Walt was the first person to finish reading. “Guess god does exist. How poetic,” He mumbled, only loud enough for Kyle to barely make out what he said.

After another few moments of silence Sarah turned to Kyle.

“What now?”

Kyle only had to think for a few seconds.

“That’s obvious. We head for the city. If this message is true, that’s where Carl, Lisa, and Mickey should be.”

Kyle turned to the other two.

“Do either of you have any younger siblings?”

“Nope, it’s just me,” Li said.

Walt paused for a half second before shaking his head.

“Then we have no reason to go anywhere else,” Kyle continued. “The city should be protected, and if it has a large number of people in it there must also be a way for them to feed themselves. We still have some food left over in Li’s pack, but that won’t last forever.”

Sarah took a long deep breath before slapping herself and regaining her energy.

“Okay! So it’s decided. We aim for the city.”

The group decided to use the same formation as they used in the Kobold dungeon, with Sarah, then Walt, then Li, then Kyle.

Everyone in the group had a four hundred health shield, courtesy of Kyle, that he refreshed every five minutes. They had to stop every ten minutes for Kyle to regenerate his mana back up to full, but not knowing what dangers they could face, safety was the first concern.

It was slow going. The group was well aware of the dangers that dungeons held, and they had even lost the peace of mind from having the escape crystals as backup. They had tried using them, but there was no effect.

As they walked along Walt was constantly reviewing the message on the wall in his head and finally noticed something.

“You guys might want to check out the new title that we got. That so called ‘god’ wasn’t kidding when he said it might be useful.”

The group came to a halt while everyone read over their new title.

Title: Part of Humanity

Effect: Those with this title are part of Humanity. This title gives the owner the ability to identify crystals. This title gives the owner the rudimentary ability to identify monsters. This title allows for communication through mana. This title makes the owner more likely to have a positive reaction and work together with others with the same title. This title allows the Titan race to recognize the owner as part of a race created by Gaia. This title increases the overall knowledge of the system put in place by Gaia to help humanity.

Li reached into her pack and took out a skill crystal they had picked up in the kobold dungeon.

“It works. The title says this is a Basic Health Regeneration skill.”

Everyone else tried identifying the crystal before Li put it away.

“This should help us a lot,” Sarah said. “We haven’t run into any monsters yet, but now we won’t need to go in blind.”

As they continued on, the first obstacle they ran into was not a monster, but a trap. Sarah and Walt suddenly found themselves falling into a thirty foot hole with spikes at the bottom. Sarah managed to twist herself in such a way that she only took a little over two hundred damage, but Walt took almost five hundred. Sarah would have survived, but Walt would have died without the shield Kyle had on him.

Kyle had to cast more shields on them so they wouldn’t die from the spikes before Sarah was able to jump her way out of the pit. Walt needed them to drop down a rope so he could get out.

“Those spikes weren’t normal,” Sarah said after she and Walt were safely out of the pit. “They dealt way too much damage to be regular spikes.”

“I’m not sure there is a normal anymore,” Kyle worriedly replied.

The group eventually took a meal break for what should have been dinner. Time had lost most of its meaning since they were in a strange glowing dungeon. There was no daylight and the sun could have blown up for all they knew.

The meal was a solemn affair. Each person was lost in their own thoughts. Walt eventually opened his mouth and broke the silence.

“Why now? Why us? Surely if that ‘god’ is actually so powerful he could have waited a few hundred years.”

The volume of Walt’s voice continued to grow, his anger increasing.

“Things were just starting to recover and look up. Or if that ‘god’ couldn’t have done it later he could have done it at least two months sooner. Then my sister wouldn’t have had to die. I saw the stories online. People who had cancer only had to eat some food from a dungeon when they were full health and they were cured.”

Kyle listened silently. Walt always seemed so bright and happy. Kyle only now realized that they had only known each other for a short time and he didn’t actually know him at all.

Walt continued, “My parents were closer than ever and my girlfriend and I were going to get back together. Then the Change comes and she gets in bed with someone who can lift cars with his dick. It’s all so fucking messed up. Now we are trapped in this fucking dungeon and there could be a fucking dragon around the next fucking corner. I could have died to that stupid fucking trap! A fucking pitfall trap!”

Walt seemed to deflate, all his anger draining out of him.

“I thought that magic powers were supposed to fix people’s problems. Guess the same thing could be said about the existence of god though. It seems like he has only caused problems, not fixed them. I never asked to be part of his godly dick measuring contest. Now everyone is trapped in some dungeon. Who even knows where my parents are. They could be dead already for all I know.”

Sarah reached out and grabbed hold of Kyle’s hand.

The group sat there in silence, digesting what Walt had said. Kyle finally turned to Walt.

“You know, I guess we have not known each other for that long, but I want you to know that I consider you a friend. We are all in this together and our first plan should be surviving and making it to the city where other people are. But once we are there I’m sure we can find some sort of divination skill to look for everyone’s family and try and rescue them if they haven’t made it to the city yet. We don’t know that they are dead so we should do all that we can in case they are still alive. I’m sure your parents would be devastated if they made it to the city and you didn’t.”

“Thanks man. That means a lot.”

Walt took a deep breath and collected himself.

“I guess you’re right and we just need to do what we can. This new dungeon world doesn’t seem to be any more unfair than our world used to be. At least here you are rewarded for your efforts.”

The group sat in silence for a little while longer before Li spoke up.

“I doubt my parents would look for me and I don’t really want to look for them but I will stick with you guys until the end. Count me in as a member of our party.”

Li then turned to Kyle and Sarah with a very grave expression.

“There is a bigger issue here though. If we are all going to work together than we need to resolve all of our problems, and I think it is time that we addressed the biggest one. It’s obvious that the two of you have a problem, but luckily you both obviously want to fix this problem. The solution is simple. You two just need to get in each other’s pants.”

Kyle and Sarah immediately dropped the other one’s hand and religiously directed their gaze anywhere but the other person.

“It’s so true though,” Walt said as he busted out laughing, the heavy atmosphere from earlier forgotten.

Kyle could feel his ears turning bright red. He wanted to look at Sarah and see her reaction, but was too afraid of being hit to do so.

The group eventually started moving again after Sarah made Li retract her statement, insisting that she wanted nothing to do with Kyle or his pants. Everyone knew they were empty words, but it was clear to the other two that Kyle and Sarah had some unspoken accord and that it involved keeping their pants on despite how they both obviously wanted to do otherwise.

An hour or so after they had started moving again they ran into their first monster. Not figuratively, but literally.

Sarah turned a corner and found herself face to face with a giant blue blob.

After backing up, she utilized her new title to check out the giant slime’s info.

Name: Large blue slime

Description: A large slime that is mostly immune to physical damage. It is not violent unless it feels itself threatened. It has a large amount of health and attacks its enemies by shooting parts of itself towards them at high speeds.

“It says it’s not violent,” Sarah told the other three after they had moved a fair distance back down the tunnel. “But I think it might be blocking the way forward.”

“Why don’t we just nuke it?” Li asked. “If we can’t get by we are trapped anyway. Besides, it might drop some sweet loot!”

“Sounds like as good a plan as any,” Kyle said. “And if we can’t even kill one slime we are probably boned if we face anything tougher.”

After moved as far away from the slime as they could, Li and Kyle prepared their spells. Li used a Dual Targeted Pillar of Light while Kyle fired off a Compressed Mana Explosion. The spells didn’t kill it, but the group was able to kite backwards down the tunnel and allow Li and Kyle to finish it off. Thankfully it moved slowly and they were in no real danger of the slime catching them.

The group ran into more slimes as they continued down the tunnel. There was almost a sticky situation when they ran into a pitfall trap that had a slime in it, but luckily Sarah was getting better at catching those so no one fell in.

The first slime to drop something other than an enhancement crystal gave them a shock. The first ten or so slimes had all dropped one or two enhancement crystals, so when a skill crystal finally dropped everyone crowded around to see what it did.

Name: Mana Regeneration

Effect: Passively regenerates mana equal to 50 plus three times the level of the skill every five minutes.

Li was the first to comment.

“It has the same name as my mana regeneration skill, so why is it so much better?”

No one had an answer.

They continued on, defeating more slimes and avoiding, or falling into, more traps. The tunnel had no branching paths so they were stuck on their current trajectory. It had grown fairly monotonous when Sarah found something out of the ordinary.

They were on the lookout for any place where they could rest other than the passage they were currently in. The slimes might not have been dangerous, but they did move around and sleeping only to have a slime roll over you didn’t sound like a viable plan to any of the group. They were hoping they could find a safe zone to make their base while they got their bearings.

Sarah noticed something out of the ordinary when they were skirting a particularly nasty pitfall trap. It looked at least twice as deep as most of the other ones and had downward sloping spikes on the walls to make it harder to get out. Luckily this was one of the ones Sarah was able to notice. The party was inching along a narrow ledge to get around the trap since it took up the whole passageway when Sarah’s enhanced senses told her something was not right about the wall behind her. To the others, it looked like one moment Sarah was strangely groping the wall, and then the wall ate her.

Seconds later she stuck her head out of what looked like solid rock.

“Guys, check this out. I found a secret passageway. The rock seems to be some sort of semi-solid illusion.”

The other three followed Sarah inside. Kyle shivered when it was his turn to pass through the illusory rock. It felt like he was bathing is some slimy substance that covered every nook and cranny of his body, except nothing was actually there.

Once inside, it did indeed look like a secret passageway. The tunnel was somehow smoother, looking more man made, and the light was also more consistent. The whole dungeon was suffused by a slight blue glow, but Kyle thought this glow was gentler then the more inconsistent glow of the main tunnel. He would never have noticed had it not been for the contrast between the two.

Finding a secret tunnel didn’t put the group any less off guard. They still proceeded with safety first. Everyone had shields on and Sarah was checking the ground for pitfall traps and potentially any other traps they could run across.

The tunnel was not that long and they soon reached the end. The tunnel, which was much smaller than the previous one with the ceiling only a foot or so above Kyle’s head, ended in a small chamber that was big enough to fit a four door sedan but would have trouble fitting a pickup truck.

Before entering, Kyle regenerated his mana and then cast a 4,000 mana shield on Sarah before she cautiously explored the chamber and checked it for traps. The reason the group was so cautious was the chamber only had one notable thing about it, a chest sitting next to the far wall. It practically screamed trap. But nothing happened as Sarah checked the entire room, poked the chest, and eventually lifted the lid with her sword. No pits opened up, no boulders fell down, and no poison coated arrows shot out from hidden holes in the wall.

“I think it’s all clear,” Sarah said. “At least if there are traps, I can’t find them. It looks like the treasure chest has some sweet loot too.”

Everyone went over to see the contents of the chest. Not waiting for the other three, Sarah fully opened the chest to see what it held.

“It looks like there are some large mana crystals and three skill crystals. There also is some sort...”

Sarah was interrupted before she could finish her sentence.

The walls and floor of the room they were in were not completely smooth. There were many bumps and dips littering the floor. So when Sarah checked for traps, she didn’t check a small bump in the floor that happened to be in the exact center of the room. Kyle was still in the back, so Walt and Li were walking ahead of him when the three walked over to the chest. Walt and Li both avoided the small bump in the floor. But Kyle, hurrying to not miss out on the loot, wasn’t watching where he was walking and his foot ended up hitting the small bump.

Sarah whipped her head around when Kyle was enveloped in a bright purple light and, not even a second later, disappeared. The light was so bright Sarah could still see an afterglow in her vision of a circle that had appeared on the floor where Kyle had been standing. Walt and Li could not turn around quickly enough and had only seen a bright purple glow that originated from behind them. It took them a second to connect it to the light from teleportation magic when they turned around and found Kyle had disappeared.

Sarah robotically walked over to the center of the room. She stiffly bent down and put her hand on the bump in the floor that she had missed in her previous examination of the room.

No. No,no,no,no,no,no,no. This must be an illusion. Kyle can’t be gone. It must be like the rocks covering the entrance. Fake. It’s all fake. Calm down. Gotta calm down. Be calm. It’s fake. He’s still here. Definitely still here.

Walt and Li watched as Sarah’s breathing slowly got faster and faster. Walt was trying and failing to process what had happened. Kyle was gone. Li seemed to possess more presence of mind and hesitantly tried to go up to Sarah who was now lying on the floor in a ball having a full blown panic attack.

There’s no way Kyle would leave. It must be a joke. He’s just getting me back for all the times I made fun of him. That’s it. He still here. Definitely here. He wouldn’t go. He definitely didn’t teleport somewhere. Nope, still here. Oh god, what if he died? No. he wouldn’t die. He wouldn’t leave me. He promised. He wouldn’t. He needs me. There’s no way he would leave. He couldn’t leave. How would he sleep at night? He must be still here. He promised.

Sarah was now rocking back and forth on the ground. Walt, who could have kept it together had Sarah not been freaking out, now started to lose it as well. It seemed like everything was hitting him at once. Kyle was gone, and now Sarah was losing it. What would they do without shields? He would have died without that shield. And now Sarah was going crazy. They were all going to die.

Li almost failed at keeping it together watching her two remaining teammates have mental breakdowns. Taking drastic measures, she cast a Dual Targeted Shadow Suppression on both of them. Once her skill had stopped Sarah from continuing to hyperventilate and Walt from starting to do so, Li was able to calm down. Well, calm down enough to not start hyperventilating herself. She had to try and face their current situation as the only person not losing it. Kyle had been teleported away by some sort of trap and, now without their main source of magic DPS and shielding, the other three were in deep, deep trouble.