I made frequent trips to the park over the next few months to implement my new Food Plan A: Permaculture Around the Dungeon. An acre is an area of land about 70 meters on each side, more or less the size of the grassy area surrounding the dungeon building before meeting the road, parking lot or trees. I want to grow a hedge to stake out this much area as my personal low-maintenance food garden. Honey Locust and Osage Orange are two hedge plants recommended for my area, both growing on the University campus allowing me easy access to cuttings and fallen seeds.

Both seeds take some preparation (mostly soaking in water) before they'll germinate and I put them in the ground all around the border while I made long mounds of overturned sod, wood and leaves from the forest area, and topped them with straw and newsprint. The mounds will be ready for planting and transplanting over the next few years.

When the weather was clear, I moved as much food, seed, tools, shelves, and books to the safe zone as possible. Other days I went exploring dark buildings for dungeon equipment, and practicing punches with a bag at a local gym.

Finally as Summer began in earnest, I had everything I needed. I found equipment for both football and ice hockey in my size and frankensteined it together with the few pieces of riot armor from the police station that fit close enough, strapping it in with strips of velcro where needed. My sleeves were cut resistant, my torso had an outer layer of chainmail made by an SCA enthusiast. A military surplus store had combat boots that fit me, and I'd been breaking them in over the last two weeks. It was heavy, but I had built up pretty well from riding my bike all over town while hauling supplies. And it beat getting hurt.

I kept first aid supplies in the safe zone: gauze, bandages, neosporin, betadine, hoping I'd never need any of it. After showing all this to Lance, I asked if I was likely to need the riot shield since it was a bit large for me. He said he trusted my judgement, and I left it behind.

Through the portal was a maze of wide hallways, walls and floor made in a pattern of large grey bricks arching upwards to meet in the center. There were rooms here and there throughout the labyrinth where small groups of monsters would gather and attack all at once. Now, Lance opined, would be a good time to use your wildcards and try for a weapon.

The treasure cards system usually gave wildcards which could be used once to randomly generate an item based on the card's level. The three wildcards in my possession were level one, the weakest possible. Low level cards could be combined two at a time to produce a card one level higher. Higher level cards would give better items, and using five wildcards of the same level at the same time would grant an extra item for a total of six.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

I removed the velcro on the outer layer of my right glove which was a heavy work glove modified to shorten the fingers so the ends wouldn't get in the way. Underneath, I showed Lance I was wearing fingerless leather gloves and brass knuckles. "To protect my hands," I explained. Lance raised an eyebrow but said nothing as I re-secured my outer glove. "I was planning to combine cards and get five at level five before trying my luck, but your counsel is welcome." Lance nodded and made a noncommittal hmm, which I took as tacit approval.

The other type of treasure card showed a specific item. These could be combined with cards of the same item even if the levels were different. Lance's card was of this type, but there were also unique weapons and other artifacts that would drop this way.

Lance had agreed on the outside to defeat the first few monsters we encountered, and from there let them come at me one at a time unless I got injured, so that's exactly what we did. They were greyish green humanoid creatures with large mouths and sharp teeth, only about five feet tall, even shorter than me. After casually stabbing the first one that ran toward us, Lance called them goblins and said all the monsters on this floor would most likely be goblins. As it hit the floor, the goblin's body disappeared and was replaced by a small dark purple rock. "A gemstone, I'm told they're a power source. At that size, basically worthless." I picked it up anyway, and put it with my cards.

Lance noticed and said I should practice my Storage skill. I remembered that word from my Status and as he then explained, Storage was a skill to keep personal inventory items and would expand in capacity with frequent practice. Items in storage were held in suspension, safe from theft, breaking, and decay. Nonliving items only. Good to know, now I have one more thing on my schedule.

We spent a few hours with frequent rest breaks, Lance letting one goblin approach me at once. They always preferred to target me, even if they noticed Lance first, and when there were two or more Lance would lazily stab all but one of them on their way to me. I'd take them down in three or four punches, or sometimes punches and kicks with a steel toed boot. Memories came back, telling me to keep my center of gravity low and aim kicks to the knee.

I fell down a few times, and must have gotten up too slowly because Lance told me "You should practice that." I thought I heard him sigh, but told him I was thankful for his advice. He threw me a side glance and said nothing more.

After counting 40 kills between us, I wanted to head back. We hadn't seen the stairs going down yet, but this was enough for the first day. Lance led us to the safe zone, stabbing one more goblin on the way which dropped a wildcard making a total of four cards, 31 rocks, and seven iron coins dropped in total. It would take 80 level one cards to make five level five cards, and I now had a total of seven. Eighteen more runs like that would do the trick.

In the safe zone, Lance nodded at my work with the shelves and stackable plastic containers, making noises of approval. I told him about my plans for hedges and permaculture outside, but he feigned disinterest. "My expertise is guarding, but there are other summons who might advise you if you can find them." And with that, my first dungeon fighting experience came to an end. Good enough.