We pushed forward blindly, navigating by those ghostly threads. Greg didn't shut up the entire way: "Unbelievable... Teaching a demon something she should know from birth. That's like teaching a fish to swim. Complete degradation."

  I silently digested his grumbling until we hit a blank wall at the end of the corridor.

  "Alright," Greg braked, nearly plastering himself against the stone. "This isn't good. The little threads end here."

  I walked up to the wall and tapped it lightly with my knuckles. The sound was too solid. Without overthinking it, I pressed my palm against the rough surface and poured in a short pulse of mana.

  The wall responded instantly. Glowing blue patterns emerged on the stone—complex, ornate runes resembling a schematic of a circulatory system.

  "WAIT! How did you figure that out?" Greg stared at the wall as if I had just discovered America.

  I snorted. "Oh, come on, Greg! It's just logical. If you see something suspicious—knock. If the wall is magical—pour in mana. You can be so... sometimes, that you forget the simplest things."

  Greg squinted, examining the glowing scribbles. "And what does this give us? It's pretty, sure, but completely useless."

  He stepped closer and placed his own hand on it. I felt the flow of his mana—it began to pour in. The blue patterns blinked and, right before my eyes, filled with an aggressive red light.

  "What?!" I recoiled. "I've never seen runes change color like that..." "Have you ever tried pouring in a bit more than a 'polite drop'?" Greg smirked.

  He began rapidly scanning the inscriptions that had now appeared on the red background. He reads terrifyingly fast, of course.

  "AHA!" he finally declared. Greg walked over to the left edge of the wall and pressed his shoulder against it with all his might. When the stone didn't yield, he stepped back a couple of paces, got a running start, and slammed into the monolith with all his strength.

  BAM!

  "Greg, are you an idiot?" I covered my face with my hand. "Mages don't do that!" "Damn it..." he rubbed his bruised shoulder. "Looks like I mixed up left and right in this mirrored logic."

  He moved to the other side of the wall and started pushing again. This time, with a creak, the stone reluctantly began to give way inward, revealing a narrow opening. I immediately jumped over and started helping.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  The moment we crossed the threshold, the wall slammed shut behind us with a crash. The floor beneath our feet instantly vanished, as if it had never been there. We hung in the void, levitating over an endless well.

  Suddenly, the outlines of a human face emerged on the wall in front of us. Massive, made of stone, it scrunched up in offense. "Not... fair..." it droned. "You broke... the ritu-al..."

  The ceiling above our heads shuddered and began to slowly but inexorably descend, intending to turn us into pancakes.

  "Well then," I cracked my knuckles. "Looks like we'll have to play."

  I looked at Greg. He didn't look scared. On the contrary, he was staring at the falling ceiling and smiling broadly. It seemed this chaos brought him genuine pleasure. And I caught myself thinking that I was having... fun too. Things definitely won't be boring with him.

  I had already raised my fist to turn the wall in front of us into fine crumbs when Greg suddenly grabbed my ankle. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" I managed to bark. "ONWARD, TO ADVENTURE!" he yelled.

  And we plummeted downward. The freefall didn't last long. We landed in a massive hall, and magical light instantly flared up beneath our feet.

  "O-o-oh, I see it, I see it!" Greg bolted from his spot, waving his arms ridiculously.

  His enthusiasm was contagious, right until damn arrows came whistling out of the walls. Greg, laughing like a maniac, began spinning in some crazy dance, dodging the arrowheads a millimeter from his jacket. I, on the other hand, simply raised a barrier, listening to the metal bounce off with a nasty clatter.

  "What are you doing, Alastia?!" Greg braked, looking reproachfully at my shield. "Just imagine: someone designed this! These tunnels, these mechanisms, these poison spitters... A person put their soul into this, and you just go and block it? Show some respect for the labor! We have to activate every trap, otherwise the creator will be offended!"

  I looked at him like he was crazy. But arguing was useless—he was already running further, stepping on every suspicious tile in the floor.

  We walked through the tunnels. The outlines of golems began to appear on the walls—massive stone idols embedded in the masonry. Without waiting for them to wake up, I began methodically smashing their heads to dust.

  "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" Greg almost burst into tears. "Breaking them before they crush us!" I answered reasonably. "Ugh, I have to teach you everything..."

  He ran over to a huge button in the center of the floor and jumped on it with both feet. The golems instantly creaked, their eyes filling with red light. It began. For the next ten minutes, all we did was grind animated stone into gravel.

  When the last golem crumbled at my feet, I wiped the sweat from my forehead. "And what was the point of that, Greg? Why did we waste so much energy?"

  He looked at the pile of rubble, kicked a stone, and answered honestly: "I don't know."

  "WHAT?!" "Quiet down, don't yell..." he waved his hands. "I just thought that if we did everything 'by the rules,' they'd give us some kind of reward at the end. A chest of gold, or at least a tasty pastry."

  I glared at him with maximum malice.

  Greg, sensing that things were getting heated, quickly moved on. He pushed a door. Behind it was another one. He opened the second—behind it was a third.

  "Oh, come on!" Greg started losing his patience. "A door matryoshka?"

  He opened the fourth, the fifth... At the sixth, he stopped, growled, grabbed the handle, and with all his might pulled the door not toward himself, but... downward, crushing it straight into the floor.

  The mechanism crunched pitifully, and the passageway finally opened. "There we go," he said, dusting off his hands. "Should've done that from the start. Let's go, Alastia. I feel the room is close."