Kidnapped

"Gul! No, here, come back!" They continued on with their test, unaware of the person who had been watching them.

Just as Zeeth shrank Gul back down, a few dark particles gathered around Zeeth. Perhaps it was due to the steam that the heat and all the slimes water caused, but it wasn't until it was too late that Page noticed as he yelled, "Zeeth, that's teleportation magic! Jump away!"

Page tried to jump at Zeeth to push him out of the range of the particles, and Zeeth, having his reflexes honed by his many months in the forest, quickly jumped back, but the particles stuck with him and just kept multiplying until they became steaks that covered his entire body and teleported him away, while at the same time blinding him and knocking him unconscious.

He didn't know how much time had passed, but suddenly he was blinking his eyes open to a brightly lit room with a glaring light pointed straight at his face, forcing him to shut his eyes again to stop the pain of the brightness. A voice to his left came blaring out, "You're awake! I believe your name is Zeeth? A tier C hunter, nice, quite nice. Too bad I wasn't able to get the other one, Page, was it? I'll get him later."

He leaned his head to the side to avoid the glaring light and continued trying to open his eyes and yelled, "Who's there? Where am I? What are you doing?" he tried to move his arms and legs to sit up and rub his face, but they were being held down with what seemed like magically enhanced cuffs. Just as he was blinking his eyes open, slowly adjusting to the room, a flash of a memory came back to him. When he was a little boy, he had gone through a very similar situation.

He was tied down to a moving bed as he was wheeled through a white corridor. Another flash and he was in a single dark room with a few men and women in surgical suits and masks, holding sharp tools as blood covered the bottom half of their suits. He was shot back with a sharp pain in his stomach that quickly disappeared.

The man over the speakers didn't seem to notice and went on, "I ask the questions. Don't move, they only get tighter with more movement. How did you get all those slimes to the volcano? Do you have a teleportation skill?"

"What!? What are you talking about? Let me out of here first, we can talk later."

"No. I want answers now. I was looking into your past, but you have nearly nothing to your name before Jarlon. I can't even find where you were born, what were you doing before then?"

"I'll tell you if you let me go."

The man from the speakerphone gave a deep sigh and said, "fine if you want this the hard way. I can figure it out myself."

Just as Zeeths eyes were getting used to the brightness of the room, all the lights were turned off and his cuffs released.

"What I have here is a maze and you are on one end. I haven't touched any of your belongings, and there is a definite way out on the other side of the maze. But are you able to get out before you starve? There is nothing in here that you can eat or drink, how long will you last?"

"What the hell? Let me out, you crazy person!!" Zeeth tried banging on the speaker where the voice was coming from, but nothing but the hollow echoing of his fists hitting the wall sounded out.

The man behind the speaker spoke to himself, "this should make him reveal his secrets. Show me, what are your skills and talents, boy?"

Meanwhile, over on Page's side, all of Zeeths slimes were standing around, trying to fight through the heat. Many of them had noticed that their master was nowhere near anymore, but he was too far away, their connection had been thinned out too much and the heat was preventing them from focusing. Page had even less of a clue about what was going on, he had no magical or physical connection to Zeeth or the teleporter.

Nevertheless, he kept looking around, trying to find clues on where it could've taken him. Teleporters like that can't just come out of nowhere, unless it was a talent there needed to be some sort of pre-drawn circle. All his years of fighting and traveling the world had made him very keen about traps, it didn't take long for him to find the magic circle covered with layers of protection. Now all he needed to do was uncover and decode it, which could take hours, if not days.

Zeeth kept trying to feel the walls, making his way out. He opened the doors out of the room and found a long, narrow path ahead of the exact length and width as the doorway. It was so dark he couldn't even see his hands and he had to extend his mana to feel around, but there seemed to be some kind of limiter so he couldn't extend it that far.

The madman behind the speaker was watching him from some kind of camera and through the one-way glass ceiling.

Zeeth started walking through the maze, taking random turns and twists. As he kept going, the rocks around him got less smooth, there were spiky bits pointing and poking his hands and feet, the paths were getting narrower as the stones got sharper and bigger. They also seemed to be emitting some kind of strange mana.

At first, they were doing nothing but intercepting with his own mana detection, but they soon got so violent that he couldn't even tell if there was a left or a right passage a few feet ahead of him, making him accidentally walk into many more walls and forcing him to touch more of the spiky walls.

He decided to stop and feel one part of the wall and it felt like a cool hard gem. The sides seemed polished and straight while the top was sharpened into a spike. They weren't thin enough to immediately puncture his skin, but they were sharp enough to hurt if he walked into them too fast. Just as he grabbed another gem, another burst of memories came back. He was in a bright white room and a single stone stood in front of him. He didn't know how, but the next second there was a fist-shaped dent in it and he was sent back before he figured out how.

A small light shone on half of the crazy man's face, revealing a man with messy white hair, a long beard and overgrown mustache, and a messy labcoat covered with writing and holes. He said to a little device in his hand, "test subject #24 is not doing much. His control over magic is beginner level at best, he hasn't shown any of his skills or talents yet. Moving difficulty to level 2."

he flipped a giant switch in front of him and the walls suddenly started glowing purple, revealing what they really looked like. It was an amazing view, the walls were basically a mass of gems, all of different sizes. They were slightly transparent, and it was just enough light to allow Zeeth to see just a bit ahead on the floor.

Just then, he heard the strange scuttling of hundreds of feet. They were strangely familiar to the scuttling of... bugs. He looked around for the source of the noise, but they seemed to come from everywhere. A large swarm of silver beetles. The back of the beetles reflected what little light the gems walla gave off and gave a slight purple hue to their silverbacks. One that was particularly ahead of the others tried to stick onto his foot.

Zeeth swung his foot around, trying to shake it off, but he found that their grip was a lot stronger than he had thought. He kicked it off with his other foot and kicked against the wall, impaling it on a thin, sharp gem killing it instantly, creating a sharp crunch sound that sounded strangely like twisting steel.

The beetles weren't strong, he could stomp on one a few times to kill it, but the shells were strangely strong. It felt like real steel on their backs, and because of that, they were harder to crush. He just kept trying to stomp them to death, but he suddenly had another flash of memory, as a child he was in another large, white room, and he was facing a wall of moving target.

His arm came up and revealed that he was holding a pistol, aiming it at the targets. He steadily moved his arm, following the largest target, and fired, a loud gunshot working its way through his mufflers, and a quick flash of red burst from the gun. A dozen more shot later and all of the targets had a hole through it.