Outside spawn zones slain enemies did not dissipate back into the system. Instead, corpses will remain until picked clean by animals or harvested my someone. The group worked quickly to skin the animals and scavenged any other useful items.

By the time they were done, no one wanted to go back to sleep. They were now wide awake, and the gore from harvesting the animals make the area reek of blood. Instead, they packed up their camp and began to move once more with the early light of dawn just making its appearance.

They headed out through the winding maze, and Jude occasionally used his to get the local topography. The directions weren’t the best, and they lost their way several times, but it did contain landmarks that helped them from being completely lost.

What seemed like a quick journey at first, ended up being a three-week trek through the maze. Many more beasts attacked the group. One such beast was a boar the size of a car and they took a day off from traveling to cook the pig for extra rations. As a crafter, Ellie was able to use her skill to dry a portion of the meat incredibly fast. It had left her drained, but they weren’t moving anywhere as they still needed to cook the rest of the flesh.

Along the way, Krinn and Wen reached level 25 while the rest hung at level 24. Slowly they were all started to average out their levels.

Finally, they reached the end of the road, the place where the directions ended, and the entrance to the aquifers was supposed to be. However, the entrance was a barren wall and a gravel floor. No entrance could be seen.

“This is where it’s supposed to be, but how do we enter?” Jude asked. He figured it was some sort of magical entrance.

“Do you have any more of those script things to check?” Krinn asked.

“No, and I used up my last small brush two days ago,” Jude replied. He needed small brushes to create scrolls and large brushes to do the formations on the ground. He hadn’t planned on the trip taking so long and already used up all his small brushes. If only he could create a suitable brush that could handle the magical power of the .

“Should we just use magic to punch through the wall?” Cairfray asked, using magic to blast things away was her forte.

Jude replied, “It’s not the best idea. We don’t know which direction it is in and forcefully digging could collapse the passage we are trying to get to.”

“Maybe there is a secret lever,” Ellie said. She started examining the rock walls for nooks or secret pressure plates hidden under the surface of the wall. Without anything better to do, the rest followed suit.

Jude was the only one trying something different. He gazed at the place where he thought the entrance should be. It was the flattest part of the wall with the gravel dipping down near it, and everyone else seemed to avoid that location. Clearly, there was some sort of magic at work here. He opened up his to see the hidden structure of magic, but he didn’t find anything out of the ordinary.

Then he had another thought, what if it required a command word to open? Magic had two forms of communicating, runes and the ancient language. Most of his understanding of runes came from his advancement of . Each rank up he would understand more of the written words. Because of this, he decided to research the ancient language along with learning the runes.

Unfortunately, didn’t use proper grammar as it was more like a coding language. Even the inscriptions made by that he had studied didn’t use grammar, but a combination of nouns and adjectives. But his desire to learn the ancient language didn’t diminish. There was clearly a power in understanding it and might be useful in the future. Because of his endeavors, he was now Rank I in the ancient language.

Thinking back to the words that might work, he started calling them out.

“Usyr!”

Nothing.

“Buey!”

Nothing.

“Buey usyr.”

“Usyr buey sneimy?”

“Usyr marm py?”

Still nothing. Jude checked with once again, just to see if there were any changes. But there was not.

“Open sesame?” Jude tried on a whim, and it would be quite funny if it had worked. But it didn’t.

Jude kept saying different words to no avail while everyone finished searching the surroundings. No one was able to find anything yet, and someone even checked the area that Jude thought was the doorway.

He continued to work as everyone else set up camp with evening drawing in. Jude moved beyond words and tried various other things, and now he was trying . This type of analyze would give him detailed information for a particular object.

Jude walked up to the wall as the gravel crunched beneath his feet and placed his hand against the cold stone surface. The analyze only told him that it was stone.

Stone.

Really?! He thought, Just stone? Nothing magical or even an inkling of something other than stone?

A random rock on the ground would give the same analyze result, and a normal stone wall would be no different. If there was a doorway hidden here, it was done really well. Jude was so frustrated that he wanted to hit the wall! But his better sense told him not to. Instead, he slammed down his foot in vexation.

The strike caused the gravel to shift, then his feet sunk in. It was an odd sensation, nothing like what gravel should do or feel like. Both feet were now buried up to his ankles, and there it paused for just a moment. It was just long enough for him to look back and his eyes meet Ellie’s before his whole body sank so fast it was as if he fell into water, except the ground didn’t splash. It had made a slight sound of gravel moving before all was quiet.

***

Ellie saw Jude disappear and gave out a shout. Then she called out his name, “JUDE!”

The rest quickly turned from what they were doing to see that Jude was nowhere in sight.

“Where did he go?” Wen asked confused, Jude had just been there. Did he find the way in?

“He sunk into the gravel where he thought the door was,” Ellie answered as she rushed forward to the spot.

She was on her hands and knees as she tried to brush the gravel away looking for him, but the gravel was compressed, and only the top surface lose.

“If he found his way in, then he will come back just as easily,” Cairfay said with confidence.

“I’m not so sure. Whatever he did, didn’t look like it was on purpose.” Ellie said exasperatedly. “The look on his face before he fell in was that of surprise.”

“Did you see what he did before he fell in?” Krinn asked.

Ellie hadn’t been paying attention to closely to what Jude had been doing, so she tried her best to remember what he had been doing in her peripheral vision.

She said, “I had been practicing glyph inscriptions on a small piece of metal, and I noticed that Jude had walked up to the wall that I inspected earlier. He placed his hand on the wall and then seemed irritated. Then maybe he kicked a rock? But the gravel made an odd sound, and I looked over at him. I saw his face, and I knew something was wrong.”

“Kicked a rock?” Wen asked as she walked over to the wall.

“Wait! Don’t do anything yet. We don’t know if we-“ Krinn was cut off by Wen kicking a small piece of gravel.

Everyone tensed up for a second before relaxing once again. Nothing happened.

“What the cosh Wen!?” Krinn roared, “We don’t know what is down there so don’t just jump off the ledge!”

“Jude is down there!” Wen bellowed back. “Are we just supposed to leave him there?!”

“No, but at least use some sense and tie a rope around yourself before you do something dangerous. What if you guys needed to get back up? How would you do that? Think before you leap for once!”

Wen knew that Krinn was right, but it only made her angrier. “You might be my big brother, but you can’t protect me all the time! I’ve grown up too. I’m a full-fledged warrior!”

Krinn was about to lay into Wen yet again, but was interrupted by Ellie, “Stop! You guys can argue later. Wen tie a rope on yourself before you try something else.”

Now that Ellie butted in, Wen’s anger rose to a new height. She wasn’t oblivious to how Ellie looked at Jude and could even see Jude caring for Ellie. But what about Wen? She had never met a man who met her standards except for Jude, and he even exceeded them. Yet he rarely seemed to take notice of her. And how could he? He was surrounded by beautiful women, Ellie, Cairfay, and Nellie. They often had time alone with him, yet she never did! She was never alone with him!

And that didn’t even mention the host of other young ladies who had tried to meet with Jude for the purpose of courtship. Not that any succeeded in meeting him. But that didn’t matter to her. She only saw what they looked like, all prim and proper. They were young ladies of nobles and wealthy merchants. They all had refined behavior, silky clothes, and a demeanor that fulfilled everyone’s expectation of what a woman should be.

More often than not, she wondered if she was even good enough for him. He was like the rising dawn, full of light, warmth, and possibility. She was just a cosh’ing girl who didn’t know how to interact with a man unless it was with weapons. She was rough and hard and had little confidence in her appearance. The shame she felt now burned just as hot as her earlier rage. Irritation at her thoughts and emotions made her want to lash out, but with no target, her frustration just continued to build. She slammed down her foot as it was the only release she could get.

Her feet sunk.

Then she too disappeared.

***

Jude fell through the rock, and it felt like going down a water slide mixed with sand and rock. He kept his eyes tightly shut and covered his head as best he could. Scratches and bruises were the least of his problems as he couldn’t breathe. But there wasn’t anything he could do but hope that the bottom of whatever he was falling through would lead to an exit with air.

It felt like minutes had gone by as his falling started to level out and soon he was ejected out of the rock and flung across the stone floor like some sort of water park slide across water. He skidded and rolled to a stop some distance away. But most importantly he could breathe!

After he had gasped for breath, he took a look around him. He was in a strange new world. The wall he came from was a pile of gravel that slowly sloped from the cavernous ceiling down to the rock hard ground. Only the ceiling and floor was a solid looking stone. What walls could be seen were made out of a holey stone that reminded Jude of a sponge.

This rock in a sponge-like structure was everywhere. It composed the majority of the wall that the gravel slope leaned against and sprouted up all over the place.

There was a dim light emanating from something similar to embedded into the ceiling. However, these stones were ancient, and only a faint glow emanated out of them. Their glow was a dark purple, but not like the bluish purple of Spectral Magic. Jude could see the difference.

Jude looked out and saw that the cavern was colossal, big enough where he couldn’t see from one end to the other. The rocky ground soon gave way to the soil where various plants had once grown. Now all that was left were the sickly remains. Grass grew nearest, then shrubs then the tree's with a random rock formation made out of the sponge-like rock.

Jude walked up to the nearest plant and touched the blade of grass. It was like fragile paper as it crumbled to pieces. Apparently, the land below the Arkess Desert was just as much a desert as the land above.

Then Jude heard a rumbling sound as the gravel slope spat out Wen. She tumbled across the ground, and he rushed up to her.

“Are you ok?” He asked as he lifted her up and cradled her shoulders in his arm.

She took a moment to gather herself before looking at Jude, “Yes, I think I’m ok.”

Then the strangest smile was plastered across her face. Jude had never seen Wen like this before.

What was this smile all about?