Nick kept his head low and just kept walking, a perfectly reasonable strategy. He didn’t engage with any groups and did his best to avoid drawing any attention to himself. He remembered reading somewhere the most innocuous position to look was at a 45 degree angle downwards, too far down and you’d just look suspicious. Nick’s gear set went a long way in helping. Most people were wearing better armour and carrying weapons, in comparison Nick looked like a grub trying to secure any left over loot.

Nick checked his map and found that he’d walked almost a kilometre away from the car park door before the crowds started to die down. Nick was shocked, there were so many teams of shoddily geared people floating around. A lot of the people didn’t even seem to be affiliated with the 71st floor, Nick had noticed that some people would have the number 71 placed somewhere on their gear. Damn, Nick both wanted a 72nd signifier and not at the same time, that little desire for a neat label was burning hard.

Once he found a place to settle he’d be sure to get whatever signifier they were running, it was scary being alone. Every team that had a 71 on them would be friendly with each other, whereas the other teams were always casting a cautious gaze around. Thankfully little ol’ Nick was doing a good job of avoiding that gaze.

Eventually the crowds were completely gone and Nick was back to wandering empty hallways. It was only when he was alone that the atmosphere began to creep in on him. When there were people around there was always energy and motion at least, there was chatter and the rustling of clothes or gear. Alone, it was just Nick and the long stretches of yellowish carpet, the cream walls and tacky fake wooden doors. It was now that Nick noticed a distinct sound that permeated the hotel, the faint, dull, buzz of fluorescent lamps. He hadn’t paid any attention to it in a while but the electricity in this place must be nuts.

Nick approached one of the lights in an empty hallway, he removed the lamp’s cover and tried to inspect the lamp tube itself. Then he realised how dumb he was and had to deal with being partially blind for a few minutes.

“Maybe not my smartest of plans.” Nick mumbled to himself.

Nick then decided that the lamp had won this round and continued on his journey. He wouldn’t be telling people that he’d lost a fight with a lamp. As he was wandering Nick began to doubt Gareth’s directions, why hadn’t he told him how far in the damn room was. Had he accidentally walked past it? Was it just one door over this entire time? Nick shook his head and took a deep breath to clear his mind, he had found himself doing that an awful lot over the last few days.

Nick began to get a little bored of the hallways and empty rooms, their eerie nature prevented him from being able to completely zone out though. It was an awful environment, dull enough to bore him but weird enough that his mind didn’t want to stop cautiously scanning it. It felt like the place had been optimised to unnerve him the perfect amount. Nick then found something he could distract himself with.

It was the energy he’d found inside himself, it was like a little sentient creature moving around inside him. Nick then baulked at the framing, oh god was it a parasite inside him? Where had this energy come from? Was it his own? Was he now engaged in a nonconsensual parasitic relationship? Wouldn’t be the first time but oh no! So many questions.

All these worried questions were completely brushed aside as he watched the energy just harmlessly bounce and float it’s way around his body. It was adorable. If it was some evil parasitic creature then that was okay, it was too cute to say no to. It certainly helped that Nick felt intrinsically connected to the energy, he couldn’t quite describe it but it felt entirely his. It would respond to him and he had control over it, whatever it was, it was his.

Nick now had something to distract him as he walked, he made the energy move in shapes and do laps around his body as he walked. Nick got so caught up in the exercise that he didn’t notice when the door he walked through opened up into a much wider room. A vast room filled with support pillars. Nick had made it a dozen metres into the room before he noticed something was different and pulled himself away from the internal mindstate he’d been in.

That was something he noted as important, it almost felt like he was engaging in meditation while he focused on the energy. Something to think about down the line.

Nick was once again amazed by the hotel, this room was easily a hundred metres wide and just as long, from looking at his map. It was an absolute marvel in disturbing architecture and Nick was instantly made to feel small and unsafe. Splendid work. Nick then faced his next problem, he wasn’t sure which of the corners was the one that led to the button. He decided to clear each of the corners one by one until he found it, he started clockwise.

He walked to the first corner and walked around it from the right side, anticlockwise. Nothing. Nick just felt a little silly. Then Nick felt extra silly when he realised he had a skill he’d completely forgotten to use up to this point. He activated treasure sense and was given the vague feeling of the opposite corner to him. Goddamnit, he’d walked at least four kilometres into this damn hotel and hadn’t even been checking for loot.

Nick then justified it to himself, he’d been focused on finding the button. It was clearly a more important goal, loot would clearly just have distracted him. Things felt so much better when you engaged in a little coping. With a smile on his face he walked over to the opposite corner and started walking around it anticlockwise.

He hated it. He really really hated it. It just shouldn’t be there. There was another hallway that just existed. He walked around the pillar from the left, clockwise, and it just wrapped around. When he walked anticlockwise, from the right, there was a hallway. He hated it. His mind just refused to accept it and it’s consequences. He had to sit down for a moment. He actually felt a slight headache from the situation.

If spaces like this existed could you trust anything in this place? How the hell were you supposed to map something like this? This hallway just didn’t work, it just shouldn’t be there. Nick couldn’t wrap his head around it, it might actually be the most magical thing he’d experienced so far and he hated everything about it.

Nick very reluctantly opened his map skill. He dreaded to think what it would show him. It seemed the skill was a little confused as well, it was the first time he saw the map moving. The map was flicking between showing a door, the hallway and the wider room. When he focused on the spot it was like he could choose which to focus on. He could see the hallway or the wider room with a door sitting in it, the door would open up into a sublayer showing the hallway. Which raised a solid question, was the hallway a separate space from the rest of the hotel he was walking through? It had to be right? But where did it change? Where did the space go from hotel to stange hallway thing? Nick's brain was doing loops on itself trying to work it out. It really was an Unusual Cave Space Hotel Thing. Damn U-C-SHTs.

Nick took a deep breath and realised he didn’t care. Why did it matter if the rooms made sense? Why did it matter that his map didn’t get it? The entire place was confusing and the situation that led him to this point was equally as strange. He’d never once cared about cartography before, why would he start now? Nick then had a sneaking suspicion that his mental dedication to this problem was a little bit class influenced. It would make sense that an Explorer would care about how spaces worked. Wait, was that part of the reason Explorers went crazy? Their minds were being moulded into something that conformed to conventional space and they were being presented with non-euclidean problems to deal with?

It made sense… But holy cow Nick didn’t want to think about it right now. It was a terrifying thought that his brain was being moulded into something without his consent, especially terrifying that he now had an inkling of why it could turn him insane.

Well, if it was a mindset problem, Nick had the ultimate solution. He said fuck it and walked down the hallway. He didn’t place a single thought into where he was going or how it worked. His boots were made for walking and so that’s what he did. Nick activated his treasure sense while in the hallway and it led him around the bend at the end of passage. It was a deadend. The hallway had no doors and didn’t lead anywhere, what a bloody waste of space it was. If Nick didn’t have prior knowledge and a very handy skill that’s all he would have thought and left the scene.

Thankfully Nick had those two things and he quickly identified a patch of wall that looked out of place. It wasn’t as blatant as the black slate of the last one he’d seen but it certainly still stood out once he noticed it. There was a patch of wall that had faint patterns in the wallpaper, if he didn’t inspect it closely he probably wouldn’t have noticed. Everything in the hotel seemed to somehow blur together. Even when he’d seen the black slate doorway his brain had just explained it away and blurred it into the wall, his skill being the only thing that really let him focus.

Was that the architecture in general having that effect or was there something more magical at foot? Nick was very interested to find out. Nick then pushed on that particular section of wall and it swung inwards just like the slate part had. What lay on the other side was a familiar scene. There was a large button on the wall with a message on the wall above it.

Are you ready to start?

“Well at least I’m here by choice this time.” Nick said to himself.

He then placed his hand on the button and waited. The first thing to come up was his status.

Name

Nicholas Jones

Stickers

+1s (2/4)

Please find better stickers!

Endurance x1

Intelligence x1

Please find better stickers!

Classes

Explorer (Level 2)

Skills

Treasure Sense - Active (10%)

Lucky - Passive (2%)

Hasty Escape - Active (20%)

Map - Active (4%)

Oh there it was, the beloved status screen. God how he wished he could carry this thing around with him. Alas, their relationship wasn’t meant to be, Nick would only be able to meet his beloved in the dark and dingy backrooms of a tacky hotel. How fitting it truly was.

There were two points that interested Nick the most. That the status screen was lowkey nagging him to do better and his skill experience. The nagging was clear evidence that better stickers did in fact exist, which reignited Nick’s hopes. Maddy had failed to bring that detail up when she’d crushed Nick with the reality that he could only have a few stickers. Superhuman attributes were still on the table!

Next was the skill experience. How come the numbers were so varied, shouldn’t his passive skill be the highest if that’s what he was always using? He definitely used Treasure Sense more than Hasty Escape, so why was it lower on experience? Thankfully Nick had dealt with systems like these before. Well not personally, but he’d read far more than his fair share of litRPG webnovels. Consulting his library of very forgettable reads he pulled out a few of them that had stuck with him. A lot of systems had levelling skills, usually through repeated use. The main character had to have a way to catch up with the titans of the world though, so instead of it just being based on repeated use…

Creative application! Now that fits the bill. He’d like to think he had done a great job of using his Hasty Escape skill in a variety of unintended ways. He certainly hadn’t done much experimentation with the map skill and while he didn’t think he’d experimented with Treasure Sense, he certainly had explored the sense part. That all seemed to add up.

Then his status page was bumped over by a new line of text.

Free class slot found! Choose your class!

Special button! Level two classes available!

Nick was then presented with a list of classes.

Sadly, Wizard still wasn’t there.