The beautiful and boastful city of Agade. The city between two great rivers of Tigr and Eufr is a place of a certain wonder known as Babel. The Babel, otherwise known as The Dungeon Tower Bebel is a place of unknown origin. Some say that it was deities who opened this treasure trove to the common people others claim it is the work of great hero Gilgamesh.

The reason and why was it popped exactly there is a mystery and not that important. What is important is that Babel brought great wealth to the city of Agade and with wealth came the people. It was not just humans seeking fortune and adventure but many other races as well.

The clans of sand elves were there, the bestial nomads, the pious lizardfolk and many others flocked to the city of Agade. All of them mixed in this boiling pot of culture and diversity. The 'pot' was boiling because it was never peaceful and calm. Diversity sounds nice and exotic, that is if you are looking for an odd meal, but it brought nothing but chaos.

Yet still, the residents in Agade managed to coexists. That was because in Babel they needed each other. Different races had different skills to offer. The ones who wanted to excel at adventuring and go deep into the inner levels of the tower dungeon needed a mix of versatile skills. Variety of knowledge and out of the box thinking was paramount to the survival.

So we start here with a boy living in Agade. His little story goes something like this:

A boy whose mother was a high priestess, his father he knew not. He was brought into this word in a small city on banks of Eufr. His mother seared him in secret. She put the boy in a basket and set him to a river to be picked up by Akki, the drawer of water. Akki took him as his son and reared him. He appointed the boy as a gardener to the temple of Inanna. The boy grew and prospered both in mind and body. He grew rebellious and ambitious rushing forwards to fend for himself as an adult.

A naive boy. Left behind his nice job as a gardener to become a dungeon dweller. Akki was sure the boy was making a mistake but let the boy do as he pleased. Akki wondered what did all this youth saw in this Dungeon Tower. Surely a stable life was better than the one full of risk and unknown. However, the youth had to make mistakes by themselves so that they can learn and wizen up with time. Akki just hoped that his boy will remain alive, well and a tad bit wiser from this misadventure.

A foolish boy. Left everything behind and moved to live closer to the Babel. He had very few possessions. He had his clothes; a rough woollen skirt hanging to his knees which was tied by a belt. Also his weapon, all dungeon dwellers needed one. it was a copper coa; a type of versatile hoe which had a sharp rounded 300° edge which could be used for both digging and cutting. Having a job provided him with stable income for a while so he had a small pouch of copper coins saved up just for this. The coins were known also as Shekels. The mentioned pouch was getting lighter with each passing day, He was yet to explore the Babel dungeon.

The money was getting scarce and... well, a young man is defined not by his possessions but by one's accomplishments in life. The boy was named Sargon and being on a brink of adulthood he had no achievements to boast of, not yet. That's precisely why he decided to challenge Babel. He wanted to prove others and mostly to himself that he can be something more than just a gardener.

After all, he was just too plain. Like most humans here he had black hair and brown eyes, he was of average build and had no hidden talents or anything like that. And he hated that, he wanted to be special, he wanted to be different, even better than others. He could not change the way he looked so he changed the stuff he did for his living. He changed his profession and his future. He was an adventurer now and the Babel was his workplace.

Babel was a harsh dungeon, but it was rewarding for those who managed to go deep enough. The deeper down the floors he went the more reward he could claim. There were all sorts of stuff to take: rare herbs, metal ores, crystals, exotic animal parts you name it. However, the main income was the monster cores which adventurers extracted from various creatures inhabiting the dungeon.

The cores could be exchanged directly to Shekels in the guild houses or used in various recipes; provided that the person knew them and had a skill to do it properly. Sargon was going after these cores for money.

Currently, he was in the Level 5 killing local critters. It was ants he was slicing in two, those were not the normal ants. They were the size of a small cat and would come in flocks of twenty or fifty at most. It was not hard to kill them, quite easy actually because they were poorly organized. It just took a lot of energy to finish them all. The risk was low so was the reward. The monster cores within the ants were at the size of the single wheat grain. So, he needed to dispatch a whole pack of them to receive a single Shekel.

Beggars could not be choosers. He had to work his way down through the dungeon levels, it was a slow process. He did not want to rush things and risk his life, he needed better equipment before he could afford to take risks. So, he swung his coe and sliced the ants. He made sure that all the insects were dead so that he won't be bothered and he could start extracting the cores. He had to work quickly because the laws in the Babel were slightly different than those in the outside world. The dead animals would disintegrate into the air quite quickly; becoming one with the dungeon again. But if a person took an effort to harvest their parts and store them close, they would remain intact. This applied not just to the core but whole animal too. Sargon worked hard cleaning the dungeon, getting rid of pesky insects. His pouch got heavier with monster cores by each passing hour.

He was not alone, yet he was not a part of a group either. There were a few other newbies doing the same stuff he did. They would pass each other, bow down their head for a greeting and go on their way. This type of activity did not require a whole party, quite the opposite. The newbies worked alone and far away from each other so that they could maximize the number of insects they can slay and don't interfere with each other.

A well-kitted party passed by Sargon. He observed the party with awe, it was his goal to look and be like them in the near future. A short and stout man walked past him, he sported a glorious braided beard and was heavily armoured, on his shoulder he carried a menacing pickaxe. It was probably a dwarf, a very rare sight here in Agade, after all, there were no mountains in these plains. Sargon nodded his head in a greeting, so did the dwarf. Even if they were of a higher status, dungeon dwellers believed in treating each other with respect no matter the class, sex or race.

Another member was a lizard-man. He was lightly armoured, it was a mix of leather and metal. He had no apparent weapons beside his claws which were plated in shiny metal. Sargon repeated the ritual of greeting. The other two were humans, male and female.

The human male had armour with an exotic design, probably a work of elves. The silver metal protected only the left side of his body while the rest was left exposed. His left arm had a long-sleeved metal gauntlet and a small shield welded to it. For a weapon he had a spear, it was also silver in colour and decorated with a pattern which resembled a vine.

The female was dressed in a tunic and a leather west. She had a bow on her back and a quiver of arrows on her right side. On her left side, she had a dagger, one could not only rely on ranged combat. Even if some of the floors were huge open spaces melee was still unavoidable here. The dungeon floors had many narrow spaces and corridors too. Sargon nodded politely to the woman.

She just looked at him confused as she went past him. Sargon should have waved or said hi instead, not all women understood this nodding thing. It was done mostly between men. Nodding the head down was a greeting to neighbours, acquaintances and people in the same profession, while nodding up was reserved for close friends and family.

The boy gazed at the adventurer party with wonder until they disappeared on the corner. He tough about his future. What sort of path and fighting style he should pursue. What sort of party he would like to have. All of this was still a dream, a fantasy but it was not that far.

“What I am waiting for. Those who take risks reap the fruits of victory!” He was tired of slicing mere ants.

He held his coa tighter and rushed towards a staircase leading down another floor.