D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad Chapter 2281 A Relic in Hand was Inside us all Along. No Wait…

--- Kat ---

Kat poked the stone a few more times, and gathered up some water to give it a real shove. None of this produced any sort of movement from the stone. If it wasn’t hovering, Kat would’ve said it was locked in place. It technically moved a bit, but that was the natural bobbing it had due to whatever enchantment kept it in place. None of Kat’s efforts were good for anything.

Giving a mental frown, Kat catalogued everything within her sight bubble and it was... not much. The scorpions were still too scared to get close and Kat was thankful for that... but were they scared enough to give her a chance to transform? She was still somewhat lost as to how this thing was meant to be moved. Her current best guess was that you could carry around the alter it was ’attached’ to but it seemed rather fixed to the ground with no way to release it. But there had to be one right?

Lily sent back an image of her pouting, something Kat enjoyed immensely for a few seconds before forming herself into a more body-like shape and readying her hand.

Kat let her mind speed up, and executed her pre-planned actions. Transform, touch the stone, t- Kat’s plan to transform back was interrupted when the entire thing exploded into light. A giant pillar that Lily and Appoline could see... well until they too had to look away from the bright light.

Kat didn’t bother blinking the water from her eyes, she just transformed once again. This allowed her to see once again, and found that... she was no longer on the plinth. Instead she was in a small cavern with a door. All covered in runes. Her link to Lily felt a bit weird... so where was she. *

So that’s what Kat did. She returned to normal... and immediately started coughing. Lily was worried, but Kat gave a mental wave off. It was just that the entire area was THICK with dust. The long breathe in she’d done upon transforming back had been enough to gather far too much of it. Kat spat out a bunch of spit mixed with dirt, and placed her kimono over her mouth as she started to breathe a bit more normally. Once she didn’t feel like coughing anymore, Kat breathed in deeply and then got to investigating.

The runes on the walls were what stood out the most of course. They were pulsing bright blue and might have intricate meanings... sadly neither Kat nor Lily had a single clue what any of them were meant to mean. Kat certainly didn’t recognise them and even with Lily’s slightly larger understanding of runes, it didn’t help her here.

Now, that raised the question of if these were all nonsense or real runes. The answer would dictate how careful Kat needed to be interacting with them. If they were real, disrupting them could cause all sorts of effects. If they were fake, they were just fancy lights. At least the door didn’t have any runes on it. Except for the circular glowing dot. Was that a rune? It really was just an orb that lit the area. Though not one Kat could take into her bracelet... unless?

Kat walked over to it and tapped her bracelet against it and the door flung itself open. Shrugging, Kat glanced around the other side which seemed to be just a long, if thin corridor lit by more blue runes. Tucking her wings in close Kat carefully slid her way along. Checking the floor with her foot for traps, and debating if it would be better to transform into water to get through whatever this was.

In the end, it didn’t really matter. Halfway along the trip, the ceiling cracked and broke, dropping some rocks on Kat’s head... but they just shattered on her horns. It left her wondering what the point of that even was. It wasn’t like they had far to fall, nor was there much force upon her neck when they did. Was it the dust that was meant to cause an actual issue? *

With the weird rock ’traps’ dealt with there was nothing stopping Kat from reaching the next door and using the same method to open it. The next room was more interesting looking, but not more interesting for Kat in practice. It was a series of moving platforms likely intended to try and get people to jump across them. There was water at the bottom at least so nobody was going to die if they fell... but Kat didn’t even need to worry about that.

There was a few moments of consideration for potential enchantments to stop her flying, or something else of that nature... but she decided to try anyway and was rewarded. Nothing stopped her at all. So it was just another easy room. The exit door to this one led into a slide. Though there were theoretically dangers in this one. Glowing blue lines that acted as obvious tripwires, gaps in the slide itself you could fall down, and potentially other traps...

All defeated by the fact Kat could just glide over them. The ceiling wasn’t particularly low, and the glowing blue lines meant it was easy to follow the track without getting lost at all. Kat was really starting to wonder who designed this challenge set because at least so far, they didn’t seem to have been made with her in mind. A good thing all in all, but a weird one.