Everyone ate a small meal and drank their fill, resting their legs for a few minutes. Frank filled his waterskins from the cooler and motioned the others to follow suit. He got his things together and waited for everyone else.

A couple of minutes later the entire group was up and ready to move. Frank led them onwards. The roof was completely featureless, meaning the only marker as they walked was the shrinking couch and cooler behind them. When they disappeared, everything looked the same in all directions.

"How do we know we are going in the right direction?" asked Maria. "It's so disorienting."

"Use a compass," Frank said. "North is always the end. South is always the entrance. Just don't rely on it if you move into a diversion. Which you might sometimes, to try and go around something."

He removed his from a pocket on the side of his pack and demonstrated it. The arrow of the compass pointed straight ahead, where they had been walking.

"We are still heading in the right direction," he told Maria.

The walk continued, featureless until it wasn't. A path started abruptly, the stone marking it off slightly darker. Maria and Bill visibly relaxed at its presence. Frank hadn't noticed them getting tenser. It must've been a slow build.

"Fuck I thought I was losing my mind for a bit there," Bill said, looking back at the featureless expanse behind them.

The path went on, straight as an arrow. Eventually, walls rose on either side of it, turning it into a hallway without a ceiling. The walls were straight protrusions of stone, a foot thick, running parallel to the path, extending on to the horizon.

The group moved between them. A minute of walking and the walls opened into a room. It was the size of a school gymnasium. Everything, from floor to ceiling, was a checkerboard pattern, light and dark grey. The far end had a wooden door with a brass knob set into the middle of the wall.

In front of the door stood two armour wielding spears.

Derelict Iron Armour Animated by a Forgery of the Flame of Agility

Level 1 Derelict Iron Armour Animated by a Forgery of the Flame of Agility

Level 1

Frank’s eyes narrowed at the description. “All three of you go back down the hallway.” He told his companions.

The armour started moving towards him, not with a shuffle or walk, but at a sprint. Each held their spear out in front of them as they bore down on Frank, the clanging of their footfalls on stone pounding into the ears of the group.

Frank leaned forward on the balls of his feet, knees bent, sword out front. The two armours rapidly closed the difference. He began to move to the left, avoiding both of them reaching him at the same time. The armour closest to him after his reposition made its attack.

Its spear stabbed out in a straight thrust, vicious, fast, but thoroughly telegraphed. The thing was not subtle. Frank reacted to the change in arm position, dashing out of the way before the attack even started. His dodge put the closer of his foes in between him and the other, which afforded him a precious moment to attempt a counter-attack. His sword snaked out, striking for the knee joint of the armour.

He managed a glancing blow but the speed with which his enemies could bring their range to bear forced him to abandon any thoughts of an immediately crippling blow. He danced back, anticipating the followup strike and the arrival of the other.

He’d successfully circled his opponents and put them between him and the nearest wall. Besides a scratch, neither of them had taken any damage. He continued moving perpendicular to the pair of them. It was essential to avoid both of them attacking at the same time.

The followup came, but Frank was far enough away to have steppped backwards and avoided it. He continued moving sideways to avoid the attack of the second, then pivoted and turned at a right angle. The spear whipped at him horizontally, but a hair too late. The additional agility and strength Frank had received left him with the explosiveness of an elite athlete, and he used it for a burst of movement that put slightly behind and only a few feet from the attacking armour.

The trailing enemy attempted to jab out at him, but he stepped in closer to the first to avoid it, swinging out with his sword towards its knee joint as he did. This time the strike bit in deeply.

Frank then moved towards the undamaged one, feigning an attack but breaking off at the last moment to run away. Two attacks came at him, but his feint had drawn its target to attack too early, while the damaged leg of the other impeded it and it was too late.

With the mobility of one severely hampered, he simply ran across the room. The now diverging movement speeds of his two opponents meant that he had time to engage the one that ran after him without the worry of an interloper. He turned to face it.

It had broken into a run to chase after him, and once again thrust out straight at him, completely telegraphed. Frank simply sidestepped and attacked its hand as he avoided its centerline. The attacks were quick, but there was no deception or suddenness. Every one was easily dodged. Within a few exchanges, he’d crippled its hand.

It struggled to attack him without the ability to grip with both gauntlets. Frank stepped past its clumsy attempt and slashed it in the knee. Both enemies were now crippled. The other armour limped near, but now Frank was able to simply circle it with ease. A few more clumsy thrusts and sweeps were unable to mount any threat to him when he could just keep to the side of the damaged leg.

Soon he’d disarmed both of them in turn, and this counted as completely incapacitating them, because they went limp and toppled over into an inanimate pile of metal, before flickering away in motes of blue light.

Derelict Iron Armour Animated by a Forgery of the Flame of Agility (Level 1) X2 defeated. Frank awarded 350 EXP.

Bill, Rina, and Maria stepped into the room, notified by the message that Frank had succeeded.

“Why exactly did you take us with you?” asked Rina, looking uncomfortable. “We can’t help you at all.”

“I don’t really know,” Frank replied.

He thought it over. He hadn’t really had a strict plan. He wanted to see if they could fight. It was important to have someone to trade watch with. But neither of those things were necessary for this. He could have made it to this dungeon alone in one day and rested in the entry room. Even in a group as small as the survivors of Redstone so far, there’d be someone who had somewhere to be or a place to go he could have travelled with for a time after.

He could justify all sorts of logical reasons for and against it, but ultimately, none of them had been in his head when he offered to take anyone who wanted to come with him. He had just wanted company. Something stopped him from saying that out loud.

Instead, his noncommittal response made it appear like he was considering whether or not it had been a good idea to bring them along. He wasn’t. He knew if the choice was given again he’d bring them again. But they didn’t, and he didn’t voice it.

Bill looked fine, oblivious. Both Maria and Rina looked at him uneasily. Maria’s worry was obvious, she wanted a potion to help her dad. Rina though, Frank almost thought it was insecurity.

Frank looked away from them. His eyes swept across the room towards the other exit. A pink shopping bag with incomprehensible symbols on it sat on the floor, directly in front of it. He walked over to see what was inside.

A white mask, made of wood, lips pursed and eyes narrowed in disapproval. A health potion. A scroll sealed in wax. He removed the contents and walked over to the others, handing the potion to Maria.

“We can return after finishing the floor. We are closer to the end than the beginning now anyways.”

She looked at him gratefully.

“What’s the scroll and the mask?” Bill asked.

“The mask is just a piece of wood,” Frank said and tossed it to him.

“As for the scroll, it’ll have something written on it. What that is, I have no clue. Usually, it makes about as much sense as anything else the system does. I have another one in my pack.”

“Can I see it?” asked Rina quietly.

Frank tossed it over. Rina caught it and then used a fingernail to break the wax. She unravelled it with curiosity but soon frowned.

“What’s it say?” asked Bill.

Rina hesitated for a moment. “It’s a, I think a bad love poem? ‘I’m pulled to you like the tides, but destined to recede.’ I wasn’t expecting that.”

She rolled it back up and stuffed it in her pack. Perhaps thinking that, because the system gave it, it would be useful. Frank turned forward, focusing on what was to come next.

“Let's keep moving.” He said and headed for the door.

His hand turned the knob, and it swung outward easily. Behind it, the light that unnaturally illuminated the rest of the dungeon was absent. It was complete darkness other than the light bleeding in from the doorway. Frank could vaguely make out a stone arch, freestanding with nothing around or inside it.

“That’d be the way to the end,” Frank said, pointing at the arch. “Usually there’s a fight once you walk through it, and then you have the option to leave.”

He looked at the three he’d brought along. “I wouldn’t recommend risking going through for any of you.” Frank walked towards it, into the darkness. “Wait ten minutes. If I don’t come back through then leave the way you came. Don’t stop on your way out if it comes to that. The longer you wait the longer the odds something wanders into your way.”

He stepped through the arch and found himself in a dimly lit room. Not in the manner the dungeons usually did, but by direct, normal light. A bright hot forge in one corner cast shadows around what appeared to be a dusty and ruined foundry. It was a fairly large space, perhaps a thousand-foot square, but only the area near the forge was properly illuminated. The walls were mud brick. Rotting leather straps and rusted metal were strewn about. A huge anvil completely red, sat decaying near the forge, a smith’s hammer resting on it, similarly corroded.

Something stood up from behind the anvil where it had been hiding. A blackened and burnt silhouette, five feet tall, thickly built. It faced the forge, then turned around to stare at Frank. The only discernable feature on it’s ruined face were a pair of eye sockets, flame licking out of them.

Burnt Out Husk of a Smith Possessed by the Flame of Vitality.

Level 5

A mouth opened, the black ruin of its face splitting horizontally, flames flaring out, and it gave an agonized scream. Then it grabbed the hammer and vaulted over the anvil, rushing at Frank.

As it got near it began a wild swing. Even without moving the hammer would not reach him. Frank still stepped back, cautiously. He had only a moment's warning before a gout of flame extended from the diagonal arc of the swing. If he had not moved he would have been enveloped in it. Fortunately, he did, and it gave him enough time to dive out of the way.

He landed awkwardly though, his physical attributes still painfully human. He had not the dexterity to land gracefully from a panicked dodge while retaining a grip on his weapon. He hit his hip and felt the ache of impact. Nothing was broken, but he’d be sore for a while.

He scrambled to his feet as the husk chased after him, dodging about desperately, before finally using a ruined sluice as a barrier, allowing him to regain a defensive stance. Frank felt this was going to be a miserable experience.