Chapter 31

Name

Elias Mathews

Health

179/179

Age

15

Mana

308/308

Species

Human

Stamina

164/164

Class

Scholar

Strength

14

Level

14

Dexterity

15

Titles

Runekeeper

Agility

14

Party

Unnamed Party (Leader)

Endurance

16

Guild

None

Constitution

18

Allegiance

None

Magic Power

22

Eli couldn’t help himself, he pulled up his status before even checking on the others or figuring out where he was. The fact that he’d gained six levels from the experience from the previous floor made his eyes bulge out a little bit.

He wondered again how the numbers actually translated into percentages. Was his Magic Power 220% stronger than it had been at level one? Was he 140% stronger than he’d been? He knew that the system itself had made him stronger, and he hadn’t gotten a good baseline on that improvement before entering the dungeon.

So he was uncertain what he was capable of now, except for the muddled recollection of standing with the warriors against the zombies.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

He jerked himself out of his reverie and turned to the others, who were looking around the wooden boat where they found themselves. They were in the hold, and the hold was narrow. There was very little light, what illumination there was coming from portholes. It was daytime or the hold would have been pitch black.

“So where are we?” Peter asked, looking around.

“I have no idea,” Eli confessed. “But I don’t think we’ll be fighting zombies this time.

He pulled up the SafeZone menu and checked the floor objectives.

Welcome to Floor 7 SafeZone

Time until SafeZone Collapse: 1:59

Floor 7 objectives:

Kill 6 Elite Monsters

or

Kill Labyrinth King

or

Solve Floor Puzzle

Or

Find Stairwell to Floor 8

Completion of any of these 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 (Error: Sysadmin Intervention prevents withdrawal at this time)

Good luck!

“We only have two hours before the floor collapses,” he informed the others.

The others frowned, confirming his statement with a quick check of their own interfaces, then began considering what that meant.

“It says that the option to retreat is blocked by the Sysadmin,” Maia pointed out. “Do you know what that means?”

“I don’t,” Eli said. “Maybe it has something to do with the fourth floor? Like there’s some sort of weird event every four floors that we can’t avoid?”

“Nah, this has something to do with your weird and screwy world,” Gabri said, floating over to poke at Eli. “If this was another Remnant it would be like the other one. And we wouldn’t be facing enemies. This is another training floor, I’d bet my wingdust on it.”

Eli blinked when the faerie got to close to his eyes and pulled back. He frowned at the little guy, then turned to the others. “Okay. So, the system can apparently pull out a zombie apocalypse from our media. We don’t know what else it can do, but given that this boat is made of wood, I don’t think that this current scenario involves a lot of modern technology.”

“There’s no point in speculating until we know more,” Erik said. “I’m going to go up to the surface. I’ll come back when I’ve spoken to whoever is in charge.”

“I’ll come with you,” Eli said.

“No,” Erik said. “I’m not certain that the deck is part of the SafeZone yet. It might be that we’ll be attacked as soon as we leave the cargo hold. Everyone else stay down here and figure out what to do with the sudden power bump you got from the last floor. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m level nine now.”

Eli blinked, noting that he was a higher level than his teacher, but he didn’t say anything. He supposed it might make sense if the different classes leveled at different rates.

Indeed, a quick poll showed that it was actually related to age. The youngest member of the party, Peter, was also the highest level at level sixteen. The oldest among them, John Sr, was only level eight. This was excluding the two noncombat classes, who were both a surprising level twenty-two and level fifteen, with Jose being lower level. The others put this disparity down to his age, and Eli allowed them to make that attribution.

They didn’t need to know that until the previous floor Jose had been receiving a massive bias against his experience gains.

Erik came back after fifteen minutes. He sighed and slung himself into one of the hammocks.

“I figured out what’s going on, more or less,” he said. “The scenario is this; we’re in classical times. And unfortunately, we’re slaves. We’ve been sold to a foreign king, who is planning on sending us into this labyrinth where he has tricked every monster and evil thing on his island into hiding. The passageways keep changing so once we’re inside there’s no coming out. Our job is to kill the most evil thing we can find and return. Does this scenario sound familiar to anyone?”

The room was silent, then Luke raised his hand. “Is this like the labyrinth of the Minotaur?”

“Indeed, it sounds exactly like that to me,” Erik said. He sighed. “Well, at least we only have to kill six enemies.”

“They’re elites though,” Luke said, shaking his head. “That means the fights aren’t going to be easy. And I’m not entirely convinced that we can read the prompt to say that there are only seven monsters in the labyrinth. It’s possible we’ll have to kill endless waves just in order to reach one boss.”

“Thanks, you’re right, I was being too optimistic,” the teacher said. “We’re obviously screwed.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Luke said.

“So what do we do?” Sophie asked. “We have two hours before this SafeZone collapses, what does that mean?”

“It means that we’re arriving in port today and after that we’ll be presented to the king and thrown into the labyrinth,” Erik said, shrugging. “Unless we try to run away. We could try that.”

“And what?” Eli asked. “We don’t know where we’re going, we won’t be able to return to the surface, and we can’t call for help. The only way I see to get out of here is to keep going. My vote is that we cooperate with this scenario and fight it out in the labyrinth.”

“Right, mine too,” Maia agreed.

The teens were all with him, and the adults reluctantly joined their voices to his. Even Jose, who looked annoyed to be forced to agree with Eli.

After the discussion came to an end, Eli pulled out the book on Tattoos that he’d received and began reading it in the light of one of the portholes. He blinked in surprise as he realized what it was, sitting up straight.

He re-read the introduction, then examined the index. He flipped to the back and read the description of the complex patterns. He settled on two to test out immediately.

His mind raced quickly, and he looked at Sophie. “Sophie, come here. I need your help.”

She walked over, but paused when he began taking off his shirt. “Um, what’s up, Eli?”

“One of my rewards from the last floor, it’s a list of Tattoos. Enhancement tattoos. We need to get them on everyone ASAP, but these two are a priority to put on me. They’re scholar specific. One of them increases speed and strength, and the other increases regeneration? I’m not exactly sure what it does but I’m hoping it will let me buff everyone the way that I can buff weapons and clothes at the moment.”

“Okay,” she said. “So why did you take off your shirt?”

“I need you to draw this pattern on my back,” he said, turning away from her. He passed her the henna tattoo kit over his shoulder. “You’re the best artist among us.”

She bit her lip for a moment, but accepted his story. She spent a moment examining the patterns on the book, then began.

There was fifteen minutes left on the timer when she finished the first one, so she didn’t bother with the second. Instead, Eli ran his magic through the tattoo to test it out, feeling it burn into place in a way that he hadn’t been expecting. But once it was active, he tried arm wrestling with Maia to test how strong he was.

She beat him both times, but reported that he was about sixty percent stronger when he activated his enchanted tattoo. They repeated the experiment with him buffing the other warriors and found that the effect was less profound when it was spread to someone else, only about thirty percent.

But that was still a thirty percent strength buff, he thought to himself. He checked to make certain that the tattoo had set before he put his shirt and leather jacket back on. When they had time, they’d go through the rest of the tattoos and figure out what to put on everyone. But for right now, they didn’t seem to have time.

Indeed, just as he was thinking that, the boat clunked and men came into the hold to yell at them. The prisoners understood them perfectly, for the men were speaking in the Language of the Birds.

“You shall cooperate with us as we go meet the king,” the captain said, his muscular sailors standing nearby to back him up. “If you don’t cooperate, then you shall die prematurely, yes? You have come this far, do not be a bad investment for me at the last moment.”

“We’ll cooperate,” Eli said. “We have our own reasons to get this over with.”

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