Eric woke in the same corner of the room as he fell asleep in. His heart beat furiously as his eyes roamed, searching for danger.

As nothing caught his attention, he slowly relaxed. Though he soon shuddered and moved away from the walls he had been leaning against. Sleeping in a corner was safer, he had concluded. Even so, the darkness he had seen beyond the confines of the Deep made resting against a wall unnerving.

As he tried to stop thinking about the darkness, he leaned over and hiked up a pant leg to scratch at the multitude of spider bites he had collected.

With a sigh that was almost contented, he moved his satchel around to fish out an apple. Thankfully, every so often he had gotten something edible as a reward for defeating a room, which was probably the only reason he was still alive.

He noted the water skin that still lay on the far side of the room, empty. Sadly, such rewards were sometimes abundant and at other times scarce. Eric knew well by now that having no water did not necessarily mean he would find any today, or even tomorrow. Acknowledging this made his mood sour as he took a bite from the apple.

The constant stress and worry wore him down. He had no real idea of how long he had been here, but to keep track he had decided to consider every time he woke as a new day. While this timekeeping was not the most accurate by any means, Eric was never the less certain he had been in the Deep for weeks by now.

He was also very sure that the Archive was a complete and utter ass.

What the Archive had done to him was beyond the pale. He was quite certain that the System he had absorbed had messed up his mind, while leaving him unaware of it even happening.

His reactions had been off and strange. While he had freaked out a bit, been scared and worried, it was as if a part of his brain had just stopped working properly. He had taken things in stride and rejoiced in whatever scraps the Archive had thrown his way.

Eric chewed his apple as he considered sewer Ghouls in a new light. It was a punishment for the worst kind of offender, to have a choice between death and ghoulism. With what Eric now knew, it was surprising that so many chose to become a Ghoul.

Considering they used to be humans and now they spent all day eating crap, literally, there should have been a Ghoul uprising at some point. Yet they had never demanded fair treatment, or even to be paid more. Eric doubted they were paid at all.

Viewing his own experience in that shared and rather unpleasant light, Eric decided that the Archive was bloody horrible. He shied away from thoughts on the role people took in the travesty.

The jury was still out on this Order though, at least he was free to think nasty thoughts about it, which strangely lessened his fear of this new ...

Eric's thoughts trailed off. What were the Archive and the Order?

Eric was sure by now that he was on a completely different world than he had been born on. The messages from the Voice certainly supported that idea. The short view of a swamp with the giant skeleton and the sword that almost took his head off gave assent to the notion. Who even used a sword anyway?

The Order was what finally convinced him though. He had never heard of the Order. Everyone listened to the Archive through the Voice. Everyone.

Now that had changed.

Eric's emotions ran wild as he recalled killing the weird imp-creature and being tossed aside by the Archive like a used tissue.

He took an aggressive bite out of the apple. The Archive was crap.

Then he ended up here, fighting rats and spiders, whittling away at an experience debt. No more Essence. Experience.

He took another angry bite and shook his head.

At least his Blood Beetle had grown as time went on. It was now almost twice its original size, making it as large as a small dog and quite capable of clearing out a nest of spiders or rats on its own. Sadly Eric could not keep it active for too long, as it constantly drained his Mana.

With a grunt Eric got to his feet, tossing the remains of his apple in the corner.

Status.

Eric

Age: 19

Level: 1

Experience: 68/100

Race: Aberration

Class: Summoner

Strength: 4

Dexterity: 3

Agility: 3

Constitution: 3

Endurance: 6

Intelligence: 8

Wisdom: 5

Willpower: 11

Perfection: 1

Charisma: 2

Health: 21/30

Mana: 160/160 (8/minute)

Stamina: 60/60 (9/minute)

Unallocated Attributes: 0

He nodded to himself. As the day was just starting out he should be able to reach level two today.

With a stretch and a yawn he moved over to the door and opened it, to peer carefully in either direction.

Not for the first time, Eric swore under his breath at his lack of a weapon. Could not this Order at least give him something useful?

Quest!

Meet Ewynne and avoid dying.

Reward: Not dying.

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Eric blinked in shock, not knowing what to think, what was an Ewynne anyway?

He stepped out of the door into the hallway, which started to shimmer around him. His heart stuttered as he felt a sense of vertigo.

Eric could have sworn that his heart rate had just slowed down, but he decided that it had to have been his mind playing tricks, or possibly adrenaline.

A nearby door opened causing him to jump back, preparing to fight what might possibly be a patrol.

The patrols were normally less dangerous than what could be found inside of a room, but you never knew what you would get with a patrol. Some of them had been downright devious.

Just as he was about to start the far too long summoning of his Blood Beetle a stunning woman stepped out. She had skin, hair, and eyes in amazing shades of green.

She turned to face Eric, where he stood mouth agape.

With no expression and without saying a word, the lovely creature pulled her shoulders back and pushed her wonderful chest out.

Eric groaned out loud.

**

I stretched and got to my feet, having finished eating. As I did not yet suffer from any other needs I headed for the door into the Dungeon proper. What would the first floor of a Dungeon be like? How difficult was it? These were things I would have asked Charles, given the chance.

I stopped with a hand against the door. I missed Charles. We were not really friends, but we were something. Acquaintances? It was more than I was used to having.

Would I have cared as much about him if I had friends and family? Charles had in many ways been both trouble and help, probably more trouble. Yet I missed him.

Shaking my head I opened the door, only to have the Golem swiftly step through ahead of me. Not that I minded. I was quite certain the Golem could take more of a beating than I.

Before following, I activated two iron beads of Minor Shield and dropped them into my pockets, just as I had on the tenth floor. On this floor though, a shield of presumably four damage might actually be useful.

I stepped through the door after the Golem and took in the scene before me.

If I thought it would have done any good, I would have slapped the stupid piece of rock.

There it stood, in the same posture as the undead-infested Guard earlier, preening. This was seemingly in response to a gray and horribly ugly looking monster, which was busy leering at my Golem.

I wanted to hang my head, of all the things to learn, the Golem picked this up?

I had not been leering at the Guard.

With a deep sigh I fished out a few stones of Fire Burst. At least the creature stood still, giving me an opportunity to see how strong the opponents were on this floor.

Spotting me, the creature ducked its head and blushed, as if ashamed. Surprised, I studied it for a moment.

I grumbled under my breath as I sensed the same constellation of Power within it as from myself. The Power that every creature inside the Dungeon so far had lacked, was present in this thing.

"What kind of creature are you?" It was a long shot, but worth a try, I supposed. If it was not intelligent enough to speak, I could always just kill it.

The creature tore its eyes off the Golem once more, to stare at me. It then looked back at the Golem and then at me again. A creepy grin spread across its face as it straightened up, placing hands on hips.

"I am an Aberration!"

I rolled my eyes.

"What are you doing here? Are you alone?"

"I am gaining Experience!" I considered the strange way the creature spoke, as if it was not accustomed to the words it used. Could it be a goblin Aberration that had learned the human language?

"So, tell me, what are your names?" The creature looked from me to the Golem and back.

I sighed, "I am Ewynne. This is my Golem."

The creature's eyes widened in shock and it took a step backward, raising its arms as if to ward off a blow.

"Ew-- Ewynne?" It's large red eyes bugged out as it swallowed audibly, before it fell to its knees and banged its head against the floor.

"Please, please, please don't kill me, I'm useful, I can be very useful, I know useful things, I'm very nice, please don't kill me!"

I stared at the creature, how did it even know of me? It was not as if I was well known anywhere. Very few people in Logate knew of me, never mind outside.

I narrowed my eyes as a suspicion crept up on me, there was something that knew of me though.

"Did the Order give you a quest?"

The creature lifted its head off the floor and nodded furiously. "Yes, yes! I should meet you and avoid dying!"

I rubbed my temples and sighed as I tried to make sense of this. The quest was strange, was it an attempt at humor? It seemed rather callous of the Order, as I might have really killed the creature without consideration, this was a Dungeon after all. Further, the thing seemed weak of both mind and body, with spindly limbs and strange behavior. Why did the Order even bother?

It struck me that there was something the Order knew to dangle before me, information. I dropped my hands and stared at the creature. What could it possibly know?

"What do you know about undead?"

The creature rose slowly, with a strange expression on its face that made me think it was possibly constipated.

"I've heard of the Undead, they have shown up several times in history, they're horribly difficult to deal with. I think, I was never a very good student." It smiled sheepishly, making me frown in response. Just how far away had it come from?

"Where did you learn that?"

The creature straightened up with a wide grin, showing yellow and crooked teeth.

"I'm from another world you see! I used to follow the Archive before your benevolent Order set me free!"

It seemed to me as if the creature was expecting my approval, which did not make sense.

This creature used to be of the Archive then, just like the apple. Presumably it really could be from another plane of existence if that was so, yet the creature had heard of the undead. Whereas I had never heard of or read of the undead at all, before encountering them. Thus it seemed a reasonable hypothesis that the undead were not from this plane either, originally.

"My name is Eric by the way." It spoke happily, before trailing off, "Not that you asked..."

I looked over at the silent and immobile Golem. Despite the difficulties in the beginning and some weird antics, I was coming to appreciate it more and more.

The prudent thing to do for my sanity, was to ask the ugly creature questions, get my answers, and then leave it behind.

Quest!

Defeat the first four floors of the Deep, assisted only by your Golem and Eric!

Reward: Five levels.

I let out a sigh and hung my head. There was no way I would pass up on such a reward, even if I had to put up with this annoyance.

Why did the Order care more about this creature than Charles though? I had actually liked Charles a bit. At least he had not made me feel disgusted every time I looked at him.

The Eric-creature had started to prattle on, something about a beetle and killing spiders.

"Did the Archive send you here?"

Seemingly surprised at my interruption, it nodded furiously.

"Yes, yes." Something that looked a lot like horror flickered across its face, "It also changed my body, messed with my mind, and threw me aside as soon as something strange happened!" At the end of the rant the creature was shouting, waving its arms in the air and spouting gibberish.

"Explain!" Apparently my voice cut through the creature's nonsense, as it began to expound on what had happened.

"You see, I acquired this System, a book. I knew immediately what it was, but somehow the Archive tricked me..."

As the creature rambled on, I kept a close eye on the hallway behind it. But so far, I had not seen or heard any monsters coming.

I listened to Eric, as he told me of the Archive and the Voice. About the caves and his Domain. About summoning an imp, killing it, and then being abandoned by the Archive.

This made me wonder if there was an even bigger picture than what I had been struggling with so far. How would I even start to unravel this? Perhaps more important: why did the Order even want me to know these things?

I frowned as Eric finished up his story.

The Order did not care all that much about individual people, this was blatantly obvious by now. So why such apparent care with me all of a sudden? The reward for fleeing into the Dungeon was all but absurd.

The most solid theory that I could come up with, was that I was available and held knowledge about recent events that few or no others did. If there was one thing that seemed rather certain, after the encounter with the apple of the Archive, it was that knowledge seemed to be a limiting factor for interactions with the Order.

I did not know if that was a rule, a strong suggestion, or even something else. By what I had observed so far, my original hypothesis seemed flawed, but the general premise still appeared to hold true.

So in conclusion, I was the best currently available candidate as a knowledge repository. If this assumption was correct, I would eventually get a quest to tell someone of what I knew.

This also made it all but a certainty that the Order either had a backup plan, or was working furiously on one.

Further, it was quite probable that my role in all of this was a non-permanent one, which made me a bit worried that the Order would just have me killed off in the end.

On reflection though, this did not make sense. I doubted the Order cared enough to be vindictive. I was probably a piece on a board and little else.

So, both the undead and the Archive came from other planes of existence, presumably.

Both had Domains they could establish. In my fight with the Champion of Truth I had wondered about the unresponsiveness of the Order and if that had been due to the undead Domain.

Eric had mentioned leaving his Domain and the Voice talking about establishing a connection and reporting on his progress. As if something within Eric had informed the Archive about what he had done when not in the Domain. I nodded slowly as I recalled the feeling of being watched after my fight with the Champion of Truth.

A Domain belonged to an entity of some kind, that came to this plane of existence to do ... what?

Did this mean that the rest of the world was the Domain of the Order?

Was that why the Order cared? This was all some interplanar expansionist war?

Did that then mean that the undead and the Archive could somehow challenge the Order? But even so, why did the Order really care? What use did these entities have for their Domains?

That raised other interesting questions: what was the Emptiness Corruption that made the Archive throw Eric aside? Did that mean the imp was Zackary?

Why would that make the Archive abandon the Domain?