The Strongest Spellblade

“So, you are the brat wanting to learn from me,” Trap Master Enzo said.

“Yes, Master Enzo,” I replied, and he gave a small snort before stroking his pointy beard.

“Traps are an artform. Most adventurers just activate them without regard. No finesse or understanding. I specialize in trap toys for young children to work on the skill. What level are you at?” he asked me.

“Level one in Trap Detection,” I said.

“Bah, completely fresh then. Might as well not count at all. Trap Detection is about sensing the subtle danger coming from the traps. This isn’t Danger Sense either. Since low tier traps have no source of Mana of their own, this danger is much more diffuse and difficult to sense. Especially with traps with secondary effects and delayed reactions,” he explained and I paid close attention.

He set a large wooden box on the table between us. “This is a trap box. A toy for children to learn Trap Detection.” He opened it up and there was an opening in the box. “You stick a hand in the opening and grip the pole inside. If you mess up, your hand will experience something unpleasant.” While I knew that dismemberment and death weren’t options, I was still a bit nervous.

“On the top here, there are various contraptions. Knobs, buttons, and so on. Your job is to use the correct order to disarm the trap.”

“This will improve trap detection?” I asked hesitantly as I reached inside the box with my left hand. My right hand was my dominate hand so I didn’t want to risk it for now.

“Yes. It is simple, but it is designed to help you learn the skills necessary for dealing with traps.”

“The dungeon had some wire across a tunnel, this is similar?” I asked.

“The skill is the same, isn’t it? As for the dungeon, that will come in time. Now I turn a lever on my side and your left hand is locked into place. To escape, you need to unlock the trap,” he said.

I hesitantly twisted a knob. I felt a poke on the back of my left hand. I jumped slightly, but my left hand was stuck in the box. “Don’t just try things out. Try to guess what they will do before you experiment. Push your Trap Sense to the limit,” he explained.

I focused on the skill and moved my hand on a knob that could slide. “Something will hit me,” I said after a minute and slid the knob. Something did hit my wrist.

“Good. This is as basic as it gets. Try another,” Trap Master Enzo said. Someone who had the recognized title of master had a high level in a specific skill or groups of skills. Enzo’s claim to fame was his trap detection and disarming. Various organizations offered certification by confirming certain skills, their tier, and level. Trying to fake being a master when you weren’t would quickly be found out when you actually tried to do the job.

One by one, I tested all the controls across the box. None of them released my hand. I looked up at Enzo who was smiling at me. “The lever at the back you used initially,” I said.

“Correct. Never forget the most obvious solution. If you can see how a trap activates, that is the best way to disarm it, by simply reversing that process,” he explained as I freed my left hand. He moved the wooden box away and brought out another.

“Keep working on this trap box. And no, the latch I used to lock your hand in, doesn’t automatically free you like the last one. I am going to prepare your next training session,” Master Enzo said. It took me half an hour to carefully test out each piece of the trap box. I called out each knob, slider, and button before I actually used them. I got about a third correct and another third were close.

Once I finally freed my left hand once again Trap Master Enzo had returned. “Come with me,” he said. I followed him to a room in the mansion. I noted that there were thin wires everywhere and lots of other miscellaneous contraptions scattered about.

“If you trigger a trap it will make a loud bang. You need to move that small statue over there on that shelf over to the other side of the room on that desk, then come back here,” he said. I slowly began making my way through the room while he offered periodic advice.

“Don’t look at how traps connect to each other. Mana can make things much trickier with remote connections.”

“If you suspect a trap, always check where you will be moving your body and know your retreat path. Don’t startle yourself into another untested location. That is how you can set off a chain of traps and kill yourself.”

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“This is Trap Detection, no waving something ahead of you trying to trigger them. You aren’t meant to disable them. Go around them. Memorize where the wires and plates are.”

When I picked up a statue, he pulled a single wire and everything shifted across the room, including the areas I had cleared. I looked at him and he smiled. “I am a trap master kid. Whenever you interact with anything inside the dungeon, always assume the traps have changed. The moment you assume you are safe from a trap, that is when one will get you,” he explained.

It took two hours carefully moving through the room to complete the task he had given me. It had been incredibly stressful and I needed precise movement to avoid everything. “Rest up and go on study whatever it is you normally do. We will be at this all week. Today was just the starting day. But I am going to get creative. You did well in avoiding everything, but you were slow. Tomorrow there will be a time pressure included as part of the traps,” he explained.

That afternoon, I studied my Eldarin Runes and Empowered Writing. “Have fun with the Trap Master?” Tutor Damian asked me.

“It was stressful. But I felt like I learned quite a bit. But it is hard to spot thin wires,” I said.

“Trap Masters aren’t common. Since their fighting skills tend to be lacking. They often go in as a team into the dungeon or have to lure monsters into their traps on their own. That works fine on the upper layers, but the deeper one goes, the less traps work against monsters,” Damian explained.

“Why is that?” I asked.

“The environments and the strength of monsters. They also get smarter and have stronger skills. Including sensory ones. The increase in their core color also denotes an increase in their combat ability,” Damian explained.

“So, no legendary trap masters?” I asked.

“There might have been one or two. It isn’t a simple build to fight with. It takes a lot of thought and planning. Too easy to make a mistake in my opinion,” he said. While he might not be good at fighting, Damian was quite learned. Also, his analysis seemed correct. Swinging a sword to kill a monster was much more straightforward than running around and trying to place traps.

“Does anyone not fight with just spell skills?” I asked.

“Mana is used in all higher tier skills, but most often fighters tend to favor specific weapon skills, rather than a combination of magic and weapon. And increasing physical stats to survive and fight their way through. Specialization tends to be more important to reach a higher tier. But just specializing in spell skills leaves you vulnerable in the dungeon. Also you will struggle with Mana,” my tutor explained. “But you are getting ahead of yourself again. Runes, time to focus.”

I nodded at this. Focusing on the runes I had to learn in front of me. I was glad my father was changing things up, or I really might have just given up. Well, not really, but my progress would have been much slower.

The following day, I had to move through the grounds of the estate outside. “A natural environment is the absolute worst, especially in the dungeon. It lulls you into a false sense of security, that you know how things are. Don’t believe it for a second.” Trap Master Enzo was sitting on the base of a statue in the gardens. I had to follow the path in front of me to get to him.

I only had an hour. I carefully moved forward checking every step and making sure there were no wires that crossed my path. Twice there were bangs, signaling a trap had been triggered. I finally made it to the Trap Master.

“The two traps, what were they?” he asked me.

“I still can’t figure out what I missed,” I said, and he nodded at this.

“Mana disturbance for both. A rare trigger, but once you get deep enough it will happen. Even if you do everything right you might still trigger a trap. Good job on retreating back the way you came when they went off. Now go down that path to that fountain, you have an hour,” he said.

That felt unfair, but I wasn’t about to complain. I could feel my skill improving as I made my way down the next path. Occasionally Trap Master Enzo would call something out for me to pay attention to or to correct. No trying to leave the path or cheating the traps.

In the dungeon there were tunnels and other forced routes between chambers. I couldn’t try to go around the edges. The entire point of the exercise was to bypass traps without setting them off. I began to use my Mana Sense skill as well. I managed to detect some mana floating through the air on my path and avoided it. I got a compliment from Trap Master Enzo for that.

I also made sure to maintain my breathing throughout the entire exercise. It was hard to concentrate on so many skills at once. Each training session left me exhausted, but in a good way.

Every time I avoided a trap I felt a sense of accomplishment, pushing me forward. That was what made Trap Master Enzo a good teacher. He precisely managed the difficulty, to give me a couple of failures, but enough success in detecting traps if I pushed myself to get them.

It wasn’t just the equipment or a mastery of the skill itself, it was the understanding of what was needed to quickly advance a person through each level of the skill as quickly as possible. That was why teaching and being a Tutor was treated differently than just knowing skills. Just knowing them and having a mastery wasn’t enough. One had to have the skills to teach as well and be good at that.

Thinking about teaching, it made me wonder if my mother selected her Squires with this purpose in mind? I knew she did a lot for me, but it could have easily been one of her many considerations, when picking people. I would have to ask her when she returned if I remembered. The question was a bit rude as well, so it would just have to be the two of us.

If she really did that, I wouldn’t know what to say. I knew my mother loved me, but the more I learned, the more the shadow of her accomplishments loomed over me. It felt so far away, it was mentally draining to think of all the skills I would to train up.

But that was what I wanted. Every little skill, every bit of effort would forge me into the ultimate legend. I was trying to verify everything about my build and considering other paths, but for now I would trust my mother and the people she had entrusted to teach me.