Ben stared at the blue haze shimmering in front of a trypophobic wall. He had no inclination of what it did beyond Dustin’s claim that it was an exit out of the forest. Would it return them to the university, or a different location?

Dustin’s hand on his shoulder slid off, placed on the floor to help him stand, grunting in pain. Ben rose to help him, looping an arm under his armpit to hold him steady.

“Thanks, I can walk on my own.” Dustin groaned, rubbing the bite wound on his side. The antivenom was destroying the venom in his system, and the closer it got to the injection site the more it burned a painful minty cold.

Ben released Dustin, collecting the baseball bat and the medical kit. The quality of care the medical kit provided amazed Ben. It outstripped what modern medicine could accomplish, and with straightforward application. Ben was unsure how Dustin gained it, the object appearing in his hands like magic.

If the video game mechanics provided any context, Ben guessed it was a reward for slaying the ‘boss’. Dustin had muttered something about purchasing it in his delirious state, to Ben’s confusion.

Once Ben finished packing the leather bag, he zipped it up and handed it to Dustin, along with the other metal bat he retrieved. Spider’s blood stained over half the surface, leaving only the handle clean.

Dustin spun his arm in a loop above his head, feeling his shoulder joint groan, free of the inflammation and gradual tissue necrosis. He felt stable on his feet and pulled Ben away from the unmoving spider.

“Shall we get you a starter medical kit too? Taro will need something to patch him up, as will Mark’s girlfriend.” Dustin asked, feeling the weight of his own medical kit disappear as it formed a small icon in his inventory.

Ben looked on, muddled at the sudden appearance and disappearance of Dustin’s items. He chalked it up to some magical fudge logic and held out both hands like he was awaiting candy.

Dustin placed a finger in the palm of both Ben’s hands and lowered them.

“Just say ‘Open Dos’ and you’ll see what I mean.”

Ben repeated the words, eyes widening as the screen popped up in front of him. His gaze flitted between the interface and Dustin with his jaw dropped.

Dustin chuckled, regretting the action as pain lanced through his side.

“It’ll ask for a pioneer name, kind of like a username, just choose something so we can get out of here.”

Ben nodded and began tapping on the invisible keyboard in the air, appearing like a maniac to anyone who had yet to interact with the system. When his fingers stopped dancing he recoiled, looking back to Dustin.

Ben repeated what Dustin had whispered earlier when prompted, leading him to feel a sense of loss, followed by the sudden materialization of a leather bag in his hands.

“It’s the same one I had.” Dustin pointed out before looking around for his discarded weapon.

Dustin’s bow laid on the stone floor, two deep grooves in the metal arch, and a missing string. He left it behind as the two of them escaped the cavern, crawling back through the small tunnel.

The goblin beastmaster and its mount must have created another entrance into the cavern to accommodate their size. Neither Dustin nor Ben were about to go poking their heads around the cavern for a bigger hole and risk running into more spiders.

An eerie silence filled the tunnel as they crept along, checking each of the chambers again before moving past. The quiet unnerved Dustin after the fight, and the adrenaline pumped into him was not helping. Before they could escape the goblin hideout, they found a group of students sitting on the floor by the waterfall entrance, guarded by Jennifer and Sam.

“Oh thank god!” Jennifer exclaimed as she lowered her bow. She returned the arrow to its quiver and ran up to Ben, hugging him tight. Dustin held his hand out to stop her when she turned to him, gesturing with his other hand at the bandages. He looked down at the scattered spider bodies and grimy students.

“Shit.” Jennifer muttered. She circled Dustin, gasping when she spotted the burns covering his back and arms.

“I’m alright. I think we found a way out.” Dustin said. Jennifer tilted her head and looked over her shoulder at the light filtering in from the hideout entrance.

“Not the cave, the entire barrier that’s around the forest. I think it’ll take us back to Earth.” Dustin explained, meeting Ben’s eyes as the two nodded in unison.

“When we killed a giant spider boss… thing, I got a notification that the dungeon exit was now open.” Dustin continued his explanation, weaving truth and lies to convince the group that it would return them home. If Dos established the interface before they entered the dungeon, a notification would pop up telling them the exit was now open.

Jennifer glanced at the spiders laying belly-up on the ground, several of them pinned by arrows. Dustin was about to praise her for handling the spiders, and complimenting her archery, but found two students acting as back up, holding arrows like daggers.

“It must have been just before these showed up. We had to hold a tide of them off until they ran deeper in. And what do you mean by notification? Like on your phone?” Sam interrupted, tearing her eyes away from the burnt skin on Dustin’s shoulder.

“Say ‘Open Dos’. You’ll see what I mean.”

With a shrug, Jennifer and Sam repeated the words, blinking when a screen popped into existence before their eyes.

“Whoa.” Jennifer whispered, waving her hand through it. The screen was not a physical object, but her hands could still interact with it, pressing buttons and sliding bars.

A few seconds later Jennifer looked up at Dustin and frowned.

“It wants me to enter a pioneer name?”

Sam tilted her head and frowned, “Like an explorer?”

“It’s more like a username. I put mine as Dusty and now it refers to me as that.” Dustin said. His system had greeted him as Dusty, without even asking for his input on a pioneer name. Another unexplained phenomenon to add to the pile after finding the reason for his future memory upgrade.

“Where are the others?” Ben asked, the leather bag containing precious medical equipment clenched in his fists. He could spot most of the students sitting around him, including Kantaro wound up in bandages, and Mark with Katie’s head resting in his lap.

“They’re still coming in. Some wildlife came close, so we hid in here.” Jennifer admitted, pushing a strand of orange hair behind her ear. Dustin twisted the hem of his shirt, releasing the gush of sweat from the fabric. The tunnels were growing hotter after setting the webs alight. Students wiped the sweat off their brow, colouring their clothes an ashy grey colour.

“Ben, you go handle the injured, just repeat what we did in the cave.” Dustin ordered. Ben took off without a word, making a beeline towards Kantaro first.

“Something big is coming!” A student shouted from the mouth of the cave entrance, his voice echoing through the tunnels. Dustin pushed past the crowd with Jennifer in tow, finding himself facing the thin ledge that ran along the cliff wall. Three students were creeping towards the hideout entrance. Dustin could see the treeline shifting and took a step back. While Dos limited the quality of dungeons inhabitants, according to the level of the pioneers or race attempting the dungeon, it could ramp up the difficulty in quantity.

A horde of carnivorous wildlife crept to the edge of the forest, black beads, glowing yellow, and black slits all stared at the students sliding along the cliff wall in hunger. Dustin could hear some of them fighting deep in the forest. There were two students climbing along the ledge, shaken at the hungering, eyes boring into them. Dustin willed them to move a little faster when a growl echoed through the tunnels behind him.

Turning back to see Jennifer already releasing an arrow into the black mess of legs that came skittering towards them from the goblin hideout. There was no question where they had fled. A goblin approaching the torches appeared to be fending off the spiders that latched onto its body.

Dustin looked towards the group of students that scrambled away from the encroaching arachnids.

“Get everyone into the other tunnel!” He shouted, picking up a nearby student by his shirt collar and tossing him towards the second tunnel, leading back to the beastmaster’s room.

A few students hesitated to pick themselves up, but Kantaro shoved them forward. Dustin smiled at his friend, skin now looking tanned again and a fresh bandage around his shoulder free from blood.

“You heard the man!” Kantaro shouted, spurring the group into action. Dustin joined the few students facing down the spiders and swung his already filthy bat into the swarm. Jennifer knelt beside him, firing arrows into anything that moved. She pulled back when something dove for her, giving Dustin room to bash it away.

In the far corner, Ben knelt beside Mark and Katie with the strange syringe in his hand.

“What are you doing?” Mark hissed, pushing at Ben’s chest to stop him from stabbing the alien medical equipment into Katie.

“Trust me Mark, it’s antivenom. I already jabbed Dustin with it, and he took way more bites than Katie did. Look how he’s doing.” Ben jabbed over his shoulder, pointing towards Dustin. Mark squinted in the low light to see the man in question. He noticed Jennifer hiding behind Dustin, picking off spiders around his hip.

Mark glanced back down at Katie, noting the sweat that had soaked through her clothing and the tendrils of purple that spread through the blood vessels away from the bite. He nodded and ran a hand through her hair.

“Hey Ti, we’re going to give you an injection that will stop the pain, alright?” Mark whispered into her ear. She produced a low groan and shifted to the side, freeing her hand to squeeze Mark’s thigh, as much consent as he was going to get.

“Alright, do it.”

Ben followed the same method he used when treating Dustin and gripped the syringe in his fist, planting it into the outer right thigh, watching the liquid drain accompanied by a light whir.

When the canister in the back of the syringe emptied he took it out, watching the needle leave no mark, like it was never even there. Similar to the reaction Dustin had shown when he received the antivenom, Katie stirred as the manufactured medicine neutralized the venom in her blood, relieving the inflammation and pain.

“Looking better already,” Ben chuckled, glancing around for any other injured students, “now that's sorted, you two need to follow Kantaro.”

Mark collected his girlfriend off the floor and ran towards the screaming students streaming out of the tunnel intersection.

In a defensive position, Dustin kept his swings controlled, attacking only the spiders who came close enough to threaten him or Jennifer. He had to ignore the shrieking behind him as spiders escaped the goblin hideout, or zeroed in on any lone students.

He suspected the amount of bite wounds was increasing, but with the exit already open and the venom slow to act, he pushed aside any worries. The experience would traumatize most of them, but it was something everyone would soon have in common.

Being exposed to something like giant spiders this early might even be for the best, as other encounters might appear lame in comparison.

The spiders lost all semblance of tactic, fighting on raw instinct and throwing themselves at the closest living target. Several goblins made it out of the cavern but collapsed after exiting, stuffed full of venom and no longer able to walk. Spiders pulled three of them back into the darkness by latching onto their legs. Dustin did his best to avoid befalling that fate, focusing on pushing the spiders out of the hideout rather than fending them back. The shrieks behind him lessened, and he felt Jennifer tug on his torn pants.

“They’re all in the other tunnel.” She shouted, little more than a whisper about the echoing sounds of dying goblins and terrified students.

Dustin nodded and retreated, walking backwards, giving any spiders that charged him an alternate world view by battering them in the head. He hoped they would take the other tunnel outside.

His arms grew tired, the overexerted muscles burning and screaming at him to stop. A moment of reprieve came when a goblin trio came screaming out of their hideout, followed by a swarm of smaller spiders nipping at their heels.

The largest of the goblins swept the feet out from one of its tribe, sacrificing them to a horrible fate. Dustin made himself small, keeping the goblins in the centre of attention provided an opening for him to shuffle away from the intersection.

He met back up with Jennifer who was ushering students into the small crawl space, ash and sweat covering her arms and legs. Blackened blood and dirt covered her orange braid of hair, each touch against her shoulders sending a shiver down her spine.

She turned to see Dustin and took a deep breath in, letting the tension in her shoulders drop. She raised a shaky hand to rub the soot from her face.

“Is that all of them?” Dustin asked, watching the last student disappear through the hole, his torn pant leg dipping out of the sight.

“Yeah…” She muttered, crouching on the spot and clawing at the bite marks that sent waves of nausea and pain through her.

Dustin placed a hand on her shoulder and offered words of encouragement.

“You did well, given the shitty circumstances. Now get going, I’ll make sure nothing follows us in.”

Jennifer gave a weak nod and winced at the shark rocks that dug into her knees. The fifteen metre wide crawl space accommodated a few students entering at a time, but Dustin made sure that she was at least half way through before following.

His view opened up into the cavern again, clear of open flames but illuminated by the flashlights from smartphones. Ben had the group wait for Dustin to come through, his face contorted into a permanent frown as he bounced his knee.

Ben saw Jennifer pop out of the hole, a brief bolt of fear striking him before Dustin emerged fifteen seconds later. He stared at Dustin, then directed his attention towards the portal with a nudge. Dustin dusted the ash that clung to the sweat covering him, finding it futile as it seemed to rub it in further. Students huddled up against one side of the cavern, avoiding the large spider body laying belly up on the opposite side.

“I don’t have to do anything, just try walking up to the wall.” Dustin chuckled to Ben. He walked over to Xa’thel and hauled its body in front of the hole leading out of the hideout. Happy with its position, he did a circuit around the room. He ensured that none of the hairless arachnids waited to ambush them by poking his metal bats into the vacant nests.

Ben approached the shimmering haze, swishing his hand through the latent mana that created the portal. A pop-up scared him back a step, asking if he would like to leave the dungeon.

“Just touch this and accept the pop-up.” Ben gestured to the portal and took a step back, allowing other students to try first. Two girls disappeared in a flash of light, prompting the rest of the group to flood forward. As Dustin circled the room, he could hear the low whistle of wind coming from one of the spider nests.

Crouching down for a better look, he realized that the small hole was wider further in. The boss piled up several boulders along the entrance to hide it, easy enough to dislodge. It appeared as more spider holes. The beastmaster hid it well. Prior to burning the cobwebs, Dustin would have missed it.

A low growl echoed through the hole, drawing his attention back into the darkness. It remained a murky black, but the sounds grew closer.

“Alright everyone get in there quick, something found another way in.” Dustin called out, turning to find that only a few remained in the cavern.

“Oh.”

Ben smirked and touched the haze himself, waiting for Kantaro to join him.

“After the first few left, they all rushed for it. You’re not gunna stay behind and do something stupid, are you?”

Dustin snorted and walked up to stand beside Jennifer, hands on his hips in his best overbearing mother impression.

“Never.”

Dustin heard Kantaro laugh as the two disappeared, leaving him and Jennifer alone.

“Ready?” He asked, stepping forward to touch the haze. The pop-up appeared in front of him, a familiar sight.

Would you like to leave the dungeon? WARNING: Once you leave, you cannot return. YES / NO.

Jennifer nodded and pressed the button, vanishing from sight. Glancing back towards the hidden exit, he could see two eyes staring up at him, hungering, before Dustin pressed YES, returning to earth to face a new battle.