Now that his eyes had adjusted to the dim lighting, Nick found himself standing in an enclosure formed from a blend of brickwork and concrete.
It looks like some kind of bunker network or service tunnel. Water dripped incessantly from the roof, falling from tufts of moss that were growing down from the ceiling like wispy beards. The runoff formed shallow pools that reflected the pale-yellow glow shining from the walls. It came from some sort of recessed electric lights, far too weak to be modern LEDs.
Behind him stood an open doorway. Instead of leading to another chamber, the space beyond the frame was obscured by an opaque golden glow. The color was different from the others Nick had come across, but it had to be the portal that would take him back to the beach after a day had passed.
He was soaked from his brief exposure to the searstorm, but it wasn’t chilly enough down here to make him shiver. I wonder how long that boiling rain will last. He winced at the painful blisters covering his arms. I should stay here for as long as I can, regardless of the timer. If I leave and the searstorm is still raging overhead, I’ll be trapped out in the open with nowhere to hide.
With a sigh, he turned his attention to the other surfaces of the chamber. In the center of the floor sat a rusty iron grate, which drained the excess moisture dripping from the ceiling. Bordering the grate was rough concrete, covered in a wide variety of slime and grime.
Running along the red bricks forming the walls was a maze of corroded pipework—ancient ducts ranging from the width of Nick’s thumbs to wider than his hips. They were bracketed into the masonry with simple metal bolts, many of which had corroded away with the passing of years. The brickwork looked ancient, but it seemed to be well made if poorly maintained. A trio of rotting barrels was stacked against one wall, and a fenced-off corner held a series of rusted-out storage tanks, sitting beside what appeared to have once been a boiler.
There was only one exit besides the portal, an opening over on the far side of the room. By now, his shock was starting to recede. After making sure that none of his wounds were deep enough to require bandaging, he carefully crept his way across the concrete, then stuck his head through the doorway.
The scent of raw earth hung heavy in the humid air, so thick that he could taste it. It was clear from the packed dirt visible behind a cluster of missing bricks that he was underground. Through the cracks in the concrete, roots were poking through the ceiling, suggesting that the surface wasn’t too far above his head. Not that Nick had any intention of discovering what, if anything, lay beyond the boundaries of the dungeon.
He was afraid to leave this chamber since he couldn’t afford to stumble into anything hostile. He had nowhere to run and would be trapped in here if he was forced to fight. But he couldn’t just sit here either. Well, he could, but that would entail squandering the opportunity to profit from the dungeon, which he was loathe to do.
Thus, after working up his nerve, Nick decided to take his first steps into the tunnel ahead, where he could see the darkness of other passages outlined by the wan and flickering light.
On his way out the door, he took off his sunhat and set it beside the portal. He would come back for it later. But it wasn’t practical to carry, and wearing it down here would reduce his field of view. Heart pounding in his chest, he tiptoed up to the first adjoining chamber, lowered himself onto his hands and knees, then poked one eye past the border of the doorway.
Ten seconds later, he let out a soft sigh of relief. This room was smaller than the one Nick had left behind, and nothing seemed to be living within. It looked like some kind of storage room, but the handful of objects inside were even more weathered than the ones he’d found near the portal. Everything piled against the walls had long since been reduced to shapeless piles of rust and rot.
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He poked through the garbage with the end of his spear, hoping to uncover any clues that could clarify the nature of the dungeon or the people who had created it. He soon abandoned the effort as a lost cause.
On his way out, he reached into the belt pouch he had filled with charcoal. He made a mark beside the doorway to indicate that he had cleared the chamber. The last thing that he needed was to fuck up and skip a room, as that could lead to a situation where he became trapped between something that walked out of it and the depths of the dungeon ahead.
Now committed to his course, Nick began what would prove to be a nervous three hours spent exploring the network of subterranean tunnels. His path was illuminated by the flickering light, which gave birth to an endless array of ever-shifting shadows.
He was forced to assume a draining state of hypervigilance, cortisol spiking his bloodstream whenever he thought he saw movement at the periphery of his vision. He froze in place for long minutes each time that he heard distorted echoes reverberating against the stonework, their origin impossible to divine. As he searched, he wondered about the story of these ruins. It was clear that the tunnels had been built by an advanced civilization with a level of technology at least at the level of Earth’s industrial revolution, if not closer to modern times.
Could something like this be happening to the Earth while I’m stuck in my tutorial? I wish that I could remember what happened before my orientation. All that Nick could recall was a vague sense of dread, and his blurred memories stubbornly refused to focus within his mind’s eye.
His musings added a somber tone to his exploration of the dungeon, complementing the pervasive tension spawned by the knowledge that he was guaranteed to encounter something dangerous eventually. As he crept down the tunnels, he subconsciously mourned for the people and the world he had lost, sparing a bit of his sorrow for the fallen civilization of Kastilla as well.
While he hadn’t found anything useful or threatening just yet, not all the chambers were barren. Nick’s path took him past rusted sluice gates, decrepit machinery, and collapsed stairwells. Some chambers held the remnants of gigantic pipes and gaping ducts, banked by mildew and crumbling mortar.
Most of the tunnels were narrow and short, but there were occasional segments featuring wide pathways and high ceilings. Some housed the remnants of an ancient ventilation system, forming a decaying maze of ducts and debris, vents and fans, their origin shrouded in mystery.
Not long after, his stomach informed him that it was time to take a break and eat a late lunch. Or perhaps an early dinner. Being underground was already starting to mess with his sense of time. His walk back to the portal only took twenty minutes, revealing the extent to which caution had curtailed his pace.
By now, Nick was certain that nothing was lurking close to the dungeon’s entrance. But he knew deep in his bones that this peace wouldn’t endure once he left the periphery of the zone. None of this looks like a city’s sewer system. I will have to delve deeper before the true dungeon begins.
While he pondered what he’d seen so far, he broke open the top of his coconut, careful not to shatter the sides of the shell so that he could use the husk for storage. He drained the sugary fluid and then devoured every scrap of meat so that he wouldn’t have to worry about his provisions being contaminated by the grungy environment.
He used his finger and the charcoal in his pouch to draw the layout of the level on one wall, trying to determine if the design suggested anything that wasn’t obvious while walking through it. All that Nick could tell for certain was that this was only one wing of the dungeon, likely a self-contained area intended to give him a chance to obtain his bearings before the System started turning up the heat.
After reviewing his map, he was ready to begin his final foray for the day. He would explore for another four hours, then return to this spot and call it a night. Based on what he discovered, he would either wait out the timer and return through the entrance portal or continue to investigate the dungeon’s depths.
Nick hoped that he wouldn’t run into anything too treacherous, but his gut told him that danger was coming sooner rather than later.