The Last Experience Point

Chapter 136: The Ancient Rules

Sometimes, emotions were complex, multi-layered, and deep. Other times, they were straightforward and easily understood. Right now, Jimmy was exhibiting the latter; in his case, Zach didn’t need to be an empath or a therapist to understand his new friend’s heightened state of agitation, frustration, and anger. Even if Zach hadn’t learned a great deal about analyzing one’s emotions from Jascaila, it would still be perfectly obvious how, from Jimmy’s perspective, he was being disrespected and was completely justified in being pissed off.

Given all his fears and questions, it was only natural that he’d want to speak with Eilea, who was responsible for bringing him here to Galterra. But he was not being allowed to see her—well, at least not yet. This was because, given the sheer volume of people who wanted to meet the Elvish Goddess, Jimmy was low on the priority list. Even still, Kalana had personally promised him that he would get the chance. She had even sworn an oath that he would have his turn eventually and would not be skipped over. But for now, he’d have to wait.

Understandably, this hadn’t gone over so well with Jimmy, who had protested to the Elves to no avail. They were refusing to listen to him, and Zach could easily imagine how unfair and infuriating this must have felt to Jimmy. In fact, he didn’t even need to imagine it, because as it turned out, Jimmy wasn’t the only one who’d found themselves rebuffed by the overly zealous Elves; incredibly, not even Zach was currently able to speak to her. Not only was this frustrating, but it was also a big part of the reason why he, along with Jimmy, were currently swimming their way across the Gods-be-damned ocean for the second time since yesterday. Stroke by stroke, the two of them were throwing arm over arm as they swam along the salty water, heading farther south towards Shores of Wrath.

“This is bullshit, dude,” Jimmy said, breathing heavily. A large wave caused both their bodies to lurch upwards before plopping back down, and Jimmy, looking a bit exhausted, had to spit water out of his mouth. “After all the shit I been through, I should be the first person she’s gonna talk to. That woman put me in the dirt for thousands of years, and she won’t even…you know what, I’m gonna drown if I keep thinking about this.”

“I’m just as pissed off,” Zach said. He was swimming extra slowly so that Jimmy could keep up, though “slow” in this context was relative, as they were still moving roughly about as fast as a speedboat. “I didn’t think I’d just get thrown aside like that either. Honestly, Jimmy? I’m mad at all of them right now. I get where you’re coming from.”

Jimmy splashed the water a bit harder as he swam; it was as though he scoffed at Zach’s words. “No disrespect, but you don’t,” he said. “I mean, you’re just mad because you were slightly inconvenienced. That’s totally different.”

Zach frowned. Jimmy’s words were true on a surface level, but they were also an oversimplification of Zach’s reasons for being irritated. “There’s more to it than that, Jimmy.”

“I’m sure there is,” he said. He halted from speaking a moment as he huffed, clearly struggling to keep pace. “But like, the reason I’m mad is because I was taken away from my mom, my cat, and my friends by that Elf woman who let me get hit by a goddamn car that she knew was coming. And the worst part of it all is that I was only one episode away from finishing Shógun, too.”

“Huh? What the hell is that?”

“What? Shógun?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh. It’s a show about the samurai during feudal Japan.”

“Those words mean absolutely nothing to me, Jimmy.”

Jimmy looked like he wanted to sigh, but he was breathing too hard as they continued to swim. “I’ll tell you later.”

The two ventured onwards, and Zach reflected on his own aggravation. Honestly, he felt cheated. He really did. He’d made a deal, and he should not have to be swimming across the ocean right now. And though he liked her greatly, he was particularly angry with Angelica, who couldn’t just do the damn thing he’d asked of her and which she was definitely allowed to do.

She has to be allowed, he thought. We made a deal!

About three hours after bringing Eilea to the island and causing such a stir, Zach had approached Angelica with a simple request. “Hey, can I talk to you for a second?” he’d asked the super-high-level, cat-eared NPC.

“Sure, Zach!” she’d said cheerfully, pausing to kiss Grundor on the cheek and telling him she’d be right back.

The two had moved a bit away from the others, and Zach had spent a few minutes recapping everything that had happened to bring Eilea here. Angelica had surmised most of it on her own, as it was obvious some bargain must have been struck for Eilea to have returned to the world. Angelica also had ways of knowing most of what was going on outside of her tavern, which was partially how the word of this had spread—though Donovan deserved most of the blame for that.

After filling in what minor details Angelica did not already know, she’d thanked him for informing her and looked approvingly at him.

At that point, having required her assistance, he’d said, “Okay, so I know you’re bringing Mr. Oren here later today, but I was thinking about it, and I decided I want to fill him in on what’s going on ahead of time to prepare him for what to expect when he gets here. So uh, do you think you could please warp me over to Slopes of Dal’Zarrah? I’m pretty sure that’s where he is.”

Angelica cupped her chin as if she'd been thinking about it. “Um, I guess I could. But…is this really an emergency, Zach?”

Not wanting to lie to her, Zach had shaken his head. “No, it’d just save me a whole lot of travel time. I haven’t even gotten to hear what Eilea knows about the weapons yet, so I don’t have that much to tell him, but I just feel like I should speak with him in person. I also really need to talk to him about The World Eater now that I can remember it.”

Angelica had looked at him curiously, and he had elaborated. “Adamus said I could spread word of its existence, and that’s something I’m going to eventually have to do. But I don’t think humans alone are going to be able to stop it, and I think everyone in the world deserves to be told at some point that it’s coming. Anyways, since Mr. Oren is now the chief diplomat of humanity, I got this idea in my head that maybe he could use his position to convince the other races to cooperate with humanity when the time comes in five years from now. But, uh, with everything about to go down, I don’t think I’ll have another chance to bring this up with Mr. Oren for a good while.”

At this, Angelica’s face had tightened, and her cheer was replaced by a look that seemed overly apologetic. “I don’t think I can help you with this. I’m sorry!”

Zach had winced, unable to believe the response she’d given him. “What do you mean? Why the hell not?” Her name had briefly flashed red, and he'd immediately apologized for his disrespectful tone. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she'd said. Then she had sighed. “Based on everything you said, it would violate the bargain you made with Adamus.”

“Huh? No it won’t.”

“Yep it would!”

“No way. Maybe I explained something wrong. Basically, as long as it—”

“You just said it’s for the sake of convenience, right?”

“Okay, so?”

“And um, you also said you had other things you wanted to talk to him about that aren’t directly related to the weapons in Shadowfall Coast.”

“Well, yeah, but it’s also about dealing with the weapons, too.”

“But you still want me to bring him here later today?”

“Yeah, because it’s easier that way. It makes more sense to have him here so that he can listen to Eilea’s report about the weapons at the same time that I do. Otherwise, I’ll have to relay the information to him secondhand, which means it won’t be as accurate.”

“Okay, so, couldn’t you tell him all this stuff then?”

“I won’t have time,” Zach had explained. “Once Mr. Oren gets here, we’re going to be too focused on Shadowfall Coast to talk about anything else. So there’s a mixture of reasons I want to go over there. Just consider this the magical version of a business expense. Adamus will understand.”

Angelica had laughed at his words, which he hadn’t even intended to be funny. “Adamus wouldn’t have agreed to those terms if he didn’t know that me and Eilea have a pretty good sense of what actions he’d be okay with and what actions he wouldn’t. If you’re asking to take a portal to Slopes of Dal’Zarrah just to avoid the hassle of traveling there yourself, and um, if it’s also about things that are unrelated to destroying the weapons, he’s gonna get really mad.”

Zach had completely disagreed with her take on things. “You really think he’s going to give us an earful if you take me over to Dal’Zarrah?”

“Uhh…actually, he probably won’t say anything to us at all, but he’d still be really upset. And then, later on, if you need to skirt the line over something that’s actually important, you’ll have already burned out his good will and he’ll stop me from helping you.”

“Fuck his good will,” Zach had growled.

“I agree with you on that,” she’d said, giving him a very approving nod. “But you might need it later on. Gosh, I guess if you really want to, I can take you there and back, but I know he’s not gonna be happy about it, and later on, you might regret it.”

Zach had considered his options, becoming grumpy and annoyed. “Let me clear this with Eilea,” he’d said. “Because this is utter bullshit.”

And so, he’d tried to do exactly that: only to find himself completely blocked off by literal spear-wielding Elves, who stood at the outermost edge of a perimeter, inside of which she was having one-on-one conversations with various individuals as something of an “order” had been drawn up, by which the people who wanted an “audience” with “the Goddess” had been given a slot and a priority. Jimmy was at the bottom, and Zach, who hadn’t requested an “audience,” wasn’t on it at all. The adventurers, at least those high in rank, were sprinkled in here or there. Zach knew they were primarily interested in seeing Eilea in her capacity as a “Great One,” as opposed to the Elves, who worshipped her as a Goddess. Without a doubt, most wanted to ask her about Olandrin, the Great One everyone seemed to be obsessed with and who was no longer in this galaxy.

“Guys, I need to get through,” he’d told them. The Elves, an even mixture of green-cloaked and white, had shaken their heads firmly. The guards Fylwen had chosen were on the larger side for Elves, and among them was Londril, who towered over everyone, human and Elf alike.

Now that almost—if not every—living Elf in the universe was packed into the mob-free section of the island along with nearly every adventurer—save for those still on their way—Zach had been able to confirm that Londril was, in fact, the largest, toughest-looking Elf in existence. If Ziragoth had only been a single-phase boss, then he alone could have tanked the terrifying dragon without the aid of any others for as long as needed. He was a fiercely powerful Elf, and flute aside, his son, Trelvor, was also pretty intimidating too when he wanted to be.

“It doth bring joy to mine own eyes to see thee,” he said to Zach. “But I cannot alloweth thee passage.”

Zach had pursed his lips, and he cycled through the various breathing techniques he’d learned in order to keep his cool. “I haven’t spoken to her in over three hours. I need to touch base with Eil—err, ‘The Great Goddess’ really quickly.”

“Three whole hours, huh?” asked a green-cloaked Elf. “My people have not been able to ‘touch base with her’ for over a thousand years. I’m sure you can survive waiting until tonight or tomorrow to speak with the Goddess.”

“This isn’t a contest,” Zach said dryly. He had then tried to shove his way through, but five of them had readied their spears at him, and all had looked as though they were willing to use them. “Seriously, guys? Come on. Seriously?”

“We love you, kid,” another of the green-cloaks said. “But this is just not a fight you’re going to win. And if you think that’s unfair, just know that I haven’t gotten to meet her yet either. You must be patient and wait. Please don’t make me be the one to have to give an ass-whooping to Elvish kind’s greatest human friend.”

Zach sized him up, his anger having begun to rise up from the pit of his stomach. “If you even can,” he’d said threateningly, the words having flown out of his lips before he’d been able to tamp down on them.

“Trust me, I can,” the Elf had replied. This, of course had only served to further provoke Zach’s anger.

“Oh yeah? Well, let me tell you something, okay? You might be way higher level than me, but I bet you I could still snap that fucking spear of yours in half like a Gods-be-damned—”

“Heya, Zach, is everything all right?” a voice had called to him just as the situation had begun to escalate. Zach’s words had then cut off immediately, and he felt great shame as Jascaila strode over to him. “What’s wrong, buddy?”

“Nothing,” he’d said. “This guy’s just being a fucking dick.”

Before he could explain, the green-cloaked Elf cut in. “We’re not! We’re just not permitted to allow anyone through until it’s their turn to approach the Holy Goddess.”

“Well, I’m the reason she’s even here in the first place,” Zach had said, his frustration level having begun to skyrocket. He turned to Jascaila. “Can you please tell them?”

She gestured with her chin and put an arm around his shoulder. “Let’s go talk over there.”

“Oh, not this,” he’d moaned. “This means the answer is no. Gods-dammit!”

Nevertheless, he’d stepped off to the side, and somehow, she’d worked her magic; ten minutes later, Zach had realized he wasn’t actually angry with the Elvish warriors who he’d been about to pick a fight with, but rather, he was upset because he felt like he was being sidelined despite all that he’d done to bring this about. Jascaila agreed with him one-hundred percent, too.

“It’s total bullshit,” she’d said. “And I’m not saying that to ‘calm you down.’ It is. It’s disrespectful towards you.” She took a slow breath, then added, “But so much of life is dealing with unfairness. We can either address it sensibly, or we can get into swordfights with Elves. Which is more productive?”

Zach had laughed despite himself. “I could’ve taken that guy…maybe.” At this, Jascaila had given him one of her knowing “looks,” and Zach rolled his eyes. “There’s no way we would’ve fought to the death or anything like that. But anyways, I really wanted to see Mr. Oren sooner than later, and I know Eilea could clear this up. But they won’t let me through to see her, and she’s not receiving the thoughts I’m sending her way, either.”

It was that second point that Zach found most alarming, as he had been having no success in mentally communicating with her in the way he usually did. No matter how hard he’d tried to send thoughts out to her, she wasn’t receiving them. But what really troubled him was what this implied, as he did not think she was intentionally ignoring him. It seemed that while her attention was occupied elsewhere, she wasn’t able to communicate with him. This meant that, while trapped down below the surface, she’d been so lonely, bored, and isolated that, aside from whenever she had her “accomplice” there with her, she had literally nothing better to do than to wait on standby to see if Zach had anything to say to her. It made him feel really bad for her, which he’d expressed to Jascaila.

“That infuriates me,” Jascaila had said. “It sounds to me like Adamus thinks he has the right to ‘store’ her in some kind of subterranean cellar as though she is a piece of property to be locked away whenever convenient. That’s a toxic relationship on a universal scale.”

“I don’t get it either. How could he let her suffer like that? If it was Kal, I couldn’t even imagine doing something like that to her. No way.”

Jascaila had ruffled his hair as if pleased by his sentiment. “Kalana is very loyal to you. Make sure you always treat her well.”

“Of course,” Zach had replied, certainty in his words. Then he’d slowly released a breath as his thoughts had returned to his current dilemma. “But yeah, anyways, since nobody’s going to take me there, do you know of any dungeons that can get me from Whispery Woods to Slopes of Dal’Zarrah?”

“I do know of one, actually,” she’d replied after a brief pause to think. “But…are you sure you wouldn’t rather just wait for later when Angelica brings Lord Oren over here and Eilea gives you her report about the weapons?”

He’d sighed. “Nah, I kind of feel like I should really get him in the loop now, and I have other things I want to talk to him about, too.”

Jascaila had given him another pat on the back. “Well, if you’re insistent on going, I can give you instructions on how to get there, but…in this case, I really think you should wait, Zach.”

“And why is that?”

Her gaze had turned serious. “The closest path to Dal’Zarrah runs through a dungeon that’s rarely discussed or used, and one that I know nothing about and have never been to myself. I only know of it from a friend of a friend. I have no idea what might be in it or if it’s even safe, and I don’t know anyone who’s run it because it’s deeply unpopular. I seriously think you should just wait until later.”

Zach had laughed. “Pfft. I’ll be fine. Just tell me where I’ve gotta go.”

“Time to break the adventuring code again, huh?”

Without asking for anything in return, Jascaila had told him about the dungeon, which she claimed was called “Trials of Nolak,” and she stressed once more that she did not know what would await him. Then her attention had become diverted by Trelvor, who had wanted to talk to her again about his dad and how he felt insecure in living up to his expectations.

Bowing his head graciously, Zach had decided to get going, as he would be very busy the second half of today and needed to make every minute of the first half count. But first, a thought had come to him, and he’d decided to wade his way over to Jimmy, who was brooding by himself under the shade of a lone tree in the open fields of the mob-free zone.

“Hey, Jimmy,” he’d said to him.

“Yeah?” he’d replied, his head pointed at the outer edge of the gathered crowd while staring daggers into their backs.

“So, look, I’m heading out to go talk to a friend of mine—you met him yesterday, actually—but I need to travel through a dungeon I’ve never been to before to get there. I know you like that stuff, so is there any chance you’d want to—”

“Dungeon?” Jimmy had said, whipping his head excitably in Zach’s direction in a way that reminded him of Fluffles whenever the cat smelled food.

“Y-yeah,” Zach had said. “I was wondering if—”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then.”

Before leaving, he’d briefly told Kalana where he was going, promising to stay out of trouble and keep Jimmy safe. Jimmy had promised Tena a variant of the same thing. She’d wanted to come too, but she’d been busy helping catch Zephyr up on what had transpired yesterday with the two OMP goons. And so now, here they were, him and Jimmy, doing the breast stroke side by side as they journeyed to the capital city of humanity, where Mr. Oren would likely be waiting in his office. Zach had tried to call ahead, but trying to get through to the man was like trying to call a doctor's office and asking to speak directly to the doctor. It was impossible.

I can’t believe he’s become so important, Zach thought.

As Zach continued onwards, he noticed that Jimmy was panting and beginning to slow, so Zach slowed along with him. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Jimmy said, treading water a moment as if to catch his breath. His eyes started shifting downwards. “Hey, do you see any fish under us by any chance?”

Zach found his question strange. “Huh? No, why?”

“I wanna poison them so I can cast my stamina regen buff.”

Zach chuckled. “That’s a terrible idea. For all you know, you might end up going into E-debt and drowning. Then I’ll have to hold your head above the water until you wake up. Besides, that buff is probably why you’ve got so little stamina for your level to begin with. I bet the fact that you never have to really push yourself is actually stopping you from growing it.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Jimmy said, angling himself so that he began to back-float. Zach allowed him the moment to rest.

“You should try pushing yourself more without relying on that buff so that you build your stamina. Especially for times like now when you can’t use it.”

“You’re probably right about that,” he agreed. Zach watched as his breathing slowly came under control. “Ah well. If nothing else, at least all this exercise is helping me take my mind off everything, know what I mean?”

“I do,” Zach said. “And I could also use a little head-clearing myself.”

“I’m just glad to be going back to a dungeon,” Jimmy remarked in between gasps of breath. “I need to touch a dungeon floor so bad. I think I’m going through dungeon withdrawal.”

“How? It’s only been a little more than a day, Jimmy.”

“That’s just how I am, man. I go hard. That’s just how it is.”

“Well, let’s hurry up and get there, then. We’re almost to Shores of Wrath. I think I can see it.”

Although Zach thought of this trip as “swimming across the ocean,” in truth, they were only swimming a tiny fraction of the overall distance that spanned the South Bastian Sea; the island of Elendroth was, geographically speaking, considered to be “just off the northern coast” of South Bastia, and on a map, the two points were so close that they almost seemed to be touching.

Ahead of them, Zach could spot the coastline, and given that it was now only two hours from noon, he was worried that he’d be pestered on arrival. The city’s beaches were very popular year-round, and Zach was concerned that he’d be spotted the moment he and Jimmy swam to shore. He seriously doubted he could continue to remain undetected as he had on his trips to Shores of Wrath during his first two weeks here.

It's probably going to be impossible to move around unnoticed, now.

Zach was unable to go anywhere in public in North Bastia without being recognized, but down here, in Shores of Wrath, things had been way different. For two weeks, he’d been able to stroll around the city at any time of the day while remaining completely unbothered. This was likely because, despite knowing who he was, no one in Shores of Wrath had actually expected him to be there, and thus even if they thought he looked similar to the “Zachys Calador” they read about in the news, they probably would not have actually thought it was really him.

But now, after yesterday’s “incident,” there was no way he wouldn’t be bothered while traversing the city, as by now, everyone would know he was staying at the relatively nearby island with Kalana. And indeed, as he and Jimmy neared land, he was already having to politely wave off a number of people.

Once the two of them swam close enough to the shore that they began to encounter other swimmers, they had to slow down to avoid accidentally hurting or killing someone. And that was when it began. Shouts and victorious fists raised in the air from numerous swimmers, as well as people on floats, who called out to him. Zach made quick nods of his head and waves of his hand to as many as possible, not wishing to come across as rude or “mean” like he’d done once before, which he knew would cause Kalana to scold him later.

“Nice to meet you too,” he said in reply to someone as he and Jimmy swam far enough that they could now stand up and wade the rest of their way to the shore in the shallow water. “Nice to meet you,” he said to someone else. “Oh, wow, that’s awesome. Good to meet you too, sir.”

Eventually, the two of them emerged on the beach in soaking-wet equipment that Zach knew would dry in a matter of minutes under the intensely hot morning sunshine. Dozens of children playing with their parents near the water turned and gasped at the sight of him. Zach could do little but wave. It was impossible not to draw their attention, too. Hell, even if they’d had no idea whatsoever who he was, their heads still would’ve turned just at the sight of two guys walking onto the shore in outfits that were anything but swimwear and were armed with a sword and staff respectively.

“You’re pretty popular out here, huh?” Jimmy asked him as he did his best to appear both polite but also in a hurry.

“Yeah, I guess,” Zach muttered. Then, to a middle-aged woman who’d sprung up from a blanket she’d laid on the sand, he said, “Sorry, ma’am, I’m actually in a hurry. I’ll take a picture with you next time. I promise.”

“Excuse me, young man. Are you Zachys Calador of the Royal Roses?” another woman asked, her three children beside her as she approached from behind him. Zach turned his head around to look at her, and he forced a smile onto his lips.

“Hi there. I am, but I can’t stay to chat. I’m really sorry, but I’m actually in a hurry. It’s uh…guild business.”

“Oh, that’s okay. I just want to say I support you!”

“Thank you so much.”

Slowed, but only slightly, Zach led Jimmy away from the beach, up a fairly steep hill, and then onto a concrete street on the outer edges of the city. Stopping to pull the hood of his cloak over his head and obscure his face, he beckoned Jimmy to follow him, and the two began making their way down a wide boulevard into a narrower one as they headed towards the market district for which Shores of Wrath was famous, at which point the DEHVs on the road would be replaced with wagons and camels, and there would be more street merchants than one could count.

Luckily, with the hood drawn, people did not appear to recognize him, though they did recoil somewhat in fear, as he knew that the cloak added a menacing, dark, and shadowy look to his visage. The farther into the city they ventured, the more crowded and densely populated the sidewalks became, and eventually, Zach began to stare down at the ground to avoid having anyone look directly at him, as he worried that, given yesterday’s excitement, the sight of him might cause an unintentional panic.

Oddly enough, however, the busier the streets became, the more anonymous he himself became in turn. Eventually, he was able to once more pull down the hood as people became too busy to bother scanning the faces of the pedestrians walking around them, and he was able to more or less “blend in” to his surroundings. In fact, it was so busy here that Zach almost lost sight of Jimmy, who was quickly beginning to vanish in the throngs of people stomping their way up and down both sides of the sidewalk.

Zach turned around and hurried over to him. “Try to keep up,” he said. “We’ve only been walking for fifteen minutes. How the hell are you this tired already?”

Jimmy, who was clearly struggling not to lag behind, now had sweat pouring down both sides of his face. “It’s just so damn hot,” he said, wiping his forehead with his arm. “I actually miss being in the water. That was better than this. I’m gonna die out here, Zach. Fuck.”

Zach paused at the end of a street not far from where he’d fought that guy, Zylor, yesterday. Briefly, he stepped into a small convenience store and purchased two bottles of water, which were 3g each—way more expensive than the price of bottled water in most of North Bastia. Likely due to its geography, the price of water in South Bastia was significantly costlier than what he was used to. And despite now having more gold than he’d ever had in his life—almost seventy-two thousand stowed away in Bank and Storage—he still hated paying 6g just for two Gods-be-damned bottles of water. Still, he had little choice. It was hot, and they were both thirsty.

“Here you go,” he said, exiting the store and tossing Jimmy one of the bottles. His new friend caught it and eyed him gratefully.

“Thanks, dude.”

“No problem.”

Zach watched as Jimmy gulped it down in a matter of seconds, and Zach joined him. Then they tossed the empty bottles in a recycling bin near the curb and continued onwards. A half hour later, they made it to the market district, and a half hour after that, they were entering the Grand Library in Shores of Wrath. Zach could audibly hear Jimmy sigh as the air-conditioned library must’ve felt like a great relief compared to the punishing, outside heat. Jimmy, who had come to shore soaked, had dried off only to become soaked again in his own sweat.

“You doing okay?” Zach asked him, concerned.

Jimmy nodded. He downed another bottle of water—the third of which they’d bought on the way over here—and disposed of it in a bin near the library’s entrance. “I’m good. Hey uh, Zach,” he said, a touch of nervousness in his voice.

“Yeah?”

“We’re not gonna have to fall through a planet again, are we?”

“I don’t think so,” Zach answered. “I mean, at least not on the way over there. We’d normally have to do that again on the way back, but I think we might be able to hitch a portal back along with Mr. Oren when Angelica comes by later to grab him.”

“Sounds good.”

With that, the two of them made their way up the tall, golden-covered, and spiral staircase that led to the third floor of the large building. Many fancily adorned men and women perusing various books and records stopped and widened their eyes as they took in the sight of Zach, and he was once again forced to politely wave and smile. Still, he managed to get where he needed to go, and a moment later, he led Jimmy through the double-doored entrance to the restricted section of the Grand Library.

Today, the head librarian was nowhere to be found; the desk the old man sat at was vacant. It was quiet in here compared to the rest of the library, and Zach found it pleasant. Calmly, he strolled over to the various bookshelves and began to count, pausing when he got to the seventh. “This is the wall,” he said to Jimmy. “Remember that in case you ever need to come back here on your own.”

“I will. Trust me.”

Walking right through the wall between the seventh and eighth bookshelf, Zach and Jimmy entered into a narrow, dark, and tunnel-like passageway that ran for a quarter of a mile. There was nothing to see amid the darkness, and as they walked, the only sound was their feet clicking against what felt like stone. Eventually, however, they emerged from another wall, and from the sight of the tiled floor and brick walls, along with the windows that gave off a view of an endless blue sky, Zach knew that they were back in F17 of Tower of Eternity.

Jimmy’s mood changed immediately. “Goddamn, it’s good to be back!” he said cheerfully.

“Don’t get too happy. We’re just passing through this dungeon. We’re not here to fight anything we don’t absolutely have to, either.”

“Yeah, yeah. But wait. Let me at least just…just hold up one second, okay?”

Zach laughed. “All right.”

He watched as Jimmy unsheathed his staff, began to pant even harder as he cast numerous poisons on three mobs nearby, and then raised his staff and called down the blue heart that Zach recalled was his stamina regen buff. A minute later, he looked refreshed, renewed, and revitalized. His entire demeanor seemed to change. He went from looking like he was about to roll over and die to marching along as if carried by a heavenly wind. As the two of them continued to walk, he no longer had any issue keeping up, and Zach was glad to see him so upbeat and optimistic. Jimmy really did love the dungeons, didn’t he?

More than anyone I’ve ever met, Zach thought. Even more than me.

“Looks like the dungeon reset since yesterday,” Jimmy said, pointing his staff at the unbroken window they’d leapt out of the day prior.

“I’m glad. It would be too cold in here otherwise.”

As the two proceeded down one of the long, typically mob-filled halls that defined this place, Zach suggested they group up and join into a party just in case they had to fight, to which Jimmy agreed. To their left was a door that led to Angelica’s, and to their right was a door that led to the bazaar, which Zach still had not had the chance to visit despite having numerous pieces of junk loot that he wanted to sell off whenever he got the opportunity to do so. Though his storage box still contained most of its empty space, he didn’t want to fill it up with what he’d begun to think of as “crap loot,” and he was eager to sell it for whatever gold he could get.

“Oh, shit, I can’t believe I forgot,” he said to himself as something came to mind, drawing Jimmy’s attention.

“What?” Jimmy asked. “What’d you forget?”

“My ability, Gacha Get’cha, is off cooldown. I forgot to use it. I got absolute garbage last week, too. I was looking forward to it.”

When Jimmy gave him a blank look, Zach explained to him what the ability did and why he was excited each week to use it. Last week, Zach had gotten three common, low-level items, which consisted of a shield and two pairs of gloves. He was hoping for a bit more luck this time around. Sadly, he’d have to wait until later to find out what fate had in store for him, as he knew Kalana would be very upset with him if she didn’t get to watch. She found the ability just as entertaining as he did, and she would kill him if she didn’t get to be there when he next used it.

“That’s incredible,” Jimmy said. “So you can just get, like, anything? Even limited-time and event items?”

“Yep. I think so, anyway.”

“Damn, man. That’s cool.”

“I just hope I don’t get screwed over again. I can’t believe how shitty my luck was last week.”

Jimmy made a tsk sound. “Yeah, RNG, man, it gets you every time.”

“R-N-what?”

“RNG. Don’t you…is that not a term you guys use over here?”

“Nope,” Zach said, searching his mind for any memory of it and finding nothing. “At least, it’s not a term I’ve ever heard of before.”

Jimmy shrugged. “Oh. Well, it just means random number generator. Chance, basically.”

“One of these days we need to just sit around and talk about everything you know about the world thousands of years ago. There are so many questions I want to ask.”

Jimmy smiled. “Sounds good to me. I’m an open book.”

Picking up the pace somewhat, the two of them moved at a brisk walk beyond the entrance to Angelica’s and the bazaar, then pulled open a metal door labeled F17->F18 and began ascending the three flights of stairs that led to the next floor up. Zach himself had never been here before, as he’d thus far had no reason to go back to Whispery Woods. Originally, when asking Jascaila about this dungeon, he’d done so with the intention of never having to board a ten-hour flight to North Bastia ever again. Ultimately, however, he hadn’t ended up using it to travel to North Bastia, but instead, he’d used it as a quick way of getting to and back from Angelica’s.

Now, however, it would serve as the first leg of a two-step journey to the northmost human region of Slopes of Dal’Zarrah, a place he had never visited. Actually, he’d never been to most regions. Despite being seventeen years old, Zach had only ever been to Whispery Woods, Shadowfall Coast, Varda’s Lair—very briefly—Tomb of Fire—also very briefly—and Shores of Wrath. And he really couldn’t count Varda’s Lair since he’d never left the airport. At least he'd actually gotten to walk through the majestically beautiful and lively city in Tomb of Fire. There was so much of the world he still needed to see, and he intended to see all of it.

“So, where is this passage, anyway?” Jimmy asked him as they climbed the stairway.

“Jascaila told me it’s in a pool that’s just to the left of the exit.”

“I think I remember seeing that when I did these lower floors, but I ignored it. I was working too hard on climbing higher and leveling as fast as I could.”

A moment later, as they shoved open the push-bar door and emerged onto the eighteenth floor, Zach heard Jimmy begin to grumble to himself. “Damn,” Jimmy said, sounding disappointed.

Just ahead of them and to their left was a small, divergent path that led to a room that, from smell alone, Zach could tell contained a chlorinated pool. As far as Zach was aware, it was the only such of its kind to be found in the dungeon, which was otherwise repetitive in structure and contained little variation in décor, style, or substance.

“What’s wrong?” Zach asked him.

He pointed. “The pool you were telling me about is right there.”

“So?”

“No mobs to fight,” he said, glancing longingly farther down the hallway, which was absolutely teeming with various creatures at differing levels.

Zach laughed. “That’s good. I’m not in the mood to start messing around with mobs.”

“Typical PVPer,” Jimmy muttered under his breath—though Zach heard him clearly. The accusation annoyed and slightly hurt him, but he decided not to make an issue of it, as he had the sense that it did not quite mean to Jimmy what it meant to Zach or the other adventurers of Galterra. Here, calling someone a “PVPer” implied someone who took joy in fighting and killing other people. He was pretty sure that wasn’t what Jimmy meant by it.

Making his way down the small path and into a larger, more open, and spacious pool room, Zach curled his lower lip and said, “Looks like we’re getting wet again.”

Jimmy leaned over the edge and looked down at the blueish, clear water. “What exactly do we gotta do?”

“Just jump in and swim straight down, I think.”

“Down to where? It’s only like six-feet deep.”

Zach rubbed his chin. “I think we just have to swim straight down and keep swimming. Forget what our eyes see.”

“Yeah, all right.”

Volunteering to go first, Zach walked forward and fell with a slight splash into the pool, treading water as he waited for Jimmy to join him. A second later, there was another splash, and now Jimmy was swimming beside him.

Without another word, Zach glanced downwards, took a deep breath, and then plunged down into the water, swimming to the bottom. Cautiously, he reached out with his palm and prepared to touch the blue-colored bottom of the pool. Yet when he swiped his hand, he felt nothing but emptiness.

Confused, he tried swiping it again, and only now he realized that what looked like the bottom of the pool was actually a cloudy, blueish emptiness, one that he could continue to swim through.

Glancing upwards to ensure that Jimmy followed along, he continued to swim down deeper into the pool, hoping it was not so deep that he ended up dying from lack of oxygen. As he went deeper and deeper, the water became warmer and warmer, heating to the point where he eventually felt like he was swimming through a bath.

It also became darker, too: turning from a blue to a dark blue, and then the water became black. Eventually, it became so dark he could not see anything at all in front or around him. He was also beginning to feel the very first ache in his lungs as his body called out to him for fresh oxygen. Even still, he kept calm and continued to swim farther and farther down—at least until it abruptly occurred to him that he wasn’t swimming downwards at all.

Zach wasn’t sure when, precisely, the shift had occurred, but it came to him as a form of bodily realization that, at some point in the past few seconds, he’d gone from swimming straight downwards to straight up. He was no longer descending: he was ascending. The water also began to cool, quickly turning from a bath-like temperature to something much chillier. It also felt a bit slimy, too, and much less sterile.

The darkness abated as well. There was a light coming from up above that looked to be like that of the Galterran sky, and Zach, becoming hungry for air, swam upwards towards it. Finally, he surfaced, drew a deep breath, and then released it just as Jimmy’s head popped up beside him, taking an even larger breath.

“God, that was close,” Jimmy said, his voice containing a mixture of excitement and fear. “I didn’t know how long that’d go on for. At one point, I wasn’t sure if I should turn back or keep going. I bet I’d have drowned if I tried to go back. It was the not-knowing that made it scary as hell.”

Zach nodded, which caused his chin to splash the water. “I got a bit nervous there too, Jimmy.”

He made a relieved-sounding sigh. “Well, we made it—somewhere, anyway. Where are we?”

Zach glanced at his surroundings. Although Jascaila had described the exit point as a “lake,” to Zach, it was more like a relatively small pond, one that was surrounded on all sides by trees, which meant this pond was located directly in the middle of a forest of some sort. It was somewhat darker here than he’d expected, but that was mostly because the weather today was nowhere near as nice as it’d been in South Bastia. Although it was clearly hot and humid outside, the skies were completely overcast with enough cloud cover that not even a hint of sunshine managed to break through. At least it wasn’t raining, though.

“We’re in Whispery Woods,” Zach said, spinning himself around to get a better look at the terrain.

“That’s where you’re from, right? Do you recognize this place?”

Zach shook his head. “Nope. Never been here before. I’m from the city. Whispery Woods is actually a really big region, though, and I think we’re all the way up northwest. A few miles north of here is probably the boundary that separates Whispery Woods from Varda’s Lair.”

“And that means…?”

“It means we’re not too far from Pixie’s Point, which is where we have to go.”

Jimmy made a grunt. “As impossible as it is, I keep hoping we’ll end up back on Earth: my Earth. If that ever happens, I’m buying you the best damn pizza you ever had in your whole life, and that’s on God.”

“You sure about that?” Zach asked him as the two slowly swam towards land. “The place I worked at all last year was pretty good.”

“You made pizza?”

“No, I was just the delivery boy. But the place I worked for made really good pizza. Might’ve been better than what you’re used to.”

Jimmy laughed. “Man, I don’t care how good it was. There ain’t no way you’ve got a slice in all of Galterra even five-percent as good as what we have in Brooklyn. I’m surprised pizza is even still a thing. I guess people love it so much it survived thousands of years. You know pizza’s an Italian food, right?”

“It’s a what?” Zach asked, genuinely curious. For some reason, it caused Jimmy to stare at Zach as if struggling once again to convince himself that any of this was real.

“You don’t even know that the food you’re eating is Italian? I just…it’s so wild. I don’t know how I’m ever gonna get used to this. Every time I’m sure this is real, I end up moments later starting to wonder again how any of this can even be possible.”

“Talk to Jascaila. She’ll help.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s just…it’s gonna take me some time is all.”

“That’s normal,” Zach said, speaking from newly gained experience. “It’s all a process. You’ll see. Anyways let’s get out of this water. It’s kind of gross in here.”

Together with Jimmy, the two of them swam their way over to the muddy, leaf-covered ground, and in the process of climbing out of the lake, Zach’s knees, gloves, and footwear became covered in a blackish-green muck, which smelled strongly of moss and mud. He felt dirty and grimy, and from the look of disgust on Jimmy’s face, he could tell his recently acquired friend felt the same.

Once he was out and away from the water, Zach shook his hands to get as much of the nastiness off as he could, and then he wiped the rest of it on his sides. “We’re going to need to do some serious drycleaning when we get back,” he said quietly.

“Yeah, no kidding,” Jimmy agreed.

Removing his phone from his pocket, Zach checked their current location, then turned halfway around and pointed. “We need to go that way,” he said, pointing to the southeast. “That’ll take us to the main road leading to Pixie’s Point.”

“How far away is it?” Jimmy asked.

“Only like thirty miles once we get out of the forest.”

For some reason, this made Jimmy swear. “That’s not exactly close. My stamina buff only lasts five minutes, dude. It’s gonna wear off in like another 50 seconds.”

Concerned, Zach asked, “You don’t think you can jog thirty miles?”

“Nah, I can, it’s just gonna be a pain in the ass without my buff. But if we gotta do it, we gotta do it.”

Zach lowered his arm and paused to think. “I could summon my Kralzek’s Beast and we could ride our way there, but Fylwen might not be happy. A few days ago, an adventurer was running across Whispery Woods in the middle of the night and he accidentally collided with a DEHV and killed three people. Since then, Fylwen’s banned anyone who isn’t Elvish or authorized from doing anything a level 1 couldn’t do. That probably also includes using my mount.”

“Can’t we get a taxi or something? You guys have those, right?”

“We do, but…” Zach performed a search on his phone. “Not in this area, no. Uh…oh, okay. There’s a bus stop only five miles from here. I’ll be honest: I don’t feel like walking either, so I think we should catch it. I’m getting a bit lazy now, too.”

“When’s it get here?”

“A half hour. And the next one isn’t for an hour after that, so we better hurry up before we miss it.”

Following those words, Zach and Jimmy walked side by side through the forest. Though it was a bit later here than it was in South Bastia, it was still in the early afternoon, yet the tree-cover, along with the overcast skies, made everything appear darker than it should’ve been for this time of the day. As they trekked through the uneven soil, a brief period of quiet came over the two of them, and for a good ten minutes, the only sounds to be heard were the occasional rustling of leaves, twigs snapping beneath their feet, and the infrequent chirp of a bird or cry of an animal.

Due to the lack of sun and high humidity, their equipment was slow to dry, creating a very uncomfortable feeling of sliminess and stickiness as everything sort of clung to Zach’s skin. He was also feeling a bit itchy, and little pieces of leaves, dirt, and other ickiness were practically glued onto his robe and his trousers. Jimmy also didn’t appear to like the hike through this forest, and in some ways, he was having an even worse time of it than Zach was.

Wincing, Zach caught sight of Jimmy as he walked face-first into—and then through—a thick cobweb he didn’t see, causing him to furiously wipe at his face and begin spitting. “Gah, the fuck is that?” he said, somewhat higher in pitch, rubbing all over his nose, mouth, and eyes. “Tell me I didn’t just eat a spider.”

“I don’t think so,” Zach said, holding back laughter.

“Ptuh!” he shouted, spitting a wad of saliva onto the forest floor. “Disgusting.” He slapped his neck, killing a fly that was buzzing around him. Then he began to walk a little bit faster, and Zach matched his pace.

Step by step, the two of them navigated their way through the forest, and as they did so, Zach couldn’t help but notice a look of consternation on Jimmy’s face. It was a look he thought he’d noticed earlier but hadn’t been certain. It’d been popping on and off Jimmy’s face for a while now, actually, and due to his own struggles, Zach was able to recognize that something was bothering Jimmy: something beyond the mere notion of his presence here on Galterra. He was tempted to ask, but he didn’t want to pry or say anything that would make Jimmy become confrontational. But as things turned out, he didn’t need to, either, because Jimmy gave voice to it all on his own.

“That guy that tried to kill me,” he said, his voice sounding shaky and distraught. “Zylor.”

“What about him?” Zach asked.

Jimmy slowed as they continued to move, but he did not stop. He ducked his head beneath a low-hanging branch as if to avoid stepping through another spiderweb, and then he craned his neck to look at Zach. “He said something that really bothered me. It didn’t mean shit to me at first, but now, I mean, now that it’s been a day, it’s starting to really get to me.”

“What’d he say?” Zach asked calmly, not trying to sound demanding or intrusive.

Jimmy’s face tightened, and he became even more visibly upset. “He said I was a human, and that’s why I gotta die.”

“Huh?” Zach asked, running the words over in his head to make absolutely sure he was comprehending them. “He said he was after you because you’re…human?”

“Yeah.”

“Wasn’t he also human?”

“Sure looked it,” Jimmy said.

“I mean, so am I. So is Tena. So is just about everyone in North and South Bastia. Why would he target you just for that?”

“I don’t know,” Jimmy whispered. “But the way he said it made me feel like…like there’s something I’m missing here.”

Zach shrugged. “You know what? Don’t even worry about it. The guy lives in a boring space station. He’s probably nuts.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Jimmy said, nodding. As though the matter was settled, the two continued onwards for about another fifty steps, but then Jimmy again slowed, and he added, “It’s just…it’s the way he said it that really got to me.” Zach offered nothing in reply, choosing instead to listen and wait for Jimmy to continue, which he soon did. “I asked him what he meant by that. I said, ‘Aren’t you human too?’ And he told me that there’s ‘human’ and then there’s human, and that I shouldn’t exist anymore.”

Zach frowned. “You mean…like there’s different kinds of humans?”

“Yeah. And the thing is, Zach, I got absolutely no idea what that dude could've meant by it. Like, none.”

“Neither do I,” Zach said. “But seriously, it’s probably best not to even worry about it then. The guy was crazy. Just forget it.”

“I’ll try.”

“Hey, look, we’re almost out!”

Ahead of them, Zach could spot the tree-line, beyond which resided a long stretch of road that he knew would run all the way across Whispery Woods from the north to the south end of the region. Glad to be out, he patted himself down, knocking off leaves, gunk, and other types of dirt, and then he traveled with Jimmy southbound down the forested road, which was lined with trees on both sides.

For the most part, they spotted few DEHVs, and it reminded Zach of the road that he’d walked along back when he’d first set out in search of xp after splitting up with Kalana. A whole lot of Whispery Woods consisted of rural land, and here in the northwestern part of the region, it was no different. Thus, for nearly ten minutes, there was nothing to see but trees and road. This changed only after a clearing entered view up ahead in the form of a rest stop, where a tiny little DEHV charging stop with a small attached store awaited parallel to a bus stop a little farther down the road.

“You wanna stop for anything?” Jimmy asked, flicking his chin in the direction of the station.

“Nah, if we need anything, we’ll buy it in town.” He removed his phone and checked the time. “I don’t want to accidentally miss our ride.”

Jimmy nodded, and the two took a seat on a bench that was framed by a dome-like piece of plastic, which was meant to shelter those waiting for the bus during times of rain. Another five minutes came and went, and then, standing up, Zach pointed. “There’s the bus DEHV,” he said.

With a bit of a screech, the large, fifty-passenger vehicle came to a halt just before them, and the door opened up on its own, inviting them inside. Zach, followed by Jimmy, ascended the three steps that led up and into the bus, and then deposited a 5g coin into the payment apparatus, instructing Jimmy to do the same, which he did.

Thankfully, the driver was not paying any attention to him. Even with a sword on his back and a staff on Jimmy’s, he did not appear to take notice or care, which meant Zach was able to grab a seat with Jimmy in the back without being hassled. There were only two other passengers riding with them: an elderly woman up front and a young man in the middle. The woman was sleeping, and the man was staring at his phone’s screen.

“I feel bad for whoever has to clean these seats tonight,” Zach whispered as the doors closed and the bus DEHV took off. Their equipment was still wet, and they would definitely leave mud stains on the seats and on the floor. “Hope they don’t think we’re animals for this.”

Jimmy turned over his palm but said nothing in reply. Once more, he seemed troubled, likely over whatever bullshit Zylor had put into his head. It was probably something he needed to ask Eilea about, though given his deal with Adamus, there was a chance now that she might not be able to tell him. Deciding to let Jimmy quietly dwell on his thoughts, Zach looked out the window and watched the landscape blaze past as they took off and headed towards Pixie’s Point.

Despite being only thirty miles away, it would probably take close to an hour for them to reach their destination, as the bus needed to make several stops along the way, and it would not be heading there in a straight line. There was also little to see outside of the forested road, and so Zach let his own mind wander. It seemed like he was in for a fairly boring ride. That was: until Jimmy decided to break the silence.

Unprompted, Jimmy, out of nowhere, began discussing his life in the days leading up to his first encounter with Eilea, and Zach found himself getting drawn into the conversation very, very quickly. “So, wait a second,” Zach said, having to force himself to keep his voice low. “You’re telling me she told you that she still loved you, but she had to break up anyway?”

“Yeah,” Jimmy said, his tone turning dark. “I loved this girl like you can’t even imagine. Like you love Kalana. But she comes up one day, right? And she starts with all this ‘I’m not in a good place mentally right now’. So I’m like, that’s cool. I’ll be there for you no matter what, baby. But then two weeks later, she’s with some other dude. I guess her mental state wasn’t so bad after all. I mean she broke my goddamn heart, Zach.”

Zach gave him a pat on the shoulder. “But now you’ve got Tena, right?”

Jimmy smiled. “Yeah, I guess I do. I don’t deserve that girl. I need to make it right with her. I never treated her the way I should’ve, but I’m gonna.”

Zach listened in, fascinated, as Jimmy told him about his life, his school, and his best friends. It turned what would’ve been a long, drawn-out ride through empty scenery into something that blazed by so quickly Zach was almost disappointed as the end of their trip neared. Just shy of an hour after boarding the DEHV bus, the scenery at last changed; the forested road was gone, and ahead of them, Zach could now see farmhouses—though only a few—and these rapidly turned into two-story homes, some with backyards larger than the homes themselves. But that too changed as the landscape became more suburban, dense, and now, as the bus continued on, what Zach saw were a regular series of housing developments broken apart by shopping malls.

From what Zach could recall, Pixie’s Point was a moderately sized town with roughly two-and-a-half times the population that Den of Ziragoth used to have before the dragon spawned. It was a modest place with mostly suburban-style homes and a decent variety of services and businesses. It wasn’t exactly a place someone would visit for the purpose of tourism, but it was a decent enough town to call home, Zach supposed.

“When do we get off?” Jimmy asked, staring out the window along with Zach.

“Second to last stop,” Zach answered. He studied Jimmy a moment, noticing that he was smiling as though reminiscing about something from his past. “Does this place remind you of Earth?”

“Yeah. It reminds me a bit of New Jersey.”

“New…” Zach inhaled. “Wait, I know that place. I’ve been there before.”

“You’ve been to New Jersey?” Jimmy asked, looking just as stunned as Zach felt.

“Yeah. B2 of Yorna’s takes you there.”

“Oh, right,” Jimmy whispered, suddenly sounding deflated. “For a second, I thought you meant my New Jersey—even though I know that’s not possible. It was just an impulse I had at hearing you say you’ve been there.”

“Sorry. But…did you live around there?”

“Not that far at all, actually. A lot of express buses went through the very same road you drove on. But I guess…” His voice abruptly saddened, taking upon a mournful quality that Zach had not before seen from him. “I guess…I guess that was a long, long time ago.”

Zach said nothing for a moment. Then he whispered, “This is our stop.”

Jimmy seemed to pull himself together, nodding and standing up. Together, the two of them made their way once more to the front of the bus, bid goodbye to the driver, and it was only as they were on their way out that now, for the first time, the driver said, “Hey, wait a minute, kid. Aren’t you…?”

“No time to chat!” Zach said apologetically, hurrying off the vehicle and dashing onto the sidewalk. Jimmy followed, and then the two of them hurried away as the driver kept the door open and even got out of his seat as if to look out and follow them with his eyes. Zach waved behind him and continued to hurry away, turning the corner of a block and thankfully pulling out of sight. Then he removed his phone to get his bearings straight.

“Okay,” he said, studying the map on his screen. “We’re only like a two-minute walk to where we have to go.”

Something changed in Jimmy. Something noticeable and very apparent. Upon speaking those words, a glint seemed to pop into his eyes, and any trace of sadness vanished in an instant. “To this new dungeon?” he asked Zach.

“Yep.”

“Hell yeah.”

From what Jascaila had said, the entrance to “Trials of Nolak” was to be found in the basement boiler room of an abandoned school that was spared from being demolished thanks only to the Explorers Brigade; they had bought the building just to prevent the entrance to the dungeon from becoming difficult or impossible to access. Zach wondered if it was even worth the investment, because based on what Jascaila had told him, this was a dungeon that nobody seemed to care about or want to visit. He didn’t get the impression that it was due to its difficulty or level of danger—but he didn’t not get that impression, either.

Really, Zach had no idea why it was so unpopular, and as the prospect of entering it began to fully dawn upon him, he began to get a little bit nervous, harboring some second thoughts about all of this. As he paused at an intersection, waited for his turn to cross, and then quickly moved his way past a used DEHV lot and an old diner, he began to wonder if maybe he was about to make a terrible mistake.

“Hey, Jimmy,” he said, trying his best to keep confidence in his voice.

“Yeah, Zach?”

Zach paused, coming to a halt just outside of a shopping lot that contained a grocery store, a barbershop, and a fast-food restaurant. “Listen, we’re about to enter a place that nobody knows much about, and it could be really, really dangerous. I know you’re a bit older than me and don’t like to be bossed around, but it’s actually my responsibility to protect you, so I want you to do everything I say, okay?”

At this, Jimmy rolled his eyes. “Relax, dude.”

“No, Jimmy, I’m serious. I’m not even sure we should really be doing this. I probably should’ve thought about this more before deciding to bring you here. If anything happens to you, it’s on me. And I really don’t want to—”

“I said relax,” Jimmy fired in. For the very first time since meeting him, Zach saw a return of his confident, assertive nature.

From the moment the OMP goons had appeared until now, Jimmy had been acting in a way that could only be described as passive and somewhat timid. But something about the notion of entering this dungeon was having a dramatic effect on him. Instead of feeling like someone Zach needed to look after, Jimmy was beginning to behave like Zach was someone he needed to look after.

“This is my world we’re gonna be going into,” Jimmy said. “And I promised Tena I’d keep you safe. If I didn’t think we’d be all right, I wouldn’t let you go in there, Zach. Ya’ll don’t gotta worry about a thing.”

“Jimmy…I know you’re higher level, but trust me, this isn’t—”

“PVP,” Jimmy again shot in, raising his finger. “This isn’t PVP. If it was, I’d do any damn thing you said. But this is my world. You might not know it yet, but you will.”

Trying to keep his cool, Zach stopped himself from raising his voice. “Just do what I say, okay? Please. Or we’re not going.”

“All right. Fine.”

“Really? Because you don’t sound convincing.”

“Yeah. It’s cool.”

“So you’ll do what I say?”

“Yeah,” Jimmy said dismissively.

And with that, the two of them continued onwards, only now, Zach was a great deal more uncertain. Nevertheless, having come this far already, he decided he might as well at least scope the place out. If he thought it was too dangerous, he could always have them leave and head back to Tower of Eternity and go home.

As they made their way down the final two blocks that led to the location where Jascaila claimed they’d find the dungeon entrance, Zach decided to briefly duck into a mid-sized shop and purchase a small pack, which he stuffed with a few drinks and a few snacks—just in case they were needed. With that, the two made their way down a disused service road that looked like it hadn’t been traveled in decades. Ahead of them was a rusted gate that led to a courtyard where an uneven mix of tall shrubs and dead grass dotted the grounds with seeming randomness. In the middle of it was a three-story school that looked rundown and decayed.

“This is the dungeon entrance?” Jimmy asked, his lips twisted wryly.

“Yeah, I guess,” Zach said. “It probably looked nothing like this thousands of years ago, though.”

The rusted gate creaked as Zach pushed it open, and then, after taking a deep breath, he ambled down a concrete path that was missing chunks of concrete in various places, and he approached the entrance to the school, which in this case consisted of a faded, discolored door that had likely once been beige but now looked a darker shade of yellow-brown.

Inside, there was nothing but quiet. And honestly? It was spooky: really spooky. Jimmy seemed to think so as well, because he shivered and said, “This place gives me the creeps. It’s like the scene of a horror movie.”

“I know, right?” Zach said, adding a shudder of his own.

It was very dark inside, and aside from a rattle from somewhere up above, there were few other sounds besides a constant pinging that reminded him of heat traveling through a pipe. “Okay,” Zach said, looking around. “I think we have to go down there.” He pointed to a door that said “maintenance” and had a picture of a set of stairs heading downwards.

Jimmy, for the first time, walked ahead of Zach, which he found off-putting. “Hey, wait up!”

Opening the door, Jimmy began to travel the old set of stairs down into the basement area. It was so quiet inside of this abandoned school that each time one of their feet stepped down, it created a loud echo—or at least one that seemed loud by comparison to the unsettling quiet. But Zach supposed it was still preferable to total silence.

“I don’t know about this,” he muttered to himself as he followed Jimmy down. The stairs were narrow enough so that they could not walk side by side, and Zach was forced to stay behind him—at least until they emerged into a slightly wider room, which contained old, clearly broken pipes, filthy, rotten-looking buckets, and a mop that was drier than a desert. There were many other types of maintenance equipment elsewhere, and all of it looked broken and disused. Nothing here gave off a vibe of function or health.

“So,” Jimmy began, “where’s the entrance?”

Even though he was clearly speaking at a conversational level, the ambient quiet made his words sound louder than shouts. Zach wet his lips and nervously glanced around. “I’m not sure about this anymore. I have a habit of impulsively getting myself into situations only to realize too late that I should’ve thought more about what I was doing. Jascaila taught me that, actually.”

Jimmy laughed. “Well, this time around, you’re fine, dude. I trusted you with my life, now you’re just gonna have to trust me with yours.” Jimmy’s laughter cut off abruptly, and his voice turned serious. “I’m not dumb. I know you think of me as like someone you need to baby or look out for.”

“I don’t,” Zach said.

“Yeah you do. No point lying about it.” He sighed. “But the truth is, I probably do need protecting when we’re out in the ‘real’ world. I’m not really able to defend myself. I don’t know how, and I’m not gonna bullshit and pretend otherwise. Without you, I’d be dead. But when we’re in the world of PVE, I can be the one who looks out for you.”

“I know that,” Zach lied, unwilling to break the harsh truth to Jimmy that Zach genuinely did not think he could survive on his own. Based on everything he’d seen so far from the slightly-older guy, he couldn’t help but conclude that Jimmy had been very fortunate to survive as long as he had in the dungeons. He clearly lacked the appropriate amount of stamina for someone his level, and his survival instincts were really bad, and he needed to work hard to improve himself before Zach felt he was ready to put his—or anyone’s—life in Jimmy’s hands.

But he’s got great potential, though, Zach thought. Donovan’s right about that.

“Just tell me where the dungeon is and what we have to do to get to your friend.”

Zach hesitated, and Jimmy gave him an annoyed look. “You need to listen to me, Jimmy,” Zach said. “If we do this.”

“I told you I will,” Jimmy said, and Zach had the sense he was lying, though he couldn’t be sure. Yet even still, against his better judgement, he relented.

“Okay, fine.” Zach walked past three orange valves and into a corner of the room next to two large boilers that almost certainly no longer worked. “I think it’s here,” he said, extending his arm and placing his palm flat against the grimy, dust-covered wall, which he was shocked he could actually feel. Rather than sink through it, his palm instead laid flat on the gross-feeling plaster, and he frowned. “Or at least it should’ve been.”

Jimmy approached closer. “What’s wrong?”

Zach looked at him. “The entrance is supposed to be right here. Through this wall. That’s what Jascaila said.”

Jimmy began stroking his chin with his thumb and forefinger, making a slight buzzing sound as though thinking over Zach’s words. “What exactly did she tell you?”

“She gave me the address of this school, and she told me to head down to the boiler room. She told me that, in the back-left corner of the room, there’s supposed to be an entrance.”

Jimmy continued to rub his chin. “Now, when you say ‘there’s supposed to be an entrance,’ are you quoting what she said or are those your words?”

“Huh?” Zach asked. “Oh. I’m quoting what she said. Her exact words were: ‘From the stairs, at the back-left corner of the room, there’s supposed to be an entrance.’”

Jimmy licked his lips, saying nothing for a few seconds as if contemplating what Zach had told him. “If that’s how she said it, then that means she herself wasn’t sure, right?” He squinted his eyes. “Actually, can we get some fucking light in here? I can’t see shit, man.”

Zach nodded and removed his phone, and then he activated the flashlight. The boiler room had been so oppressively dark that the light was almost blinding by comparison. Jimmy pointed at something nearby, and then he asked Zach to shine it in that direction. Zach did as he asked.

“Any ideas, Jimmy?”

Jimmy did not reply right away. He moved over to where Zach had only just been standing, and then he placed his own hand on the wall. Soon after, he began whispering to himself as if working out a problem of some sort. Then he turned his body around full circle several times as if surveying the room, asking Zach to shine light on various spots. When Zach failed to light up the areas quite the way he wanted, Zach decided to just hand him the phone and let him point the flashlight wherever he pleased.

For the next five minutes, Jimmy walked around the room, studying each inch of it and running his finger along every inch of the wall before finding himself back where Zach remained frozen in place. “Well?” Zach asked.

Jimmy again licked his lips. “I don’t know. You’re sure she said the back-left corner?”

“Yeah,” Zach said. “Kind of hard to forget something so specific.”

Jimmy flashed the light in the back-left corner, then moved it over slightly to the right before subsequently shining it slightly more to the left. It was here he made a sort of curious-sounding “hmm,” which contained just a slight note of excitement and intrigue. “Wait a minute,” he said quietly. Though he spoke mostly to himself, Zach couldn’t help but question him.

“Did you figure something out?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Jimmy said, his voice becoming a bit more animate and excited.

Once more, he shined the light to the right, letting it settle over the large, metallic boiler. Specifically, he shined it towards the rear, where it spanned several feet from where Jimmy was standing to just an inch or two in front of the wall. Then, after a brief pause, he shined the light on the adjacent boiler, which actually seemed to be pressed up against the wall. “I think I got it.”

“What?” Zach asked, Jimmy’s excitement becoming infectious.

Jimmy walked around to the front of the boiler. “Shine the light on this for me, Zach.”

He handed Zach back the phone, and Zach took it. Now, Zach provided him the light exactly where he specified. Placing one hand each on the boiler’s outer plate, Jimmy made a grunt, and then he detached the outer layer, pulling it directly off before spinning around slightly and settling it down; though he did so gently, it fell over anyway and caused a loud clang, which made Zach flinch and hurt his ears amid the extreme quiet. Still, Zach did not dwell on the loud noise. Instead, he stared at the boiler’s tunnel-like inner portion, which was just large enough for a person to crawl inside.

“It’s in there, isn’t it?” Zach asked with a gasp. “We need to get inside the boiler.”

“Yup,” Jimmy said, nodding and grinning. “I mean, I don’t know for sure, but it’s my best guess.”

Without waiting for Zach’s input, Jimmy began to maneuver his body towards the boiler, but Zach, knowing it was his duty to protect him, managed to dash forward and get there first. “Stay behind me, Jimmy,” he said, giving him a stern look.

Jimmy rolled his eyes but said nothing, and Zach hopped into the cramped, uncomfortably tight boiler. On hands and knees, he crawled forward, making an echoing, disturbing banging sound with each forward movement, causing the entire thing to vibrate as he made his way inside of it. He paused once he moved as far in as he possibly could; now, he stared at the metal surface on the opposite end, skeptical that this would really work.

“Well?” Jimmy asked, his voice reverberating. “Should I come in after you?”

Nervously, Zach extended his hand, and like before, he laid his palm flat—only for it to go right through the metal, vanishing from his own eyes before he pulled his arm back. “Yup!” he called, releasing a laugh. “You were right, Jimmy.”

There wasn’t enough room for Zach to turn around, but from the sudden thud and follow-up vibration, he knew that Jimmy had climbed in behind him. “Well?” Jimmy asked. “Are we going or not?”

Zach gathered his courage. The fact that he was so hesitant was undeniable proof that the past two weeks had softened him somewhat. Because while he’d certainly been in a state of rapid mental decay before meeting Jascaila, if nothing else, he’d finally entered a state of pseudo fearlessness where death had ceased to disturb him. Now, he’d sort of pulled back a little bit. He was still a hundred—no, a million­—times braver than he’d been before becoming an adventurer, but the cost of Jascaila’s therapy had been that his heart was slowly becoming whole again, and in so doing, his daring had diminished ever so slightly. He was moderately more cautious now than he’d been two weeks prior.

But I’m not really afraid for myself, Zach thought. I mean, I am just a bit. Really, though, I’m worried about Jimmy. I don’t want to get him killed.

“Zach, let’s go already,” Jimmy said impatiently, his voice now sounding much closer. He must’ve been directly behind Zach. “We’re gonna be fine.”

Exhaling slowly, Zach decided to go through with it. He crawled forward, crossed through the solid metal barrier at the opposite end of the boiler—and then he continued to crawl into what felt like a world of pure silver. It was as though he’d crawled inside the metal to the extent that it colored everything around him. To his left, his right, above and below: there was nothing but a sky and ground made of pure metal. Eventually, he realized he could stand up and that he was no longer confined to a tiny crawl space, and so he picked himself up and straightened his back.

“Jimmy, are you with me?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Jimmy said, sounding close—very close. Like, arm’s length. Zach reached out and grabbed what felt like his shoulder, though he couldn’t see him. He could only see the silvery sheen of metal everywhere.

“This is new,” Zach said, trying his best to hide his nerves. “Usually, it’s a dark tunnel.”

“How do we know which way to go?” Jimmy asked. “Let’s try not to get separated.”

Zach extended the arm opposite the one he was using to grab Jimmy’s shoulder. Then he sighed with relief. “I don’t think we can,” he said. “There are walls to our left and right even if we can’t see them.”

Jimmy said nothing for a moment, and then Zach heard a slight thud—two such thuds, and Jimmy grunted in acknowledgement. “Oh yeah, you’re right.”

With that, Zach began to walk forward through this world of silver—until something changed. It took him a moment to process it. Given the disorienting, blinding effect of this mysterious, all-consuming silvery light, it took Zach’s brain just a second or two longer to realize what it would normally realize an instant after happening. Yet when it did, Zach let out a loud yelp. Zach, it seemed, had slipped. Or no, not slipped. He’d stepped off something—a ledge of some sort that he couldn’t even see. And now, falling onto his ass, he began to slide down something—a slope of some kind. And he was sliding fast. Very, very fast.

From the yelp of surprise above him, he could tell that Jimmy had fallen as well. And now, the both of them made nervous cries as they went down a slide-like slope, gaining more and more speed as they ventured into whatever dungeon awaited them below.

Though it seemed a great deal longer, it was ultimately only a few seconds before the all-consuming silver, metallic-colored light faded away, and now Zach’s eyes took note of red and golden bricks; this, he spotted for only a moment before he began to roll, the world inverting itself around him, with up becoming down and down becoming up. Finally, everything stilled, and he found himself on his back in an unfamiliar place, with Jimmy lying beside him.

Somewhat dizzy, he picked himself up and glanced around. “Well, I think we found our dungeon,” Zach said, taking in his surroundings. “Whoah,” he then whispered.

His immediate impression was one of pure fascination. He appeared to be in some kind of castle-like hall that was spacious without being overly wide. Below him, the flooring was made out of a polished golden-red tile, and there were various carpets that ran along the length of it in numerous spots. The walls were made of a very smooth sort of brick, though curtains also draped over them in multiple places. There were also a fair number of paintings to be found, all of which depicted a different landscape that Zach did not recognize, and there were decorative statues of armored knights placed irregularly off to both sides of him.

“Awesome,” Jimmy said, a mixture of cheer, confidence, and excitement in his voice. “I’m so pumped right now, Zach. This is exactly what we needed!”

This place—wherever it was—was fairly dark in lighting, though it did contain enough light so that visibility was still satisfactory. What Zach found immediately noticeable was the way in which the light seemed to contain a slight neon-reddish hue, which when combined with the overall atmosphere, gave a somewhat darker, ominous vibe to everything. In addition to this lighting, which seemed to come from the emptiness itself, there were also ledges built into the walls, where stone lanterns were lit and provided additional visibility. The place had a very clean, almost pristine look to it, though that did little to mitigate the sense of danger.

Zach took a step forward, his feet making a soft thud on the elegant, smooth carpets. “We have no idea what to expect,” he warned, meeting Jimmy’s eyes. “We need to be careful.”

Jimmy gave a confident nod. “We will be. So uh, Zach, what’s the deal? How do we get from here to where we gotta go?”

Zach took another look at the world around him. He was somewhat distressed to see that the “slide” they’d barreled down offered no way back up, as they’d fallen through a hatch in the ceiling that now seemed to be closed. This meant they were now in a partially rectangular hall with nowhere to go but forward. Ahead of them, just beyond the hall, was a door with a flat, somewhat curved handle labeled F27->F28.

“Jascaila said that the dungeon runs through Slopes of Dal’Zarrah on floor 31.”

“Runs through?” Jimmy asked.

Zach nodded. “Yeah. Um, basically, some dungeons have floors that run through outside areas, but the ones that run through Galterra were made a long time ago, and those particular floors are usually destroyed. So basically, you enter them just to find yourself back in the regular world.”

Briefly, he explained Yorna’s B7, which was just a beach in Shadowfall Coast. Once, long ago, it was likely a fully-fledged dungeon floor, but in these times, it was simply a convenient way of getting somewhere you needed to go.

“So, basically,” Zach said, concluding his explanation. “We just need to go from F27 to F31.”

“Now we’re talking!” Jimmy said with a very elated laugh, giving Zach a thumbs-up. At first, Zach wasn’t sure why he was so happy—but then it quickly became obvious as he said, “This means we’re gonna get to fight a boss together, right? On F30.”

Zach gasped. A sinking feeling of wrongness entered the pit of his stomach. It was only now that he realized that most dungeons had a boss every ten floors. It was something he knew, but was not fully cognizant of to the extent that he’d think of it. Thus, it was only now, with a mention from Jimmy, that he realized the two of them might actually have to take on an unknown dungeon boss of an unknown level of power all by themselves.

Relax, he told himself. This is no different from the way things were your first time in Yorna. You got through that just fine, didn’t you?

It was true. This was not the first time he’d gone through a dungeon portal, trapped himself inside, and needed to fight his way out. The exception this time around, however, was that he was in a very “unpopular” dungeon that little was known about and he didn’t have the time to slowly work his way through it. He had real responsibilities he had to address in a few hours from now, and he couldn’t afford to be stuck in this place as he’d been in Yorna. He needed to burn his way through here with Jimmy and get out.

I might’ve made a catastrophic mistake.

Zach shook the negative thoughts out of his head. No. This wasn’t a mistake. He needed to be confident. Just like he’d been earlier today when he’d argued with Adamus. He had survived so much shit to get to this point, including a fire wyvern that had threatened the entire world. He would be able to make it through a few floors of some shitty dungeon—and he’d do it while keeping Jimmy safe, too.

“Stay close to me,” Zach said to him, fixing Jimmy with the most serious and commanding look he could give. “If I tell you to run, you run.”

Out of an abundance of caution, Zach called upon Summon Active War-Mount, knowing that it would ease his nerves a great deal to have his level-85 war-mount around for protection. With that thing nearby, he doubted he’d have to worry about anything this dungeon might throw at him. And so, having called upon it, he waited for the mount to appear before him.

It didn’t.

Instead, the following message popped up into the air above his head, drawing not only his, but Jimmy’s attention to it as well.

Summon Mount Failed: Trials of Nolak is not a Mount-Compatible Dungeon.

“The hell?” Zach asked, perplexed and even a little bit outraged. “Why won’t it let me summon my Gods-be-damned mount!”

He looked at Jimmy, and he was surprised to see that none—not even an iota—of the shock he felt was reflected in Jimmy’s eyes. If anything, Jimmy seemed amused. “It’s not that much of a surprise to be honest,” Jimmy said to him. “Actually, I’d be more surprised if you were allowed to summon a mount in this dungeon.”

“You say that like it’s a given.”

“To me it is,” Jimmy said. Zach waited for him to explain, but he didn’t. He simply stated it as though it were an obvious fact and then made as if to continue on. But first, Zach darted forward and placed a hand on his shoulder, stopping him.

“I told you, Jimmy. Let me go first. And stay close. Everything else still applies. Like I just said before: if I tell you to run, you run. Okay? This isn’t a joke.”

For the third time today, Jimmy rolled his eyes. It was almost as if for each ounce of worry and caution Zach began to feel, Jimmy went on to feel the exact, diametric opposite. Before his very eyes, the nineteen-year-old guy from Earth came alive in a way that Zach was witnessing now for the first time. Even just standing still with his hands on his hips, he looked like he belonged here in the dungeon: like he was born to be here.

“Well, go ahead and lead then, dude,” he said to Zach. “But if ya’ll look like you gonna fuck up, I’m stepping in.”

“Sure thing,” Zach said, Jimmy’s words barely even registering in his head. He was far too busy scanning the room for any sign of danger or hostile mobs. Drawing his sword from his sheathe, he held it in his left hand, and with his right held out in front of him, he walked up to the door ahead, grabbed the handle, and pulled it open.

Stepping carefully inside, he was greeted with another, similar looking hall. This one was even wider, though like the previous, there only seemed to be one way that he could go: straight ahead. Glancing in that direction, he noticed that the wide hall narrowed considerably the farther one ventured into this particular area until approaching what, to Zach’s eyes, looked like a fork up ahead with a leftward path and a rightward one.

“You can come in, Jimmy,” he said, taking another step inside. Now, he gripped his sword with both hands, his eyes darting around looking for anything that might be moving or might be about to move. “I don’t think there are any mobs in here.”

“Doesn’t look like it,” Jimmy said.

Zach, continuing to hold his weapon out in front of him defensively, began to make his way farther into this area. Yet he proceeded all but five steps before he was forcibly and urgently stopped—by Jimmy of all people.

“Zach!” Jimmy shouted at him, a combination of anger, disbelief, and fear in his words. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing, man? Shit!”

Zach had been mid-step, and his right foot was hovering a few inches off the floor—or at least it was until Jimmy gave him a very rough yank in the opposite direction; having been pulled by surprise, Zach began to stumble. He would’ve fallen over if Jimmy did not reach out and then steady him. Now, utterly confused and very much annoyed, Zach turned his head towards Jimmy and glared at him. Jimmy glared right back.

“What was that about?” he asked.

Jimmy snorted. “I could ask you the same thing! You trying to die or something?”

“Huh? What the hell are you talking about?”

Jimmy made an annoyed-sounding moan then pointed to the floor. Zach traced his fingers with his eyes and looked where he was indicating, but it did not cause him to gain any better understanding of why Jimmy had nearly thrown him down. “What?” Zach asked, becoming frustrated. “What are you pointing at?”

“Are you…are you serious?” Jimmy asked.

“Of course I’m fucking serious!” Zach snapped. “What’s going on? Why’d you freak out just now?”

Jimmy rubbed his face as though he was the one with the right to be frustrated in this situation. He marched over to Zach, took two small steps forward, and then said, “Duck.” When Zach remained right where he was, Jimmy shouted, “Duck!”

Becoming angrier by the second, Zach decided to humor Jimmy if for no other reason than to feel totally justified in blowing up on him five seconds from now—when whatever bullshit Jimmy was trying to pull revealed itself to be nothing more than some weird paranoia. Thus, Zach bent his knees, ducked down, continued to glare at Jimmy—and then ducked even lower and yelped in surprise as a dart-shaped object that was shining with a glowing blue light ripped across the space above his head, collided with the wall behind him, and exploded into a shower of sparks and flame, sending pieces of brick and plaster crumbling down and blocking the door that the both of them had only just walked through.

“Wh-what the fuck was that?” Zach shouted, amazed and confused all at once.

Jimmy shook his head as if in frustrated disbelief. “It’s obviously a trap, dude. Are you blind or something?”

“What do you mean? Jimmy, I have absolutely no idea what just happened.”

“Fucking PVPers,” Jimmy grumbled. He entered something of a hopping, zig-zagging motion as he began to make his way farther into this area. This continued until he paused at the right side of the wall at the point where it began to narrow. “See this?” he called back to Zach, who was still standing right where he was. “Can you tell me what this is?”

“That?” Zach asked, pointing with his blade.

“Yes.”

Zach leaned forward but did not take any steps towards Jimmy. “There’s like a…a white, slit-like indent in the wall.”

“That’s right,” Jimmy said, nodding. “Now look down by your feet. Do you see how some of those tiles are a bit lighter in color and sticking out a bit: almost like a button.”

“Yeah, so?”

Jimmy made another frustrated moan. “So,” he said, “you step on tile, wall shoots dart. It’s not rocket science, dude. It’s a basic-ass trap.”

Zach stared at Jimmy, speechless for a moment. He could do little but marvel in absolute, utter awe of what he’d just both seen and heard. He tried to form words, but they failed to enter his lips. Finally, after several seconds and a drying of his throat, he gave voice to the question that was blaring in his head.

“Jimmy,” he said, “how in the fuck did you know that?”

Jimmy didn’t even vocalize a response. He simply waved his hand at the wall, pulled it back, and then waved that very same hand at the tile—as though it were somehow self-explanatory. When Zach, totally bewildered, continued to stare at him, something finally seemed to click in Jimmy’s head, as evident by the way his eyes widened.

“You don’t know how any of this works, do you, Zach?”

“How what works?”

Jimmy laughed, though rather than the sound of humor, there was more amazement in the way it came across. “None of ya’ll do. None of you know any of this. I’m an outsider to this world, but I’m the only one who knows.”

“Knows what?”

Jimmy repeated the same series of movements he’d made to travel to the wall, only now, he did so in reverse. This time, however, Zach finally understand why: he was avoiding all the elevated tiles. Once he was back by Zach’s side, he said, “Rule number one of raiding: if you see a tile sticking out of the ground, you do not step on it.”

Zach’s confusion lessened, but only barely. “Rule number one?”

“Yeah, number one. I just decided now that I’m gonna start making rules. Something tells me we’re gonna need these based on what I just saw.”

“And that’s…number one?”

“Yes,” Jimmy confirmed. Then, abruptly, he shook his head. “Actually, you know what? Wait. No. That’s gonna be like number four.”

“Then what’s number one?” Zach asked, still caught up in a haze of amazement and confusion.

At this, Jimmy made another laugh, and this one did contain a great deal of humor in it. “You never, ever, ever stand in the fire.”

“The fire?” Zach asked, his words coming out louder than he intended.

“Yeah, don’t stand in the damn fire. You’ll see that rule play out eventually. I’m sure of it.”

Zach lowered his weapon slightly. “That dart could’ve killed me,” he whispered. “I think it was magical. It might’ve actually killed me.”

“Good thing you didn’t get hit then, huh?”

“Yeah,” Zach said nervously. “Okay, stay behind me. And thanks, Jimmy. Seriously.”

“Sure.”

Now that Zach understood how things worked, he carefully navigated around any of the floor tiles that seemed to jut out more than the others. And with that, he made his way across the hall until halfway in, when the walls narrowed to where he and Jimmy had just enough space so that they could stand together side by side.

“Okay, hold on up,” Jimmy said, pointing ahead of them. “Spikes are gonna come out of these walls as soon as we get near them.”

Zach, doubly perplexed, asked, “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, do you see those indentations? That’s a spike trap all right. Seen this in a billion games. And do you see that circular one right there, Zach?”

“Which?”

“Look closely. Halfway down this little passageway, do you see how there’s like a circularly shaped indentation in the wall?”

Zach nodded. Now that he looked closely, he could indeed see it. “Yeah.”

“That’s gonna be a saw.”

Zach blinked, too stunned to even contemplate the veracity of what Jimmy was saying. “A saw? That’s really specific, Jimmy.”

“Trust me. That’s gonna be a saw, and those other ones are going to be spikes. They’re gonna activate as soon as we get close to them.”

“Are…are you sure you haven’t been here before?”

“A hundred percent,” Jimmy said.

There’s no way. He has to either be lying or wrong.

But he wasn’t. Just as Jimmy said, the moment the two of them came within a certain proximity, Zach was forced to jump to one side with Jimmy, as a barrage of spikes popped out of the wall with a ftch! Then, once more, he had no choice but to make a sudden movement to the opposite side, as the same took place across from him. Finally, towards the end of the passageway, a loud, motorized buzzing came into being, and six yellowish, dust-colored, and fast-spinning sawblades slid out of the walls on both sides all on their own, and each began moving towards them.

“Follow me exactly,” Jimmy said.

Zach watched as Jimmy darted forward, dropped to his knees, rolled, stood back up, and then ran forward and jumped. Zach mimicked the movement exactly, and to his amazement, they both navigated beyond the saws without facing any harm—and all of this only served to heighten Zach’s disbelief and confusion. But it was only destined to become even greater from this point on, as Jimmy transitioned from someone knowledgeable into an outright seer capable of deducing future events.

Zach, eager to get out of this narrow passageway of death, was about to step into the forked part of the hall, where it split off to the left and the right. But before he could take a step forward, Jimmy again grabbed his shoulder. “Okay, stop,” he said, pulling Zach back towards him.

“Now what?” Zach asked.

Jimmy leaned forward, though he did so without taking any steps ahead. “Okay, do you see how the whole entire wall to our left is curved upwards? Almost like a giant slide?”

“Uh, yeah,” Zach said.

Now, Jimmy turned his head to the right. “And do you see how that hallway just goes straight forward for like almost a city block’s worth of distance?”

“Y-yeah,” Zach said again, not seeing where his friend was going with this.

“Well, what I think is gonna happen—and I’m like 99% sure—is that a giant-ass boulder is gonna slide down that wall as soon as we walk into the next hall, and then we’re gonna have to run as fast as we can to the opposite end before it crushes us. And it’s probably not an ordinary boulder, so we should assume it can hurt you even if you have high constitution. We’re gonna need to run as fast as we can.”

How the hell can he know this? Zach thought, simply unable to accept this was happening. It’s impossible. Something’s not right here.

Trying his best to concentrate on something other than his shock, he asked, “But where do we run to? It’s a dead end.”

“Hmm?” Jimmy shifted his position so that he stood closer to Zach, which gave him a fuller view of the hallway opposite the curved wall. “Oh, you’re right. Okay. So, when we get to the end, the floor’s probably gonna break and we’ll end up falling down to the next part of this level.”

Zach shook his head. “There’s no way you can know that, Jimmy. There’s no way.”

“Man, it’s fucking obvious. I’m telling you.”

“It’s not. You’re…you can’t know this.”

“Yeah, well, I do.”

Zach, so confounded it actually hurt, struggled to keep himself focused as he followed Jimmy into the next area. Immediately upon stepping on a maroon-colored rug decorating the floor, the entire hall began to shake, and a deep rumbling came from somewhere above and to their left. Then, just as Jimmy had said, a tremendous boulder with spikes covering it began rolling down the slope-shaped wall and heading straight towards them. It too was glowing with what Zach took to be magical energy, and while it was entirely possible Zach’s constitution was high enough to where it wouldn’t even scratch him, it was also possible it could kill him instantly. There was no way of knowing—and no reason to find out.

“Run!” Jimmy cried. “Let’s go! Come on, Zach!”

“Y-yeah,” Zach whispered.

Together with Jimmy, they dashed their way down the hall. The boulder moved far faster than Zach expected, but because Jimmy had warned him in advance, they reacted to it with a quickness that Zach doubted any other adventurer would have been able to summon. As a result, they reached the end of the hallway with ample time to spare, and when they did, another set of rumbling, this one from below, caused the ground to shift beneath their feet.

“Told you,” Jimmy said as the bottom gave out and the two plummeted straight down. Zach, along with Jimmy, fell what he estimated to be over a hundred feet. Yet what should have been a scary fall that would make him scream left him speechless as he stared at Jimmy the whole way down. Rather than release so much as a chirp, he simply studied Jimmy’s expression, mystified. Jimmy, for his part, did let out a loud whoop and a cheer as the two of them plummeted down together into another section of this strange dungeon, landing in a pit filled with water and sinking nearly a dozen feet into it.

Zach surfaced a few moments later, and so too did Jimmy. Then the both of them swam to the edge and climbed out of the water-filled pit and onto more of the elegantly tiled flooring. Now, they were in a wide, rounded room that had seemingly no way out.

“We’re trapped,” Zach said, trying not to panic. “Jimmy, I think we’re—”

“Oh, it’s one of these puzzles,” Jimmy said, sounding bored and disinterested. He even yawned.

“Jimmy, what’re you—”

“Zach, look around to see if you can find, like, I dunno, any kind of pattern or something somewhere. Basically, we have to turn those six dials which control the pillars across from them and make a pattern, but the pattern is always hidden somewhere in the area around you. Otherwise, we’d have to guess by brute force, and that could waste like an hour. Once we put the pattern in, that shutter over there is gonna open. Oh, and for real, Zach? I’d bet like 50k gold right now that mobs are gonna come through as soon as we solve the puzzle. Oh! And this is really important too. Zach, do you see those like, those rock-covered statue things over there? The ones that look like little demons holding spears? I guarantee those come to life as soon as we solve the puzzle. The rock around their bodies is gonna break apart and they’re gonna turn out to be underneath. Shit’s so basic. Who would be surprised by this?”

Zach, who now realized he was totally out of his element, no longer bothered barking any orders. He instead obeyed.