I felt that same reality warping, falling-but-not-falling wobbly effect when I walked through the portal. I had to close my eyes for a few seconds to let my body get used to being still and not wanting to vomit. When my inner ear was finally equalised, I looked around to see that I was in a huge hall with various benches dotted around the room, next to each bench as a large wooden box. The walls of the room were covered in what could only have been thousands of items. I saw leather hats, gloves, swords, hammers, gems and magnifying glasses, statues made of stone, wood, and some were made of glass. They all looked interesting and I wanted to go and look at them but I was frozen in place again, I waited to see what else would appear in the room. Instead, to my surprise and joy a notification popped up.
Challenge 2: Make something.
I felt the force release me and I landed on my feet and swayed for a second. When I was ready to move I slowly walked around the room looking at the various workbenches. Some of the benches I recognised as being for taylors, smiths, artificers, gem smith, enchanting, rune crafting, each bench had to correct tools for the trade and, while I wasn't familiar with the tools, they looked like they were high quality tools. The boxes next to the bench contained all the material needed to perform the craft, each was neatly organised but there were only limited items in the box. I pulled out a few of the uncut sapphires in the jewellers box and put them on the table as if I was going to use them. When I looked back in the box they had been replaced with a few more uncut sapphires. I frowned, I had planned on stealing all the tools and materials from each of the benches and the boxes next to them, but there was Dungeon fuckery going on and I didn't want to pissing off the Dungeon.
I, instead, examined the items that were on the wall. There were a multitude of items that covered every inch of the walls and were at least 4 items deep. As I was looking at a very well made shirt, a notification asked me if I wanted to view the item behind it, I selected yes and the shirt disappeared and a steel helmet pushed its way forwards. I reached forwards to pick up the helmet but my hand was stopped by an invisible barrier. I tried using my Identification spell on the helm, I felt the spell activate and my mana drained but nothing came back, like my spell was blocked. I frowned again, more Dungeon fuckery.
I decided that it was time for me to make something and find my friends. I found the woodworking bench in the middle of the room, it was a simple wooden bench that had 12 different chisels resting on it. The chisels were of various sizes, widths, cutting edges and bevels, these were far superior tools than anything I had ever used. I was used to a simple knife that I’d been given by my teacher years ago after I made my first carving. Thinking about it, I had never needed to sharpen the knife since I’d first gotten it and it was still incredibly sharp. I smiled and pulled the knife out of my bag and started spinning it in my hand, I beamed as my control over the carving knife had increased greatly ever since hitting Grand Master in my carving skill. I knew when to move my fingers and I could visualise the shape of the cut if it was to hit my finger. I reached into the box next to the bench and started pulling out pieces of wood before tossing them back into the box.
“No, no, not this one, or this one,” I muttered to myself as I sorted through the pieces of wood.
It was odd, when I was just a Master woodcarver I would get a slight impression from the wood if it would submit to the design I wanted to make. Now however I was getting strong impressions of what the wood wanted to become, some of them wanted to become specific tools like hairpins, clubs or bats, others wanted to be less practical things like table decorations or stands. Then there were pieces that gave off concepts or ideas of what they wanted to be, these were the most confusing as it felt like the wood was saying ‘Make me feel like I am the wind’ or ‘Make me into a household staple’. I spent a while staring at a block that gave the impression that it wanted to be ‘of the water and the sky’, instinctively I projected my design onto the block of wood and I almost dropped it as I received a feeling of desire and need from the wood. I eyed it, the same way you’d eye a shifty merchant who’d said “These goods were not taken from the corpses of bandits'', I started carving with hesitancy but the wood yielded to my carving knife easier than it had ever done so in the past. I took my time to carve the wood, making slow and steady cuts and staying with the design I had come up with. When I was finally done I put my carving down on the workbench and smiled.
“A tribute to you Master Burnsides.” I mumbled to myself as I inspected it.
Item: Carved Wooden Duck
Rarity: Very Rare
Weight: 2lb
Description: A carved duck from the hands of a Grand Master, made of simple wood but with a wealth of experience, knowledge and love of the craft has been poured into it. This duck is so life-like you can almost hear it merrily quacking.
I smiled as I looked at the duck. It was the first thing that I had ever been taught to carve and this one was so much better than the first one. I could just imagine my teacher beaming and telling me that it was the cutest thing he’d ever seen, a tear ran down my cheek at his memory and I hoped that he was enjoying reunion with his wife. I wiped away the tear and looked at my duck. I had managed to get the feathers to look ruffled, like it was in the middle of shaking water off, I felt as if it had the perfect pose to capture the movement of the tail as it twisted. I had shaped the wings so that they were in the process of flapping, the feathers on the underside looked like the chaotic mess that a real duck would have, at the same time the backs of the wings had some round protrusions that looked like water droplets.
"Duck made." I was proud of the duck, so I booped it on the head and I could have sworn I heard it quack.
My pride turned to horror and I shouted in dismay as my beautiful duck began to dissolve, it started as its head as the wood seemed to turn into colourless smoke and it quickly spread down its neck and along the wings. I tried to pat the duck to check if it was on fire but an invisible barrier stopped my hand from getting anywhere close to it, all I could do was watch as it vanished before my eyes. I didn’t know why I was getting choked up about the duck disappearing but the second it was gone a notification popped up. I mentally shoved it to the side and began searching the walls for my duck, after a few minutes of frantic searching I found it. The duck was nestled next to a stone carving of a man holding what looked like a disc of some sort and a monkey sitting on an ivory throne. I tried inspecting it but, just like the other items on the wall, the spell was blocked.
Slightly mollified but annoyed with the Dungeon I left the duck and walked over to the stone podium that had grown out of the ground while I searched for the duck. On top of the podium was a replica of the duck I had just carved, just below it was a shelf that held a gold prize box. I looked at the notification I had pushed aside in my search for the duck.
Challenge 2 has been completed. Please collect your rewards and enter the next door.
I nodded in confirmation of what I expected to see and turned my attention to the prize box. I opened it hoping that it would be something useful and looked down at 2 potions and the gold key. I had mixed emotions about them.
Item: Greater Health Potion x2
Rarity: Uncommon
Weight: 0.5lb
Description: This health potion will restore 500 health instantly.
Item: Gold Key
Rarity: Rare
Weight: 1lb
Description: A gold key that can be used to open a reward room in the Spring Falls Challenge Dungeon.
I put the key into my bag and looked at the potions again. 500 health was not a lot for a greater health potion, in fact it was lower than the average for greater health potions. I guessed that the real reward had been the gold key and the potions were extras. The description for the key said that there were reward rooms in the Dungeon, and from my knowledge of Dungeons, they were usually hidden so I began checking the room. The key also meant that there would be secret rooms that could be shortcuts through the Dungeon to get to a lower floor or skip a room, I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything.
As I searched I felt a pang of worry, I wondered how the others were doing and hoped that we would meet up at some point soon. I knew that they would be able to hold their own against most challenges that a Dungeon could throw at them however a Tier 4 Dungeon was not a thing to take for granted. Sure it was a challenge Dungeon rather than a Vault or Testing Dungeon, but that didn’t mean some of the challenges couldn’t be insidious like a Battle Royal with only 1 victor. I guessed that I had started at the beginning of the Dungeon based on the fact that the first room I had been in was challenge 1. Then again, Dungeon fuckery was a thing so it might be that it didn’t matter what room I started in, it would always be challenge 1 because it was the first room I had been in. I continued to worry as I searched but after 20 minutes I hadn’t found anything. I firmed my resolve telling myself that I’d be reunited with my friends soon and stepped through the portal to the next room.
I felt the same effect as before, the falling-without-falling, that I was now beginning to think of as this Dungeon’s version of teleportation. It was not the most elegant version of teleportation I’d felt, but something told me that it was a new feature that had only just been implemented. I also felt myself shake off the effects of the teleportation faster than I had done so before which was a good thing.
I looked around to see where I was now and found that I was in a large dark room, the ceiling was about 15 feet above me and I could see the end of the room was about 60 feet away. In between the platform I was hovering above and the back wall there was a large open chasm that just went down without being able to see a bottom to it, a bit like some of the ravines we had passed while travelling to Spring Falls. As I was looking at the far end of the room I realised that the assessment of the room being dark was wrong. The room was lit by Dungeon magic meaning that there were no torches or light crystals but instead light just existed, I could tell this because at the far end of the room was a small wooden sign that I could read said ‘Finish Platform’. I looked at the stone walls again and saw that they were made of black stone and were made to absorb the light so it wasn’t reflected back. That also meant that I was not sure if I’d be able to trust my eyes when it came to anything in the room. Before I had a chance to re-examine the room further a notification appeared and blocked my view.
Challenge 3: Reach the Finish Platform. Your speed and method will dictate the reward you will receive.
Smiling at the second part of the message, when my feet touched the ground and I used Etheric Step. It was the fastest method of movement that I had and since it was an ability rather than a spell it didn’t come with requirements like needing to touch the ground before I could activate it again, I just needed to move like I was going to take a step and could activate it again. This challenge was going to be a breeze and I should end up with a crystal prize box. I appeared out above the chasm and my Danger Sense overloaded my mind. Every nerve in my body exploded in warning saying that I was in imminent danger and that I really, really should not be above the chasm. My body felt like it was frozen in place as I started to fall. I tried to move my legs to activate Etheric Step again but it was like they were stuck in a Gelatinous Cube. I struggled for a second and watched as the finish platform began to rise above my head, I panicked and with all my might I forced my left leg forwards. There was a snapping sensation and I felt Etheric Step activate before I disappeared again.
I appeared above the Finish Platform and fell a few feet to the platform. I crashed to my knees on the ground, my legs were shaking so much that they were unable to take my weight. I felt the cold sweat on my back, and my legs were tingling and felt sore as if something had been holding them in place. I stayed there for a minute panting, had the Dungeon tried to punish me for using an ability to take a shortcut through its challenge? Or was it a trap that had been placed there to stop the use of abilities like Etheric Step? Come to think of it, I should have just been able to use my ability to go from the starting platform to this one. It had to have been a trap, a very devious one but a planned trap nonetheless. I stayed on my knees for a little bit soothing my mind that was still reeling from the mental shock of having my Danger Sense overload me. That had never happened before and it had made me freeze up and almost lead to my death, slowly I realised that the snapping sensation was me breaking out of the mental overload.
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I shivered and looked at the notification that had been vying for my attention for the last few minutes.
Challenge 3 has been completed. Please collect your rewards and enter the next door.
I looked over to see a pedestal, the statue on top was of me on my knees with my hands on the floor, I had a look of pure terror on my face. I squinted as I looked at the statue, was the Dungeon making fun of me? That was not cool. I looked at the shelf where the prize box was and saw a silver box. At least it had recognised that I had completed the challenge quickly however I was annoyed that it was only a silver box. I opened the box, took out my prize and used my Identification spell on it.
Item: Clean Chalice
Rarity: Uncommon
Weight: 4lb
Description: A bronze chalice that will turn any liquid it holds into clean water. This item is spatially expanded and can hold up to 500 gallons of liquid. Liquid stored within will not spill out unless the holder wishes it to.
The chalice was actually a very useful prize, there had been a few times in the past where I had run out of water while travelling and ended up trying cleansing rituals to purify water that should have been left alone. This was probably going to end up being a true lifesaver but right now it felt a bit like a punishment than a real prize, shaking my head I tossed it into my bag.
The now familiar portal had appeared in the wall not too far from me but I had received a silver prize box for the way I completed the challenge, that meant there must have been other ways to complete it. I looked around and could see bars that extended out from the side of the wall as well as rings that extended down from the ceiling. None of these had been visible from the starting platform but then again I hadn’t really taken time to look around, instead I’d just used my teleportation ability to jump to the finish. With the bars and hoops in mind it looked like it had been an agility or dexterity challenge, with my method of completion I guessed that the Dungeon deemed that I had cheated by not using their solution to complete the challenge.
I decided not to voice my complaints about the challenge in case I was being watched by the Dungeon, I knew they could be touchy and I’d heard rumours about arrogant adventurers being punished after complaining about the Dungeon. They were powerful enough that their punishments could be extreme and with my friends being elsewhere I didn’t want to make things worse for myself or for them.
I walked through the portal and felt the disorientating Dungeon teleportation again, as I reappeared it felt like my head had been stuck with a club and I kept my eyes closed as the pain began to slowly fade. I kept my eyes closed as the challenge notification appeared, I read it quickly and sighed in relief.
Challenge 4: Leave the kitchen.
When I was ready I opened my eyes and looked around. I had appeared in a large kitchen-like room that didn’t make too much sense. The room was split into 2 sections, the first section that I could instantly see was a standard kitchen with a large double basin sink with a just as large drying rack, a huge 12 burner stove with ovens doors underneath, to the side of the stove was a ceramic oven that looked like it was heated with wooden logs. The rest of the wall and spaces around the kitchen equipment was filled with cupboards, draws and racks holding ingredients of all sorts. The whole space gave off a homely vibe that made me want to cook some food and sit around relaxing. The other half of the room was odd and didn’t make sense to me. It was like large steps that were too big for a regular sized person, part of my mind said that it was a seating area like they had in battle arenas but why would there be one in a kitchen? It didn’t make sense and I couldn’t reconcile it, so instead I decided to ignore it and work on completing the challenge.
I walked around the room looking for a doorway but the archway that I would have predicted to have the door was just a brick wall. That made sense, it would be too obvious to have a simple door to exit. Something itched at the back of my mind though and I spent a second wondering what it was my brain was telling me, then it clicked, I could hear birds. It had added to the homely vibe of the kitchen and was mixed in with the feeling of the room. I walked around until I could hear the birds clearer, it ended up being by the sink and behind a set of purple curtains. I drew them back smiling but my smile froze on my face when I was confronted with a brick wall that had a picture of a window with a bird perched on the window frame, the bird sounds were coming from the bird picture. I shook my head and closed the curtains.
Fucking Dungeon fuckery.
I sat down on the floor and thought about the various ways that should be possible to use to leave the room. Most of the various ways were mundane in some way but I had already exhausted those options while looking for a doorway and the sound of the birds. I'm sure that there were other ways to leave but I couldn’t think of what they would be. I decided to let my Mana Sense guide me in the hopes to find a magical solution. I focused my Mana Sense around my eyes to let me see the flows of mana and opened my eyes. I instantly slammed them shut and released my Mana Sense as the entire room was so dense with mana that it blinded me from the second that I had looked at it. I cast Lesser Regeneration to fix the damage that I had done to myself, I kept my eyes closed until they were no longer throbbing. When I opened my eyes again I did so slowly, thankfully the room had gone back to normal and the mana in the room had become invisible once again.
I was about to start having a panic attack from being trapped in the room but the thought of my friends being stuck in the same situation made me pause. None of them would panic. Raven would probably be rifling through the cupboards looking for the most valuable things to steal, Clair would be looking at the ingredients and seeing what she could use to supplement our food rations. Taylor would probably have some way of measuring the flows of mana in the room and be able to find an exit that way. Harold would struggle with this challenge, while he wasn’t a novice in the kitchen, he was the only one of the party that we had unanimously agreed shouldn’t cook the party’s food. I smiled thinking about my friends and the rising panic slowly vanished.
Now that I was more centred than before I remembered something that my Dungeon Diving teacher had told me years ago when I entered my first Dungeon. Dungeons always gave clues and different ways to solve their challenges, there was rarely just a single way to solve a puzzle or challenge. I just needed to look around and find the clues.
I started with the non-kitchen side of the room. The section looked like steps for larger creatures so I treated them as such, I took my time to climb up the 10 levels to the top and when I reached it I looked around for a doorway. Nothing had appeared, instead I was met with a brick wall. I went back down and tried climbing up faster, still nothing. I felt that I was missing something but I didn’t know what it was. I sat down and looked at the kitchen for a few minutes, I took out a water cantine from my pack and drank some water. The solution didn’t lie with these raised sections, it had to be with the kitchen section of the room.
I climbed back down and started to rummage through the cupboards and draws. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for exactly but if I knew what was in the cupboards and draws I could at least rule out what would not be a solution. The cupboards were filled with crockery, baking trays, pans, pots, cake tins, mixing bowls and a whole host of other cooking items that I didn’t know the names for. A few of the cupboards contained ingredients, most of them were bulk bags like rice, flour of various types, potatoes, packets of dried food and food stuff that didn't have storage preparation or preservation magic. The draws mainly held cutlery and cooking utensils but they also had things like measuring scales. After looking through all the draws and cupboards I ruled them out as being exits from the kitchen but also ruled them out from having clues. I also had a quick look through the racks of ingredients and seasonings, everything was meticulously labelled but unfortunately there was no ‘Exit’ ingredient or ‘Powder of Door’ that I could conveniently use to leave.
The only conclusion that I could draw was obvious, I had to cook or bake something that would show me the exit. With this in mind I turned to the shelves that held the cookbooks, all 15 of them. I have to admit I was a little intimidated by them because the cookbooks were of various different sizes and, from what I could see, came in a few different languages. There was a large variety of cookbooks, from small brochure advertising a specific place and the local ingredients that could be used to make a few local dishes, all the way up to encyclopaedias of cooking that started with basics like frying an egg and ended with a banquet fit for a king. I hoped that I would find something useful among them as I gathered them up and walked over to the raised platforms, I sat down and began skim reading.
A few hours later and about 100 cookbooks later I came to the final book. If I’m honest it was more of a Tome than a book, it was well over 2,000 pages thick and was called ‘Helga's Guide To Kitchen Success’. The tome was written mainly in Orcish however as I was reading there were a lot of annotations, the annotations were in a variety of different languages, I recognised Gnomish, High Elven as well as one line in Abyssal that recommended trading out lamb or braised human. The tome was well written and some of the pages had runes written on them, out of curiosity I pushed some of my mana into one of the runes and an image was projected above the tome. The projection was of an Orc woman demonstrating the carving technique the page had been talking about. My eyes went wide as I realised that this was not just any cooking tome, it was a full cooking tutorial tome. The second I realised what it was, I knew that I would be stealing this no matter what.
Tutorial tomes were some of the most sought after items as they could only be made by a Sage in the skill it was for, which also meant that they were always incredibly rare, even if the skill was basic or obscure. The tomes was only filled with correct knowledge but they always had demonstration runes in them that could give an in depth display so that there were no misconceptions. It was rumoured that the Emperor of Lithan had a Trade tutorial tome and that was how they had risen to power. It was only a rumour but considering that the Lithan Empire was one of the major merchant empires, it only made sense if the rumour was true.
I picked my jaw up from the floor and continued reading through the tome. It was another 30 minutes before I reached the recipe section of the tome and I started to only read the titles of the recipes. There were a lot that I had never heard of and some of them that made my mouth water at just the name. I started to near the end of the book when a slip of paper fell out of the tome and into my lap, I picked it up and unfolded it. As I did so my Identification spell activated.
Item: Escape Room Cookies Recipe
Rarity: Rare
Weight: 0.1lb
Description: A recipe to create a delicious batch of cookies that can be used to exit the room and receive a prize at the end of the next room they complete. Warning, any room passed with the cookies will only ever grant a silver prize box.
I smiled at the recipe and quickly read through it. It was very simple, so simple I was sure that Harold wouldn’t have been able to mess it up. I made sure to put Helga’s Guide to Kitchen Success into my bag and got to baking some Escape Room Cookies. It was kinda fun mixing the ingredients and watching them turn into a bit of dough. I was a little dubious about some of the ingredients it required, I had never heard of ‘The zest of a lock’ or ‘Extract of a Slam’ but I found them in one of the spice racks. I wasn’t about to question the recipe though it wreaked of Dungeon fuckery and if it worked then I would be one step closer to catching up to my friends. In the end I had 6 little cookies that had little glowing red gems on them, they smelled amazing and I was looking forward to tasting one. I had added raspberries and white chocolate to the mixture when the recipe said about adding flavourings, I had loved the combination when I’d tasted it back in Sunak a few years ago and it was still my favourite type of cookie. I was about to take a bite of a cookie when a notification blocked my view.
Challenge 4 has been completed. Please collect your rewards and enter the next door.
The familiar pedestal rose up out of the floor and the statue on top was of me holding a tray of freshly baked cookies, the look on my face was pure bliss and I may have blushed a little. What? The Dungeon had managed to capture a true candid moment where I’d forgotten that I was in a Dungeon and was enjoying the smell of freshly baked cookies. I was a little touched.
The shelf had a golden box on it and I contemplated using my Prize Upgrade Coin to make the prize a platinum box but I hesitated. Did I think I could get a prize that would be higher than gold? I was sure that somewhere in between here and finding my friends I’d either get another gold prize box or possibly something higher. I was worried about us leaving the Dungeon and the coin vanishing without being used. I deliberated for another minute before deciding against using the coin. I flipped open the lid of the box and found a small nondescript leather pouch. I held it up and used my Identification spell on it.
Item: Large Coin Pouch
Rarity: Rare
Weight: 0.5lb
Description: A spatially expanded coin pouch that reduces the weight of any coins put inside by a factor of 90%. This pouch is sealed against thieves and pickpockets, any who try to steal the pouch or the contents will be subject to a skill backlash. This pouch can hold up to 50,000 coins of each denomination.
Restriction: Only coins can be placed in this pouch.
I gawked at the pouch, it would be useful to a merchant or anyone who didn’t have a spatial storage item. The threat of a skill backlash for theives was not something to fuck around with, skill backlashes had different degrees depending on the skill but anything less than a rare skill would end up with the thief paralysed for the duration of the backlash. That meant that the pouch would be worth at least 500 gold pieces, the fact it could hold 50,000 of each denomination would probably put the price closer to 1,000. I smiled and put the pouch into my bag of holding, I would be keeping hold of this.
The familiar Dungeon portal appeared on the wall I had expected the doorway to be on. I thought about using the doorway or eating one of the Escape Room Cookies, I wondered if it would give me the extra prize at the end of the next room. I quickly discarded the idea, Dungeons had a habit of dissuading cheating or attempts to get more than what was intended as a reward. I didn’t want to push the Dungeon and receive a punishment. I double checked that I had Helga’s Guide to Kitchen Success in my bag of holding heading to the portal to the next challenge.
Challenge 5 would be a long one, challenges that were multiples of 5 usually were important or signalled the end of floor and a potential exit to the Dungeon. I hoped that I would find everyone in either the next challenge or waiting for me after the challenge by the exit. If not, I could always use my Escape Room Cookies to skip the next few challenges to find the next exit.