Frank moved on. He wanted to clear the rest of the main path. The hallway he was in gradually widened over the course of ten minutes, until it was about a hundred feet across. Big cubes of stone, each the size of a small home, began to dot the area, placed randomly. Each was carved with more murals.

As Frank walked between them, they became denser and denser, some beginning to touch each other. As he passed between him, the walls on the far side of the room seemed to disappear abruptly. Every direction showed only the stone cubes. He soon had to use his compass to stay oriented as he weaved around them.

Enemies began to appear around corners and in pathways through the bricks. The density of them increased as he walked further in, as did their average level. At first all of them were level one and easily dispatched. Later, as he progressed, more and more were high level, and the proportion of dangerous foes with increased strength or agility increased. Frank didn't stop his progress at this, although the new opponents took longer to defeat.

The experience was excellent, and he'd found a pair of hide gloves which he soon donned. They weren't equipment, but his sword hand thanked him, having started to blister from the rubbing and sliding of hilt on skin.

During this time, he leveled up twice, and got a quarter of the way to level twelve. He decided to distribute his stats to vitality, constitution, knowledge, and agility. Something about the way he felt now seemed fundamentally different than before, and Frank suspected it might have to do with his stats. He decided to hold off on increasing his wisdom and stability for the time being, concerned about what their effect on him actually entailed.

Frank HP 140/142 Level 11 Human (1435/11520 EXP) MP 0 Saviour SP 90/120 Strength 11 Knowledge 10 Agility 12(11) Intelligence 10 Constitution 12(8) Stability 10 Vitality 10(9) Wisdom 7(6)

He looked over his his status. His strength, constitution, and agility now all exceeded human limits. His vitality and stability were at the peak of human performance. Knowledge hitting ten was a breakpoint as well; enemies would now have basic descriptions, equipment would display its durability, and items would list their trade value.

Frank kept pushing through his opponents. They never exceeded level three, and he never ran into any level three agility armour, which were the most dangerous thing he'd seen to that point, besides the husk. After what must've been half an hour, the blocks started getting closing off more and more, until there was only one path left. It gradually got smaller, until Frank could no longer walk straight, and had to shuffle sideways, and take off his pack.

The path kept getting narrower, and in the end Frank had to abandon further progress. He laughed at himself inwardly. He couldn't get through any more because he was overweight. There he was, stronger, faster, and hardier than any human ever to live, but the fact he hadn't hit the treadmill enough before all this meant he simply didn't fit. His gut blocked him.

He returned back. It was time to start heading to diversions. First though, he was going to check on the other three. It took about an hour to return. As he approached the starting room, he saw Maria and Bill in the hallway. Bill was still laying prone, while Maria sat with her stuff as a barrier between her and the room. The sound of stone hitting stone periodically rang out.

That sound was like music. Frank honestly hadn't expected Rina to get it together enough to move forward. He greeted Maria, who responded halfheartedly. He walked past her, into the starting room, to the sight of an exhausted looking Rina practicing her sling. She stopped and turned to face him at the sound of his footsteps.

She looked like shit. The aftermath of crying, still obvious in her reddened and puffy eyes, combined with the exertion of what she had been doing leaving her sweaty and breathing heavily, did not paint a pretty portrait. But her face didn't show resignation or terror, as far as Frank could tell. She looked anxious and afraid, but in this circumstance, that was about as good as he could hope for.

"You've kept yourself busy." he said to her.

She breathed deeply. "I don't want to die." Her voice wavered slightly as she said it, tinged with fear.

Frank nodded at that, unable to think of an appropriate response. There was a silent pause. "I've found water."

He pondered about taking one of them with him, but changed his mind from his earlier plan, instead pulling out his waterskins. "I'll swap you and Maria for empty ones."

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That completed, he turned to leave. There wasn't any real purpose in sticking around. He left back down the hallway, one last glance at Bill laying down. His nose must've stopped bleeding since his head was no longer elevated.

Frank made it back to the fountain, filling two more waterskins, and taking a drink himself. Then he proceeded over to the room with the pit. One suit was standing across from him. He walked over and dispatched it. His focus this time was the stairs. He walked to the opposite side and descended them carefully.

The bottom had two wooden doors. Each was made of roughly cut planks, with a hole for someone to look through at Frank's chest height. They were opposite of each other, and largely identical in size and construction. Frank picked the one closest to him. It had a handle, but it appeared locked. Frank kicked it right beside the handle several times, and whatever was holding it close gave way with the sound of splintered wood and it swung inwards, creaking.

That greeted him was a hallway filled with small rooms branching off it like cells. The rooms did not have doors that Frank could see, only small openings he could peer through. He walked down, checking each one quickly. They were all completely empty. A set of armour appeared on the edge of his vision.

Decrepit Iron Armour Animated by a Forgery of the Flame of Strength

Level 1

The hallway was narrow enough he had no hope of flanking or dodging, and blocking it directly was out of the question. There was only one possible strategy he could use. Bait an attack; hide behind his shield, then cripple it while it recovered. His shield wasn't big enough to protect his entire body though. It was round and maneuverable. He clearly remembered how the blow of an armour of strength had taken chunks out of the floor and thrown them outwards like shrapnel. Frank decisively backed away. He'd have to abandon that direction.

The doorway back into the pit was small enough the armour couldn't fit through, so Frank simply jogged back to it and checked the other door. It was not locked, but otherwise basically the same as the first. It led into an identical hallway. Frank wandered down it, glancing through each hole in the wall to see if any of the rooms had anything in them. By the time he met the first enemy in that particular hallway, he had looked through over one hundred of the rooms.

Dapper Three Piece Suit Animated by a Forgery of the Flame of Vitality

Level 2

He approached it warily. Vitality was not hard to deal with, but three piece suits were definitely dangerous, if manageably so. Once again, the small space proved his disadvantage. His opponent's rapier had more reach, and he didn't have the ability to move side to side in the narrow hallway. With his options restricted, he'd have to fight differently.

Stab wounds were probably irrelevant against a self repairing piece of clothing. He'd have to get the opportunity to slash something with an overhead swing. That meant he'd need to render the suit unable to counter with the rapier for long enough to do so. Frank met it, testing it with a few slashes, blocking its attempts with his shield and stepping back as necessary. 

He slowly got a feel for its swordplay, and seized on a predicted attack. His shield swung out and pinned the suit's rapier against the wall briefly, allowing Frank to get a solid swing at his opponents arm, cuttting the fabric of its wrist clean through. The enemy now disarmed, Frank made short work of it.

Dapper Three Piece Suit Animated by a Forgery of the Flame of Vitality(Level 2) defeated. Frank awarded 335 EXP. Frank awarded Health Potion.

Frank picked up the health potion from the ground at his feet, placing it in his bag. The red potion always meant relief; in this situation, doubly so. He stepped past his defeated foe and continued to down the hall. Each room was empty. The distance between them grew, their appearance became infrequent, and they petered out entirely. The carved murals returned, showing the same goblin-like people, with the same emphasis on flame.

Frank entered a diversion. The murals changed. Two women and two men. A sling. Masks. A pocketwatch. Frank stopped looking at them when he realized they were about him. It made him nervous. That the system knew everything about him was a given. Why wouldn't it be able to given what else it accomplished? That it might be attempting to modify his behaviour or communicate with him, though, was both revealing and disturbing.

He'd never really considered it intelligent. It had always seemed, to him, and to the people he spoke to, to be a very complex, but deliberately designed system. Autonomy, yes. Sapience, though? That was something that it had never displayed until he went back in time.

Yet if it was, and wanted something from him, that implied that it was limited in what it could actually do. Either the system had restrictions placed on it, or another party was able to interfere with it, but not to an extent where they could directly commandeer its functions. Otherwise, Frank would already have been altered to suit whatever purpose they needed, and these physical manifestations were irrelevant.

He relaxed a little after working that part out. He'd never found that he could control his emotions with logic. Working something out rationally didn't make him feel differently, even if changed his course of action. It did at least moderate his feelings a bit, stop them from bubbling over.

He came upon and slew an armour, but then proceeded into another diversion. It looked the exact same, so he didn't notice it right away. An itch to his arm prompted him to scratch it, and he realize his handedness had switched. Frank immediately turned around and went back the way he came. That was the kind of change you rarely saw two diversion in. Once they started messing with how you perceive or interact with yourself, it was time to leave.

Frank decided against returning to camp. If he had to use the health potion, then it'd be a cruel bait and switch. He wasn't going to give it to Bill while he lay there in a safe place. He decided to walk back up the pit and try exploring the margins of the maze of cubes next.