I woke up to the sound of Aaron and Lily preparing a meal in the kitchen. It was quite early in the morning, probably not even an hour after dawn, and I still felt a little groggy. I could hear a few birds chirping from outside of the walls of the little wooden house, and I could also hear what sounded like a little squirrel-like creature scampering along the roof, as it leapt onto the trees that stood nearby. It was a pleasant, tranquil sort of way to awaken, and I just let myself lay there and enjoy the feeling as I gradually roused myself up out of my slumber.

Then, after I had woken up a bit more, I got out of bed – still wearing my gloves and leggings – and put on the chest-piece that I had worn before. Afterwards, I went into the kitchen, and said hello to each of the children.

They were making up a stir-fry that was just like the one that we’d had before, though with a different kind of meat this time, and more of the vegetables than we’d used previously. They had made up enough for all three of us, to my great satisfaction, and the meal was already just about completely cooked. So, after we had stood and talked for a little while, Aaron scooped out each of our portions with the wooden ladle, and the three of us moved over to the table, where we ate our food, and talked about the day ahead.

To my surprise, Lily was managing to walk over to the table completely on her own. She still had an obvious limp, and she was being very careful to place most of her weight down onto her left leg. But it still seemed as if nothing was all that wrong with her, and I imagined that she would be back to normal in a few more days at the latest. That was all quite good news, and it seemed to make both her and Aaron very happy, as they told me again and again just how much better she was feeling now. I listened to each of them with a lot of pleasure, and I told her how glad I was that she was recovering so quickly. Then, she just lowered her head shyly, and wagged her ears, as she scooped up big portions of the delicious meat, and beamed with contentment.

As the three of us continued to eat and to talk together, I let the two of them know that I was going to head in towards the Beginner’s Dungeon a little bit later on in the day. They each seemed to be quite excited by that, and they gave me lots of well-wishes and encouragement, and expressed their interest in hearing all about my adventures, and my explorations. I promised them that I would be sure to tell them about what it was like inside, and that I’d try to bring back something for them to see, and to enjoy.

Once the three of us had finished up our meal, the children began to play with an old board game that they had found, which seemed a little bit like a Medieval version of Monopoly, mixed with some of the warfare elements of Risk. It looked like a lot of fun, but I didn’t really have the time to play with them right then, so I had to decline their offers to join in. Instead, I picked up my large long sword from where I had left it, and went down into the storage compartment to see if I could find a leather helmet that would go with my gear. After a few minutes of searching, I managed to find one that matched the rest of my armor just about perfectly, so I put it on, climbed back up, then headed out the door, as I began to make my way towards town.

It was an extremely beautiful morning outside, and soft light was streaming in through the leaves above, gently lighting up the fresh dew that covered the ferns and the herbs all across the soft, cool floor of the quiet forest. I made my way through those woods just daydreaming about all of the adventures that lay before me, as the whole world seemed to gradually be waking itself up from its recent slumber, and looking forward with great eagerness and excitement to the thought of spending another day in this strangely tranquil and beautiful location.

About half an hour later, I had made my way out of the forest, and could now see the large, stone wall that surrounded the town of Westfall. This time, I headed out towards the left of the city, away from the wooden gate that I had gone through before, as I made my way towards the farmlands that lay beyond the outer edges of the wall. I soon found myself on a well-trodden path that ran from the gate and out around the city in a small semi-circle, which then branched off into many different directions, one of which wound out through the surrounding countryside, and towards the dungeon that lay beyond.

There didn’t seem to be much of anyone on the path right then… but even so, I found that there was at least one person who caught my eye just about at once.

Directly in front of me – right where the path began to branch off, and to split into two – there was a small grove of trees, with a little wooden bench right in the center. Sitting on that bench, there was a young woman with cat-ears, of about my own age or a few years younger, who was reading a book beneath the trees.

It was a little past dawn right then, and the soft light of the morning sun was gently dancing across her short, red hair, as her soft green eyes focused on the book in front of her. She was holding the book quite lightly, and her small, white fingers were flipping through the pages, as she looked ahead with an expression of wonder, and of contentment.

She was pretty short for a girl – about 150cm or so – and she was thin, and small in her features. At the same time though, she didn’t seem frail, or weak at all… and the bow that was resting in front of her small feet – along with the leather armor that she was wearing – suggested that she was probably an adventurer of some kind, or perhaps a guard.

Almost in spite of myself, I found my eyes resting on her, and looking towards her.

It had been a long time since I had been able to talk to a woman of my age… and something about her just interested me at once, for reasons that I couldn’t quite explain.

A few moments later, as I was walking past her, she looked up, and noticed that my eyes were looking towards hers.

I felt a little embarrassed to have had her notice me like that… but fortunately, she didn’t really seem to mind at all. Instead, she just smiled at me quite shyly, and waved hello.

“Hi, there,” she said, softly.

“Hi,” I said, a lot more quietly than I was used to.

I wasn’t quite sure of what to say, right then.

The honest thing to have said would have been that there was something about her that really appealed to me, and that I would love to talk with her, and to get to know her for a while.

But, I wasn’t really brave enough to say that. So instead, after hesitating for a couple of moments, I asked her if this was the path out towards the Beginner’s Dungeon.

“Yeah, this is,” she replied, in a very shy voice. “The dungeon is just out that way, through the forest,” she added, as she pointed out towards a path in the horizon.

“Alright,” I said. “Thank you very much.”

“Of course,” she said, with a warm, and tender smile, that was surprisingly affecting.

Ordinarily, I would have just gone on my way right then, and she would have picked back up her book, and continued to read.

But, for some reason, I really couldn’t take my eyes off of her... and I wasn’t quite sure of what to do next.

She seemed to feel the same way, I thought. Because her eyes seemed to be lingering on my own… and I had the distinct impression that she really didn’t want me to leave right then, and that she wasn’t all that eager to be back alone by herself.

At the same time though, even though we both obviously wanted to get to know each other more deeply, neither of us really seemed to know just what to say, or how to express ourselves.

And so, we each just waited there about as awkwardly as we could… until, after a little while, the two of us burst out into laughter at our own ineptitude, and our lack of social grace.

“I’m sorry,” she said, still laughing softly. “I’m really bad at this sort of thing… but, I was planning to head out towards the dungeon myself in a little while. So, if you’d like to… you could wait here with me for a moment, and then come with me through the forest after I gather up my things.”

“If you’d like to, that is,” she added, a little quietly.

“Yeah, I’d like that a lot,” I said. “I’d love to walk with you for a while, if that’s okay.”

I think that I said that with a bit more feeling than I had intended… because afterwards, she just kind of lit up with happiness, as she moved over to let me take a set.

“It really would be okay,” she said. “Honestly… I’m pretty new to this town, and I’m kind of shy, so it can be pretty hard for me to meet people. So I’m happy that you came over, and that you said hello.”

“I’m glad that I got the chance to meet you, too,” I said quietly, as I sat down next to her.

“Although… you said that you were shy, didn’t you? You don’t actually seem that shy to me,” I added, with a grin. “Not right now, at least.”

She laughed a little, as she turned to face me, and set her book down upon her lap.

“I really am pretty shy, I’m afraid,” she said. “But… I feel pretty comfortable right now, to be honest. I don’t feel that nervous anymore… which is really, really nice.”

“I’m glad,” I said, quietly.

After that, there was a short, but noticeable pause to the conversation.

To my surprise, it wasn’t awkward, or tense in the slightest.

Instead… it just felt warm, and tender.

And at that moment, I felt surprisingly at peace, and deeply contented, as I let my guard down just about completely.

“So… are you a student here,” she asked me, eventually, after some time had passed.

“Oh, no,” I said. “I’m just, um… ‘traveling,’ at the moment.”

“Oh, really,” she said, as she picked her bow up off of the ground. “What brings you out here in your travels, then?”

“Um...”

... maybe I had let my guard down a bit too much, I thought.

I didn't have any answer at all to that question... and this time, there was a longer, and a more awkward pause.

And then, once again, we each just burst out into laughter.

“I’m sorry,” she said, still smiling. “I didn’t mean to pry, or anything.”

“No, it’s fine,” I said, laughing a little. “I’ll try to explain it to you later sometime, I promise.”

“Okay,” she said, with a slight grin. “Well, then… can I ask you what you’re out here to do for today, at least?

“Yeah, of course,” I said. “I’ve been thinking of becoming an adventurer, so… I wanted to go to the dungeons for a while, and to see what they might be like.”

As I said those words, I saw her soft green eyes begin to light up a bit, and to sparkle.

“That’s why I came to this town, too,” she said. “To become an adventurer."

There was a lot of emotion in her voice, as she said those words… but then, she seemed to come back out of her reveries, as she looked me in the eye.

“But, if you’ve never been to one of the dungeons, then… are there any questions that you’d like to ask me about them? I’ve only been exploring them for a little while now, but I’d be happy to tell you about anything that you’d like to know.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Honestly, I kind of have a lot of questions about all of that.”

“Okay,” she said, a little softly. “Let’s head towards the dungeons now, then, and we can talk along the way. Does that sound good to you?”

“It sounds great,” I said.

And then, after that, the two of us sat back up from the bench, and began to make our way ahead.

Even though we had just met, there was something very natural about speaking to her, and about walking by her side… and within a few minutes, we were talking like we’d been friends for a long time, as I asked her all sorts of different questions, and as she told me all about the dungeons in this world.

Apparently, as she explained it to me, there were three kinds of dungeons here: Beginner’s Dungeons, Intermediate Dungeons, and Expert Dungeons.

Beginner’s Dungeons had 50 floors, Intermediate Dungeons had 200, and no one in the world knew just how deep the Expert Dungeons went, or what might be lurking at the end. But, they had been charted up to their 85th floor or so, though no one that we knew about had ever managed to go any further than that, or to discover what might lay beyond.

When you entered a dungeon for the first time, you were taken to a kind of “hub,” with doors that lead out to different segments of the area. From there, you could make your way up through any path that you chose. Every five floors, you would find another sort of “hub,” and when you re-entered a dungeon, you could choose to start at any hub that you pleased. That meant that, generally, you trained in order to be strong enough to make it up the next set of five floors, and then once you had, you stuck around the first floor or two for a while, until you were ready to keep making your ascent.

Each floor of a dungeon had monsters that were about one level higher than the monsters on the previous floor, and the three kinds of dungeons started at levels 1, 51, and 251, respectively. That meant that Beginner’s Dungeons covered levels 1 through 50, Intermediate Dungeons covered levels 51 through 250, and Expert Dungeons covered levels 251 and beyond. Incidentally, this all meant that no one in the world had gone much beyond level 300, and that reaching level 250 was enough to be considered very, very powerful.

No one had built these dungeons, or knew how they worked, exactly. But they seemed to be deeply magical places, and to be like a kind of “training ground” that you could go in and safely explore, in order to level up and to become stronger.

At the start of every day, all of the monsters and treasures in a dungeon would be “replenished,” by some sort of magical energy.

Each floor of the dungeon was a real, and stable place. But sometimes, when you traveled between the floors, you would be taken to a kind of “intermediary” stage, that was generated on the spot, then vanished once you had left. These intermediary stages might be things like special boss battles, or treasure rooms, or something that was called a “memory floor,” which I’ll go into later. But, at any event, these in-between areas were often very useful, and it was considered a stroke of good fortune to have found one, even though they were quite rare.

At any rate, after you had exited the dungeon, your body was restored to exactly the state that it had been in before you had entered. That was why no one in the dungeons was ever injured, or ever came close to dying. Likewise, while you were in the dungeon, your ability to feel pain was significantly diminished, so that you could go out and fight without being overwhelmed by the physical sensations of the combat.

Every time that you returned from the dungeons, you could bring up to three items back with you from your adventures. Those three items would then appear on your person once you left, and they would be yours to keep after that.

What you brought back could be any object that you found on any of the floors, but adventurers tended to end up bringing back very obvious sorts of treasures, like weapons, gemstones, and precious minerals. However, these weren’t all that easy to find, and so it took quite a bit of work to really discover enough on each of the floors of the dungeon to make a living, and quite a bit of fighting, too.

Those were the basics of the dungeons, and that was most of what I took away from what she said. As I listened, I made quite a few notes to myself. But mostly, I just tried to think of more things to ask, and more ways to learn about this new world of mine.

There was one more thing which she said that I didn’t pay enough attention to at the time, but which I should probably mention here, even though it won’t come into play for quite a while.

As I believe that I mentioned a little bit back before, when you stepped into an “in-between floor,” you would sometimes be taken to a place that was called a “memory floor.” These memory floors were like perfect replicas of certain events that had taken place in the distant past. No one really understood why they appeared when they did, or what purpose the system could have in presenting them to the adventurers who happened to find them. Often, it wasn’t even clear that the events that were being replicated were especially important, or significant, which only added to the sense of confusion.

But still, the fact that the memory floors existed – and that the dungeons could sometimes provide a kind of window into that which had long since been forgotten – was something that basically everyone recognized the significance of, even if no one grasped just what that significance might consist in.

But at any rate, I didn’t think that much of that at the time, since those places seemed to be extraordinarily rare, and almost an afterthought, on her part… and so for now, I let all of that drift back out from my mind.

As the two of us continued to talk about the dungeons, and to talk about adventuring and exploring and fighting more generally, I found that it was becoming easier and easier to talk with her, and that I was really just enjoying being in her company. There was something really friendly and sincere about her whole demeanor, and once we had managed to get onto a subject that we each really wanted to talk about, our words just seemed to flow with an easy and a natural grace... and we soon found ourselves joking together, and laughing, and enjoying the walk that we were taking through the cool, and beautiful morning.

And so, after we had finished going through the details of the dungeons, the two of us just fell into a comfortable silence together for quite some time. We made a little bit of discussion here and there, pointing out how beautiful the farmland that surrounded us was, and how nice of a day we were having. But even though the conversation could hardly have been more simple, I found myself enjoying it deeply all the same. She seemed to be enjoying it, too... and whenever she gave me a warm, and contented smile, I felt pretty happy, and glad to be out here with her, just enjoying this moment, and the place that we were in.

It really was a lovely place, too.

All around us, there were rows and rows of beautiful, well-maintained farms, that were filled with young men and women who were tending to their crops, as they plucked the freshly grown vegetables and fruits off of their vines and branches. We each seemed to find the sight quite charming, and we eventually stopped for a little while to watch the farmers at work, as the laborers laughed and joked with one another, enjoying each other’s company, and the cool, beautiful day.

Apparently, the “Farming” skill made it so that crops would grow more quickly, bear a greater yield, and provide more nourishment and health. That meant that most of the more experienced farmers didn’t have to work for more than about five or six hours a day, so most of them chose to begin their work early in the morning, when their labors could be cool and refreshing, and then conclude just a little bit before the sun had reached up towards the middle of the sky.

There was something rather enchanting and idyllic about the whole sight, and I realized in that instant that, even if I didn’t end up becoming an adventurer, just being a farmer in a world like this might be a wonderful way to spend my life. She seemed to be having just about the same kind of thought, too, as she smiled warmly, and looked out at the beautiful sight in front of her.

Of course, right after that, I remembered what the children had told me, about how joyless it had been to labor on the farms, and how many hours they’d had to work every day just in order to survive. That had been quite painful to hear, and it was a striking contrast with the pleasant and amiable sort of labor that I saw in front of me. It made it obvious that there was a much darker side to this world that I hadn’t seen yet, and that not everything was so peaceful and so beautiful as the parts of the world that I had witnessed would suggest.

For now, though, I let those thoughts drift out of my mind, and I simply continued to enjoy the spectacle that was unfolding all around me. Then, after a while, the two of us continued to make our way ahead, out towards a quite small forest that stood between the farmlands, and the mountain with the dungeon.

We talked a little bit more along the way, just making small talk now, and speaking in an increasingly casual, and relaxed manner, as we joked and laughed, and made our way through the overgrown path. A few moments later, we emerged back out of the forest, just in front of a small mountain that rose up into the distance.

At the foot of the mountain, there was a large black cave, with three separate tunnels that served as entrances, and a large sign proclaiming, “BEGINNER’S DUNGEON INSIDE.”

From what she had said before, I knew that she was about level eight, and that we’d be heading towards different floors. So, I figured that this would be the time for us to part, and that we’d each be going our separate ways for now.

“Well… it was really nice to meet you,” I said, after a brief pause.

“It was nice to meet you, too,” she said, softly.

“I hope that we can see each other again sometime,” she added, after a few moments.

“I do, too,” I said. “If you would be interested… maybe we could go out into the dungeons together sometime, once I’ve gotten a bit of experience?”

“I’d like that a lot,” she said. “I work down at the barracks, most afternoons and evenings… so if you find me sometime, we can head out together from there.”

“Alright,” I said. “I’ll be sure to do that.”

There was a brief pause, that was warm, and peaceful, but also a little tense, albeit in a good, and lively sort of way.

Then, just before we were beginning to part from one another, we each broke out into laughter once again, as we realized our mistake.

“I’m Praxa, by the way,” she said, still laughing.

“William,” I said, grinning. “It’s good to meet you… even if we’re both apparently really, really bad at this.”

“Yeah, I know,” she said, laughing a little. “I told you… I’m not good at making friends. But...”

“It really was good to meet you, William. I’ll be looking forward to seeing you again, sometime.”

“I’ll be looking forward to seeing you again, too,” I said.

After that, she waved goodbye, as I watched her head out through one of the entrances to the dungeon. And then, I just did my best to prepare myself for the adventures that lay ahead, as I made my way in through the middle entrance of the Beginner’s Dungeon.