As I stepped inside of the cave, I heard a gentle “pinging” sound. Then, there was a sudden flash of light that blinded me temporarily, and a loud rumbling noise that echoed throughout the halls. After that, everything fell silent… and when my eyes had adjusted enough to open back up again, I found that I was now in a small, circular room, with four doors lined up against the wall, and a series of flashing blue messages that were displayed right at the center of my field of vision. They read:

“Welcome to the Beginner’s Dungeon! You are currently on Floor One.”

“Your currently available starting points are: Floor One. You can unlock a new starting point by reaching a hub floor for the first time. The next hub floor that you can reach is: Floor Five.”

“While inside of the dungeon, you can fight monsters, discover treasures, and encounter a variety of other surprises. To mark an object as a piece of treasure that you want to bring back with you when you return, look at the object, and then think keep item. You can bring back three (3) pieces of treasure per trip.”

“To return from the dungeon, think exit the dungeon. You will also return from the dungeon automatically if you fall in combat.”

“Returning from the dungeon will restore both your body and your equipment to the condition that they were in before. Once you have returned from the dungeon, however, you will not be able to enter again until the following day. Each new day begins at midnight. At that time, monsters and treasures will be automatically re-populated. Finally, please note that all EXP that you acquire in the dungeons will be applied after you have rested, and that any levels that you gain will be available the following morning.”

“Good luck, and enjoy!”

The only part of those messages that surprised me much at all – besides the continual oddness of living in this video-game like world, of course – was the one that said that the EXP which I gained inside of the dungeon wouldn’t be applied until after I had returned, and gotten a good night’s worth of rest. That meant that I would be level one for the whole of my time here today, so I probably wouldn’t be able to advance beyond floor two, or beyond floor three at the very most.

After I had finished reading each of the messages, I looked around, and took in my surroundings.

As I mentioned before, the room was mostly empty, except for the four doors that were placed along the walls. There didn’t seem to be anyone else here at the moment, so there wasn’t anyone that I could ask about where each of the doors lead to, or which of them I should choose for now. But Praxa had suggested that the most enjoyable way to explore the dungeons was just to go whichever way you wanted, so I doubted that what door I chose would really matter all that much at all. So, I ended up deciding to just pick the door that was closest to me, which had a small engraving of the number “five” right above its center.

As I approached the door, I reached out, and grabbed the black metal handle that protruded out from it. I found that it turned quite easily in my hand, as the large golden frame of the door pulled out smoothly towards me.

Through the now-opened entryway, I could make out what seemed to be a huge, sprawling jungle, and a ceiling so high up in the air that it seemed to be almost invisible out in the distance. All sorts of large, brightly colored flowers were springing up on the trees all around me, and something that looked almost exactly like sunlight was beaming down from the roof. The whole place really gave off the impression of being a sort of a tropical paradise, and the scene certainly wasn’t at all what I had been expecting from the first floor of an ancient, enclosed dungeon.

I couldn’t have known this at the time, of course, but part of the joy of exploring the dungeons was that the magic of the place was used to create places that were very lush, and often extremely beautiful. In my adventures to come through the different floors of each of the dungeons, I would end up seeing just about every sort of wonder that you could imagine – huge, soaring waterfalls, and islands that were floating in the sky, and golden staircases that ascended up towards the peak of frozen mountains, and old, ruined castles, that hovered magically above the surface of great and beautiful lakes.

But even just at this moment, I could already get some taste of all of the splendors that were yet to come, as I watched a creature that looked a little like a large, emerald green parrot go flying through the air above me, before landing on the branch of an enormous tree, and letting out a beautiful, melodic song, that echoed through the huge expanse of jungle that stretched out before my eyes.

In a state of deep contentment, I took a few steps inside, and began to think about what I wanted to do next.

One thing that had become really clear from talking with Praxa was that, if you wanted to be able to make a living as an adventurer, then you’d need to end up becoming pretty powerful.

Even in a town like Westfall - where there was a student run economy that prevented any sort of competition from older and more skilled explorers - most people weren’t able to make a living just from adventuring until about level 35 or so.

For would-be adventurers like myself, that meant that you would generally end up supplementing your explorations with another source of income, which would probably be either a skilled profession, like blacksmithing, or else a role as a guard or a soldier for the town (which is what Praxa had chosen to do).

Of course, when Praxa had said that you needed to be about level 35 in order to “make a living,” what she had meant is that you needed to be around that level in order to make enough money to be able to pay for your rent, and your food, and your classes, and all of the other expenses that came from getting a place to stay in Westfall. That was more money than I would need for right now, of course, so I wouldn’t need to worry about getting that powerful just yet.

But, even if I just wanted to make a bit of money to try to pay for the next weeks’ worth of food, it was still going to take a bit of experience. It seemed as if most of the treasures on the first five floors were fairly worthless, and that I’d need to be around level 6 or 7 to be able to start finding things that anyone might want to pay for. From there, I could probably start to make enough to pay for food for myself and for Aaron and Lily, and I could certainly earn enough to pay for my food reliably around the time that I reached the Tenth Floor or so.

For the most part, then, it just wasn’t possible to really turn much of a profit without going up higher and higher into the dungeons. That meant that a new adventurer like myself probably wasn’t going to be able to find anything very valuable on his first visit here, or to support himself right away.

There were, however, two different exceptions to that rule.

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The first exception was something that I had mentioned before, which are “treasure floors.” Every time that you moved from one floor to another, you had a small chance to end up on a kind of randomly generated, “in-between” stage. That stage was sometimes what was called a “treasure floor,” which gave you your choice of all sorts of rare and valuable treasures to bring back home.

However, it didn’t seem all that likely for me to encounter one of those anytime too soon. From what Praxa had said, it sounded as if many people had even spent a whole year in the Beginner’s Dungeon without ever discovering one of those places. But it was at least a possibility, and one that I might be able to light upon, if I was lucky.

But, of course…

… I wasn’t.

That left the second option.

The dungeons also had a special kind of creature called a “golden goblin.” These strange monsters looked a little bit like goblins made up out of gold, and if you were able to defeat one of them, then they would dissolve into a box that was filled with three different kinds of valuable goods, all of which you could bring back with you when you returned to your home.

Best of all, encountering these golden goblins didn’t depend at all on your Luck stat. Each of them just happened to spawn in a certain area at a particular time, which had nothing to do with the luck values of any of the players in that area, and only had to do with how frequently that area was visited (with more populated areas receiving the greater share of golden goblins). So, if you happened to be closer to the goblin than any of the other people nearby, then you had a really good chance of defeating them, and of making their loot your own.

Unfortunately…

… it was nearly impossible to find one.

According to Praxa, there were forty-nine of the creatures in total, and each of them took a year to respawn, once they had been defeated. Add in how many floors they might spawn on – and how many other people might be there to get to them first – and your odds of encountering one were just about 1 in 10,000 on any given day… low enough that most people came and went through the town of Westfall without ever having seen one of them at all, much less having defeated one and taken their treasures.

All of those considerations together meant that the “exceptions” to the rule weren’t as real as they might have seemed, and that it was pretty much guaranteed that I wasn’t going to find any sort of valuable treasure until I had at least managed to get my level up to about 6 or 7, and made my way towards some of the higher floors of the dungeon.

For that reason, I had decided that I would just focus for now on improving my abilities, so that I would be able to bring back some valuable goods after a few more trips to the dungeon. If that plan ended up falling through, then I planned to either take up a skilled profession, like farming or blacksmithing, or else to see if it would be possible for me to be hired as a guard for the city.

That was my thinking at the time, at any rate.

Anyway, after having settled on my tentative plans for the future, I began to simply venture out further into the jungle, in order to see where my explorations might happen to lead me.

At first, the whole place had seemed enormously tranquil, and the whole time that I had been thinking about what to do, I had also just been soaking in the whole graceful beauty of the jungle that was stretching out all around me.

But once I began to move further on in ahead, it really didn’t take too long for things to become a lot more chaotic, as I encountered my very first enemy in the dungeons.

As I soon discovered, the whole jungle was full of a certain kind of short, bipedal lizard creature, that carried a large, iron-pointed spear, and a small, round wooden shield.

If I’m being honest with you, the first one of those creatures that I encountered was actually pretty terrifying. I knew that I wasn’t going to die here, of course, or even get injured. But it was still more than a little unnerving to see an angry looking creature with a pointed weapon run towards you as fast as it could, shrieking and yelling in a fit of rage, while it thrust its spear directly towards your chest with the intent to murder you.

It took just about everything that I had to be able to keep my cool, as I just barely managed to leap out of the creature’s way, before swinging my large long sword down against its shield with both of my hands. Fortunately, the creature still seemed to be a little off balance, so it didn’t have the strength or the coordination to be able to block the downwards swing of my sword. Instead, the blade went crashing through the fragile wood, cleaving the whole shield into a handful of splintered fragments, as I drove the blade further and further down through the creature’s shoulder, along the neck.

A few seconds later, I had attained my first ever victory as an explorer in the dungeons.

“Congratulations! You have defeated your first enemy in the dungeon!”

“Achievement unlocked: Novice Dungeoneer! +2% damage while inside of a dungeon.”

Another notice informed me of the EXP that I had gained, which would be applied once I had exited the dungeon.

That victory – and the little bit of extra power that I had gained as a result – gave me exactly the boost of courage that I needed to keep pressing onwards, and to continue to fight against the creatures.

The next one of the monsters that I found went down pretty easily, too, and by the time that I had gotten to about the fourth or the fifth of them, I was starting to feel a lot more comfortable in my abilities, and a lot more certain that I was really able to fight.

I hadn’t known this at the time, but I think a lot of the reason that my first day in the dungeons had gone so well was because of my naturally high Agility stat. It was actually pretty rare to have more than an 8 in any single attribute, so to have come into the world with a perfect ‘10’ in Agility, and then added to it that extra point which I had gotten right at the beginning of my journey, all meant that my dodging abilities were a little over twice as high as what an average person’s would have been at that time.

Combine that with the fact that the lizard-men were fairly strong, but not especially agile, and it was pretty easy to see why I would be able to take them down with so little danger. Add to that the blessing of Kalia, which restored me back up to full health even if I did get hit, and it really seemed as if I could have stayed out there forever, just fighting and growing more and more capable and skilled.

I must have stayed out there for at least two or three hours, just fighting against the lizard-creatures and beginning to get a sort of mastery over my blade. I knew that Praxa had told me that you’d often encounter other people while you traveled through the dungeons, but so far, it had just been me out here all by myself. I wasn’t really sure why that was – I was still right by the entrance, so it seemed like I should have seen someone by now – but I didn’t really give it a lot of thought. Instead, I just continued to fight, and to practice each of my skills, only taking a few short breaks every now and then to admire the beauty of the environment, and to marvel at some of the places and the sights that I stumbled across along the way.

By the time that I had at last begun to grow a little tired from fighting each of the different creatures, I had made a fairly considerable amount of improvement. My Strong Swordsmanship skill was now at level 7, and my Dodging skill had improved all the way up to level 4.

I had been hoping that I would unlock a new enhancement at level 5 (just as I had done with my Swordsmanship skill), but I hadn’t gotten any sort of notice sayng "a bonus will be unlocked at your next level" yet with my "Dodging" skill, so I assumed that my enhancement would come a little later, if dodging also had an enhancement of its own. But, that meant that I probably wouldn’t get all that much stronger than this, at least for the time being, which suggested that, if I wanted to try venturing up towards the second floor, then now was as good of a time to head up there as any.

Even though I had found the entrance that led up to the second floor a little while back, I had wanted to avoid it at first, until I felt as if I had made as much progress down here as I could. But now that defeating the lizard-creatures had become so easy, and now that it seemed as if my abilities weren’t going to improve all that much more, I figured that there wasn’t any harm in making my way upwards. The worst that would happen is that I would be defeated... and even then, I would still have made a good deal of progress, and could just pick up where I left off on the following day.

So, with quite a bit of curiosity about what might lay ahead, I made my way out towards the entrance to the second floor, and prepared to make my way further on in through the dungeon.