We emerge into an open field where human-sized cards are playing croquet. Upon closer glance, their croquet mallets appear to also be made out of cardboard. This makes them somewhat ineffectual against balls.

“What is that thing doing here?” declares the Queen of Hearts, looking disdainfully at Mipsy. “How dare you bring a foul cat onto our field. Off with their heads!”

Rowan was prepared for this, and brings his shield and wooden sword to bear against the oncoming pack of cards.

“I’ve been waiting for this!” Rowan says. “Now I just wish I had something that could cut paper.”

Mipsy hisses at the overly-addressive pieces of cardboard and shreds with her claws. Burdock protects her flank, beating them away with his staff.

I have a pair of scissors in my inventory. Because I didn’t see a reason not to load it up with every tool I might conceivably find useful totalling under 5 kg. I never got to go hiking much in my first life, but I nerded out over people optimizing their carry weight because it involved math and science. I was frequently involved in developing lighter products. The tiniest computer possible would be one whose additional weight was negligible.

I eat a bit of growth mushroom that I kept in my pocket, and rapidly grow larger until I’m big enough that the cards only come up to my knees. Then I pull the scissors out of my inventory. I heft them with both hands and sweep down into the middle of the pack and snip anything I catch.

The cards scream as they’re cut, bleeding ink. This is… slightly disturbing, but also kind of funny. They’re monsters and will respawn anyway, never mind the fact that they were attacking us. And continue to do so even after a giant with a pair of scissors starts making confetti out of them, so I don’t have much sympathy.

Eventually, the royals retreat, leaving behind the common numbered cards to get decimated. Seeing their leaders abandon them and their comrades cut apart, the survivors surrender.

Skills increased: Striking (Bladework)

Giant scissors count as [Bladework]. Noted.

A chest appears once the field is silent. It contains coins, a diamond-shaped glowing yellow crystal, and a flat sharpened spade. Rowan hands them to me to identify after looting the chest.

“The crystal just has the aspect of light in it, so far as I can tell,” I say. “That might be good for crafting. I’m not detecting anything I can identify from the shovel, but it would probably be a decent weapon.”

“Better than a wooden sword, at any rate,” Rowan agrees. “Might be awkward to use with a shield, though. Burdock, you’re already using pole weapons. This will beat trying to cut paper with a stick.”

Burdock takes the spade and hefts it to test its weight and balance before nodding.

“Great!” Anise says brightly. “I love equipping pre-teens with sharp objects.”

“Let’s not tell his mother,” Meadow adds.

“I’m sure Aunt Maggie won’t object to her son using a perfectly ordinary garden tool,” Anise says.

“A garden tool capable of cutting through the most stubborn taproots and pesky plant monsters,” Meadow says.

As mundane as a light crystal might be in magitech, I’m still excited about getting one. I’m going to play around with that for my crafting. It would probably make a good headlamp, for the most mundane possible use at least.

“Maybe there will still be a sword later on,” Rowan says. “How much more of the dungeon is left?”

“Dunno!” Anise says brightly. “I haven’t been here in years and dungeons can change between visits.”

“You see anything interesting from up there, Drake?” Rowan asks.

Off in the distance (how the heck large is the inside of a dungeon, anyway?) I spot a giant sitting against a cliff (that’s probably the edge of the dungeon) and crying a literal river. We’ll need to cross the river just to get over there, the way it’s cutting through the terrain. We could all get big, but there’s probably a better option here. And by ‘better’ I mean more fun.

I look down at the cards who are cowering in submission. “Hey. I don’t suppose you can make a bridge for us?”

The cards are very confused at the idea, but amenable to whatever doesn’t get them scissored.

“Okay, just… hold onto one another and try not to squirm too much,” I say.

I pick up the terrified cards two at a time and start building a bridge out of them. It is probably the most ridiculous thing I have done in this life and I am thankful that I don’t wind up with a Crafting (Card Building) skill—

Skill acquired: Crafting (Card Building) Description: The ability to build structures out of cardboard, with or without the addition of glue or other materials.

Oh for Corwen’s sake… Fine! Fine, I will take my small bonus to all my other crafting skills from this stupid skill. This wouldn’t even work very well with cards that don’t have arms and legs and aren’t capable of grabbing onto one another steady themselves.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

My party walks over the bridge of cards, and Meadow barely makes it across in the rear before something slips. The bridge collapses, and screaming pieces of cardboard fall into the river. I scoop out some waterlogged cards that fell nearby before we continue on to locate the giant.

I’m still big, but the giant is even bigger than me. Still, the amount of water coming out of his eyes is quite exaggerated, flowing out like a waterfall. Along the banks of the river of tears, a group of mice wearing clothes are trying to swim to shore, helping one another out of the river, and drying off nearby.

“What’s wrong?” Burdock calls up to the giant.

The giant stops sobbing for a moment to open one eye at the voice that spoke. “I sat on a mouse. I didn’t mean to! I don’t want to hurt any more of my little friends.”

“Oh,” Burdock says. “Hey, Drake, do you have any shrinking mushrooms? I don’t know if we figured out which type did shrinking.”

“I did,” I say, pulling out and offering a pale brown speckled mushroom to the giant. “Here, take a little at a time and try not to shrink away into nothing.”

“Can that happen?” Burdock wonders.

“Dunno!” I say.

The giant nibbles on a bit of mushroom, and starts getting smaller. After the first bite only making him a little smaller, he eats more and more, until he’s the size of the mice. Once he’s small, the mouse he’d sat on crawls out from between the giant’s butt-prints, dirty but unharmed. The now-tiny giant and the mice start to dance and sing and play as the river dries up.

“Has anyone seen the White Rabbit?” Burdock asks. “Oh, there’s some gloves in the water. Do these belong to anyone?”

“The White Rabbit dropped them,” says one of the mice. “He looked very distraught! Said something about meeting the Duchess for a picnic.”

I look around while I’m still big, and spot the White Rabbit having a picnic with a well-dressed woman, a large turtle, and a griffin. I point out the direction and we head over, bracing ourselves for something else weird to happen. As we walk, the skymote shifts from azure to green. I had just gotten used to bright blue light everywhere and the sudden change of tint is a little disorienting, but not as bad as the change of perspective from getting bigger and smaller.

I’m already shrinking down to normal again as we cross the meadow. Looks like the effects of these mushrooms don’t actually last very long. Hopefully that giant won’t squish any further mice but it is no longer my problem. Also, they’re all monsters. I have to wonder what monsters do all the time when there aren’t people delving the dungeon.

Have picnics, so far as I can tell. The White Rabbit, the Duchess, the Mock Turtle, and the Griffin (or is it Gryphon? whatever) are all sitting around on a huge white-and-red checkered blanket. A massive wicker basket overflows with jars and bread. On the blanket, a tiny (by which I mean normal-sized) animated chess set plays out something vaguely resembling a game. Occasionally, they get knocked over and scattered when one of the bigger picnickers carelessly bumps into them.

“Hello!” Burdock says, approaching the picnic. “I followed you into the dungeon, Mr. Rabbit. I’ve been looking everywhere for you! Here, you dropped your gloves.”

The White Rabbit wrinkles his nose in disgust at the tear-soaked gloves, and hangs them up from a tree to dry (almost stepping on a couple of pawns in the process, who squeak and scatter out of the way).

“I am most grateful for their return,” the White Rabbit says.

“Did that giant finally stop crying?” the Duchess says. “He was making the most dreadful noise. I could hear it from the other side of Wonderland! Insofar as Wonderland has sides.”

What follows is a burst of wordplay so intense that it gives me a headache. I maybe have been relying on auto-translation a little too much, and the worst bit of it is that the dungeon is also trying to translate. I switch off the translator for a moment and just sit down and listen to waves of nonsense go back and forth. I watch concepts float through the air, trying to see if I can identify the concept of puns. Very strange, in a world of concepts, to see strings of sounds tangled up with two meanings.

I can’t follow what happens, but apparently whatever Burdock says satisfies the diverse group of beings. They offer another chest, and I turn the auto-translator back on and start paying attention again as we’re distributing loot. Some coins, a jar of jam, and a bluish metal rod.

“Drake, I don’t suppose you could make me a sword out of this?” Rowan asks.

“I don’t have any metalworking skills yet,” I say. “But it’s definitely on the agenda for when anyone feels like letting a small child near a forge.”

Finally, we come upon a huge talking tree monster who, of course, wants to play Leaves with us before he’ll let us complete the dungeon. We all have to groan at the prospect even as we obligatorily sit down to play. I’m starting to really hate this stupid game. And we lose. Badly.

“Hmm, hmm,” says the tree. “It seems none of you is a budding cardsharp. A pity. Well, perhaps then you can answer me a riddle instead.”

“A riddle, yes,” I say. “A riddle sounds fantastic. In fact, I would have preferred to have been given the option of a riddle before being forced to play one more match of this game.”

The talking tree is unfazed by my outburst. “Here is my riddle, if you can answer it. What’s up?”

“A direction away from the pull of gravity from a given position,” I say.

“I was going to say ‘the direction toward of the Great Orb’,” Burdock says.

“I’d say ‘we’re currently completing this weird as Void dungeon’,” Rowan adds.

The tree rumbles with a chuckle deep within its bark. “Very well. I will not award any bonus cards, as you could not defeat me, but you may have your chest and dungeon completion.”

There’s an option in the options menu about consolidating system messages to only display at the end of the day. I like to be aware of incoming experience, however, because it’s very interesting and I’m trying to figure out how it works.

I know once we’ve completed the dungeon, we will receive a burst of experience. I’m getting all my senses running, draining my Inspiration like a faucet, ready to analyze the incoming conceptual energy.

Congratulations! Your party has completed Wonderland. Skills increased: Discipline (Focus) Skill acquired: Knowledge (Scientific Method) Description: A method of learning about the world through observation and empirical evidence.

A glittering stream like tiny stars embeds itself in my mind. It’s beautiful, but I am no closer to understanding it. My system interface basically already is translating its analysis of the concepts in the form of its congratulatory message. I can’t tell where it came from, exactly. I can’t even tell where in me it went or what it did. Into those skills, I suppose, but there’s got to be more to it than that.

Burdock cries out in joy. “I did it! That pushed me over to Elite!”

“Congratulations!" Rowan says. "I didn’t, but good job. I wasn’t really expecting to. You've done more to earn it than me.”

Rowan goes to check the chest while the rest of us are giving Burdock congratulatory group hugs. The final chest contains a fair number of shiny coins and a shield that looks like a turtle shell. Rowan claims it, since he didn’t get much else in the dungeon and he’s the only one that uses shields.

A door in the back of the tree opens. “Enter, travelers, and exit. Do please visit Wonderland again. Perhaps practice Leaves a bit in the meantime?”

“Not a chance,” I say.

“Thanks for having us!” Burdock says.

We step into the hollow in the monster tree and into a long fall back to the other side of the world.