Half a day had passed, and it was now afternoon. The group had decided to sleep on the dungeon situation, so right now everyone was lazing around in their campsite outside of the dungeon entrance, not focusing on the dungeon. Or that’s what they were supposed to be doing. Levi knew he wasn’t doing a very good job of clearing his thoughts, and he suspected it was the same for everyone else, even Sam. It was hard to ignore the dungeon entrance as it towered over them. The longer he sat there the more he adjusted to the insidious pull of the dungeon, but while he got better at ignoring the System’s urging him to enter, thoughts about whether they should enter or not still whirled round his head. It felt like a damned if you do, damned if you don’t kind of situation.

It was getting to the point where he didn’t even care anymore. Safety wise, it was better to not enter the dungeon. Except the whole reason they were entering it in the first place was to gain more power, because they weren’t safe outside the dungeon. The whole thing was a logic knot that made his brain hurt, and he was now doing his best to just ignore it. At the moment, he knew that if everyone else entered the dungeon he would enter too, and if they decided not to enter, well, he would think about that then.

Levi knew that his thoughts probably meant that he really wanted to enter the dungeon, but whether that was his true intentions or the System’s… The whole thing was a mess. But everything was a mess, really. They were on some alien world with monsters trying to eat their face off and a somewhat malicious System that may or may not want them to survive. They were probably lucky to even be alive.

Finally Levi got sick of sitting around and brooding. Part of his reason for finding other people was so they could think about this stuff. Right now, he just wanted to punch something.

“Hey Alex,” Levi said, walking over to him. “Wanna spar?”

Alex seemed to consider the offer for all of two seconds before he responded with “Bring it”.

The two of them moved a little away from the campsite before taking their starting positions. Levi had never been one for fighting back on Earth, but there was something freeing about letting your fists do the talking. There was a sense of control. Back home, Levi had been at the mercy of so many other people. But when he was fighting he could let it all go and fly. On second thought, that might have been the Aecylic Energy speaking.

He shook his head. Between the System and Aecylic Energy the inside of his head was a pretty fucked up place. All he could do now was to push on and hope it all worked out.

Levi and Alex ended up sparring until it got dark. Neither of them was giving it their all, but it was still a good workout. They only ended up stopping because Alex collapsed. Levi suspected his stats were quite a bit higher than Alex’s, as he only had a slight soreness in his muscles, and that was without using Aecylic Empowerment. If he had been channeling Aecylic Energy he suspected he wouldn’t have felt tired at all.

After the spar he still wasn’t that tired and wasn’t sure he could sleep so he volunteered to take the first watch. Truthfully, he wasn’t sure he was going to wake the next person up. He didn’t think he could sleep at all this close to the dungeon. Its presence made it hard for him to relax and let his guard down.

After everyone had settled down, Levi was sitting by himself next to the embers of a fire when he noticed movement among the tents. He wasn’t sure who he expected, but Duane certainly wasn’t it. The large man walked over to sit next to the burned out fire, his dark skin blending in with the night.

Neither of them spoke, they just sat there staring at the embers, small flames flickering over the dying coals. Levi felt like he should say something, but he had no clue what to say. He had barely heard Duane speak, and knew almost nothing about him. What would he say, how’s the weather? Levi had never been good at small talk at the best of times, and this certainly wasn’t him at his best.

But as Duane sat there, Levi felt the pressure to speak melt away. There was just something solid about the man, something that didn’t need words. While others might have a charisma based on speech, Duane had one based on silence. He made Levi feel like it wasn’t his first rodeo, like this was all old hat to him. Perhaps he had been in the army back on Earth.

Right as Levi thought they would both just sit there is silence, Duane spoke.

“You seem troubled.”

Levi waited, expecting him to keep going. His voice was deep, and it somehow drew Levi in, making him wait for his next words. But they never came, and Levi realized that Duane was giving him an opening. Speak, or be silent. He chose to speak.

“I guess I am. There’s just a lot to take in and a lot that I should be doing, but…”

“It sounds like you are worried about surviving.”

Levi nodded. “Yes, but it’s more than that. I just…” He wasn’t really able to put it into words. How could anyone describe what he had been through? It was just so foreign to the live he used to be living.

“Anyone would question their decisions when confronted with something like a dungeon,” Duane said, his slow placid voice resonating around the campfire. “But I think you might be too focused on the past. You are alive. You have survived, and that means you won. You made the right choice, whatever that was. And if you could make the right choice in the past, it means you can make the right choice in the future. Sometimes just staying alive is all that matters.”

Having said his piece, Duane got back up and made his way back to his tent, leaving Levi alone with his thoughts. At first, he wasn’t sure what to make of what Duane said. But as he thought about it more, it felt like it boiled down to having more confidence in himself. He had been so focused on his failures that he didn’t think about the fact that he had survived something that would have killed a lot of other people. That had killed someone, someone who by all rights should have had a better chance at surviving.

Levi activated Concentrated Will and closed his eyes, taking deep breathes. It was kind of amazing that Duane had comforted him without even knowing what was wrong. Maybe he had been too focused on stuff that didn’t matter. Coming back into contact with other Humans had made him pick back up on a lot of the trappings of society, along with all of its baggage. He was alive, and right now, he had to focus on how to continue to be alive. He didn’t have the luxury of focusing on anything else.

The next morning everyone met together to discuss whether to enter the dungeon or not and, even surprising himself, Levi was the first to speak.

“I think we should enter,” he said, starting off the discussion.

“Do you have any reasons for that?,” Alex asked.

“It’s just more of a feeling. I’m not too good with estimated how dangerous it is, or what is our statistically best option, but I know that if we want to get stronger we should go in, and I think we need to get stronger.”

“I see,” Alex said. “Anyone else have any thoughts?”

“I agree with Levi,” Sam said. “We need to grow stronger. We’ve been taking it easy in the outpost. This isn’t a video game with a starter zone and easy level progression. There’s no save points. If we want to be sure we can survive, we have to take some risks.”

“Mia, Duane?” Alex asked.

“I say we go for it!” Mia said, while Duane just shrugged in a ‘anything works for me’ kind of gesture.

“I also think we should go in,” Alex said. “We knew this might be dangerous, but we also know it is possible to survive and defeat a dungeon, courtesy of Levi. Nothing ventured nothing gained.”

With their plan decided, they spent half an hour going over their formation and tactics again, what little there was, before packing up their campsite. Levi felt a lot more relaxed today then he did yesterday. He wasn’t sure if it was from Duane’s talk or the fact that everyone seemed to be on the same page about entering the dungeon, but he was definitely feeling more positive and self-confident. He had already cleared a dungeon after all. If he could do it once, he could do it twice.

But as soon as they entered the dungeon that confidence took a rather steep blow. In the other dungeon, Levi had entered through a giant tree into an underground tunnel. For this dungeon, the group entered through a giant dolmen gate in a field into a full-blown forest. There had been some part of Levi that thought that all dungeons would be, well, dungeony. He was obviously wrong, and as he looked around and soaked in the ginormous trees surrounding them he realized this would be a very different experience than his last one.

“Just to make sure,” Alex said to Levi, “but the dungeon you entered before didn’t have a bunch of trees in it, right?”

He shook his head. “No, it was all underground tunnels.”

“Maybe dungeons are like, reverse?” Mia said, looking around in awe at their surroundings. “Didn’t Levi enter through a tree? Now we entered through a gate and came out in a tree.”

It was true. While the outside entrance was an ornately carved dolmen gate in the middle of a field, the inside entrance in the dungeon was set into a tree, similar to the outside of the dungeon Levi had been in.

“Focus guys,” Sam said. “Levi, any idea what’s going on?”

“Not a clue. This is, uh, a bit different. The dungeon I was in only really had one path, but I don’t see any signs anywhere of where we should go.”

There really wasn’t anything around them except for virgin forest. Levi had thought dungeons would all be the same: follow a path towards the dungeon core. But standing there in the forest he realized getting lost might be a bigger threat than monsters. If they ran into trouble, even if Sam told them to retreat back out they might not know the way. His newfound confidence couldn’t help but take a hit. This dungeon was going to be trouble, he could feel it.