What gave this party pause was the first surprise I’d figured out in my experiments. Pit traps were normally limited; they were only about twenty feet deep, and the way to get across them was to shuffle along the wall. They were also painfully straightforward and bog-standard, so adventurers would be more than experienced in how to handle them.

What I’d discovered was a better way to make pitfalls; see, if I could make hallways along ceilings, I could also make them along floors. I’d extended the room that followed the treasure room to make it as long as I could make it, then I’d created a hallway that dug down into the right side of the floor, which went straight down as far as I could make hallways before going back up and connecting to the same room along the left side of the floor, making a full, almost two hundred yard deep pit along the room's width.

Then I’d extended the “height” of that hallway until the entire room’s floor was nothing but that pit. The system had punished me, of course, and created a one meter wide strip of dirt and rock that spanned, in complete disregard of gravity, across the entire length of the room, but that was fine. A similar room existed on the other path, though I’d adapted that one to make it a bit worse for armies.

“How deep does this go?” Maryll asked, peering over the edge.

Karjn immediately grabbed her and pulled her back. “You’re inviting her to pull you down, Cloudhead,” she snapped and Maryll pouted in outrage. “Never look down a cliff unless you’re securely anchored.”

Ulfric nodded. “Good advice.”

“Like this?” Gwen asked, getting on her knees and grabbing the stone floor with one hand before looking down. Karjn nodded.

“Yeah, like that.” She did the same, and squinted her eyes. There was a faint glow of mana coming from her irises. “There’s a hell of a lot of webs down there.”

Amir’ea had supposedly been able to survive falling down a cliff side and was still fine to fight a Wyvern on her own afterward; a simple fall wasn’t going to cut it against someone of her caliber. An entire network of nets would hopefully trap them long enough for my other bugs to deal damage.

“I can’t believe you see anything through that mist,” Gwen said as she glanced at Karjn, then her eyes widened and she stared down the length of the land bridge. “Ants under the bridge!”

Hmph, they’d been noticed. That was unfortunate; I’d have to think of a better way to hide them.

“If we try to cross, they’ll grab our legs and pull us down there,” Ulfric grunted. “I’d like it more if it wasn’t our problem right now.”

[...]

My bug chute actually connected to a spot under the bridge, on their end of the room, which they hadn’t spotted yet.

[...]

I did have a pair of ants grab Ulfric and Maryll’s legs while they were respectively immobilized and distracted, but I only gave their legs a little tug instead of pulling them into the void.