“The ceiling’s only about 10 feet high, and we can see the sky from here,” Mason said. “I’ll lift somebody up, and they can grab the edge and pull themselves out.”

Kyle jumped into the conversation. “How’ll you get out, then?”

“Dunno,” Mason said. “Maybe there’s a rope or a lever or something up there. Or a rock you can push down here so I can stand on it and jump high enough to reach the lip.”

“So who’s going up first?” Mia asked.

“I vote he does,” Kyle said, pointing at Jacob.

“Why me?” Jacob said.

“This place has game-like qualities to it, but it’s also real in a way I’ve never seen before,” Kyle said. “As the person with the least exposure to games so far, you ought to go up. You might see things in a way we don’t.” That was a lie, of course. Kyle just wanted the poor guy to feel useful, especially after getting chewed out by Mia. When you were in a group, it helped to feel like you had a job.

Kyle expected either Mason or Mia to object, but they both nodded. Mia was already back to tapping buttons in her menu.

“If… if you really think so,” said Jacob. He went over to Mason, who crouched, grabbed Jacob at the knees, and with a grunt lifted him towards the ceiling.

As this took place, an alert, much like the party invitation from earlier, appeared in front of Kyle. “Mia: Good call,” it said, “Let the dad be the scout. If he gets eaten, no loss.” Kyle glanced over at Mia, who was already looking at him. She smirked and looked away.

Kyle noted a reply button and tapped it. A keypad similar to a cell-phone’s popped up. Kyle tapped his crystal to close the display. The message wasn’t worth responding to. But it was good to know they could communicate in semi-secrecy. He decided he’d keep an eye on Mia’s “texting” hand, just in case.

Although in retrospect, Mia had caught onto something that Kyle hadn’t. Jacob’s HP was low. He glanced back up at the HP bars he’d set over his head. Kyle was at 59%. Mason at 65%. Mia took a bit of damage from Mason, which confirmed Kyle’s suspicion that PvP was a thing in this game, but was still just fine at 96%. But Jacob’s was at 9%.

Kyle’s thigh and the side of his chest still hurt. The pain wasn’t as sharp now; it had instead sort of spread through his body as a dull ache. If he hurt this bad at 59% HP, what must Jacob feel like?

If there was another goblin up there, Jacob was sunk.

Jacob finished scrambling onto the upper level. “Okay, I’m up. Looks like we’re in a clearing in the middle of a forest. There are some beams of light shooting up into the sky, like Minecraft beacons. I can’t tell how far away they are.”

“Those show where the transcendance crystals are,” Kyle shouted to Jacob. “Touch a hundred and we win the game.”

“A hundred? Man…” said Jacob.

“See anything that’d let us climb up?” Mia asked.

“I don’t… I don’t think so. Hold on, I’ll go look.”

“If you see anything dangerous, run and jump back down here,” Kyle called out. “We’ll try and save you.”

“Unless it’s got a ranged attack,” Mia said. “Then warn us and kite it away so it doesn’t spawn-camp us.”

“Um… okay,” Jacob called out uncertainly.

“Jargon overload, Mia,” Kyle warned. Mia just shrugged and kept tapping her menus.

Kyle started doing so as well. There was a whole party system he had “unlocked” in his help menu that he could read up on. He tried to, but something was eating at him.

“Hey Mason?” He asked, looking up.

“Yeah?” Mason asked.

“You seemed to know a lot about the structure of the tournament. How’d you know that?”

“I’m not a walk-in. They had to sell me on the idea of the game before I signed up. I heard a little about it.”

“So did you know it’d do this whole ‘trap you in the world’ thing?”

“Hell no.” He snorted. “I was told it’d take like two hours total. I knew it’d be virtual, though. They said it was a full immersive, non-invasive VR that didn’t require any special equipment. I told them I’d charge them an hourly rate for my time comparable to my salary on the Rams. If this thing really lasts years, I’m gonna make billions. I still think it’s a bluff, though. Give us another five or six hours, tops. Then, we’ll go home, pick up our paychecks, and compare our high-score to the other people who went through this dungeon.”

Kyle hoped so, but had his doubts. Something weird was going on. Virtuaverse shouldn’t just be able to kidnap celebrities and athletes, not even for a few hours more than they promised. Not to mention that strange period of unconsciousness. Come to think of it…

“Do you know what happened while we were unconscious?” Kyle asked.

“Nope. Gonna talk to my lawyers about that one. Maybe a doctor, too.”

Kyle sighed. Even those “clued in” didn’t seem to know what was going on. He pondered for a moment. “You knew this tournament was happening before it went on, right? Here’s a question; what day did you go unconscious?”

“April 6th. They led me into this weird gray room. They said I wasn’t going to play that day, and it was just a physical to make sure I was compatible with the system. Then I was here. Why d’you ask?”

“I went under on April 15th.”

Mason narrowed his eyes slightly and didn’t respond. Kyle left it at that.

A few minutes later, he heard Jacob calling down from the top. ‘Hey! I think I got something to help you up!”

“What is it?” Kyle called back up.

“A giant rock. It’s round enough I think I could roll it down to you.”

“How high?” Mason asked.

“About three feet.”

“That doesn’t sound giant at all,” Mia said. “Isn’t there something bigger?”

“Not that I can roll.”

“This is only half-way a videogame,” Mason said to Mia. “Do you have any idea how heavy rocks actually are?”

Mia shrugged, and Mason rolled his eyes. “Three feet will be fine,” Mason called back up to Jacob.

“Okay, heads up, guys,’ Jacob shouted. Kyle backed up into the hallway he had come from. After a minute or so of heavy scraping noises, a yard-high, mostly round boulder came over the lip of the ceiling and fell to the floor. The reverberations from its landing shook the room. The stonework cracked under the now stationary boulder.

It was reasonably round, but had enough ridges that it must have taken some real doing to get it to roll. Kyle heard Jacob panting above him.

“Is that gonna do it?”

Mason stepped forward and rolled the rock onto the flattest side he could, then stood on it unsteadily. He stood straighter after a moment, apparently satisfied with its stability. “Yeah, it’ll do.” He reached up and could just barely grab the edge of the lip.

“Great. Mia? Kyle? Want a lift?”

Kyle stepped forward. Mason, still standing on the rock, grabbed Kyle’s waist and lifted. As he rose, Kyle’s vantage suddenly changed from “dungeon with skylight” to “forest with hole in ground,” and he squinted as the light assailed his eyes.

“Can you get up from there?”

Kyle grabbed a nearby root. His head was a good three feet or so over the edge, so he leaned forward, shifted his weight onto his belly and used it as traction, and scrabbled inelegantly onto the forest floor.

“Mia?” Kyle heard Mason ask.

“You can reach the top right?” Mia’s voice asked from down below. “Just grab the lip. I’ll climb.”

After a brief pause, Mason said, “Suit yourself, princess.”

A minute or so later, Mia came scrabbling over the edge. Shortly thereafter, with a grunt, Mason’s head appeared over the edge. With the practice of an athlete, he lifted himself up, swung a leg over the edge, and rolled onto the grass.

Kyle looked around him. The clearing he was in seemed sunny, but the forest got darker the further he looked into it. He saw beams of white-blue light rising into the sky from somewhere in the forest. Depressingly few, actually. There must have been about a dozen; some seemed pretty close, and others were so far away they were barely visible.

“Cool. What now?” Mason said.

“I guess we pick a beacon and head towards it. I vote the close one.” Kyle said.

Mason nodded. Mia shrugged. Jacob just looked between the three others, waiting for a decision to be made. Kyle, sensing no better plan, started walking towards the forest.

Mia immediately piped up. “Axes out, guys; we don’t know what’s in there. Mason in front, ‘cause he’s tanky. I’ll take rearguard because I’ve got the most HP left. Dad, stick in the middle and keep your eyes peeled for monsters. If we end up pulling by accident, we don’t want to be surprised. You too, bookworm, unless you think you can read while walking. Then do that, so you can tell us what the hell to expect when we get to that crystal.”

Kyle felt his hackles rise unjustifiably. It was all sound advice. Just because it was coming from Mia didn’t mean he should argue. As badly as he wanted to.