The giant humanoid creature swung it’s arm down towards him, Nick took a step backwards, just enough to dodge the strike and activate his skill. He then cut an angle around the creature and threw a series of punches at its body, barely getting a response.

“Don’t think your punches are doing much kid.” Gareth chuckled.

“You don’t say?” Nick panted.

The creature then started lumbering after Nick again, charged up a swing and went for him. With his skill on cooldown Nick had to almost throw himself to the side to avoid it. What he was trying wasn’t working, his punches didn’t affect the creature. He had no protection for his knuckles and wrists, so he couldn’t punch too hard without injuring himself. Nick realised he’d have to change things up if he was going to have any chance at beating this thing.

Nick started dodging around the slow creature, burning his own energy to make sure the thing had no chance to swing accurately. He waited for his skill to come back and then activated it, using the speed to get behind the creature and jackhammer his foot down into where he thought the back of its knee was. Nick didn’t know much about kicking but it was a prank he had been victim to far too often in highschool.

The creature stumbled a bit but didn’t topple over like Nick hoped it would. Nick had a feeling he was on the right path though. He started to wish he’d learnt a bit of grappling. A solid takedown here would likely have worked, sadly Nick didn’t know the technique for any. So back to dodging around he went, waiting for his skill to come back.

Nick repeated this pattern a few times, until he could tell that the creature's leg was finally giving out. With a final quick stomp, the creature toppled to the ground. It tried to stand itself back up but would just fall back down when it put any weight on it’s crippled leg. Nick took a step back and hunched over, sucking in deep breaths.

“Go on kid, you’re not done yet.” Gareth said.

“I don’t want to kill it, dude.” Nick replied. The creature was a giant grey and black humanoid, standing at least 2.5 metres tall. It had no features, just a jagged coloured layer across its entire body. It still felt kinda human though, it moved like a big, slow, man. Nick was already feeling a bit tumultuous about taking part in pushing those ‘Infected’ into the darkness.

“Nick. This thing was actively trying to kill you. You had no problem breaking it’s leg.”

“Yeah well, killing it’s different.”

“You’re going to have to do it, Nick. You killed the Brute.” Gareth reminded him.

“The demon pig didn’t look human, and technically it killed itself.” Nick countered.

“Nick, these things aren’t human. The Infected aren’t human. Anything you find in the Complex isn’t human anymore. Everything out there wants to kill us, the humans. Look at it, it’s still trying to kill you.” Gareth pointed at the giant.

It had given up trying to stand back up and was just crawling towards Nick, rather slowly mind you. Nick took a deep breath. It’s just a cultural difference, he was just acclimatising to the new lands. At least it wasn’t a cute farm animal that could stare into his eyes. The dumb giant didn’t even have eyes, thank god.

Nick walked over to the creature, dodged it’s rather pathetic swing and used his buff to stomp down on the creature's head. Just like it’s legs, it was a very resilient thing and Nick had to repeat the action multiple times before the head crumbled in on itself. He watched on in amazement as the entire thing turned to dust in front of him. Well that certainly helped with his guilt.

“All the creatures in challenge rooms are created for the room, they can’t leave and they disappear once defeated.” Gareth explained.

Gareth had pulled Nick into the room without explaining much, he had told him it was a challenge room then squared him off against the giant creature waiting in the room.

“Here comes the part that everyone loves.” As Gareth said that the dust began to move.

Nick jumped back in surprise, the dust began to gather up into a box shape. Then it solidified and began to colour itself, revealing itself to be a small chest.

“Loot.” Grinned Gareth. “The number one motivator of people around here. And a chance for you to see your passive skill in action.”

“Before you open it, let me explain what you’d expect to find. This is a white tier chest, notice the white band around it? Yep, there is usually something on whatever you find to denote it’s tier. White is the lowest.” Gareth explained.

He then continued. “Chests also come in sizes, you’ve got a small one there. There’s medium and large variants. In small ones like this you’re only going to find some pills, maybe a weak item if you’re particularly lucky.” Gareth smiled at the end of his sentence.

Not waiting any longer, Nick opened up the small chest. Inside he saw a small baggie with 5 white pills in it. They looked incredibly suspicious when packaged like that, he half expected a guy in a tracksuit with a bum bag to come out and offer him $20 for it. He pulled out the baggie and put it in his pocket, feeling like he should check over his shoulder as he did so.

There was something else in the small chest as well though, two items very familiar to Nick. There were two rolls of fabric with little loops on the end sitting there. Hand wraps. Nick laughed to himself, okay this was very targeted loot.

Gareth peered over his shoulder. “What are those?” He asked.

“They’re hand wraps, you put them on under your boxing gloves to keep your knuckles and wrists a bit more protected.” Nick explained.

“Bloody Explorers.” Gareth sighed. “Well there you go, you’ve used all your skills. We can head back now.”

Nick pocketed the wraps and followed Gareth out of the room, the door closed itself behind him.

“What?” Nick jumped.

“Challenge rooms close themselves off for a time to reset. Each one’s a little different but it’s usually a few hours at least.”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

As they walked back Nick would activate his Treasure Sense skill whenever he could, trying to get used to it. It didn’t show him the door again and there wasn’t anything else around him, each time he activated it he’d feel a resounding emptiness ring out from around him. It was a disturbing feeling but Nick knew he’d probably have to get used to it. While they were walking Gareth explained the kinds of treasure he’d be likely to sense.

The chests he’d gotten for beating a challenge room could be randomly found in rooms, but they appeared very rarely. He’d mostly be seeing doors or other people's dropped loot. Apparently Nick would be spending a lot of his time basically helping people find their lost magical keys.

Suddenly Nick felt something ping back when using the skill. It was a small shape that was actively moving around. Closing his eyes he could see that it was about 40 centimetres tall, it had stubby little arms and legs. Whatever it was, it was a few hundred metres away. Wow he had a long range, he certainly wouldn’t be losing much.

“Hey uh Gareth, my treasure sense is showing me a small creature of some sort.” Nick brought up.

Gareth whirled around to look at him. “Where?!”

“Uhhh that way?” Nick pointed in a direction.

“Lead the way kid, quickly!” Gareth said, excitement palatable in his voice. “Bloody Explorers I tell you.”

Nick led the way through room after room, getting closer and closer to the highlighted shape in his vision. When they were what Nick felt was one door away from the room the shape was in he stopped.

“It’s through this door.” Nick said.

“Alright kid, I think you’ve found a loot goblin. An incredibly rare treasure, which wow, I’ve only seen two in my years.” Gareth said. “Now, as soon as you get through that door you’ve got to pounce on that thing. Punch it, kick it, bloody bite it if you have to. Don’t let it get away. Finish it off as quickly as you can.”

Nick was a little confused but nodded his head. Then he opened the door, as soon as he stepped through he heard a shrill shriek and he saw a golden little creature. Without thinking about it Nick launched himself at the thing. The creature raised it’s chubby little arms in panic and tried to run. Nick’s foot was faster though and he punted it into one of the walls. He felt terrible doing so. The little thing slumped, and Nick got a good look at it.

It was entirely golden and chubby, those two words being its defining characteristics. It looked adorable if Nick was being honest. A cute little golem far too chubby to be practical in any way.

“Grab it Nick!” Gareth yelled.

Nick quickly snatched it up and held it against his chest. Gosh it was cute, Lily would love this thing.

“Squeeze it as hard as you can! Now!” Gareth yelled again.

“I don’t wanna…” Nick whinged.

“DO IT NOW!” Gareth shouted at him.

Surprised by the aggression, Nick bear hugged the little thing until it popped. He was left hugging a little golden gem.

“Awwhhhh.” Nick felt incredibly bad.

Gareth gawked at the gem, completely unable to compose himself he almost reached out for it.

Nick looked at the man apprehensively.

Gareth noticed Nick’s raised eyebrow, coughed and composed himself. “Uh hum, that’s a big ticket item right there kid.”

“What is it?” Nick asked. He inspected the gold gem, it had a white circle in the centre of it. “It’s white tier?”

“That kid, is a class gem. The rarest kind of gem you can find. The one that lets you level up your class.”

It didn’t mean too much to Nick, without a frame of reference he couldn’t really understand the worth of the gem he was holding. “What’s leveling up your class do?”

“It gives you a new skill.” Gareth answered.

Well that certainly sounded cool. A new skill would definitely be a huge upgrade to anyone's arsenal.

“Sweet, how do I use it?”

Gareth seemed stumped for a moment. Before hunching over in a fit of laughter. “Fuck it kid, just think about using it.”

So that’s exactly what Nick did, he held the gem in his hand and simply thought about using the gem.

Class Level Up!

One Available Class Found!

Explorer Level 2!

‘Skill: Map’ Unlocked!

Map - Active

You have access to a map of your surroundings, locations only marked as you discover them and are labelled by your knowledge.

“Woah.” Nick instantly activated the skill and a screen popped up before his eyes. On that screen was a map of the hotel he’d just walked through, well it was trying its best to be. Due to the strange nature of the rooms, walls overlapped and a lot of the spaces didn’t quite line up. It all created a very interesting visual on the map, thankfully most of the rooms didn’t overlap so it wasn’t unreasonably messy. The map even marked his location!

“What did you get kid?” Gareth couldn’t hide the giddiness in his voice.

“I thought you said you knew the Explorer classes skills?” Nick asked.

“Each class has the same first three skills. Each skill after that tends to be unique or specialised to the person's needs.” Gareth explained.

“Ah okay, well I got a map skill. It lets me open a map of the places I’ve been and shows me where I am.”

Gareth openly gaped for a while, seemingly unable to say anything. “That's… well. Helpful to say the least.”

Nick looked through what was available to him. All of the rooms he’d walked through on this floor and the parts of the car park he walked through. He could toggle which floor he was looking at, though he had very little coverage for anything not on his current floor. This did mean he could find his way back to the car though, which could be useful.

Gareth cleared his throat. “So kid, I may have put you in a pretty tricky spot.”

Nick raised an eyebrow but waited for the man to explain.

“Those gems are rather rare, usually only dropped from the first place chest in the event rooms. People have lost a lot of blood fighting over these gems kid. A new skill can completely change someone’s prospects.”

Nick nodded along. He wasn’t sure what the event rooms were but assumed they were similar to the challenge rooms. He was starting to understand that he had just used something very valuable though.

“Tony’s going to be rather pissed isn’t he?” Nick asked.

“Yeah, he really is. From what I’ve heard he’s only managed to get one of his classes to level two so far. I see two choices here. We either tell him you found a gem, but say I couldn’t explain what it was before you accidentally used it. Or, we don’t say anything at all.” Gareth said.

Nick considered the two options for a moment. Lying, or avoiding the truth seemed like the easiest option. Explaining what happened could come with some serious benefits though. If leveling up your class was as rare as Gareth was saying, having a level two Explorer would be a huge boon to a team.

“How bad will Tony lash out?” Nick asked.

“He’ll probably get rather mad. Though he should take most of it out on me. He can’t do too much to me though, it would damage his reputation too much.” Gareth answered.

Nick thought about it. “Are you willing to cop that much for me?”

Gareth shrugged. “Yeah kid, I really do feel bad getting you into this situation. That, and you and your family are going to need everything you can get with what’s coming.”

Nick looked into the man's eyes as he spoke. Either the man was a great liar with a nefarious plan, or he was being genuine. Nick decided to trust his new found friend.

“Righto then, let's head back and see how mad the little man gets.”