity or trickery it more than made up for in lethality. As the Temple went farther and farther on, the traps inside became more and more dangerous, eventually being packed wall to wall with traps and machinery that required a seventh heavenstage Qi Gathering cultivator to have even a hope of surviving.
It was lucky that the Ninth Prince was at the tenth heavenstage of Qi Gathering.
There wasn't exactly anything truly deadly in the first few dozen feet of the corridor, just some spinning blades that bounced off of Ulo's scales, a few swinging axes that also bounced off of Ulo's scales, poison darts that were easily dodgeable by the Ninth Prince, and a five foot pit. FIVE FEET! Did the temple designers think the Ninth Prince some sort of
amateur? The pit barely even had spikes in it.
Still, judging by the bones that were already present in the first area, this sort of basic trap design was still good enough to kill quite a few would-be treasure hunters. Almost certainly mortals, no cultivator worth the name would ever get caught in something so plebeian.
The next few hundred feet of the corridor were essentially the same. Sure, the spinning blades might have been a bit harder and spun a bit faster, and the swinging axes swung with just a teensy amount of extra force, and the poison darts actually begun to be staggered so that it wasn't just one volley and done, and maybe the pit traps were larger and had a few more spikes on them, but none of it mattered.
The spinning blades and swinging axes were still no match for Ulo's hardened scales, bouncing off the enormous python without leaving a scratch. The poison dart traps were still easily dodged by the Ninth Prince, and even if they weren't, the poison on the darts were barely an irritation to the Ninth Prince and the Naag bloodline he possessed. The pit traps were still at most only 10 feet, easily short enough for the Ninth Prince to jump over. Ulo was just able to slither over the pits like they weren't even there.
The only real thing of interest in that first hundred or so feet were the flamethrowers. Every so often, the walls opened up and let out jets of flame. They didn't exactly do much, but they were the first traps in the Temple of Scales to make the Ninth Prince mildly uncomfortable. Snakes may like the heat, but there are limits.
Of course, this was well within those limits.
Frankly, the Ninth Prince was actively stifling yawns as he went through the early parts of the Temple. The entire thing was boring, and honestly quite repetitive. There were only five or so different types of trap for Shesha's sake!
Five! Even the peasant tombs back in the Fifth sea had at least twelve, and three floors at the
minimum. This wasn't just bad trap design, this was an insult to the entire profession of trap architect!
Elsewhere, Ge Yahzu, Core Formation cultivator and premier trapbuilder in the Virtuous Flipper region, had an inexplicable urge to punch something.
Or preferably someone.
If there was one good thing about this insult to the art, it was that these traps seemed to be able to re-stock themselves somehow, darts being collected back into their holes, axes and blades sinking back into the ceiling and floor, and even the false floor of a pit trap somehow being repaired, but that didn't excuse the boring and basic design.
He supposed that the lethality of the traps was intended to make up for the frankly boring layout, but as of right now, the Ninth Prince's cultivation base was much higher than the level where these traps would be even halfway effective. The Temple was supposed to go up to seventh heavenstage levels of lethality, but even that would probably be nothing more than a light workout.
Maybe not for ordinary cultivators of the tenth heavenstage, but he was
the Ninth Prince! The power of
GREAT JUSTICE! fueled his every endeavor!
As usual, the Ninth Prince's predictions came true. For the next hour or so, there was nothing that could stop him and Ulo, and eventually they got into a routine, a rhythm that made the entire thing easier, darting into an area then stepping back to avoid the inevitable traps.
If there were spinning blades or swinging axes, Ulo would go in and block the metal bits with his body, holding them off with the toughness of his adamant scales. Flamethrowers were handled the same way, Ulo's scales having a much higher melting point than the fires' heat.
The Ninth Prince would just walk through poison dart traps, their measly poisons being less than nothing to a man with the snake bloodline of the Naag. Pit traps were slightly more difficult, but one of two things would happen. Either the Ninth Prince would just jump over, or Ulo would stretch his entire body out and form a bridge over the tiny pit.
Still, things weren't exactly all fun and games either. As time went on, the saw blades and swinging axes began to actually make marks on Ulo's scales, at first just a few barely noticeable scratches, but eventually managing to leave gashes that made it about a quarter of the way through. The fire of the flamethrowers burned hot enough that Ulo's outer layer of protection began to hiss and bubble.
Eventually, poison darts shot out of the walls in such quantities and at such speed that they formed a solid barrier, the darts blurring together to the point that they might as well have been called a single object, and the poisons on said darts were strong enough that they began to overcome the Ninth Prince's resistance. Pits became wider than Ulo was long, and filled with wickedly sharp spikes, forcing Kha, Li, and Ya to melt the walls around said pits wit their acidic venom,forming tiny ledges and walkways that the Ninth Prince barely managed to inch across.
And all around the Ninth Prince and his companions were corpses, bone piles that made it incredibly clear what the fate of those that came before him was, grisly reminders of the fate that awaited
him if he made but one mistake, one misstep.
...it appeared as if the Ninth Prince had severely underestimated the danger of traps that were lethal to seventh heavenstage cultivators.
Why, if he didn't have a near blanket immunity to poison due to his bloodline, as well as an enormous snake whose scales were hardened by metal, those last few sections of traps would have… bee...n… de…
Oh. He was an idiot.
These traps were in no way at the level of the seventh heavenstage of Qi Gathering. They were at the level of the tenth. The reason the Temple of Scales was reported as only having traps lethal to the seventh heavenstage was that
anybody who went farther never came back.
Well fuck.
So, to summarize what he'd just learned, the Ninth Prince was stuck in a death trap with self replenishing traps that had an unknown level of difficulty, but was almost certain to go up higher than tenth heavenstage in lethality. In addition to this already horrifying turn of events, his main protector in this area, Ulo, was getting weaker and weaker as time went on, his scales slowly breaking under the force of this onslaught.
The Ninth Prince allowed himself a smile. This was almost shaping up to be a proper workout!
Unfortunately for the Ninth Prince, almost immediately after he said that, Raj began hissing wildly.
The hissing itself wasn't exactly unfortunate, but that particular sequence of hisses meant one thing and one thing only. Raj had spotted what looked to be the end of the Temple.
Now, normally, this wouldn't be bad news, instead being some of the best news the Ninth Prince had heard all day. But, he just finished acting all badass with the whole 'proper workout' thing, and that was kind of ruined by the fact that the treasure was probably less than a few hundred feet away.
...No he was not pouting.
Yes he was.
ANYWAYS! That was enough about that! The main problem right now was getting through that last stretch of the Temple of Scales, no doubt the most deadly part of the entire deathtrap, without dying.
...DAMN IT!
This would have been the
perfect time to say that 'proper workout' thing, but he had to waste it!
Furiously muttering under his breath, the Ninth Prince just decided to get on with it. The moment was spoiled.
And besides, now was not the time for witty one liners. Now was the time for
GREAT JUS-Whoops. Force of habit. Now was the time for
GREAT TREASURE!
...That didn't sound right.
Still, if he spent any more time trying to think of a good witty one liner, the traps would reset while he was still standing on them.
The Ninth Prince took a deep breath and closed his eyes. When he opened his eyes next, there was none of the barely restrained flamboyance that normally resided within. All that existed was a cold focus.
The Ninth Prince took one step forward, Ulo by his side, and immediately, the seemingly harmless corridor in front of him shifted into a nightmarish hellscape of traps.
Right. How to deal with this?
Ah. Yes, the Ninth Prince could see exactly what he needed to do.
Jump over the spinning blades, using Ulo as a ramp. Swing over the swinging axes, using the momentum from said jump. Duck under the first set of flamethrowers, then jump over the second set.
By this point, Ulo should have caught up to him, just in time to block the poison darts. Have Kha, Li, and Ya melt the right wall, and carefully use the protrusions coming out of said melted wall to rock climb around the very obvious pit. Wait for Ulo to coil up into a spring and then pogo himself over the pit.
Intentionally trigger the tripwire for the swinging log trap, catch the log with Ulo's help, then swing it forward so that it breaks most of the invisible razor wire that's no doubtedly in the very obvious open space.
Walk through the very obvious open space, take a five second break and wait for Raj's minions to finish coming through the now inert traps. Take exactly three steps forward, then quickly step back three steps.
Have Raj's minions swarm the animated skeletons made out of the many bones laid out in perfect skeletons against the walls, and wait as the snakes easily demolish the undead. Do not interfere - this is mainly so that Raj and the minions feel like they're helping.
After the skeletons are defeated, take exactly one (1) bone, preferably a femur, for a treat later. Temple raiding is hard work, and Ulo gets hungry.
Wait for twelve seconds as the inevitable guardian golem begins forming out of the sandstone floor, then, when it is exactly half completed, jump into said sandstone golem, wait for it fo finish forming around you, then have Kha, Li, and Ya begin blasting from the inside.
Toss Ulo the bone, then stand in front of the entrance to the treasure room and bask in the satisfaction of a job well done.
The Ninth Prince blinked out the focus from his eyes, returning back to his normal state, and prepared to do exactly what he'd just laid out.
Then, the Ninth Prince actually took the time to look at what was in front of him, and realized, based on the distinct lack of any sort of deadly trap corridor in front of him, that this was not where he started.
Looking back to see a deadly trap corridor not dissimilar to the one the Ninth Prince was supposed to currently be viewing, the Ninth Prince, using his genius intellect, realized that there was only one plausible explanation for what had just happened: Somehow, while he was planning exactly how to get past the obstacle course of deadly traps, the Ninth Prince had simultaneously been carrying out said plan.
There ware really only one valid response to finding something like that out. "Huh. Neat."
After taking a moment to just breathe, and recover from the ordeal the Ninth Prince had just put himself through, the Ninth Prince took a look at the culmination of a year's worth of research, planning, tracking down leads, and nearly dying. Or, at least, the entrance to said culmination.
The door to the treasure chamber was solid gold, easily worth a fortune to mortals, but barely valuable at all to cultivators, who dealt in far more mystical forms of currency. The material making up the door wasn't the interesting part of the entire thing however. The real value of the door was the craftsmanship put into it, which somehow made the door look like it was actually a door shaped assortment of coiling snakes.
But the door was not what he was here for. The Ninth Prince opened the door, and saw it. The object he'd been searching for for an entire year. The treasure that would provide him an automatic 'get out of death free' pass. The Jewel Eyed Snake.
It was resting on a pedestal in the room, surrounded by piles upon piles of jewels, gold, and other, lesser, treasures, all just waiting to be claimed by the Ninth Prince.
So, he decided to go and claim them, walking into the treasure chamber, Ulo by his side, Raj's minions slightly behind him.
And then the door slammed shut, the pedestal disappeared, three glyphs (one black glyph of fear, one red glyph of anger, and one purple glyph of madness) appeared on the walls to the Ninth Prince's front, left, and right, and sand began pouring out of the walls.
Fuck.
Illusion arts.
What made it even worse was that the door to the
actual treasure room was
right in front of him, but obviously locked. If the Ninth Prince had a stick, or a bone, or anything else he could bend into a key shape, then creating a facsimile of the key needed to open said door would be easy, but
noooooo, he didn't
have a stick, because SOMEONE (Raj) forgot to
bring one!
To recap: There he was, standing grumpily with his arms crossed in the middle of a small sandstone room. To the Ninth Prince's right, Ulo was curled up into as small of a ball as the large snake could make, gently rocking back and forth. To his left, Kha, Li, and Ya were fighting among each other, biting, snapping, and hissing, all while shooting bolts of venom that barely missed each other, instead splattering against the carved sandstone walls of the room. On top of the Ninth Prince's head, Raj was commanding his snakes to form various fractal patterns that seemed to be created with no rhyme or reason, with the patterns being changed almost as soon as they were formed. While all of this was happening, the room was slowly filling with sand, in what appeared to be an attempt to suffocate all of them.
And, worst of all, some fool had forgotten to provide the Ninth Prince with a stick! This was UNACCEPTABLE!
There. That should be enough of a recap for you, imaginary person in the Ninth Prince's head.
As of the current moment, the Ninth Prince was desperately trying to figure out a way to get out of the mess they were currently in. He would
not die to something as plebian as
sand.
The Ninth Prince's mind leaped from one possibility to the next, discarding more and more outlandish solutions. As time went on, and he was no closer to a solution, the Ninth Prince began, for a split second, to entertain the impossible possibility that he, the
Ninth Prince, might fail.
Then, all thoughts of potential failure were banished from his mind, as the Ninth Prince realized exactly what he needed to do to survive.
Grabbing the smallest snake he could find from Raj's constantly shifting formation of minions (which were all surprisingly unbothered by the sand, being light enough that they could stay on top of the substance with no apparent effort), the Minth Prince waded through the waist high sand and made his way over to the, thankfully, unsubmerged keyhole.
The Ninth Prince turned to the snake held in his hand, and began explaining the task he needed it to do. "Wriggle tail-first as far as you possibly can into this lock, then clench your muscles to achieve maximum rigidity. Once you do that, hiss to let me know you've completed your task. Are you okay with doing that?"
The snake hissed an affirmative, then did what it needed to do, squirming into the key hole until eventually all that was visible was its head and a small portion of 'neck'. The snake hissed that its task was completed, and the Ninth Prince moved to complete his own portion of his plan.
Gently but firmly, the Ninth Prince twisted the snake's head 45 degrees clockwise, producing a loud click from the lock.
As soon as that click occurred, all three of the glyphs on the walls disappeared, and the sand was somehow sucked straight through the floor. Ulo uncoiled himself and raised his head up, mildly confused as to why he was curled up into a ball. Kha, Li, and Ya stopped their savage attacks, looking at each other with as much sorrow as a snake could muster. Raj seemed to shrink into himself, deeply embarrassed by the actions he'd undertaken while under the effects of the glyph of madness.
For his part, the Ninth Prince just stood there, waiting. He didn't know why, or for what, but the Ninth Prince's instincts told him to wait, and they'd never steered him wrong before.
After about ten minutes of said waiting, the Ninth Prince's instincts told him that it was safe to open up the small stone door that presumably led to the
actual treasure room.
The second treasure room was entirely different from the first. While the first treasure room was filled to the brim with illusions of gold, gems, spirit stones, and other such forms of wealth, this treasure room was empty, but for a single item.
The Jewel Eyed Snake hovered in the exact center of the room, suspended in midair by a pillar of glowing orange light. Coming out of said pillar were dozens, if not hundreds, of thin orange lines, criss-crossing the walls, the ceiling, and the floor, creating a veritable spiderweb of light, all seemingly stemming from the golden, emerald-eyed snake in the middle of the treasure room, almost as if the treasure was powering the entire thing.
The Ninth Prince slowly made his way up to the treasure with a cautiousness and reverence rivalling the respect he had for the Naag clan ancestors. Ever so slowly, he teased the statue out of the pillar of light, until eventually, it popped out of the orange pillar, and then vanished, after which the Ninth Prince could feel a warm
presence right above his heart.
Peering under his shirt, the Ninth Prince quickly realized where the treasure had gone, as an ink tattoo of the Jewel Eyed Snake resided over his heart.
The Ninth Prince's peering was interrupted by a distant rumbling sound. Looking at the treasure room, he noticed that both the orange pillar and the spiderweb of light had vanished, and, more pressingly, chunks of the treasure room ceiling had begun falling down.
Well fuck.
The Jewel Eyed Snake appeared to be powering the Temple of Scales. And, as anybody with even the most
basic of knowledge of arrays could attest, when an item or formation's power source was removed, it shut down.
It appeared that the Temple of Scales' version of 'shutting down' was the entire thing collapsing in a heap of rubble.
Talk about shoddy Temple design.
Elsewhere, Ge Yahzu, Core Formation cultivator and premier trapbuilder in the Virtuous Flipper region, had another inexplicable urge to punch someone.
Still, critiquing the design of the Temple of Scales could be done after the Ninth Prince figured out a way to survive.
He wasn't going to lie, living through this and, more importantly, not losing a single one of his companions and Raj's minions was going to be difficult.
But the Ninth Prince had a plan, a cunning masterpiece of his brilliant mind that would save all of them from certain doom, and was so simple, it only consisted of three words!
Run. Like. Hell.
As the treasure room began collapsing around him, the Ninth Prince grabbed Kha, Li, and Ya, and put them back on his left arm. Then, he grabbed Raj's minions, and begun finding places to put them. Some curled around the Ninth Prince's neck, some wrapped themselves around his right arm, others coiled around his spear, and the smallest of the minions sat next to Raj, on the Ninth Prince's head.
He must have looked incredibly silly, snakes covering nearly his entire body, but there would be time for embarrassment later. Now was the time for not dying.
As the Ninth Prince raced out of the treasure room, Ulo by his side and everyone else hanging off of him, the spot where he was standing not a second ago was pulverized by a falling chunk of ceiling.
The Ninth Prince dashed through the fake treasure room, illusions thankfully not operational, and burst into the trapped corridor proper.
The good thing about the Temple having no power was that the traps were no longer online, meaning that the Ninth Prince didn't have to worry about anything unexpected killing him out of nowhere.
The bad thing about the Temple having no power (beyond the whole 'getting destroyed with the Ninth Prince still in it' thing) was that, since the traps were no longer being reset, the Ninth Prince had to deal with devilishly sharp axes hanging from the ceiling, lethal circular blades jutting out of the floor, and twenty plus foot pits with spikes in them.
The only thing left to do was somehow dodge all of them, while still not losing a single snake.
The Ninth Prince was suddenly hit with the realization that now was probably not the best time to be musing on stuff like that, seeing as the first obstacle in his way was a twenty plus foot pit with no way to easily run over it.
The Ninth Prince desperately screamed at Kha, Li, and Ya to melt as much of the wall next to the pit as they possibly could.
Sensing the fear and panic in their master's voice, the three-headed cobra complied, spitting out veritable
jets of acidic venom that turned the already melted left wall into a five foot wide ledge, perfect for both the Ninth Prince and Ulo to use to cross.
The next few obstacles were a lot easier in comparison. Due to there being no power, the poison dart traps and the flamethrowers were a non-issue, leaving only the axes, the sawblades, and the pits.
The Ninth Prince jumped over the sawblades on the floor, then used said jump to land on top of the swinging axes, kicking off with the force of a man possessed.
Tomb raiding was new to the Ninth Prince, but running? Running was the easiest thing in the world.
As Ulo barrelled through the metal traps and rejoined him, the Ninth Prince allowed himself to think that they just might be able to get away with this. The traps would only get easier from here, and they'd cleared the hardest part with time to spare. What could possibly go wr-Wait nono
nono-
The Ninth Prince desperately tried to take back what he was in the process of saying, but it was too late.
Almost immediately after he'd thought those words, the crumbling of the Temple, which had seemed so distant not a moment ago, began to speed up immensely.
Fuck.
The Ninth Prince got back to running for his life.
He leapt over and ducked under the blades and axes, using everything he could, the walls, the traps, even the falling bits of ceiling themselves, as springboards to give him some extra speed. Kha, Li, and Ya, were spewing out an almost constant stream of tripartite venom, desperately melting the walls, traps, and the falling chunks to give Ulo a fighting chance.
As the Ninth Prince and Ulo raced through the corridor, things started to get easier, the axes and blades not even being able to scratch Ulo, and the pits getting small enough that both the Ninth Prince and Ulo were able to just jump or slither over them.
This drop in the lethality of the traps was desperately needed, as, otherwise, the Ninth Prince wouldn't be able to survive the spike in the lethality of the crumbling ceiling. The chunks of ceiling fell so thick and fast that the Ninth Prince didn't even touch the floor for the latter part of his escape, leaping and lunging from falling rock to collapsing boulder like some sort of demented frog.
Kha, Li, and Ya still had their work cut out for them, as they frantically shot out stream after spurt after jet of venom in order to prevent Ulo from getting crushed by falling debris.
By the time they could see the entrance, the Ninth Prince was essentially running
above Ulo, jumping from rock to rock as Kha, Li, and Ya, having long since given up on complete disintegration, melted the largest of ceiling chunks into smaller pieces that just bounced off of Ulo's scales as he slithered over pits and blades and through axes.
The last few feet of their desperate race was marked by a frantic leap from both the Ninth Prince and Ulo as the Temple of Scales crumbled around them.
Not two seconds after the Ninth Prince and Ulo lunged out of the Temple, the entire structure collapsed in on itself, turning the Temple of Scales into a true ruin.
The Ninth Prince just laid where he'd landed for a solid five minutes, face down in the desert sand, laughing almost as hysterically as he'd laughed after frightening away Flying Poison Dagger.
Still, the Ninth Prince was older and more mature, and thus, this bout of laughter only lasted about five minutes instead of the half an hour he'd laughed when he tricked a Core Formation cultivator.
The Ninth Prince stood up, brushed himself off, then walked beside Ulo to make the long journey back home.
As he once again focused on the warm presence over his heart, and more importantly, the fact that nobody had gotten severely injured, the Ninth Prince allowed himself a smile.
Today was shaping up to be a good day.
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A/N: This was supposed to be barely three thousand words. I. I don't know how it turned into this! Still, can't say I'm unhappy with the result.
@occipitallobe
I'd like a lifesaving treasure for this please
