The brute froze mid-stride and looked at Moon. "Boss?"

"Someone has been here." Moon muttered, his eyes fixed on the entrance.

"What?! Someone has been here?!" The brute’s head snapped forward in shock. He stared at the cave opening, then back at Moon. "How do you know?"

Moon pointed at the ground near the entrance. "You see that pebble?"

The brute squinted. A small, flat stone sat beside the left edge of the opening. It looked completely unremarkable.

"Before we left, I placed it on top of the entrance ledge. If anyone entered or exited, the air displacement from passing through the narrow opening would knock it off." Moon crouched beside the stone. "It’s on the ground now."

He stood and pointed to a very thin branch wedged horizontally between two rocks at knee height, just inside the entrance.

"I placed a branch across the passage at a height where it would catch anyone walking through in the dark. It’s broken. Someone walked through it."

The brute stared at the branch with confused eyes, "But boss, this branch is completely fine, its not broken."

The archer stepped forward, staring at the branch, before shaking his head, "No...this is a different branch, isn’t it boss?"

Moon smiled before nodding his head, "Yes, the person stepped inside broke it. Realising their mistake, they tried to cover it by compensating with a different branch that I placed nearby for this very purpose. You see that tiny scratch on it? I carved it out myself, this is the second branch."

The brute’s eyes widened in disbelief, he couldn’t believe that his boss had went to such great lengths to ensure the safety of their hideout.

’Boss is so scary...there is so much to learn from him, despite his young age, he is wise.’ The brute thought in admiration.

Moon then moved to the right side of the entrance and brushed away a thin layer of dust. Underneath, three small leaves had been arranged in a specific pattern, one pointing left, one pointing right, one pointing up. The one pointing up had been displaced, shifted slightly to the side.

"I arranged these leaves in a pattern only I would recognize. If someone stepped near this spot, the vibration from their footfall would shift the top leaf." He looked at the group. "It’s been moved." 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

The brute blinked several times.

"You... set up three different traps. Just rocks, sticks, and leaves."

"The simplest traps are the hardest to detect." Moon nodded. "Whoever came here probably looked for rune-based alarms. They would have found and disarmed anything magical. They wouldn’t think twice about a pebble on a ledge."

The group exchanged uneasy glances.

"So there’s someone inside? Let’s go in and beat the crap out of them!" The brute cracked his knuckles.

Moon shook his head. "There’s nobody inside."

The brute scratched his head. "Then why stop me from entering? If no one’s in there, it’s safe."

"It’s not safe." Moon said flatly. "They didn’t enter for no reason. If they came, searched the place, and left without waiting for us to return, it means they left something behind. This place is probably planted with runes or explosives set to activate the moment someone steps inside."

The brute’s face went pale. He looked at the entrance he had been about to walk through and took a large step backward.

Moon turned toward the group. "Quick question. Is there any other Runesmith in the base apart from Frey?"

The Evolvers exchanged glances. A few murmured amongst themselves before the tank spoke up.

"Yeah. There was one more. His name was Lukas. He was also a skilled Runesmith, but he never interacted with us much. Kept to himself. Always stayed close to the master."

’Inner circle...huh’ Moon thought.

"Step away from the entrance. All of you. I need to check the place out alone."

Nobody argued. Nobody volunteered to help. If the boss said he would handle it, they trusted he would.

"Everyone, let’s move back." The archer waved the group away from the cave entrance. "Give him space."

The team retreated to a safe distance behind the nearest cluster of boulders. Moon watched them go, then turned back toward the dark mouth of the cave.

He took a slow breath, activating his eye of truth to check around. Just like he predicted somebody had been inside, and they had planted almost the entire entrance with all sorts of runes, and likely the inside too.

The runes were even more shrewd than he expected, they were time based, to allow the most amount of casualties, once the first person entered, and was scanned, the rune would count a timer, then all runes would detonate.

’I can’t de-activate these...’ Moon thought in shock. He had expected himself to have the ability to disable the runes, but reality proved otherwise.

Whoever this Lukas was, he was clearly much more skilled than even Frey himself. The man had intertwined all the runes together, likely anticipating that Frey—would try to disable them himself if he felt something was wrong.

Moon also noticed that if any of the runes were removed, or tempered with, the runes would automatically explode. The amount of explosives was enough to kill him without issue.

Although he couldn’t disable the runes, a soft grin spread across moon’s face. He turned back towards the team gesturing for the archer to approach him. Although the archer wasn’t the strongest in combat, Moon realised the man had keen senses, and was very sharp, he was a natural born leader.

"Boss, nobody is spying in the vicinity. I asked the group to spread out to check too."

Moon smiled, he had actually been planning to tell him that, but it seemed the archer was a step ahead. "Good job, here is the plan..."

Moon began to explain what the Runemsith done inside.

As the archer heard, he kept nodding his head, his eyes shining brighter as Moon continued to narrate his plan.

"Boss...this is genius! This will give us the perfect opportunity for ambush!"