Chapter 2

In fashion with the rest of the overly extravagant room, the large wooden doors that Grizz guided us towards was adorned with intricate carvings and inlaid with sparkling gems. I couldn’t get it out of my head how these doors alone would easily cover the entirety of my student debt.

Now back in one group, it was much easier to spot what weapons the rest of the group went with.

Gabriel and Rebecca had armed themselves with a two-handed sword of some variety and a bow respectively. Gabe had clearly found the large weapon unwieldy and was now resorting to dragging it alongst the floor.

Richard’s choice was rather unique, resting comfortable under his belt was completely metallic mace which I could imagine a crusader charging into battle with. It didn’t exactly fit the balding mans appearance, but I don’t think many weapons would to be fair.

Like a teacher waiting for his school students to form a line, Grizz waited in front of the doors as we caught up to the little fella who was much faster than he realistically should be.

“One last thing before you venture off. If you think the word ‘Status’ within your head than a screen should appear in front of you.”

Well, he wasn’t lying, the second I proactively thought the word ‘Status’ a screen did indeed pop up before me.

A quick check showed that the others were swiping at the air in front of them, looks like this screen is only visible to the user.

Status

Name: James Burns

Class: (N/A)

Level: 1

Strength: 6

Dexterity: 6

Vigor: 5

Endurance: 7

Intelligence: 4

Wisdom: 4

Skills (0/5):

Runes (0/1)

I would be lying if I said I was completely happy with my current stats.

A four in intelligence AND wisdom… Was I really that dumb?

Well apparently, someone thought so at least so it wasn’t like I had anyone to complain to. Other than the slightly depressing stats, seeing higher numbers in the strength, dexterity and endurance certainly did feel good.

I was by no means a world class athlete, but I did try my best to eat healthy and stay in shape and seeing that lifestyle getting rewarded now washed away any negative feeling’s leftover.

Not seeing anything else to take notice of within my Status, I was ready to move on when another screen popped up from nowhere.

Status

Name: Ellie Vernin

Class: (N/A)

Level: 1

Strength: 4

Dexterity: 4

Vigor: 5

Endurance: 3

Intelligence: 7

Wisdom: 6

Skills (0/5):

Runes (0/1)

Holy shit. I was surprised by the sudden pop-up in front of me, but even more surprised by the stat values I was reading. If we could become mages, it was clear that Ellie was perfectly primed to walk down that path.

Her physical stats clearly left some room for desire, but they weren’t anything a little extra training couldn’t fix.

Turning to my side to look at the girl who was still shying back, I couldn’t help but chuckle a little to myself. Thinking about sharing my Status, there was a clear success as Ellie’s eyes started running up and down an invisible screen before she graced me with a gentle smile.

“You’ll have time to familiarise yourself with your Status later, all you need to know for now is how to access it, all the fun stuff comes later.

Well folks without further ado please make your way into the dungeon, if you’re all lucky I might even see you all again on the second floor.”

With another formal bow and hat tip, Grizz disappeared.

There wasn’t any flash of smoke, or a laser that beamed him up. He was simply there one second and gone the next.

Questioning the goblins teleportation abilities seemed a bit lower on the priority list though, as the large wooden doors were now opening with an unseen force.

Revealed from the open doors was a tunnel system identical to the one we had wakened up in, however this time it wasn’t a single straight path. Spread in front of our group were three different paths all connected to a large room in front of us, each path looked identical without any noticeable difference.

“Well I think for starters it would be best to stick together, we don’t know what else is in these tunnels so safety in numbers, right?”

Surprisingly, Gabe was the first to speak up. I had gotten the impression that he would simply watch everything from a distance and occasionally chirp in to annoy people, looks like I was wrong though.

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His idea was sound, and walking solo through these tunnels sounded like a quick and easy way to die. Looking at the others, Rebecca was obviously on board and it seemed that Richard was too as he gave a slight nod to the notion.

Ellie on the other hand was clearly apprehensive about the idea, maybe it was from their earlier comments and behaviours, but she seemed like she was ready to venture off by herself.

“Ellie I am so so So sorry about what I said earlier! You know we all woke up in this totally crazy place, so I was just really stressed out!”

Just as I was about to step closer to her and ask what her plan was, Rebecca stepped in just a second earlier. With a slick grace, she walked arm in arm with Ellie closer the front of the tunnels, and noticeably further from me.

“Look, we started off on the wrong foot and that was totally my bad, let’s just start over as friends, okay?”

Between the battle of an overconfident person with no boundaries, and a shy introvert who was surrounded by strangers, the victor was clear from the get go.

With a silent mumble which she took as an agreement, Rebecca jumped in glee before tightly hugging her new friend.

From my perspective the whole scene looked like a poorly written screen play, but if this helped us all work together than who was I to complain.

With everyone agreeing to work together for the time being, we marched through the left most tunnel.

It only took around ten minutes for us to come face to face with our first challenge.

After walking along the dimly lit tunnel, we eventually came across a large room like where we started, however this time the room wasn’t empty.

Sat around on a bunch of rocks were goblins. They had such a stereotypical appearance that it was impossible to confuse them for anything else.

Peering in from a safe distance, we spotted four of the little creatures. They were letting it constant barks and bursting into spontaneous laughter, so it was clear that they were having some sort of conversation in their primitive sounding language.

Worried that any conversation would be overheard, our group discretely signalled to go back out of hearing range from the group of monsters, these guys shouldn’t be a threat if we go in with a plan.

Just as we were about ready to head backwards a large impact hit the ground, stunning our group.

Ellie fell over.

Full faceplanted tripping over her own feet.

As much as I wanted to help her up, now we had some bigger problems. Namely, the four goblins now drooling from the mouth whilst staring at us.

With an animal like ferocity, the creatures picked up their makeshift weapons and rushed at our group. They were clearly outclassed in every degree, but they also clearly didn’t care.

Ready to intercept the attackers, I walked forward ready to shield off a couple of attacks. With Ellie still down and Rebecca with a bow, we needed a solid front line to stop their rush.

Now the feral creatures were just metres away and nerves had started to set in. Each of them was wielding a weapon made up of crudely sharpened stone, but it still looked more than capable of cutting through flesh.

The fastest out of the group with a slight lead on the others was a goblin wielding a small dagger sized perfectly to fit its agile body. The creature measured up to about my chest and was skinny as a twig.

Trying to stay as calm as possible, I examined the scene in front of me.

The goblin wielding the flimsy looking dagger leaped up, ready to stab down on anything it could reach, I refused to give it that chance.

With both hands on my short sword that easily outmatched my opponents reach, I stepped forward with my right food and slashed down vertically.

The feeling of metal connecting bone was rough, but I tried my best to follow through with the swing. The result was a goblin with a slash running down its entire torse. One down, three to go.

Witnessing their comrade’s death did nothing to slow down the rest of the goblin’s rush, and this time the three were ready to attack simultaneously.

Luckily, I also wasn’t alone.

Encouraged by my initial actions, the rest of my ragtag group shaped up as Richard and Gabe stood to my sides. Just about ready to face the incoming threats, an arrow flew out between me and Gabe.

It gave me a bit of a fright, but I couldn’t complain about the results, the arrow easily pierced through one of the goblin’s heads, instantly downing it.

With just two left, the goblins finally seemed a bit more apprehensive, unfortunately for them their newfound fear wouldn’t help them. With somewhat shaky teamwork, me, Gabe, and Richard all slowly whittled down our opponents.

Rebecca seemed content to not waste any more arrows and the rest of us didn’t rush in fear of getting cocky and receiving a bad cut in turn.

After five or so minutes of slow but progressive efforts, we managed to finish off the last of the goblins. With that, our first fight as a team was a success even if there were a few slip-ups along the way.

“What the fuck was that, Ellie?!”

Ah damn, and everything had been going so smoothly as well.

“All we had to do was walk back and you can’t even do that? And why weren’t you helping us fight them off? Huh?”

Now that the threat was gone, Richard instantly voiced his frustrations on Ellie who hadn’t moved from where she fell.

“If you’re going to mess up like that, at least take some accountability for Christ’s sake!”

Although Richard seemed more than happy to keep complaining, his shouts were quickly getting tiresome.

“She gets it Richard; I think that’s enough.”

Walking past the red-faced man I knelt in front of Ellie, checking for any obvious injuries.

“You all good Ellie? Reckon you can walk?”

“I- Uhm- Yeah, I think I can walk.”

Thankfully she wasn’t injured already it seemed.

Pushing herself off the ground, Ellie slinked back a bit more like she was trying to hide herself in the dark tunnel.

Seeing these actions, Richard was about to pop a blood vessel in frustration.

“Well mistakes happen so I think it’s fine for stuff like this to happen occasionally, right guys? I know you for one wouldn’t want us all to berate you for any minor mistake, would you Richard?”

As Gabe tried to defuse the situation, Rebecca made her way towards Ellie and gave her some comforting words.

Despite the couple’s newfound cheerful outlook, I couldn’t help but feel a disconnect somewhere between their actions and their true intentions. It was clear that they were putting on a bit of an act, but what was the purpose?

Regardless, if they helped in getting everyone to survive, then I had no complaints.

As our group took a breather and reset our mental states, I was finally given a chance to read the new pop-up message that had shown up in my peripheral vision.

Your party has slain:

4x Adolescent Goblins (Level 1)

The message was simple and sweet, and confirmed that these things were indeed goblins.

With nothing else to see, we decided to move forwards following the path ahead of us.

Hopefully we could get some food and water soon.

It took us another five minutes to walk into another goblin group like the initial one, the only difference being this group all had a collection of swords or axes instead of pathetic looking daggers.

Without alerting them this time, we were able to get the jump on the group and killed the goblins much easier than the first time around. Looking around the large room, yet again there was nothing but dirt and stones around the room.

Deciding to continue forward, our next encounter took 10 minutes until we reached a room infested with the feral critters.

Observing the goblins from the shadows, a clear pattern was being shown, every group was getting stronger in some way.

First it was upgraded weapons, now there was a fifth goblin in the pack. Sure, it wasn’t exactly a scary addition, but I couldn’t help but wonder about how long these tunnels would go on for. Would we eventually be fighting 10 goblins? 20? 100?

Well, that was something to worry about later, for now we just had to remove the threat in front of us.

Like last time, we tried to ambush the pack, but this group of goblins was clearly a bit more switched on since the second we revealed ourselves they let out a cry and rushed at us.

Our formation was still rocky and inexperienced, but with me blocking the initial attacks and Richard and Gabe covering my sides, we managed to easily kill the group.

Now that she wasn’t falling over herself, Ellie managed to stand at our backs and protect Rebecca whilst dealing with any pesky goblins that tried to take the front-liners two on one.

After her initial failure, Ellie had clearly wanted to prove her worth, and truthfully her presence made fights feel much safer.

Or I was just biased since I wanted her to succeed… Meh, doesn’t really matter either way.

After clearing this third cave we finally managed to gain rewards from this shitty situation.

First thing was a level up, appearing on a pop-up screen it looked like everyone else also got an extra level since they were all busy swiping and staring at the space in front of them.

There weren’t many changes, but all my stats had gone up by 1, a solid increase that I dared not complain about.

Other than the level up, we were also rewarded with a chest that sprouted from the ground in the middle of the room.

Although its appearance was dull as the chest looked to be made straight from dirt, it was a chest, nevertheless. Which madman would ever complain about free loot?

Without fanfare, Richard walked over to the chest and opened it to reveal its contents which we were in desperate need of.

Inside were silver, plastic bags with a simple ‘EAT ME’ labelled along the front. The food in conjunction with the bottled water next to it felt like a true blessing from an angel.

Grabbing the packets with my grubby hands I teared open the plastic and didn’t spare the weird looking item inside of it a second glance before digging in.

The texture was weird and spongy, and it tasted like nothing, but it filled the empty void that had become my stomach.

With a full stomach and enough water to last a while, everything seemed like it would work out just fine.