Corvayne sat down with his journal. It had been two weeks in the dungeon, much of it spent exploring the great Cube Valley floor.

The little electronic roll up computer ran off a solar charger, and with a stylus Corvayne was able to draw on the screen. The map on it covered several floors. They entered into "Floating Cube F1 of Cascadia Forest" though Corvayne suspected if he had system access he'd be able to pull names off them. He had taken notes as they went and started organizing it, drawing the most recent section of maps of the floor they were on, in case he needed to backtrack.

They started in the floor 1 Floating Cubes, up to the starlit floor where they had a barbecue, then back down at a different stairway to a floor where he could see miles of cubes forming valleys. "Cube Valley F1 Cascadia Forest."

All that out of the way, the goals on the early floors had been to find treasure chests and try to 'solve' the floor. So from the entrance, this one in a stone tower on a grassy windswept hill, They spent a good five minutes looking at the terrain, huge cube shaped mountains with valleys between them, some open spaces like they were on, but hints in the yellow sky that the walls were also mountain sized cubes, just barely visible in the haze.

Corvayne's gut instinct told him they wanted to try to get to the 'wall' and see if there was a way up. Lady Blood Claw suggested they do anything else and was overridden. The color of grass on the floor was green, which to Corvayne suggested that it was a different 'path'.

The valleys had roads in them made of stones that looked like petrified tree trunks, and despite the even appearance of the mountains the valleys had streams, hills and dips, and swaths of forest in them. The main animal life outside of monsters seemed more like normal forest creatures: Rodents that looked like squirrels, birds of all sorts of muted colors, the little armadillos they had seen on other floors, and grazing animals with six legs that skittishly ran when they heard the party approaching.

Monsters on the floor included aggressive salamanders that had smoking jaws, beetles that had lots of thorns on them that imitated fruits and tried to drop on them, and small packs of furry slugs which Corvayne strongly considered capturing, as at this point he found them cute and they would offset that LBC had somehow found what she said was definitely Mr. Squiggleworth.

They found three chests the first day, two trapped but easily defeated by Corvayne using [[Vitality]] and his spear. Lady Blood Claw turned out to have enough faith with Gygax to at least tell them if they were cursed or not, though she warned with her low faith it was not 100 percent correct. Corvayne found a pair of bracers that seemed to help climbing, a trowel that let one stick stones together as some sort of building tool, a set of Scissors that when attempting to cut something mended it, a knife that started itself on fire but couldn't fire-breath, a set of dice they decided to have LBC hold onto, a pendant with two dragons intertwined that made the wearer start to develop scales, pants with lightning bolts all over them that built up a static charge (Grunt took them, thank goodness they were stretchy), a pack of gum that implied it gave the user some sort of resistance, six potions that were definitely healing, three mana, and two that he suspected were stamina potions. There were also scrolls, which he couldn't identify by looking. There was probably a trick to figuring out what spell was on them without unfurling them to read it, but at the moment they were set aside.

More pictures too, though the group documented them rather then carry them around. Some of them were for the house dungeon they knew about, so the others were likely hints for other entrances.

The first night they camped on a rise, the sounds of distant night birds or other weird animal calls not stopping Corvayne from sleeping well. Bell and Spears were sharing a tent with him. They were not quite like Hari and Wick had been with regards to sleeping with him at the same time, but it was nice to have the women along, and it kept him in a cheery mood.

The next day they charted a path up one of the cube mountains, using a path made up of worked yellow 'petrified' stone, natural gray-blue rock, and wood that twisted between the others to make a sort of tangled stairway up the mountain. At the top was rolling countryside, dotted with trees and lakes and flocks of birds that scattered at the group coming up. Over the trees on the cube they saw a church steeple, and naturally wandered into a ghost town light on monsters and heavy on moss. Corvayne found another one of the large guide stones and touched it, once again feeling weirdly connected to somewhere else.

They made their first major discovery a moment later when he popped over to the stone totem on the third floor, the scene whirling for a moment. He felt a little tired, but quickly started tapping the totem and willing himself to go where he felt he came from, and with a pop he was back in the ruins with worried party members around him.

They quickly figured out it worked for anyone who had touched another guide stone, mostly the one on the third floor by the haunted castle island. Corvayne hadn't forgotten about that enticing area (which more then a few of the friends had started calling a 'Raid' in honor of something in video games) but he wanted to be equipped to handle anything before his team tried to tackle it.

They found that the ruined town had a bridge miles above the valley floor that lead to a functioning town that was half on the flat top of the next cube mountain, and partially built into the wall with mining complexes and platforms that collected water forming large bowl shaped ponds stocked with fish.

The Tower folk they spoke with on the flat part of town didn't seem to mind strangers at all, and it was agreed that the group would return to take advantage of the Inn in town after seeking more chests.

They didn't have any luck that afternoon, and so were back at town when the yellow glow of day faded to orange. There were simple stone walls and a wood gate that Corvayne guessed were sturdy enough for the mostly harmless monsters on the floor.

The inn itself was built into the cliff side and had a tavern on top with rooms built into the stone, letting Corvayne get a room that looked out on waterfalls coming out of the side of the opposite cliff, lit by an invisible moon in silver and black shadows. Below the rooms there were ponds lit by lanterns, and Corvayne saw a couple of young Tower folk swimming together sans clothes.

He shared it with Bell and got her to hide under the Covers, while Spears laughed and asked if Corvayne wanted to watch her skinny dip.

“Under your clothes, aren't you always skinny dipping?”

She tossed a pillow at him for his suggestion.

The next morning, they took some time to see the cliff side mine part of the village, where townsfolk would go in to extract cart fulls of blue Cascadian metal. A helpful foreman told them about how a trader would come once a month with a great big caravan to haul the ore away and trade it for things they needed. The group didn't want to wait that long, but the man had a map of the route he was willing to sell for a pittance of gold coin.

Lady Blood Claw, perhaps because she had participated in Dungeons and Dragons rituals, wandered off for five minutes then returned saying she had a quest.

“Go into the mines and slay 20 dust bunnies.” She said, monotone.

Grunt rolled his eyes then mimed gaming on a keyboard and wiping sweat from his brow. Mister I asked “Can we eat them?” then without waiting set off into the mine to find out. It turned out: Not well. The dust bunnies were in fact some sort of elemental animal, and tasted like a mouthful of dust. Corvayne wondered if the Dust Man would appreciate one as a pet, and secretly used a dented iron lantern to catch one, using his share of the reward money after they turned in 20 left ears to also purchase some ore for it to eat.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

They also got a mining pick that was enchanted to help dig into rock, which Grunt turned down and Bell took instead.

They took a path back down, skirting around the rock on a side path to see if there were any caves to the interior of the cube-mountain, but all they found was a small cave with a chest that required Corvayne to swim in one of the half bowl shaped pools stuck to the wall, diving under the wall to a hidden air pocket. Corvayne found a blue metal bow that he gave to Mister I and a pair of soft leather gloves that they were not sure the function of. Bell took them as well, trusting the assessment they were not cursed.

Corvayne kept them looking out for caves, but they reached the line before the entire floor flipped to vertical in another day of walking. Corvayne had them walk over a few miles to line up with what looked like a hole in the wall, a square that gleamed the color of the sky, then they started working their way up. The path to the hole in the wall involved some actual mountain climbing, with Corvayne using the bracers to help bring rope across gaps or sometimes using Bell's pickaxe to carve a trail into the rock.

They found a brass accented treasure chest that spit up magma as a trap but had a lava knife that Corvayne recognized as the same type he had used to dispatch the whale. It also had a flaming sword which LBC happily took to replace her mundane and somewhat flimsy steel sword.

“Where did you find a steel sword so fast in Cascadia anyway?” Spears asked, and LBC instantly responded. “Gary.”

Corvayne heard a few “Ahhs” at that. He didn't get it himself entirely but went along with everyone else thinking it made sense. It also helped lift LBC's mood, as she was not happy climbing several miles up a wall on a make shift path of narrow stone walkways, trees that they had to climb, or water rusted metal pathways that someone had nailed to the rock face long ago and often creaked under Grunt's weight.

All that, and they pulled themselves up a broken stone stairway to the titanic glowing opening... which lead to what looked like another large chamber made up of cube mountains. However, the very smooth square passage they were in did have what looked like a platform in the exact center. There was a passage with a stairway down, a door on another side, and two ways to get atop the small platform to reach a chest banded with silver and blue gems.

Corvayne wasn't sure they solved the floor but it seemed like the Tower knew getting to where they were took a long time, and so after a little bit of basic trap-checking Corvayne opened up the chest and pulled out a gold spear, dripping a clear fluid. Corvayne offered it to Spears, who happily took it and pointed it into the distance, then blasted a huge wave of water from it.

Corvayne also found a ring that looked the same as his old storage ring and winged brown boots that floated, and a moment later he stored all his things and Lady Blood Claw had new boots that let her leap into the air and fall slowly.

Some very fancy looking energy-drink health potions were there as well, and Corvayne put one on his belt, sensing somehow that it felt full of life. He passed one to Grunt and another to Bell, which hopefully would be the three people most likely to be injured. With that all out of the way, he scooped up some scrolls.

They scouted the doorway and found it lead to a place with steel plants and giant stone bricks that Corvayne felt for sure was related to the source, especially given the sandy ground with streams running through them. They decided they would stay on Cascadia unless they found something that might be relevant to their goals, such as a city that looked well developed.

Back in Cube Valley, they had a quick meeting where Mister I convinced them to do a little bit of backtracking to go find the Caravan Path. Given the way they went, they just needed to go down to one of the Wall cubes and trek across it to a wide and fully intact petrified wood ramp leading down to a door in the wall. It kept going down all the way to the floor two wall cubes down, nearly four miles.

They passed through the door to a moon lit realm of white hills and spooky black trees that was nearly empty. Two Skeletons wandered into the clear path through the floor and were just as quickly dispatched with gunfire, falling apart the moment something hit their skulls. The map suggested a camp site in an area fenced off with graveyard fence and with a small shelter if the weather turned, but aside from Bell seeming a little too into the floor nobody wanted to actually rest there, figuring if there were some undead on the floor there were more undead on the floor.

Corvayne dubbed the floor “Creepy Moon Plains Floor 1” and wasn't too sad to move onto what the map had said was the jeweled forest. The gimmick on the floor was that there were bubbles that formed from the ground that contained breathable air. The gas between the bubbles was inert with a slightly blue tinge to it, but the plants seemed to love it as Corvayne couldn't see much besides the road and tremendous flower clad branches spiraling up to blue-white light above, with some air bubbles that had gone loose floating up through the air.

They harvested a few bubbles for everyone to put on their heads, then ventured through the gas along the road. There were air pockets every few minutes, and if Corvayne had something to augment his breathing he suspected there was some difficult path they could find away from the safety of the ground covered in bubbles for treasure. But, they didn't have something to generate safe air yet, and so they followed the map and soon reached the next doorway, again wide enough for a wagon to move through. Not before Grunt kept miming that he couldn't break out of the bubbles a few dozen times, which went from sort of funny to not funny then through to cracking Corvayne up for some reason he couldn't figure out.

The map told them they'd be going up on the floor they reached, something like a set of rusty airships floating in a fields protecting the huge structures from even an larger endless storm of colorful gas. The rust turned out to be some sort of shelled creature that clustered on the huge steel girders, scattering from the group then reforming as they passed huge steel plated bridges between metal decks decorated with brass and steel beams and colorful balloons, some of them miles wide and connected by ropes laden with fluttering banners. The sun shown from above, bright white as if to contrast all the colors. The route they followed quickly lead them across two bridges to stairs up. The second floor was also sky themed, but looked like the Cascadia forest again but with bright red trees. Small floating gardens formed the floor, with ornate liquid bridges that extended between and through clouds to let them travel. The floor was mostly open air and the afternoon colored clouds felt sort of lonely, as many of the islands had no bridges and were just a few broken columns, suggesting some sort of lost glory. The stairway was set into the base of a statue of a man with a pair of thunderbolts.

The third floor, which was short, seemed to turn everything into an oil painting, including the group. Equally notable was that the landscape was very pornographic, dominated by giant painted statues of women and men seemingly captured still enacting numerous hedonistic scenes. Grunt moved to cover Lady Blood Claw's eyes with his own impressionist oil paint shifting hands, and she slapped him away, turning a flurry of angry oranges and reds and becoming slightly more abstract until she calmed down. They moved quickly through the floor, especially when everyone kept tugging their clothes and saying it was hot. The third floor of lust didn't have enemies, or perhaps they would be obscene.

The next floor they reached was the endpoint of the map, and like many floor entrances they came out able to see a winding road leading down to what looked like endless yellow grass plains, only punctuated by titanic medieval towers perched on black rocks dotted with buildings. The trading city was at the base of one of those huge towers, and it took them two days to reach the foot of the massive castle reaching up into the clouds. There were farms and villages dotting the road, one of them a proper large town where the group stayed at an Inn and Corvayne had to fend off Tower Folk bar maids who seemed to find excuses to put their hands on him.

Grunt and Mister I stepped in, of course, and took one for the team. Lady Blood Claw grabbed the one male server's hand that started to try to give her a shoulder rub and stared daggers at them, putting the fear of LBC in the rest of them. The inn didn't have thick walls or large beds so Corvayne, Bell, and Spears were all crammed into one small bed hearing noises of at least two bar maids having a very good time as well as rowdy singing all night from below.

Lady Blood Claw looked ready to kill someone as they finished the walk to the tower, and got her wish when poorly equipped bandits jumped them. Corvayne suspected they were 'Monster' people as the last one that Corvayne captured didn't respond to questions and just snarled. “I'll kill ye!” over and over in the exact same cadence.

The base town, where the map ended, was just as massive as the tower, and possibly was an extension of the massive castle. No wall around the town, though there were so many terraces as the terrain shifted from grassy plains to rock supporting the tower. Unlike a similar setup they had seen in Nel'Feral, the town here was covered in flowers and gardens and had a complex water system where a giant lion face a mile up the structure poured water that was funneled over roofs and around smaller towers to water gardens and pour out of smaller fountains. Every street had merchants with wares laid out, fruits and veggies giving way to crafted jewelry giving way to exotic looking arms, racks of scrolls and trinkets made from bones and twine that to Corvayne had a feeling of being magic.

More importantly, they found a square with several inns around a fountain. Grunt and Mister I went to the rowdy looking one with way too many laughing Towerfolk girls, where Corvayne and the girls went to a quiet establishment that had a harp player thrumming in the common room. It also had rooms with large comfy beds and thick walls, which meant that Lady Blood Claw got some sleep, and Corvayne had the girls take turns between some alone time with him and the very luxurious bath in the next room over.

Bell and Spears fell asleep on both sides of him and Corvayne wrote, leading him up to the point they were at. Corvayne filled in the notes and smiled. No horrific wounds, or ticking clock, or insane monk stalking them. Just a few days of hiking, seeing fantastic sights, and finding treasure with a little bit of danger to keep it interesting.

Corvayne looked over at Spears, gleaming with a thin layer of dish soap she used to 'make herself look younger' as if she wasn't a pretty young woman. Her warm liquid hand was currently clutching his night shirt. On the other side, Bell's red hair rubbed at his chin as she pressed her back into him while gently snoring. Friends, girls, adventure.

Corvayne was happy. This was what he really wanted to do, more then even seeking out his destiny.

Still, they did have some goals, and tomorrow morning the group would gather after breakfast and would seek a library attached to the town and see if they could strike up a deal for information about the System. Corvayne used a shadow arm to close the drapes a little, the breeze coming in making the room a little cool, then pulled the covers over his lovers and himself and closed his eyes, untroubled sleep finding him.