Drill Sergeant slapping the door frame with his swagger stick had become my daily alarm clock. Soreness had also come to be normal. “Ugh.” I moaned, sitting up.

“You can say that again, brother.” Jackson got up and stretched.

“I’d 100% become an assassin if I got paid in coffee.” Niobe pulled her blanket over her head.

Izzy threw her pillow at the cat woman shaped lump. “Oh God, you had to say coffee. Mmmm, I can just smell it.”

“Wake up, troopers! Rise and shine. Today we allow those of you who have passed the first training dungeon into the second.” Bidlack boomed from the hallway. “Line up for accountability!”

We all stumbled up, yawning and working the kinks out of muscles. I was trying to knot the belt of my training robe. Izzy smiled and tied it for me, her nimble elven fingers make short work of the knot.

Our crew came out into the hallway, two on the right side of the door and two on the left. Elyse the midniss was right across from me. She fought a yawn, unsuccessfully. Her jaws opened so wide, her fangs popped out. That set everyone else to yawning. It’s crazy how contagious those can be.

We got chow and our time slots for the dungeon. I was going mid-morning. The platoon did some light stretching and we were released. I went to my room and changed into my adventuring garb.

Leather breastplate. Check. Rerebrace covering the bicep. Kind of tricky to tie that on. Vambrace covering the forearm. Check, check. Cuisses and greaves offers some protection for the legs. My feet and upper thigh/groin are uncovered. I really need to get some armor for them. Skullcap. Check.

Spells memorized: Candleflame, Snowballx2, Summon Lesser Beastx2

Good to go. Instructor Nills called for me. I walked into the waiting room with him. “Any advice?” I asked the fortune teacher.

He looked down at me and smiled faintly. “Don’t die. This is a step up in difficulty and will therefore be more challenging. Not passing on the first attempt is acceptable. Learn from it.”

That’s not at all what I wanted to hear. I swallowed the lump of nervousness. Coming into the waiting room I was directed to a chair against the wall. I sat.

The door to my left burst open. Instructor Falaise was yelling, “I need some more bandages! I can’t seal this wound!” Instructor Goldo and Instructor Stethyr were carrying a stretcher. The door was only open for a minute, but it looked like a cave.

The stretcher had a moaning fae elf on it. One of the guys from second squad if I remembered correctly. Falaise was bloody to the elbows and tied a bandage over a long, shallow wound on his chest. She chanted and her hand glowed gold. The wound sealed. She exhaled and leaned against the much larger elf.

“We’ll get him to recovery.” Goldo told her. She waved him away.

Nills bowed with a flourish and motioned towards the door. “Your turn next, I believe. The task is five long rat tails or spider mandibles. Any combination of the two, really.”

Wide eyed, I looked from Falaise to Nills. The sea elven woman wiped a hand across her forehead and smeared blood all over herself. She realized it and held her hands out from her body, rolling her eyes. “Good luck Mike, you’ve got this.”

Standing up, I gulped down my trepidation. Squaring my shoulders, I marched towards the door. Nills held it open for me. I nodded to each of the instructors as I checked the grip on my shield and tomahawk.

The door closed behind me with a boom. It was dark in the cavern, with slightly luminous green moss providing a bare minimum of light. That might be a problem for most races, but I was a dwarf. My darkvision allowed me to see with perfect clarity within 90 feet.

It was something of a tunnel. Chilly water ran down the center while randomly placed stalactites and stalagmites gave an impression of uneven teeth in jaws that were about to shut. The ceiling was high, maybe eleven or twelve feet, and the walls were generally about twenty feet apart, but that varied considerably.

The floor of the cavern was covered with sand interspersed with shells and insect carapaces. There was a high-pitched bipping sound echoing around. I looked up and saw bats crawling on the ceiling. Not big scary ones, but little fruit bats. That probably explained the guano and roaches on the floor. Yuck.

I strained my ears but couldn’t hear anything other than the bipping of the bats and chuckling of the water. Carefully stepping forward, I began using the rolling stride they’d taught us in skills class. I went slowly but kept making noise. The little pops of crushing roaches sounded like firecrackers.

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There were deep divots in the wall, almost like small caves of their own. I looked in one of them and it was covered in filth. Torn webbing, trash, decayed bones. Almost like something was nesting in it.

I hate caves. They are claustrophobic and gross. Probably means I shouldn’t have played a dwarf, but it was never an issue in the game. I didn’t think about during character creation. Ugh.

A rat crawled out of one of the wall divots. I stepped on it, crushing it flat. That got my confidence up. I chopped off its tail. That’s one. If the whole thing was like that, then no problem.

Another rat crawled out of that hole. This one was the length of my arm and thick. Its teeth were long, one of them cutting a hole in its bottom lip.

Right, wrong kind of tail. It saw me and squeaked, then charged. I held my shield low, making a ramp for the vermin. It ran onto the hide disk and I launched it straight up into the air. As it came down, I swiped at it with my tomahawk and missed. It got on the ground and I chopped it straight away. Collecting this tail seemed more fitting.

I crept down the cavern, staying close against the right side wall. Coming up to another of the little cubbies, I heard squeaking coming from inside. I rounded the corner, axe at the ready.

The rat inside was nearly the size of me. It was up on its hind legs, nose twitching. It stared at me when I hopped in front of its entrance. I stared at it, deeply regretting my recent choices.

The rat lunged. I braced for impact and it WHANGED off my shield. Chopping with the axe, I got a good hit. The creature squeaked, hopping back a bit in pain. It scratched at me with a clawed forepaw and ended up raking down the hide of the shield.

I dashed forward, leading with my shoulder. The rat was almost my size but it wasn’t anywhere near as dense as a dwarf. I crashed into it. The creature fell backward. I hacked with my tomahawk and it tore at my side with its claws.

-2 hp

I chopped again. The rat twitched, then stopped moving. I was breathing like a steam engine. Standing up, I got dizzy as the adrenaline left me. I had ten hit points remaining as I cut off some bandages and pressed it against the wound on my side.

This was probably pretty easy for the trainees that put a priority point to combat. They had more hit points and a better weapon selection. I gritted my teeth. My priority point was to magic. I need to emphasize that. It’s my big advantage.

Being pretty sure this is what Nills meant by long rat tails, I cut it off and put it in my pocket. If it wasn’t I didn’t want to think what the upgrade might be.

I got my breathing under control and stood. Squaring my shoulders, I went back out into the cave. Looking around carefully, I didn’t see any threats and resumed moving.

I strained my ears as well as my gemstone eyes, scanning for anything dangerous. I jumped when a group of bats flew by but they weren’t any threat to me.

The cavern necked down to a small passageway and I looked into it. A couple of the bats were caught in something. They frantically flapped their wings, but didn’t make any progress. A scuttling sound came from the shadows around the stalagmites to the left of the narrow passage. Spider.

I had range, so I may as well use it. The spider was in among the narrow stone spikes, but I think I could get him. Putting down my shield and dropping the tomahawk into its belt loop, I poured a bit of water into my hand. Beginning to chant, I twisted my fingers into the runic shapes, water droplets flinging off them.

The snow formed in my hand. I packed it as full as I could to make it larger, but only got to around the size of a softball. I held it in my right hand, up just below my chin. My left hand covered it. I stepped forward and swept my right hand back.

Underhand tossing the snowball, I stepped back to grab my shield and draw my axe. Looking up, I saw the snowball had hit! YES!

The spider’s body was about two feet wide, but its legs spread to nearly ten feet. It clicked in my direction MUCH faster than I expected. It did seem to be limping though. Two of its left side legs weren’t working right. Maybe my snowball had some effect?

It scuttled up and leapt, but the injured legs seem to have hurt its ability to jump. It came at me sideways. I raised my shield and braced, using the basic volcano strider stance.

It hit the hide and wooden disk. Surprising how light a spider is. The impact didn’t rock me back or anything. The monster did cling to the shield, though.

I tried to slam it against the wall, but wasn’t strong enough to get that kind of leverage. Leaning the shield against the crumbling stone and put my shoulders into it. I used my legs and PUSHED.

The spider’s legs started frantically scrabbling around. One of them left a tear in my right bicep that stung something fierce.

-3 hp

I chopped at the offending leg with my axe. It came away in a shower of gore. I kept chopping, the blade of the tomahawk skidding off the spider’s carapace as often as it sunk in. Another leg scratched me again, but only a shallow wound this time.

-1 hp

Driving forward with my feet, I pushed as hard as I could. My axe was finding purchase now. Nearly every strike came back drenched with the interior goo of the spider.

I chopped again and could hear the crackle as its exoskeleton collapsed. The shield surged, hitting the stone wall through the spider. Its legs stopped moving.

Leaning back from the wall, I saw the spider ooze down it to the floor. A leg twitched, and I raised my axe, but it was the last firing of a destroyed nervous system.

I looked at my shoulder and could barely see the wound. Putting down my sack, I got out the bandages and cut another strip. This got packed into the long tear on my bicep. Then I wrapped the clean cloth around it.

Heal skill successful. +1 hp

Awesome! That still put me just above half at seven hit points remaining. I bandaged the other scratch and moved into the narrow passage.

The bats struggled in the remnant of the spider’s web. I watched them a moment. Suddenly, I heard squeaking from behind. Not one loud squeak but dozens of high pitched ones.

I looked back and a swarm of rats was converging on the spider body. I tried to move out of the way, but they were coming too fast. They crawled up my leg, onto my chest!