Chapter 5

First Level

Jeremy activated his Sneak skill but didn't see anything to hide from. He stood in a hallway carved with the same stone as the cavern, with lit torches that floated over his head. The floor was red, with white arrows pointing him forward.

He turned back. The cavern was gone. The only thing behind him now was a stone wall. He touched it. Sure felt real. Nothing to do but keep going. He activated Detect Traps' skill and realized he was out of mana from using Sneak. Still nothing. He started walking.

He walked by several passages and forks in the dungeon, feeling no inclination to explore. The last thing he wanted was to fight monsters. In fact, he'd be happy to run away from them if that was what it took to get home. He started to think he might have a chance of doing so.

If Boggan was telling the truth, all he had to do was keep going down the red path, and he'd make it home in a couple of days at the most.

A brightly lit solitary piece of orange candy sat on a narrow stand. If it was possible for a piece of candy to look sinister, this one did. Surrounding the candy, above and below, was a wide open metal jaw.

Jeremy activated his Detect Trap skill, not because he had the slightest doubt it was a trap, but to determine if his Detect Trap skill actually worked. The candy and jaws took on a faint red glow. Yep. Definitely a trap. He waited to recover and activated his Identify skill.

A Low Level Trap. If you fall for this trap, you are an idiot.

He obviously had no intention of reaching for the candy. The jaws would close on him and he'd lose an arm. But he was already sick of dungeon rations and he'd just arrived. Grabbing a dungeon ration from his pack, he threw it at the piece of candy. He wasn't the best thrower, but he wasn't terrible either. He hit the candy with the dungeon ration bar, knocking it off the stand. The metal jaws slammed shut as both the candy and his meal bar dropped through the large opening in the bottom of the jaws, falling to the dungeon floor underneath.

With a triumphant grin, Jeremy grabbed the candy, unwrapped it, and licked it cautiously. It had a sweet, mediciny taste. He wasn't sure if he liked it.

Something twisted in his gut and he fell to the ground, throwing up everything he'd eaten for the past week all over the dungeon floor. All he could do was curl up on the hard dungeon floor, moan, and hope for death. He felt something change on his stat sheet. The words--YOU HAVE BEEN POISONED!-- rested above his name in big letters. Jeremy groaned again. He was an idiot. Good thing he'd just licked the thing and hadn't put it in his mouth. He'd heard inducing vomiting helped with poison sometimes, but he'd already vomited everything, so there was no point in that. For what felt like an eternity, all he could do was stare at his stat sheet and watch his hit points drop. 4-3-2. As it went down, the hit point number turned from yellow to red. If it went down to 0, was he dead?

His hit points held at 2 for a while, then dropped to 1. After that, his stomachache slowly got better and his hit points started going up again, changing from red to yellow and then to black.

Whew! He pulled out his water bottle and washed his mouth out again and again, spitting it on the floor, where it was promptly absorbed by the dungeon.

The poison effect vanished, and under Skills on his stat sheet, he had a new skill.

Stolen novel; please report.

Poison Resistance (Level 1)

Interesting, he thought.

Both his vomit and the water he'd spit out vanished into the stone floor. No doubt absorbed by the dungeon like nothing had happened, though he was down to 5 hit points and he felt drained.

Once he felt strong enough to stand, he stood up and carefully put the candy back in its wrapper, packing it away. In this place, poison resistance could come in handy.

He kept walking until he encountered a section of the floor checkered with red-and-white tiles. When he activated Detect Trap, the white tiles glowed a faint red. Not seeing any way around the tiles, he nervously stepped on a red one.

Nothing happened. Fortunately, there were enough red tiles that getting across wasn't a problem.

Once across, he reached into his pack and pulled out his damaged shoe. He was wearing his new leather boots, but he'd put his old shoes in his pack just in case. He threw the shoe at a white tile.

Nothing.

Maybe he didn't throw it hard enough?

Nervously he crept out onto the tiles, avoiding the white ones, picked up his shoe, and crept back again. This time he threw the shoe as hard as he could at a white tile.

Boom! An enormous six-foot-high stone block crashed down on the tiles, blocking off the hallway, crushing his shoe and anything else it might have landed on. The side of the block Jeremy was facing had a nice picture of a yellow smiley face, next to a bright, shining sun and rainbows.

Good thing he hadn't stepped on the white tiles. Since the stone block showed no inclination to move and give his shoe back, he turned around and kept moving.

Now it was clear the dungeon was trying to kill him. He proceeded carefully, alert for anything that looked different and might spell trouble. He quickly leveled up Detect Traps by using this skill as much as possible, and his mana went to 3.

In one of the side passageways, something looked shyly up at him with its one large eye. Two feet tall, bright yellow, eight stubby legs, and a big smile. It looked like a stuffed octopus he'd seen in the toy store. It squeaked happily and its eight feet propelled it in his direction.

Uh oh. They seemed cute and friendly, but so had the monster bears before they turned into monsters and nearly killed him. He walked faster, hoping it would give up pursuit and leave him alone. Instead, other octopus creatures, each a different size and color, came out of side passageways. The smallest was one foot tall, the largest three feet. They were all brightly colored and wore big smiles.

He ran. He found another tiled section and rushed across, careful to stay on the red tiles. The creatures followed. Unfortunately, like him, they knew not to step on the white tiles, but... He reached into his pack for his remaining shoe. Waited until the first monster was 10 feet away, then threw the shoe, hard as he could, at a white tile.

Boom! The block came down in front of him. Green blood squirted out from under the stone covering his shoes, like someone had stepped on a green slime-filled water balloon. A stubby monster foot poked out from under the stone block from where the lead monster had almost made it across.

Whew! That had been close!

“Squeak.” An octopus monster crawled towards him over the top of the stone block, dropping to the dungeon floor in front of him. Its smiling mouth opened, the mouth and teeth showing a resemblance to the evil teddy-bears from earlier.

More followed the first, crawling over the six-foot-high stone block and dropping to the dungeon floor. Jeremy turned and ran.

A white door appeared in the distance. Not seeing much choice, (he had over twenty of the things behind him now, and he was almost out of breath), he ran for the door, praying it wasn't some kind of trap, pushed the door open and ran inside, slamming the door behind him. There was a thudding as the octopus monsters pounded on it.

The sun was high in the sky shining down on him, and there were sounds of a fountain in the distance. What?

“Rarrr!” A hairy, apelike humanoid creature carrying a large club, charged him from the side.