12:12pm, The Nineteenth Day

The dungeon, though large, had a recognizable layout. The tougher enemies and gatekeepers lay to the far back of the cave system, and the larger rooms with easier enemies occupied the space closer to the valley outside the mountain. This front section was a little over three kilometers in surface area, but due to the labyrinthian tunnel system and the morphing nature of the halls I still didn’t think I had mapped it all, nor had I come closer to finding the entrance.

The walls and halls changed direction every time I moved back, each time making me curse the designers. When we had found Svite’s party, Artel and I had just given up on any hope of finding a way that led back out the front. We had just begun the walk to the areas farther back when the shrill sound of a sword on rock had reached my ears.

It had actually surprised me that we hadn’t seen more parties from the outside venturing in, at least before the first week ended. After all, this dungeon was within half a week’s travel from Paelgard, and dungeons always had a reputation for rewarding tons of valuable loot and weapons when completed. My only thoughts as to why that would be would be that either something happened in Paelgard stopping the majority of people from adventuring, or that all the other parties that had come into this dungeon had wiped before we had a chance to meet. Either option weren’t exactly great things to think about.

As we walked, I asked the others about the situation in Paelgard. I had been curious since the timeframe of the automatic logout had passed, and didn’t really know what to expect. Was the extra time just the result of poor programming or malicious intent? Both answers were equally terrifying.

“Paelgard wasn’t in a good shape when we left.” Svite continued. “The plazas were empty, the atmosphere dour. Those that did leave the town mostly kept to themselves.”

“It’s not really a surprise considering what happened though.” Kyoura interjected. “It's hard to have any breadth of levity when you think ya just got imprisoned.”

I was of the same mind. Though I wasn’t in town when I realized it, both Artel and I at the time had gradually come to the conclusion that we were trapped at the close of the second week. Afterwards we had dedicated ourselves to finding a way out of this dungeon before we worried about the situation with the game.

“What do people think the problem is? Have there been any system messages, any developer contact?” I asked.

Svite shook his head. “No messages, no system notifications, nothing. That's why everyone is so confused, there has been literally nothing from the developer.”

The party grew silent for a second to let that sink in. There really wasn’t any worse news to hear. The only reason that there would be no contact at all would be because either Novitias did not realize that there was any problem in the first place, or worse, did it on purpose. If that was the case, I didn’t even want to think about how long we could be stuck in here.

“You would think they would have some way of knowing when something like this happened, being the first game like this and all.” Artel kicked a small rock in frustration.

We walked for a few more minutes through the dew soaked caverns. The silence of the cave could be overwhelming sometimes, with only the rare cracking and crushing of stone to break it. As it continued, I could only imagine that this dungeon was a perfect reflection of our current situation. The cave would stay silent like this forever, just as our bodies currently did in the real world above.

Kyoura broke the silence first. “I’m sure a game master is still stuck in here too. There’s at the very least the one who hung out in Paelgard the first week.”

Svite and I nodded. On launch day a game master in the avatar of an orange sprite had been flying around the city answering questions and concerns. Presumably more than that one had been logged in, as Paelgard wasn’t the only starting town. They could be working on a solution at this very moment.

“I wouldn’t get your hopes up too much on that.” The mage replied. “The gamemasters can’t control the time dilation from within, they are only simple moderators.”

“Why are they called gamemasters if they can’t even do that?!” Artel asked, exasperated.

The others, having no answer for that, stayed silent.

“Surely they can message people outside the game right?” I asked hopefully. “The people on the outside should be logging everyone out as soon as they get a message.”

“Depends how long the time dilation is.” Svite replied. “If it’s been sped up too much, years down here might be only seconds in the real world. I’m no expert, but I feel like it would be difficult for them to accomplish anything quickly up there, especially before the hour ended.”

We turned around a bend in the tunnel, Kyoura peeking her head around first. By my reckoning we should be pretty close to the second part of the dungeon, where the tunnels opened up a little, but the textured rock betrayed no indication of the switch just yet.

“Shouldn’t it be set at a hundred and seventy times normal? Thats what was advertised.”

“I think it’s pretty clear that it's set at the very least two or three times that now, dude.” Artel responded.

“We can just hope that it's the logout that’s broken, not the time controls.” Svite said.

Oh well, we have bigger problems now anyway. Thinking about escape from this prison of a game was pretty low on my list of needs at the moment somehow. My first priority had to be escaping this gastronomical desert of a dungeon. Only once I was safe in a tavern in Paelgard with a full meal could I even begin to think about what to do about the rest, if I could even personally do anything.

Svite and the mage turned the conversation to something else, but I drew to the back of the group instead, under the excuse of watching the rear. Artel came with me, settling in step beside me.

“I wouldn’t worry too much about the game.” Artel whispered. “There isn’t much we can do about it anyway.”

“I don’t think that’s any more comforting though.” I replied. “In fact I think that makes me more worried.”

“It's not like we are really missing anything outside though. If the problem is the logout and not the time dilation, then it’s probably still christmas up there. If it’s the other way around then we still haven’t even been in game an hour of real time.”

I shrugged sullenly, and Artel’s voice took on a tone of mock confusion. “Don’t tell me you’re homesick. Or god forbid you miss doing coursework.”

“Well I miss my friends for one.” I replied. “And yes, I do kind of miss sleeping on an actual bed.”

“It could be worse.” Her voice suddenly became serious. “We could be separated.”

I started to think of a returning quip, but after glancing at Artel’s face it died in my throat. I had thought the same thing a few times over the last few days, but I didn’t know that Artel had thought the same. Knowing that I couldn’t just laugh off that statement, even if it was an embarrassing thing to say.

“Well, we’re family.” I said.

As the awkward silence continued, I tried to think of somewhere I could steer the conversation. Grasping nothing immediately, I turned to one of the only things we could control in this dungeon: our leveling plans.

“You are picking up Silent Sleeper when you get to sixteen in Stealth right?” I asked. “It would be nice to not have to set watch each night.”

Artel sighed.

“You wouldn’t, or rather, you shouldn’t have any need for Pickpocket anyway.” I scolded. “I’m gonna make you take the first watch every night if you do.”

Every eight levels in a skill afforded the player one new choice between two different abilities to use from. As each of us were approaching level sixteen in stealth, we had one such choice quickly coming up. For Stealth sixteen we could either pick up the Silent Sleeper perk, which let up stay stealthed while sleeping, or we could pick the Pickpocket perk to bolster our ability to complete petty theft undetected. In my opinion Silent Sleeper was much better, but if we both didn’t pick it up there wouldn’t really be any point in using it. Artel had been agonizing over the choice for the last few days however.

“Well…”

“Do you really want a reputation as a thief? Surely being able to sleep all night is worth giving that up.”

“I think you are neglecting something crucial here.” Artel puffed out her chest.

“And what is that?” I asked, knowing the answer already.

“Free stuff.”

“You are gonna get lynched by an angry mob of players one day.”

“I don’t know about that.” She twirled her sword around idly. “I don’t think I’ll lose any sleep over it.”

“You’ll definitely lose sleep if you have to stay up for watch every night away from Paelgard.” I scooted a little to the right to avoid her spinning blade. “Be careful with that thing.”

“What about Glypwork?” She suddenly asked. “Aren’t you close to sixteen with that too?”

I nodded. Even accounting for the glacial level gain, I was set to hit sixteen within the next few days if we kept up the current pace in regards to combat.

I made a circular motion with my left hand, causing the menu to open with a sharp jingle. I waved away the other’s glances when they looked back at the sound. Tapping on the leveling tab, I navigated over to Glyphwork to look at the choices available. The glyphworking choices were all between either a new glyph ability or a new runic enchanting one, but so far I had chosen all of the glyphworking ones. For sixteen, it looked like I could choose either an active glyph called ‘Smoke Glyph’ or the enchanting ability called ‘Lesser Augment’. Smoke Glyph was a simple glyph that unleashed a cloud of smoke for a few seconds while Lesser Augment just gave me the ability to give weapons one level of an elemental attribute at the cost of damage.

“It looks like I can have either a low duration smoke cloud or the ability to inscribe elemental runes on weapons.” I said. “I’m still weighing the two.”

“Why do you even need to think about this?” Artel scoffed. “Do you know how cool a flaming sword is? Why not pick that?”

“It’s only Lesser Augment, so it also decreases the damage.” I answered. “It’s only useful if whatever you are fighting is weak to fire.”

“I never thought I would have to explain to a guy why you would want to light a sword on fire.”

I ignored that and kept walking. Every once in a while I glanced behind us as I said I would, but nothing ever popped up. While we walked I tried to weigh the pros and cons of my upcoming Glyphwork choice to take my mind off things.

There were benefits to choosing Lesser Augment of course. I wouldn’t take it just for the lesser fire rune of course, but the ability also let me inscribe ice and lightning runes on weapons as well. A lot of monsters I had met in the beta often had at least one weakness to one of those three, so picking up Lesser Augment would allow me to be flexible and adapt our weapons for each encounter, not even to mention the various status conditions you could inflict with an elemental weapon. As well, although only one rune could be used on a weapon at a time, they could be freely disabled and replaced given some time.

Smoke Ward had some use as a distraction tool mid-combat, as well as allowing some new tactics. I could probably use it to escape from a fight or to confuse something by releasing it into an enemy’s face. It did seem to be slightly worse than Lesser Augment, but not enough that it was easy to reject it.

As well, on a deeper level which I probably wouldn’t admit verbally, it felt like a perversion of my dedication to glyphs to give up on one because it seemed a little underpowered.

A soft jab into my side brought me back to reality.

“We went over.” Artel said.

Looking around at the now blue tinged crystal tunnels around me, I realized with a start that we had already crossed over into the middle portion of the dungeon. This part of the dungeon was lit with natural blue crystals growing from every surface, and the ground gradually transformed from rock to yellow crystal, causing the light to cascade in brilliant patterns below our feet. Although the halls were narrow and sometimes steep, all of the roofs stretched at the very least dozens of feet up, causing a strange sense of vertigo to come over me when I looked up. Indeed it looked as if we were wandering along the bottom of crystalline canyons and ravines instead of tunnels and caves.

“Wow... “ Kyoura remarked as she craned her head around. “This is beautiful.”

“I didn’t know the lighting engine was this advanced.” Svite gawked.

Despite my prior experiences with this place, I nodded. Fantastical places like this was where the game’s visual design excelled. Places that could never exist in real life portrayed stunningly realistically. Even a computer obsessed player like me had to admire its shining surfaces of aquamarine and citrine.

After a minute we continued our march, though perhaps less studiously. Somewhat expectably, the back portion of the dungeon contained more traps and tricks than the front portion, and despite the apparently hawklike eyesight and reflexes of Kyoura I had to help Svite and the mage out of more than one trap. Most of them were simple pitfalls and monster rooms which Artel and I had come upon before we had turned back to the front section, but a few surprised even us.

After three hours of walking down these ravines, Kyoura spotted a citrine arch looming over the ravine ahead of us and pointed it out. It looked as though it was a bridge connecting the two cliff faces, though I saw no way that we could use to get up there. In the distance behind the arch, we saw that the ravine ended in a cliff, with a passage going down both the right and the left. Even from where we were, I thought I could hear the roaring of moving water at the back of the ravine.

“Sounds like a waterfall’s ahead.” Kyoura looked back at me. “Do you remember this area at all?”

I shook my head truthfully. Artel and I had taken a different route to the last section of the dungeon.

“We had to take a different route, one now buried under several tons of rocks. All of this is new territory.”

“Then we should proceed carefully from now on.” said Svite. “Keep a lookout Kyoura.”

Kyoura nodded and led us forward, and I watched the walls for signs of traps. We passed the arch without any issue, though up close it was even more evident how massive the structure was.

As we approached the cliff face, the sound of rushing water grew louder and louder, until I could just make out the sight of a river moving through the caves from the left to the right. As we carefully approached the bank, I could see that the water was almost silver in color due to the light reflecting off of the walls and floor. It rushed furiously down from a waterfall in the left cave into the right, leaving only a small path beside the river to walk on. Directly in front of me I could hear Kyoura’s faint gasp of amazement at the falling shining water.

Svite however, looked only to the path on the right.

“This looks like a pretty dangerous road. It’s too narrow for effective fighting.” He peered over the edge into the water. “And I don’t fancy getting knocked into those waters either.”

Looking into the waters I had to agree with him. They looked fast enough to kill if a player was to jump in. Even if someone didn’t drown it would probably sweep them far downstream away from the party. The riverside path was almost definitely filled with traps and ambushes, and wouldn’t be easy to cross. If I were the developer, I probably would’ve put an alternate path somewhere nearby to use instead. In fact…

I scanned the ravine and the tunnels for anything out of the ordinary. Though the blue crystals gave off enough light to see easily, small cracks could still have been obscured by the uneven nature of the walls. Nothing seemed strangely textured or modeled however.

I sighed. Maybe it would be wise to pick up Discovery at some point.

The others didn’t seem to catch the same train of thought as I. Svite and the mage stood next to the bank discussing what order we should go down the path in while Kyoura and Artel were still admiring the waterfall. Looking at the waterfall myself, I could honestly say that it wasn’t that special. Although the silver water was pretty, the actual fall was only a few meters, and it didn’t compare much to those I’d seen in real life. I had returned my gaze to the walls to look for inconsistencies when suddenly it hit me.

Of course! The waterfall! I walked up to the girls and motioned to the center of the cataract.

“How much do you want to bet there’s something hidden behind that waterfall?”

Artel and Kyoura looked at me with a touch of confusion.

“Behind the waterfall?”

“Wait why?”

“Come on guys.” I sighed at their ignorance. “It’s a stable of game design. If there is a waterfall anywhere in your game, you kind of have to put a secret room in it.”

I gestured to the narrow river path. “Just look at that. No sane game developer would put in that death trap without a way around it.”

“I wouldn’t know if sane is how I would describe these devs so far.” Artel pointed out.

“We’re kind of imprisoned in this game right now you know. I wouldn’t expect so much.” Kyoura stated at the same time.

Do they have to talk at the same time? Shaking my head, I moved past them and walked closer to the falling water to examine it carefully. Even from just several feet away I couldn’t make out any cavity, but that was mostly due to the bright nature of the water. I’m sure that if I jumped straight at it I would find a cave.

“I’m going to leap through it.” I said.

Artel and Kyoura quickly walked up to convince me otherwise.

“What if you’re wrong?” Kyoura asked. “If you fall in and the river turns away from the path we might not find you again.”

“They wouldn’t make the river like that. If I am wrong I’ll just latch onto the coast and find you guys on the path.” I explained. “It would be the same as just taking the path then.”

“Honsol you keep talking like you know what the developers would do.” Kyoura said. “You do realize they aren’t you right? They probably wouldn’t design something the same way.”

“If you’re scared of me falling in so much, why don’t I just tie myself to the ground over here with a piton and some rope?” I opened my menu with a swirl of my left hand. “Would you feel better then?”

Kyoura shrugged and Artel crossed her arms. “Don’t expect me to rush over if you get washed away.” Kyoura replied.

I retrieved a metal piton and a length of rope from my inventory and began tying it around me. Putting the metal rod over the crystal ground, I smashed it in with the pommel of my dagger. The sound brought Svite and the mage over, so I explained what I was doing.

“I think it’s probable.” The mage responded.

“That there’s a cave behind?” Svite asked, to which the mage simply nodded.

Svite looked over the waterfall quickly. “What about you Kyoura?”

She shrugged. “Even I can’t see through that glare. Seems like a random shot to me.”

Svite crossed his arm and stood silent for a second. Then, glancing at me and the mage he opened his inventory with a spin of his right hand. “That’s enough to convince me. I’ll go after you Hans, if you don’t fall in.”

I nodded and backed up a few meters from the edge, holding the slackened rope in my left hand. I better be right. I’m not sure I can swim in this game. After one final look back, I took off, dashing the few meters of flat ground I had. Once there I leaped with as much power as I could muster, flying through the air towards the thunderous water.

As I flew through the air, I suddenly got a little nervous. I better be right about this. The crushing waters came closer and closer, and I closed my eyes in anticipation for the unknown space behind. I’ll never hear the end of it if it's solid.

The water punched the air out of me as I passed under it, but I found open air just beyond it. I rolled along the damp ground behind the waterfall, roughly twisting the rope behind me until I found its farthest extent. It snapped taut, stopping my egregious momentum with a sickening crack. As I lay on the floor stunned, Svite came hurtling through the air after me and landed on his feet.

“Tough landing?” He asked.

“Very.” I massaged my limbs somewhat uselessly, as the pain had already rapidly faded. Standing up, I saw that I had only lost a few points of health from the tumble.

The cave was narrow and long, though the walls were notably made of stone bricks instead of crystal as with outside. A rickety table took up the entirety of the far wall, covered with vellum sheets and binders. A lone oil lamp sat on the table, long since run out of fuel. Several wooden boxes lined the walls, above which eight narrow canoes hung with matching paddles.

Svite went to check the canoes while I walked over to the table.

“How did you remember to check the waterfall?” Svite unhooked a paddle. “I haven’t seen a game use the waterfall room since the thirties.”

I skipped over the documents that looked to be financial documents and shipping orders, simply stuffing them into my inventory. Stopping on what looked like a journal with an image of a griffon on it, I opened to the first page before responding to Svite.

“To be fair, there weren’t too many games releasing after the mid-thirties.”

“That’s true I guess.” Svite mused.

The language on the inside wasn’t english, instead being written in some swirling script unknown to me. As just about everything I’d seen so far in the game had been english, so it was obvious that it was supposed to be intelligible without a skill or training.

“Nostalgia I guess? I dunno.” I closed the journal and placed it in my inventory next to the orders. “It just came to me.”

“Intuition then.” Svite hefted a canoe off the wall with a grunt.

I went over to a canoe and unhooked it from the wall after throwing the paddle inside. I started to follow Svite back out, but he stopped just before the water. “Oh and Hans?”

“Hmm?”

“Memory is a fine thing, but..” He paused. “ But don’t let it delude the present.”

“What?” I had no idea what he was talking about. “What does that mean?”

“Just keep it in mind.” He backed up a bit to get a running start. “Lets get rowing.”