Chapter 36) The Consultation. Or, Now you know the troubles I've been.

Ah… “Shoot. I didn’t mean to get her in trouble, but some of what I was doing got her curious and she set off to ask her boss some questions about it. I didn’t think they would fire her for that.”

Terri sighed. "I got the impression she was a new hire of some sort and was getting stuck with the worst job. Probably to put her in her place. And now the new guy gets the job since he has connections and as long as he doesn't cause any problems he's golden."

Then she drifted over close and whispered. “So what happened and how do I avoid tripping over the same landmines”

So I filled her in on how to Focus and take possession of a body, which baffled her, and how that gates mostly seemed to be trapped.

She sighed again. "Well, that makes sense. Humanity is stuck working jobs to pay off our creator's debts so of course they aren't going to send any of us to the good places. What else did you do.”

“Well, I found a second set of dungeons with the last one in a series ending close to me. Focus called it a Defunct Mage Dungeon and I unlocked Squares on my Panel that gave me the ability to make them so my Trainees could get the three starter spells for mages. Then I put out all the starting items on the Panel out so anyone could have as much stuff to start off with as they wanted… And could haul off.”

“...go on.”

“So someone complained about Matt, one of the two guys I’m trying to help on the other side of an exit gate, you can go through those in a body until the countdown for the next Trainee counts down… Where was I… Yeah, they complained about Matt having spells, and some other people having so much stuff. I think that covers it.”

Terri floated there for a moment. “Okay. Thanks for telling me Tex, and I hope you can stop by again to fill me in on the rest. But I’m not one to push my boss’s buttons. At least not when I don’t have any place to go. So I think I’m going to play it safe, and just process my ten thousand people. I hope things work out for you somehow. But right now? Good luck and get out of here before you get me in trouble too.”

Then she headed down the hall, before coming to a sudden stop back in the room with the yellow floor. “Joyce, you’re supposed to be working on the climbing.”

Joyce faced off against the glowing ball. "I did, then I used the training you gave me as a Rouge to sneak up and get some information you should be sharing with the people like me that you could be sending off to their deaths. The Exit is a trap?"

Terri drifted back and dropped down a few inches. “Ah, great, you heard that. It’s not like you’ve got a lot of options. There’s only so much food and water in here.”

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I cleared my throat. The young woman glanced halfway over at me while still giving Terri a stern look, and I kind of guessed I had Terri's attention.

“The air starts thinning out after five hours, then it even more after another five. But out of the three gates I got to choose from. One of them seemed decent. Or at least you start off in what sounds like a safe spot, it’s just surrounded by danger. The other two you have to escape either by dawn in the one or dusk in the other. But it turns out the one place is surrounded by a massive wall with no way out you either have to get ten levels by killing things or die a hundred times only to get brought back to life and then tossed back out the arrival gate over and over.”

Joyce set her hands on her hips and glared at Terri “I want to know where all three of your gates go." Then she looked at me. "What else isn't she sharing with me, what other options do I have that she holding out on me."

Well, options are kind of the magic word.

“Every new skill you learn gives you ten life points on the other side, but you should have a forth class skill. Fighters get [ Climb ] too.”

I suppose my people could learn [ Sneak ] on the other side of the gate and get the ten points for it, but sneaking up on someone might be dangerous on the other side. It would be nice to offer it as an option to learn in my Dungeon.

The young woman leaned forward at Terri and began to wiggle a finger at her. “Talk.”

The Guide sighted. “The other one was Steal, so I left it out for Climb, Stealth, and Bypass. Three skills is what I was told to do.”

Joyce huffed at her, then turned to me. “I tried to do the focus thing you talked about. What did I do wrong.”

I bobbed up and down. “It doesn't work when I’m in a body, like this one, and other people can’t seem to learn how to do it either. Terri should though.”

She frowned, "So, in a body, you can't do it to my exit gate. Can you get out of that body and Focus on my gate?” She crossed her arms and looked at Terri. “I don’t think I can trust you to do it. You screwed me and planned on still screwing me after you knew otherwise. Are you planning on giving me a fair chance now, or let me walk into someplace really bad.”

Terri sighed. "Fine. If I'm going to go down in flames, at least I can do it while doing the right thing.

Floating down the hall over the yellow floor, which turned out to be a fifteen by fifteen room of badly fitting board, I suddenly got [ Stealth Unlocking Square Unlocked ]

Neat. I guess floating over the thing was pretty sneaky. And evidently sneaky enough.

The next similarly sized room with climbing squares going up one side, but not the other which made it all off center looking didn't do anything since I couldn't climb and already had it. And bumping into the white square in the middle of the next room that held a white door frame with a gray door that had a dull metal knob with a massive old fashioned key hold didn’t do anything for me either.

The last room was larger and had one gate in the middle of the opposite side of the room.

Joyce held back cautiously while Terri drifted up to the portal. "The Panel called it Lakeshore. I thought it sounded nice."

Then she hovered there for a moment, jerked in place, and began to mutter until I cleared my throat, which was enough to get her talking.

“Fine, it’s terrible. Is that what you wanted to hear? And I've sent… Seventeen people over there. All of them standing at the bottom of a ten story tall lighthouse filled with monsters that get tougher and tougher on each floor where they have to get all the way to the top and light the beacon to get a ride off of the island in the middle of a lake of acid. I did that to all those people, and… I can’t even cry about it anymore, can I?”

The ball of light that was my fellow guide sunk down toward the floor and dimmed in intensity as Joyce dug her foot into the ground and looked away.

I didn’t know what to say here. I was never all that good at comforting people, and it wasn’t like I could give her a shoulder to cry on.

Instead, I began to vent.

"You didn't choose to do this. They chose to do to us, and Allie had no clue either. The system is rigged, and none of us are at fault. All you can do is try to do better within the limits you got to work in."

“At least you know now some of the limits you can’t push.”