I don’t honestly know what I was expecting to find once I got inside, but this is surprisingly mundane and fails to live up to even my most pessimistic expectations. If I didn’t know that this building literally popped into existence yesterday, fully formed, it would look no different than any other office building. Plain walls, drab carpet flooring, soulless lights that look like mundane fluorescents. The lights are on, however, which does provide clues as to the supernatural nature of this space.

In less exciting news, I notice that my [Ether] is regenerating only about half as quickly inside as it does in the outside world. I cannot say for sure since I used so little of it while exploring the dungeon, but I imagine it was similar. Chloe confirms my suspicions based on her own observations.

I have to assume that it’s the result of how the System and the space within is making use of the ambient Ether to power itself, and perhaps, to spawn monsters and synthesize the treasure we found inside. This leaves relatively less remaining for those who dwell within. An added sense of danger for potentially greater rewards.

I keep my gaze fixed upon the door leading outside for several minutes. Partially because I keep hoping I’ll see something miraculous when I turn back toward the inside, partially to recharge my [Ether] a bit longer, and mostly because I’m terrified that someone will storm in right behind and try to apprehend us. It’s not until Chloe snaps me out of my racing mind that I take a deep breath and we proceed further into the foyer.

Neither of us see anything out of the ordinary. I take my magnifying glass to the various objects on the countertop. Everything is mundane, made of glass or plastic or other such items that already exist on Earth. The same is true of the walls. I can’t see any of the characteristic marks I’ve been able to identify on every other piece of Ethertech I’ve encountered until now. I suppose the dungeon, when considering it as a whole, also shares this characteristic, so I can’t read too deep into my observation.

Again, I’m forced to ask myself why this structure exists. If it were a dungeon of some sort or a font of hidden artifice from a long-dead civilization, it would make sense. And if it were merely providing some office space for would-be entrepreneurs, it could have just given a city-wide notification to that effect.

I come up with two ideas. First, the System wants to analyze how humanity’s government and collective decision-making apparatuses operate. This conjecture has a flaw though. I have to assume that it knows each of us at least as well as we know ourselves. And its processing capabilities are far beyond even Earth’s most powerful supercomputers. It could certainly project our behavior from its preexisting knowledge.

The second, and perhaps more benign explanation, is that it wants to reward exploration. That’s why dungeons exist, or so I believe. The System wants us to get stronger. Maybe to encourage us to depend on it more? Or perhaps it wants to facilitate the development of more Ethertech? The System did seem pleased when I chose my class. Maybe it’s just paranoia talking with my recurring thoughts about the System’s malevolence. But I don’t think so.

We forgo the elevators, instead taking the stairwell to the second floor. I expected Chloe to protest my decision, but she was even more adamant about not taking the devices that had never been subject to a thorough inspection and absolutely screamed ‘suspended metal death trap’, to use her words.

We make it to the second floor. My [Ether] is regenerating no more quickly, suggesting we’re still in the dungeon-like space. And yet, all we see is more offices. Tiny offices barely larger than a closet, little cubicles with desks the size of the ones in our classrooms. No computers or technology that I can swipe except the lights. I do make a half-hearted attempt to reach up and try to pull one off the ceiling, but I can think of more than a few reasons why that’s a terrible idea, and shelve the thought.

“Wow,” Chloe says as she walks into the southwestern corner office on the fourth floor. “I’ve never seen the river from this perspective before. It’s so beautiful.”

I laugh. “I’ve never seen the riverbed this full except on the days right after it rains.”

“You can be such a jerk sometimes, Sera!”

I start to protest, but instead stand silently with my mouth agape. Seeing no way out of the situation, I’m forced to lower my head in silent defeat, followed by a meek apology.

“You’re not wrong, though. It’s nice to see the river actually be a river for a change.”

I nod. “Kinda sad that none of the projects to address that shortcoming ever went through.”

Chloe silently affirms. For a brief moment, the two of us watch the activity in the streets below before heading further up the tower.

I’m starting to get suspicious about why this building is so empty. The basement has something dangerous in it, I’m sure, but it feels like there should be some sort of encounter. Not too many; we only encountered two enemies in the dungeon, despite spending an entire morning inside. Three if you count the one the buffoon squad brought back with them, but it doesn’t change the crux of the argument. Maybe the enemies only come out in darkness? It’s not… quite the worst explanation I can imagine.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

When we get to the sixth floor of the tower, we decide to break for lunch. We take two of the small desks in the main area and drag them over into one of the small adjacent office rooms. I go ahead and grab a third and prop it up as a makeshift barricade as I close the door behind me. I don’t expect it to stop anything that might be lurking within, but it might buy us an extra second or two to defend ourselves. And that’s as much as I can hope for right now.

We sit down for a meal consisting of a bag of potato chips and a sub sandwich of turkey, tomato, and mustard. As soon as I take my first bite and start savoring the admittedly mediocre meal, Chloe smiles and then giggles.

I raise an eyebrow. “Is there something on my face?” I pat my temples and cheeks, hoping to figure out whatever– Oh shit, is this another spider incident? I thought I left that back in the basement dungeon where it belonged! I jump up and flail from side to side, hoping to get the damned thing off me and sent back to the depths of hell. But Chloe only laughs more, wallowing in schadenfreude.

“There’s nothing on you,” she says. “I’m just laughing and smiling because this reminds me of the time we first met, thirteen years ago.”

I blush as I sit back down. I did get a couple of pieces of turkey on the floor in my panic, but I leave them for now. I take a drink of water as Chloe starts her reminiscing. The story embarrasses me a bit, but she loves to tease me with it, and I can do nothing but acquiesce as she recounts the tale for what has to be the thousandth and first time.

“It was a day much like this one, thirteen years ago, about a month after school started. We’d just been let out to lunch, and as we were all waiting in line to get our food, you walked over to a small table by yourself and started eating half a ham sandwich. You looked so sad, watching everyone as they got their food and then sitting with your friends. So when I finished going through the line, I came over to where you were and sat down next to you.”

“And I looked up and said that I’m sorry if I took your seat. I tried to leave, but you grabbed me by the sleeve, and promptly proceeded to rip my shirt in two. I was so embarrassed. But I was also scared that my mother was going to be so pissed that I ruined one of the half dozen or so shirts I had that fit me.”

“And I started crying as I rushed to cover you with my body before anyone else saw. I didn’t know I would tear it up!”

I laugh. “Yeah, that’s the joys of not coming from a family with money. You get thrift store clothing that's been handed down from the hand-me-downs. It already had a couple of small holes in the sides, and was basically being held together by two overworked pieces of string and divine intervention.”

“Yeah. I think it’s because of you that I didn’t become like a lot of my other friends at the time. You kept me grounded, reminded me how lucky I was–”

“Oh trust me, you reminded me yesterday just how lucky you are. Five times, in brutal succession.”

Chloe pantomimes a light slap toward me, then leans forward and pokes my nose. I playfully lunge my head toward her and bite at her finger, which she pulls back at the last second.

“You should eat the rest of your food, not my finger!”

“Aww, but I’m really hungry and it looks so delicious.”

Chloe rolls her eyes at me. “Sera, food, now.”

I scarf down the last couple of bites of my sandwich, then devour my bag of chips just as quickly. The remaining half of my open bottle of water follows suit in short order, as does a handful of the trail mix the two of us have stored away.

Finding no trash can in the building, we instead stuff our trash back in a couple of plastic baggies and continue on our way through the tower. The next several floors prove equally uneventful. We’re slowly ascending, high enough now that we can see glimpses of the entire city like no one ever has before. Except maybe commercial pilots and a few recreational aviators allowed over downtown.

Chloe makes a little pinching gesture as though she’s ‘popping’ the tiny people walking on the sidewalk down below. I start wondering if we— the two of us— could make use of this building somehow. I’m putting the cart way before the horse there; we have to get out and avoid being thrown in the big house for the multitude of crimes I performed to get inside first and foremost. But it’s a distraction from the complete mundanity we find on the seventh through ninth floors.

We open the stairwell to the tenth floor and head inside. It’s odd that the stairwell stops abruptly at the tenth floor and denies access to any floors higher. That opens its own slate of questions, but suggests that there’s more in this tower than just office space.

And I find our first evidence of Ethertech when we arrive at a strange door just outside the stairwell. Predictably, it’s locked. I try to jiggle the knob. No good. Unlike every door previous, though, I can very faintly make out the characteristic patterns of Ether being guided through the various mechanisms holding the door fast. Unfortunately, I don’t recognize any of the glyphs I see, and I don’t see any of the small handful I recognize.

“Do you think you can unlock it?” Chloe asks.

“I’m certainly going to try. I do recommend you stand back, and maybe have your [Barrier Gauntlets] ready to activate at a moment’s notice.”

“You think it’s going to be dangerous, Sera?”

“I’m not sure it won’t blow up when I try deactivating it.”

“Blow up? You think it’s going to blow up?”

“I mean, probably not. But I don’t know if one of these glyphs means ‘explode this door’ or something. I’ll try to avoid messing with them. I probably just need to look at whatever glyphs connect to the locking mechanism and—”

“Seraphina Mortensen, I swear to the goddess herself, if you do not–”

“Besides, my best friend is a healer and she’ll patch me right up if the door does go boom.”

Chloe sighs. “Whatever. Just… Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

It turns out that my [Tinkerer] skill guides me straight to the exact locking glyph I need. I pour a bit of Ether into the glyph from the opposite direction, and the lock loosens, then deactivates. I open the door and head inside. Finally, the dungeon I’m expecting.