Max had been right. Sleep had come quickly and deteriorated just as quickly. The night turned slightly wet and cool – on whichever side wasn’t heated by the fire – , making for uncomfortable sleep. Endless tossing and turning got him some amount of sleep but how much he couldn’t say.

Opening his eyes once or twice showed him the world they were in now in a new light. Quite literally. Without a moon or stars in the sky it should have been pitch black. Instead, there was a very glow permeating the very world around them, of unknown origins and with never the same hue as moments before.

Time passed as it usually did, but when he woke the final time, he knew that falling asleep would not be in the realm of the possible for now. When he sat up and wasn’t greeted by Jamie he grew worried.

A quick glance later he calmed again. She seemed to be breathing deeply. The blood stain hadn’t spread further, and she wasn’t laying in a puddle of it. That was good news.

A glance at their surroundings later he could tell that they seemed to be safe. No monsters or other creatures had appeared. In fact the world seemed identically to how it had been previously, just darker.

She should have woken me just in case, that she’d just fallen asleep worried him, but he wasn’t mad with her type of injury he’d have done the same. And nothing had happened anyway so they were alright. After a quick cold-cut snack he turned around and considered their next steps.

In all honesty, there wasn’t much to consider. They needed to get to the next level, find other people, and finally get out of the dungeon if that was even a possiblity. Find something or someone that could to properly nurse Jamie wound would be great too.

There was just one hiccup to the plan. Given his predicted survival rates, getting out of the dungeon was potentially not ideal.

And there was an obvious solution to all that.

The tower in the distance was even visible at night. With maybe fifteen kilometers away, they would be able to reach it in a day, as long as Jamie’s situation didn’t deteriorate. And if it did, he would carry her there himself. Which might not be an entirely unreasonable statement anymore – given the increases to his might stat. He’d truly grown stronger. He felt it with each movement; a powerful jump as easy as hopping before, carrying the pitchfork for extended durations, barely more of a bother than holding a phone in hand.

Though, as long as he had to carry the pitchfork, Jamie would do her utmost to keep a sensible distance to him. For good reason, now it was vital to not contaminate her wound with Dung Sweeper’s seeping.

As the night moved on Max grew bored; idle and mostly pointless thoughts could only entertain him so long. Who’d have known that watching nothing could be this boring. Not him certainly.

To keep awake he began meandering around, always keeping Jamie in sight.

He walked up the hill one over – one of roughly seventy-five percent that were not covered by anything.

But mostly he waited and looked at the tower in the distance. Checking frequently on Jamie and seeing whether she showed any signs of worsening – which she didn’t.

Time dwindled like that.

With Max on the brink of falling asleep several times. Rebuilding the fire, or whistling melodies of his favorite songs – or those he had memorized the melodies too best. Inspecting the plants around him had grown boring some time ago.

Until Jamie finally stirred. Max was by her side before he could consciously make the decision.

“Hey there, how are you feeling?” he asked kneeling next to her.

“I’m freaking cold. What do you think? Not much it seems like. Geeh,” she responded yawning. “Give a girl a moment to wake up, will you.”

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Don’t you think you are coming on a bit strong? No need to be so passive aggressive.”

“Don’t you think you are coming on a bit strong?” Jamie parroted. “I don’t know Max, how’d you like to be woken up and immediately being reminded of begin half pummeled to death the previous day.”

“Ok, I can sorta see how that might have been in poor taste. Sorry Jamie,” he said. “But this is important. I need to know, so we can plan accordingly.”

“Listen, I don’t mind that, but maybe give me a few minutes, I need to go behind the bushes for the moment – no peeking or I’ll hit you – and have breakfast. We can talk then.”

Max hadn’t intended on peeking. She knew how to get under his skin. The act more annoying than it would have been from anyone else. Maybe it was the minor crush he’d had ever since first seeing Jamie. Something that was not in the realm of ever developing into more now. Even if the interest was reciprocated, it would just be a needless complication – he kept telling himself.

Jamie returned to Max feeding the fire and heating the previous’ evening’s dinner.

“Thanks Max,” she said and sat down.

After a few minutes of silently eating, she turned to him with a smile.

“Sorry for being so flippant earlier. I know you mean well. I wanted to be annoyed at something, someone. And being annoyed by you is easier than having to live in my own mind by being annoyed by myself. If that makes any sense.

“But to answer your question. I’m feeling surprisingly well,” she pulled up her shirt and pointed at a throughly scabbed over wound. “Ok, you might not be able to see much, but I feel like the wound has actually drastically gone down in size. Still hurts a ton, but I imagine it’s better than it used to be.”

Max stared at the wound for a bit.

“Can I touch it?”

“I guess. But be careful, I think my rip is still injured just as heavily.”

Max followed her instructions, and while he wasn’t entirely sure how big the extent of the wound had been he could tell it had grown smaller.

“Still feels tender, but I expected worse after how it looked yesterday. So what? You think we heal faster here?”

“We could? How am I supposed to know. I just know that I’m better than I should be.”

“That’s great. I was really worried. Maybe if you are soon able to move without restrictions, there shouldn’t be any issues of finding other humans.”

They talked for a bit longer, postulating and hypothesizing without coming to any conclusions. But before long Max decided to take another nap, given how his previous one had not been very long and the worlds darkness was still prevalent.

Jamie promised to pay good attention and wake him when it started to get brighter.

In the end she didn’t need to. Max woke all on his own after a short while, what Jamie said to be a few hours later. The coldness of the night – even with a low burning fire nearby and lacking insulation having made the night less then pleasant.

“Good morning, I guess,” Jamie chimed cheerfully. “Are you hungry.”

As they heated up another bit of their previous dinner, they began talking about how they should proceed from here on out. Jamie sharing the ideas she’d had while Max had been fast asleep.

“We should head for the tower but consider if we can take any of the monsters nearby. If we can get the clearing reward that might be nice on the next floor. And even better you might be able to infuse the rest of our clothes with monster shards. I doubt we can get the other quest, to be entirely frank. I don’t see us defeating anything stronger than a mini-boss even with improved equipment.”

Max nodded as she went on. Having had much the same thought. Without knowing what they could expect of the next floor it was best to be as prepared as possible.

“Alright let’s do it. I think it’s a good plan,” Max said when Jamie had kept talking and justifying herself.

“You know that you are going to have to do most of this on your own right. I won’t be much of a help for now.”

Before leaving, they cleaned their dirty clothes in one of the two streams flowing out from the pond where the deers had lived and put the wet cold clothes back on. Neither comfortable leaving anything that might give them a small edge behind.

###

Four hills over, and roughly a third of the way to the tower, the sun slowly began rising. The time they had given themselves to skirt monsters and dangers had come to an end. Which was good, because otherwise they would have to circumvent an entire valley to not walk through the mushroom forest ahead of them.

Accompanied with the first rays of sun, Max and Jamie descended into each of the two adjacent valleys to determine which foe would be the safer to approach.

One held maggot like creatures, except, they weren’t quite maggots. Their bellies were lined with carapace that allowed them to glide over the smooth moss surface, using only their two appendages to push themselves around.

How such creatures managed to survive in any kind of place Max couldn’t figure out. Neither could Jamie. For all they could tell, aerial predators would be having a field day. Unless the creatures were somehow poisonous.

There were various likely scenarios in what sort of ecosystem such a creature could have evolved, but those were thoughts for another day and for someone else.

Bsr’t Blight – Monster – Floor One – Level Two

Was the highest level of the group they had found, and it didn’t look particularly more dangerous than the others around it.

To both their surprise, all the creatures in this group were at least level zero.

They were optimistic that those monsters would be a survivable encounter.