Just like how there were secret passages in the Light Dungeon to hop around quickly, there was also a shortcut I could use to move directly from the Great Sage’s tower to the Void Dungeon’s gate. In this case, all I had to do was walk through the wall with the intent of leaving and I was there.

Without saying another word to Stratos or Pinky, I turned and walked through the wall, coming out the other side under the canopy of the Black Altar’s roof, back on Crucible. The moment I stepped out of the dungeon, the peanut gallery chimed in.

A curious observer was wondering when you’d come out

An unnamed observer checks you for injuries

An unnamed observer doesn’t even see any blood

An unnamed observer sighs with disappointment

An unnamed observer was told this was a deadly dungeon

A mysterious observer is glad to see Player Daniel Lamont come out

An impatient observer wanted to see what the fuss was about

A cryptic observer will be watching from now on

Great, they were multiplying. Hang on, did this mean the observers couldn’t see what happened in the Void Dungeon? They were definitely there in the Light and Nature Dungeons. Must be because of the Void. Good to know.

As disconcerting as they were, seeing those observers usually meant I’d get something good, but this was not the time to fret about that. I was too worried about my friends.

I stepped into the teleportation circle outside the Black Altar without even acknowledging the observers. A moment later, I was standing in the gazebo in the center of the city getting flooded with a rush of new knowledge and insights about the Toronto Transportation Complex. Most important of which was that I had misinterpreted the unlocked YYZ power. But it was not the time to think about that either.

“Daniel!” Jane said a split second after I appeared.

A curious observer thinks it was rude to run off like that

I waved my hands to clear away the message. “Not now,” I said.

A curious observer thinks that was even ruder

A curious observer decides not to give a reward after all

An unnamed observer has to agree with curious

A mysterious observer thinks there is a first time for everything

Jane was with some of my friends at the bottom of the gazebo steps and I rushed through the floating messages to join them. My chest tightened and a knot formed in my stomach when I saw there were only five of them: Jane, Bruce, Arthur, Morgan, and Byron. Their clothes were riddled with holes, rips, and scorch marks, as well as not a few blood stains, and there were still open wounds underneath that hadn’t been healed. They’d clearly been in quite the fight.

A quick check revealed all of their health was low and mana nearly drained. I immediately used Everybody Gets A Heal to cure them all at once. They’d been injured enough that I had to cast h he heal a few times to get everyone back to full health.

Why were there only five of them here? Did the rest die?

Jane punched me on the arm. “The Void Dungeon? How the hell?”

Morgan nudged Jane away. “We saw the notification. Congratulations. We weren’t as lucky.”

“Who died?” I said, probably much louder than necessary.

“Whoah, what’s with that look?” Jane said.

“Tell me! Who died?!”

“Sam was taken down early by some Shades,” Arthur said.

“They seemed to target his Nature affinity,” Morgan said. “Totally ganged up on him.”

“He was cutting them down like ripe wheat with his claws so it’s not surprising they’d gang up on him,” Jane said.

“We lost Nina to a trap,” Byron said, voice cracking. “Just bad luck.” He was putting on a brave face, but I could tell it was only for show. He was clearly worried to death-death about his wife.

“Andy, Galahad, and Sigrid fell in the Boss battle,” Arthur said, then put a finger in a hole that had been punched through his armor, dried blood caked around it. “We barely even got to the Shadow Demon. Makes me realize how much we rely on Nina’s healing.”

“Makes me wonder how other teams get by without a Nina,” Bruce said, and looked confused when Byron shot him a nasty glare. Then it clicked in. “Sorry, Byron, I didn’t mean...”

“Is that all?” I said. I could hear my voice rising in pitch, still too loud. “Where are the others? Chika, Kenji, and the rest?”

“They went back to the dojo already, we’re just waiting for the others to respawn,” Morgan said.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Sam. Nina. Andy. Galahad. And Sigrid.

“Oh god,” I said.

“Seriously, what’s with that look?” Jane said.

“We’ll beat it next time,” Bruce said.

Morgan seemed to understand what was on my mind. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Sigrid and others will be fine.”

“Not necessarily,” I said. I managed to keep the volume down, but I couldn’t stop my voice from quaking.

“Look, I was wrong about when and why people respawn.”

I explained fatality factors and everyone’s eyes flashed toward the place on the gazebo where people appeared when teleporting in from an affinity circle, like I just had, or when respawning. I’d just swept aside all our naive assumptions how respawning works and now the reality that death-death had been a lot closer all along than we’d thought was sinking in.

“Oh god,” Jane said.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Byron said.

“What’s the fatality factor of the Shadow Dungeon?” Morgan said.

“I don’t know exactly, but it is considerably lower than a hundred. I don’t think we are allowed to know exact numbers until the dungeon has been solved.”

“Do you know what it was for the Void Dungeon?” Arthur said.

“Twenty.”

”Meaning if you had died, there was only a twenty percent chance you’d respawn,” Arthur said.

“Jesus Christ,” Morgan said.

“But Shadow won’t be as low. I also know that the Void Dungeon was the most difficult of all of them. It was meant to be a true killer dungeon, impossible to beat.”

“So of course you beat it alone,” Jane said. “How do you know all this anyway?”

Yet another secret I still kept from everyone was my special relationship with Stratos but it wasn’t hard to explain away my knowledge about dungeons and fatality factors without revealing that.

“It’s something I got from the dungeon,” I said.

“Of course.”

“What about the other dungeons, Nature and Life?” Morgan said.

“You know what, I didn’t ask yet,” I said. I didn’t have to ask, Command Line offered the information unprompted.

>>> The Nature Dungeon had a fatality factor of 75

>>> The Life Dungeon had a fatality factor of 80

I chose not to share the Command Line windows, partly because I didn’t want to explain what it was, but mostly because I didn’t want anybody to know about it either.

“That’s not so bad,” Morgan said.

“Yeah, but solving the labyrinth was supposed to take several tries and make TPK not only possible, but likely.”

“TPK?” Jane said.

“Total Party Kill,” Arthur said.

“Fuck. We were so lucky,” Jane said.

“Let’s hope that luck holds,” Byron said, his eyes still fixed on the gazebo, waiting for his wife to appear there. “At least for a little longer.”

Every minute lasted forever as we waited at the base of the gazebo. Whenever someone appeared in the teleportation circle we jumped, hearts pounding, but it was never our friends, always some other Players returning from another circle somewhere. Most of them looked pretty beat up, no doubt from their own failed attempts to conquer a dungeon.

As worried as I was about Sigrid and the others, I couldn’t help wondering which dungeons they were returning from, and what their bedraggled states said about the challenges they’d faced there. Mental note: get the elven spies to find out what dungeons people were delving into.

Stratos had said that dungeons were meant to be challenging, that they were designed to take several attempts to beat them, that it would be considered normal for some Players to die-die in the process, even. But maybe Team Maple Leaf’s failure to conquer the Shadow Dungeon and the rough shape of the other teams coming back from adventures was indicative of something more. Were the dungeons still too hard for them? Were Players reaching a bottleneck in their growth? What would it take to push them over the edge so that they could beat the dungeons?

Then it happened. Sam appeared on the gazebo platform looking dazed and confused. I knew that feeling first-hand, having died and respawned twice myself. He saw us and grinned.

“Sorry about that,” he said when he joined us. “I guess I got too cocky and rushed in where I shouldn’t have. How’d we do?”

Nobody said anything. We were all waiting for someone else to break the news, but the looks on our faces must’ve clued Sam in that things were not hunky dory.

“What’s wrong?” he said.

“You’re the first to respawn,” Morgan said.

“Makes sense, I was the first to die,” Sam said.

“Which means Nina should be next,” Byron said.

“Nina died too?” Sam said.

Morgan put a comforting arm around Byron while Jane took Sam’s arm.

“Let’s talk over there,” Jane said, leading him to one of the fountains, no doubt to tell him what happened after his death and explain the situation. I could see the exact moment he heard about fatality factors by the concerned expression on his chiseled features.

They rejoined us and we waited quietly, all thinking the same grim thoughts. Shortly after that, a solitary figure appeared in the circle.

“Nina!” Byron shouted, and rushed onto the gazebo to catch his wife in a tight embrace. She grinned and said something to him, but they were too far away to hear. Then Byron said something and Nina’s face fell. He kept a tight grip on her hand as he led her off the gazebo.

“I don’t know if I can survive waiting,” Arthur said.

Great choice of words, Arthur. Very tactful.

Morgan must have thought the same thing because she shot a glare at her brother before turning to me. “Distract us, Daniel,” she said. “Tell us about the Void Dungeon.”

“Yeah,” Jane said, shivering, whether at the thought of that endless creepy expanse or from worrying about our friends was anybody’s guess. “How the hell did you manage to solve that? And by yourself?” She punched me in the arm for no good reason.

With fear for Sigrid, Gallahad, and Andy raging out of control, I somehow managed to push it back far enough that I could start to regale them with my adventure. It must have been a good story because we hadn’t realized someone had respawned.

“I’d expect a bit of a warmer welcome,” Sigrid said, sauntering over from the middle of the gazebo. “We did just return from the dead, after all.”

It took precisely one blink until she was enveloped in Jane’s arms. Galahad, who was beside her, was similarly embraced by Morgan, although it took a little longer for her to reach him. Morgan couldn’t teleport like Jane and had to actually run over.

“We’ve been so worried,” Jane said.

Sigrid laughed. “I’m fine. Nothing hurts anymore except my pride.”

When Jane let go, Sigrid looked at me and held out her arms. “Your turn.” I took the invitation, blinked over using Jane’s power, and hugged Sigrid. I said nothing, letting the desperate tightness of my embrace express how I felt.

“Whoah,” Sigrid said. “You trying to squeeze me back to death or something?”

I let go. “Sorry.”

“I didn’t say stop,” she said, clinging on and giving me a tight squeeze in return. We were probably the only people who could take a hug this tight from each other without crushing several ribs; not only were we both outrageously strong, but in the process of getting that strong we’d also toughened ourselves up a lot too.

“Hang on,” Arthur said. “Where’s Andy?”

We all turned our attention back to the gazebo, waiting for Andy to make his appearance.

And we waited.

And waited.

None of us wanted to say it, as though giving voice to it would make it real. Finally, Jane was the one who broke the silence.

“I don’t think he’s coming back,” she said.