Descending the stairs to the sixth floor quite a few hours later, I was sure the sun had set outside by now, or at least it had started to set. Even with the penalties, I had gained enough experience to level twice. More surprising, however, was the fact that, in that time I had only run into two other devling parties. I know this dungeon was considered a beginner dungeon, but with the number of people in Southport, I would have thought this place would have been packed.

I’d been half afraid I’d have to wait for rooms to be repopulated with monsters, but that hadn't happened, and every room I came to almost seemed never to have been touched, a thriving population of monsters in each one. If I hadn’t known any better, I would have thought I was in a completely separate part of the dungeon that only connected with the main dungeon randomly. It was almost like the secret rooms Dungy had created for me to train in back in Forestend.

Admittedly, the lack of delvers could be explained by everyone else going to the other two dungeons instead. That was one of the problems—no one authority controlled access to dungeons. Oh, the Adventurer’s Guild tried and was successful when the Dungeon was close to a settlement or, on rare occasions, when the dungeon was inside one.

But when the dungeons were quite a distance from a settlement, like the dungeons around Southport, the Adventurer’s Guild had trouble managing them, and they basically became a free-for-all. Few, if any, guild workers actually want to be that far from civilization and do everything in their power to get transferred back to a guild hall. It's gotten so bad that the Adventurer’s Guild doesn’t even try to set up an outpost when new dungeons are found far from settlements.

Some dungeons have started implementing flow controls into their floor designs, especially the more frequented ones with a more traditional connected room design. Most of those chose to implement something like what Dungy had done on his first floor, where there were multiple ways to get to the floor boss, which made it so that not all delvers were funneled down the same path. Others had started to experiment with the open floor concept where the entire floor was open, and large numbers of different monsters roomed the floor in small groups.

From some of the reports I had seen, those seem to do better since they also introduce some randomness to each floor. after all, you could face one group of monsters one day and come back the next and get ambushed by an entirely different group in a completely different place. For my part, I thought a combination of both would be best; after all, if all you encounter are open floors, that can get boring even if they all have a different theme. Also, dungeons specializing in traps are disadvantaged because those open floor plans limit the type of traps that can be deployed. Like most things in life, it is a set of trade-offs that each dungeon has to consider.

Then there was the fact that I hadn't heard a peep from the Dungeon Intelligence, which I reflected wasn’t really a reason for concern. While Dungy had been a chatterbox, that didn’t necessarily mean the others would be. Still, it was one more thing that added to the oddness of this place. I was brought out of my thoughts as I entered the safe zone at the bottom of the stairs. A group of five—two females and three males--was already there; from the hushed conversation, I could barely hear they were trying to decide if they should go back or continue.

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The taller of the two girls seemed to be the leader, with fiery red hair, listening as one of the guys was talking. Her armor was worn but still in good condition, and the collection of dents and scratches testified to the countless battles the armor and girl fought through. Beside her, the shorter girl—a route, from the look of her light leather armor and twin daggers—didn’t seem interested in the conversation and was scanning the group’s soundings. An experienced adventurer, always looking for danger, even in a safe zone. I tried hard not to let the grimace show on my face; my experience with rogues had not been that great, but I’d still give them the benefit of the doubt.

The boy who was talking was a burly warrior with a greatsword strapped to his back. Like the redhead, his armor was worn but still in good condition. Apparently, his position was that they only had two more floors to go, so why not continue? I could understand his reasoning, but that didn’t consider that the last two floors would be the most challenging. And if they were like me, they’d been fighting for the previous few hours. I planned to spend the next few hours resting in the safe zone so I could be fresh for whatever dangers the dungeon had in store. If the look on the redhead's face, she agreed with me even though she didn’t know that.

The other two boys didn’t say anything but had a resined look. The taller of the two wore the robes of the Mage’s Guild and held a staff that glowed faintly from the runes engraved into its wood. The other was also in the robes of the Mage’s Guild, but unlike the other one, I could make out the patch on his shoulder—a stylized depiction of a tree—a healer. That probably meant the mage with the rune staff was the group’s primary ranged damage dealer. I nodded slightly in approval. It seemed this team was well-balanced. I was still amazed at how many groups back in Forestend didn’t even have a healer or someone who could tank opponents.

The rogue finally noticed me or, more likely, concluded that the other party members were too engrossed in their argument that they wouldn’t because she tapped the taller woman on the shoulder and pointed at me. When they both looked at me, I waved and moved to the other side of the room to provide the group some privacy.

“Excuse me,” the redhead asked before I could entirely turn away, “did you fight through the first five levels of this dungeon solo.”

“Um. Ya,” I answer, uncertainly at the surprise in the other woman's voice.

“Really! I’ve never heard of anyone soloing the Fire Elemental that served as the Fifth Floor’s Boss.”

“Fire Elemental?” I question. “The boss I just fought was a Level Sixteen Rock Troll. I admit it was a challenge, especially when he started throwing around those boulders, but it wasn’t impossible to solo.”

“You can't be serious. Everyone knows that the Fifth Floor’s boss is a Level Fifteen Fire Element,” the guy who’d been arguing with the redhead piped in.

We stare at each other, trying to figure out what’s happening.