"Sweetness,” Carey chirped.

“Sweetness, indeed,” Will said, studying the pedestal in the center of the room.

Carey almost couldn’t keep away from a gleaming short sword resting on its surface. But he wasn’t that dumb.

“You’re not just going to walk right up to it, I hope,” Beatrice said, arms crossed as she stared—a little too condescendingly—at him.

Carey looked down at his feet, which hadn’t moved. “Do you see me walking toward it? Or are your wings blocking your eyes, because that could be a problem in a dark, dangerous dungeon.”

“It’s definitely surrounded by traps,” Will said. “But I don’t see any corpses. Torgs must know better.”

“Or they’re the ones who put it there,” Carey said. “I’ll do some exploring.”

The storage room was large and cluttered along the walls with old boxes, crates, chairs, and other similar types of junk. Carey quickly inspected the boxes for loot and found a bunch of common items—a few aluminum shards, some wood, leather strips, nothing much of value.

However, the center of the room was not cluttered at all—the only objects were the sword, the pedestal, and a dusty rug on which the pedestal stood. Even for a game, it seemed ridiculously obvious and a ham-handed design choice. Only an idiot would fail to suspect traps.

Carey thought to use Luck of the Naked Cat again to boost his detection skills, but it was still cooling down and wouldn’t be available for another hour. As it stood, his detect/disarm traps skill was currently at zero.

“There’s no way,” Beatrice said, again with that condescending tone. “You have to level up the skill first. That’s how it works in this game. In real life, you might get lucky and spot something, but here, it’s only cold, hard stats that matter.”

“I know that,” Carey said. “Did you know that when you assume things, it makes an ass out of u and me?”

“Speaking of asses, DrollTroll.”

“Whatever, BrazenBitc—I mean, Belle.”

“You almost just lost your balls right there.”

“What is it with you and my balls? Newsflash: there’s not enough room in your inventory for my balls.”

Beatrice cracked a smile. Finally.

“Guys.” Will swung his staff between them in a slicing motion. “Can we figure something out here?”

Carey let out a miserable sigh. “I want that sword. It’s calling to me.”

He focused on it until stats appeared.

Item: Unidentified Enchanted Short Sword (???)

Type: Steel Weapon, One-Handed

Attack DMG: ??/sec

Speed: ???

Weight: ???

Value: ???

Traits: ???

“Now I definitely want it.”

Will rested his staff on his shoulder. “We’ll have to come back. Once you’ve leveled up your trap-finagling skills.”

Led by Carey, who constantly sniffed the air to detect Lichroot Spiders, they continued through winding corridors, searching some rooms and avoiding others where the spider infestation level was high. Carey found himself accumulating all sorts of odds and ends—mostly ingredients and crafting items, which he hoarded. One never knew when the need might arise for Petrified Rat Tails.

His vision doubled and swayed, as if he’d become violently nauseated, but it only lasted for two seconds.

“What the…”

He found himself weighed down, unable to run if he’d wanted to.

“Uh… guys?”

“What’s up?” Will said.

His vision did that weird thing again. It seemed to happen every thirty seconds or so, like he hadn’t slept in days and was on the verge of passing out.

“I’m seeing double, but only every few—”

“You’re encumbered,” Beatrice said. “Need to get rid of some of that junk in your trunk.”

“Ah, damn,” Carey said, scratching his head as he reviewed his inventory screen.

In the end, he decided to get rid of (10) Wooden Blocks, which freed up five pounds and got him slightly below his max capacity of 55 pounds. Will eagerly grabbed the blocks off the floor.

“Thank you,” he said.

“As long as somebody brings ’em,” Carey said.

“Wooden blocks, planks, and sticks are necessary,” Beatrice said. “Especially if we need to repair a bridge or build a shelter in the rain. Good to have ’em.”

After an hour of exploring and heading toward their treasure-hunt quest marker, they came across an outdoor courtyard where floating jellyfish were visible once more, quietly moaning among the stalactites.

A granite fountain squatted in the sprawling courtyard’s center. The rest of the space was empty and barren aside from the occasional stone bench (for those creepy weirdos who enjoyed relaxing inside giant-spider-infested caves).

The loot wasn’t bad. He picked out two mounds in the thin layer of dirt around the fountain and used his shovel to uncover (1) Steel Ingot and (1) Lightning Crystal Marble, which could be gripped in one hand while casting an offensive spell to add +15 shock damage. He gave the marble to Will.

Notably, he uncovered (1) Flawless Ruby, which was valued at 6 silver, 350 copper. His mouth salivated at the thought of all that silver.

Scraping sounds rose nearby—faint at first, but loud enough for Carey’s enhanced eardrums to identify them instantly. He motioned for the others to hide.

“Torgs,” he said. “Three of them.”

The skulking creatures appeared from around a corner, the first two fighters carrying torches. The third—a “Young Trainee”—hung back in the shadows, fixated on some sort of toy in its hands.

“They’re all Level 4,” Will said.

“We could take ’em,” Beatrice added. “Sucks one of them’s a kid.”

“He’s just code,” Carey said. “They all are. I’ll be back.”

He crept up to and backstabbed the Young Trainee—he really was just a teenager, which made Carey feel a twinge of remorse—then silently hid the body beyond the reach of the torch light.

EXPERIENCE GAINED: 70 points (1,305/4,125 to next level)

A moment later, one of the Torgs looked back and didn’t see the trainee.

“Dookie’s gone,” the creature whined in its shrill voice. “Go!”

Dookie? Really?

The Torg began to sprint toward a gong at the edge of the courtyard—a crude alarm. Probably, it caused a wave of backup Torgs to swarm the place. His partner glanced around nervously like a deer frozen in headlights.

“Get him,” Carey shouted, pointing at the one running.

Will blasted it with a lightning spell. Beatrice cast buffing spells over the others. Carey dashed over to kill the Torg closest to the gong.

They wore down the two fighters and finally killed them. The loot was minimal, a few hundred copper each and a handful of basic ingredients and crafting items.

But the XP was what Carey really hoped for.

EXPERIENCE GAINED: 495 points (1,800/4,125 to next level)

“Couple thousand XP to go,” he said, gripping Will’s shoulder and shaking him. “We can do this!”

“Eventually,” Will said, taking a knee to recover his lost HP and LP.

They searched until they found three Young Lichroot Spiders hanging out on a web draped across one corner of the courtyard’s outer wall. From this distance, they resembled bloated ticks clinging to pale, dead flesh. One was Level 2, the others Level 4. Carey stealth-killed the weaker one and took a web to the face from the bigger one next to it.

Will tossed a Big Leg Flamer potion that incinerated the web but only reduced the spiders’ HP by a third.

It took at least five minutes of combat—Will and Beatrice on their own, Carey batting at his face in hopes of getting his sight back—before the other spider was vanquished.

“I’ll be damned,” Carey said. The facial webbing had cleared but left him breathing hard in chest-constricting horror. “I could barely see anything. I was friggin’ blind, man! And that web lasted, like, a full five minutes.”

“Not good.” Will took care of looting the spiders. They each received a few copper, some Spider Legs and Web Residue. “If only one of us is taken out of the battle, even for just a minute...”

“Then we’re all effed,” Beatrice said. “Should we go back to our original plan and recruit a Sargonaut at Tyrathon? We could really use some muscle.”

Carey ran a hand through his hair, sighing gruffly. “Maybe. One thing at a time, though. Let me level up, then we’ll get that sword, find Muriel’s treasure, and get the hell out of Dodge.”

EXPERIENCE GAINED: 425 points (2,225/4,125 to next level)

A couple thousand more XP shouldn’t have been too hard to score at this early level. Carey knew it took longer for Beatrice and Will because they were a few levels higher, but he found himself racking up impressive points from basic, low-level enemies.

They went deeper into the dungeon, down more darkened corridors. Carey led them into rooms where they found Lichroot Spiders and other vermin—diseased rats that had a chance to infect you with each bite; snakes that spit paralyzing venom that momentarily turned you into a crash-test dummy; and, interestingly enough, an enemy known as a Wandering Ghost that could only be taken down using magic. There were two of them. Luckily, the ghosts were one level under Will and weren’t too difficult to kill, but by the end of it, the party agreed it was time to stop grinding and get to the business of finishing this quest.

By then, they had gained another 1,900 XP, which meant…

LEVEL UP!

Congratulations, adventurer!

YOU HAVE REACHED LEVEL 4!

With Will and Beatrice watching, Carey opened his character sheet. He settled on adding a point to Perception, which made sense, considering he was about to raise a detection skill. He benefitted from a 2x racial modifier that raised it an extra point.

He decided to boost his detect/disarm traps skill for obvious reasons. With both the racial and class modifiers, the total point boost was 16.

Not too shabby. He was no master in detecting or disarming traps (yet), but he knew significantly more about the subject now, as if he’d just completed a three-week crash course in the blink of an eye. Like that scene in The Matrix where Neo gets all kinds of fighting styles downloaded directly into his brain.

Carey now understood how to set up rabbit and fox traps and break them down again, how to disarm bear traps, and how to detect hidden traps built into floors and walls. This included a few magical traps.

He also realized just how little he understood about a subject which was, as it turned out, more detailed and complex than he’d ever imagined. There were literally hundreds of varieties of regular traps, thousands of magical ones—and Carey was only proficient with maybe a handful of each. It was humbling.

“Let’s do it,” Carey said as they headed back to the storage room.

He might have sounded tough, but he felt as nervous as a blind guy about to attempt a Rubik’s Cube—one loaded with explosives.