Chapter 13.

After the system’s warning about the dungeons opening up, everyone decided to check their supplies and try to get some rest. While the opening of the dungeons would, inconveniently, be at three AM in their time zone, everyone had brought along sleeping bags and tried to get at least a few hours of rest.

Everyone had backpacks filled with supplies, including all the obvious things that one would take if they were, for example, going for a long nature hike. But the tinkerers in particular were loaded down with toolboxes and bags filled with widgets and power tools.

Alaina, the medico, had purchased several first aid kits and was working on combining and inventorying them. Her husband, Jose, was nervously embracing his role as the cook. He had a cleaver to defend himself with, but he also had more food in his pack than anyone else, and the tools required to prepare dried or fresh food, whereas everyone else was mostly relying on energy bars.

Of everyone, Lucy, Erik Estabon’s girlfriend, felt most out of place. She had a baseball bat to defend herself like everyone else, but her class was Seamstress. She’d been expected to get turned away by the boy leading the endeavor, but he had instead immediately asked for her help in getting the enchantments to work properly on his jacket, jeans, T-shirt, and even his underwear.

While he’d had no trouble enchanting his boots or his weapon with simple arts and crafts supplies, he hadn’t been able to do the same with his clothes. After showing her the patterns that he needed to put into the clothes, however, she was surprised at just how easy it had been to embroider them.

She wasn’t perfect the first time every time, but she found that she had a sense for this. She could tell when the embroidery was out of place or what parts of the pattern were wrong when he reported that the enchantment weren’t working. He thanked her profusely, and promised her a spot on the team.

“I think maybe your class is more important and impressive than it sounds,” he confided to her. “I want to get you to the system shop and see what options it gives you. It might be that ‘Seamstress’ may also mean ‘enchanter,’ or you might be able to make magic clothing or clothing from magic materials.”

“But I’ll be holding the group back,” she objected.

“I don’t think that will be a problem,” he assured her. “We’ll see when we get into the dungeon, but Gabriel has been saying something about SafeZones and noncombatants. If you or anyone else is in serious danger or holding us back, we’ll turn back and regroup on the surface. But until we have more information I want to proceed with everyone.”

She had nervously accepted his word.

The counter to the opening of the dungeons slowly ticked down even as the party settled in for their last naps on the surface for a long time.

~~~~~~~

The alarms went off at two AM, and groggily everyone got up. Eli rolled out of bed for the last time and went to the bathroom, brushed his teeth, and dressed in his enchanted gear. He didn’t activate the enchantments, not yet, but instead went to check on everyone else.

He opened the door to find a line for his bathroom, and he stepped aside to let Sophie inside. He blushed, he wouldn’t have dallied if he’d realized that others were waiting for him.

In the living room, he waited for the party to assemble, and they turned the television on. The president was speaking, encouraging people to wait to delve into dungeons until they had been thoroughly scouted by the armed forces to ensure that they were safe.

“What sort of idiotic thing is that?” Luke said. “It’s a dungeon . Of course it’s not going to be safe. But I don’t think we have a choice. If we don’t delve, then the monsters will start spawning on the surface, or else the criminals who do delve will return and burn whatever is left on the surface to the ground.”

“Yeah,” Eli agreed. He scratched the back of his head and checked TitanSystem.App for a few minutes. He hadn’t gotten any new messages, but he did notice that it was way, way more active than it had been before. According to the little ticker in the corner, it had more than a billion users.

A system timer appeared in the corner of his vision, and he swallowed. Fifteen minutes left. “Let’s go outside and finish getting ready,” he suggested to the party, and everyone agreed.

Protective gear was donned. Backpacks were slung over shoulders. Weapons were equipped. The counter ticked down.

Dungeon System Online.

Eligible Party Detected.

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Party Leader: Elias Mathews

14 Members

Eligible Difficulties: Very Easy , Easy, Normal, Hard

Do you wish to enter the dungeon at this time?

Yes/No

Eli wasn’t surprised by the difficulty option. He’d been expecting it, having been informed of the function by Gabri. But he hadn’t told his friends, because he wasn’t interested in the debate that would follow.

He selected yes, and, when the followup question of what difficulty he would be challenging, he selected hard. The system asked for confirmation, warning him that the enemies would be approximately thirty to one hundred percent stronger than on normal mode, and he selected confirm.

He was putting a lot of faith in Gabri in making this decision, but he felt confident that it was the right choice.

As soon as he’d entered his selections, a violet portal opened up in his backyard. He turned to the others, and, taking the lead, he stepped through.

~~~~~~~

The passage through the portal had a feint sense of moving in multiple directions at once, resulting in a bit of vertigo as his guts and his inner ear protested at the treatment, but after a moment he found himself standing in a brightly lit room.

The walls were covered with lichen, and the light seemed to be coming from the open sky, but the sky itself was black and starless. The walls ascended for thousands of feet and did not look climbable, being constructed of sheer rock. Maybe with the right equipment?

One by one the other party members appeared in formation behind him. Once everyone had arrived, they took stock of the situation.

After they had been in the dungeon for about a minute, they received another prompt from the system.

Welcome to Floor 1 SafeZone

Time until SafeZone Collapse: 23:59

Floor 1 objectives:

Kill 100 goblins

or

Kill Goblin Champion

or

Find Stairwell to Floor 2

Completion of any of these three objectives will teleport your party to floor 2, regardless of where they are on the floor.

Return to SafeZone before Collapse if you wish to withdraw.

Good luck!

“Goblins?” Luke said. “should be easy then, right? Goblins are trash mobs usually.”

“If you say so,” Maia said. “But one hundred is a lot of them.”

“We won’t be doing it all at the same time, obviously,” Luke clarified. “We’ll do it in smaller groups of like five or six. I bet my fireball could probably get the job done on a group that size if they’re close enough and—”

“And what, alert the entire floor of where we are?” Peter said, smacking the older boy. “Don’t be an idiot. If we’re outnumbered then we need to stay quiet.”

“Gabri, did you see the message too?” Eli asked.

“Nope! But I can guess. Don’t bother with kill counts, Master. Go for the stairwell.”

“What about experience?” Eli asked. “Won’t we miss out if we don’t farm the goblins on the first few floors?”

Gabri made an equivocal motion with his hand. “Eh, not really. If you’re fast, you earn a speed bonus to the experience reward for completing the floor. If you have to kill some goblins along the way then you shouldn’t shy away from it because they’ll definitely not be making things easy for you. But you’ll only get five to ten experience for killing a goblin. If you complete the floor, you’ll gain maybe five hundred experience, and if you get a speed bonus you can get up to double that!”

“Right,” Eli said. “If that’s the case, then we should get moving. Let’s keep an eye out for anything that looks like it might lead to the stairwell. We’ll defend ourselves if we have to, but unless these goblins are ridiculously easy to kill, then we should avoid confrontation with them until we’ve cleared a few floors and have some levels and a better idea what we’re doing.”

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