Rebecca had stormed through half the rooms in the first floor, this time with Matthew silently trailed along behind her, before she finally turned to face Matthew again. “Where is everything? I haven’t seen anything that resembled a Dungeon Heart, or any of the little gibberjabbers.”

“The gibberlings,” Matthew corrected calmly, “are generally creatures of the night. Given the chance, they’ll often go into a hibernation mode during the daytime. It’s just another one of their many weaknesses.”

Nodding lightly, Rebecca’s brows furrowed tightly together as she frowned to herself. “But that doesn’t explain where the g-men are at. Where are they all hiding?”

“How the hell should I know,” Matthew laughed, shrugging his shoulders. “You’re the one with the quest to hunt them and hunt the heart. I’m just tagging along for the ride, and to bail you out of things get too hairy.”

“So you’re not actually helping me look for them?” The corner of Rebecca’s eyelid twitched up and down several times in warning, but Matthew just shrugged, seemingly oblivious to it. “Not my job,” he told her glibly.

“You’ve got to get some first-hand experience under your belt if you’re going to survive, and tagging along behind me letting me squash all the small fries doesn’t help you at all,” Matthew tried to explain. “In this new world, there’s two things which will affect your ability to survive – your level and your skills. Since I’m mentoring you, I could go out and murder everything that walks for a week or so, and I could get you to level twenty in no time. The thing is, you’d just die once you got here, as none of your skills, resistances, or talents would have improved.

“I have a feeling that’s it going to take a long time for any of the new players to catch up to those of us who were beta testers,” Matthew boasted, sounding almost smug. “Not because we have a chance to start this new world at level twenty – that’s really not too difficult to acquire – but because we’ve had a year to grind our skills. I hit the level cap after about a month of joining the game, but I’ve been grinding and improving my skills nonstop since then.”

“This is your chance to safely practice some skills,” Matthew assured her. “Cut loose. Have some fun. You have something much better than any of the beta gear that I had starting out.”

“And what’s that?” Rebecca asked, taking a deep breath.

“You’ve got me.” Laughing, Matthew ruffled her hair lightly while a smirk twitched at the corners of his mouth.

“Fine.” Smacking at his hand with the back of hers, Rebecca pushed past him and back out into the halls. “If the damn things aren’t in the rooms in this hall, then they must be either on the second floor or in one of the other buildings. If they’re going to hibernate until nightfall, that gives us time to do a quick tour of the buildings. Right?

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

Trailing behind her like a lost puppy, Matthew just shrugged and didn’t answer. Instead, he half chuckled and asked, “Why the hell is this the first floor? And the damn floor above us the third floor? I’ve always wondered about that.”

“It’s because the stupid idiots who built this school built it on a hillside,” Rebecca told him. “The main entrance was built on the flat area beside the hill, and the second floor. That side of the building is where the auditorium, gym, and cafeteria is located. This side of the building was built on the stupid hillside, and that puts this floor lower than the main entrance. When you come in the main doors and turn to the right, you go down the steps to the office and this floor.

“It’s stupid, I know,” Rebecca admitted, “but whoever labeled the rooms didn’t want to call it something like ‘East Side’ and ‘West Side’ since it was all one connected building. And they didn’t want to call the floor with the main entrance the first floor, since you walk down to get to this floor. Thus, we’re on the first floor, the second floor is the main entrance and the half of the building that runs off in that direction, and the third floor is above us.”

“Well aren’t you Mrs. Know-it-all,” Matthew laughed mockingly. “Seems like you know all about the layout of the school.” Smiling to himself, he didn’t bother to tell her that he’d been a student here himself for several years, before he was sent away for a year. He already knew all that she was telling him, but it seemed like talking about it was helping her calm down. She may not have noticed that her stride had gotten longer, or that he steps were starting to seem more solid, but he had.

“I’m not a Know-it-all,” Rebecca shot back. “I just happen to know more than a Know-nothing. See,” she pointed up ahead to the end of the hallway, “the office is right there on the right, and those are the half-steps that lead up to the main entrance.”

“Half steps? Now who’s being a know-nothing,” Matthew teased. “Those are perfectly normal steps. There just isn’t a whole lot of them.”

“It’s a half flight,” Rebecca corrected, as she walked past the office and just glanced inside through the windows. She didn’t have any way to tell the time anymore, and it seemed like an eternity had passed since they’d came back to the school this morning to her. If the g-things were going to wake up when it got dark, that meant she had until then to just do a quick walk through and look for any place that they seemed like they might be gathering.

“And why the hell didn’t you tell me those geebers slept all day?” Rebecca asked moodily as she started up the thick moss-covered steps at then stopped in her tracks.