Chapter Fifteen ) Defunct Dungeon. Or “Is anyone home?”

I'm not entirely sure how far I had to go, or how long it took me to trudge along the flat dark red stone, but it felt like two miles and most of an hour.

Part of the problem was that once I got a few hundred feet away from my Dungeon, which was in a hole in the ground with no surface features, I couldn't see where it was any more than I could see the dungeon I was heading to.

The other problem was that it sure did feel like something was watching me, something that I think got up pretty close to me, and sniffed…

Whatever it was, it was invisible and didn't have any interest in a set of bare bones walking around.

“I guess there has to be some kind of ecology here, and with any kind of ecology, there must be predators.”

But at least they didn’t seem to be bone eating predators.

The only thing I was able to do to try to keep going in a straight line toward the defunct dungeon was to drag the fifty some feet of rope along behind me with a grapple on the end to keep the rope taunt behind me with the metal hook's weight.

Then I just kept looking back to make sure the rope wasn’t at an angle or curving.

I’m not sure if that really worked, or if I lucked out but when I felt like I had gone far enough, and began to walk around in an ever growing spiral, it only took me around a half hour to spot the drop off of the other dungeon.

Or maybe it was an entirely different dungeon… Nope, Focus still showed it to be the dungeon I had been looking for.

So… A two mile walk, and I only ended up being off by a few thousand feet. It could have been worse.

I could have been so far off course that I never would have found it, or found my way back.

Hopefully, I had left enough written instructions on the walls that the next nine thousand, nine hundred and minty seven Trainees could figure everything out and my job would have gotten finished without me being involved. Or would something happen if the countdown finished and I wasn’t there?

Walking up to the edge of the defunct dungeon I could it set up pretty much like my own, or more like mine was supposed to be.

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Two rooms on either end of a hundred foot long hallway broken up by three rooms between them. Since I had gotten to the place right about in the middle I took a peek over the edge.

There was a dark blue square with a white circle on it with a white looking squiggles in it. There was a series of cracks and holes in the middle of the wall on the opposite side of the room from me that was mostly lined up with the square.

“Looks like someone was doing some target practice.”

Taking a gander with Focus on the square informed me that it was a [ Mage Bolt Unlocking Platform ] which made me wonder now what I would have gotten from looking at the squares back in my own dungeon. [ Swimming Unlocking Platform maybe? ]

Heading to the right I found a set of stairs made up of the Strata in the middle of the room going up to another white on blue square called [ Mage Fall Unlocking Platform ] which since the stairs went up ten feet I was guessing involved either jumping or falling to unlock [ Mage Fall. ]

The last room at the end was completely empty other than an alcove with a swirling blue gate in it, and a few pock marks and cracks in the walls and the floor of the room.

“Looks like this place has seen some fighting, and either the last fight was a dozy and the Guide left without cleaning up, or he, or they, regularly let the place get messy.”

One other thing it had, was writing above the alcove that the gate sat in. Which told me two things, I didn't have to leave the alcove with my three gates open to the sky, and whoever used to work here didn't come from Earth.

The writing consisted of what looked like five symbols made up of circles and lines, with the first three linked together and the last two standing on their own.

I would call them letters since they weren't anywhere as near complicated as Japanese whatchamacallits, but they were a little fancier than normal letters. Maybe my missing colleague just decided to metal them up with their equivalent of Umlauts?

Heading the other way I found another skill room with a white on blue square called a [ Mage Guard Unlocking Platform ] and nothing else of note.

The last, or first, room had an empty table in the middle and an alcove without a red arrival gate in it.

Shoot, why didn't I make a table? Then I could have put the basic starting gear on it instead of having to point out the right shelf to everyone.

“Guess the entrance goes away when the tenth thousandth person comes in, I guess the fella who ran this place may have gone out the exit gate himself when the job was over." Which would at least explain why it was still there.

I wasn't sure if there was any point in going down there, but then there wasn't any point in not going down either. So I went.

So, first problem. There wasn't anything to hook the grapple on, at least not anything like a notch or a crack that would secure it. The best I could do was hook it over the edge of the drop off and put my weight on it by slipping over the edge and hanging on to the top with my one hand as I slipped my weight over the edge and onto the rope.

Second problem, bone fingers don’t give you much of a grip.

My grip strength was good enough to keep a hold of the rope as I put about half my weight on it without the hook slipping, but once I put my full weight on it and let go of the ledge up above with my other hand, I began sliding.

I think it was only the fact that a set of human bones only weighs about thirty pounds or so that had kept me from slipping right from the start, but once all those pounds were dangling from just my two little bony hands, strength alone wasn't enough for me to keep my grip.

My feet hit the floor with a clatter of bones after a quick descent, and I got hit with two things.

Three if you count the rope that fell on and all around me, and then the grapple that had slipped out of the edge of the top of the wall and bounced off my shoulder if you count them as one thing.

The second, or third thing was a set of glowing three inch tall letters that appeared without me having to stare at anything and Focus on it.

[ Starter Mage Class Ability Channel Magic Unlocked ]

That made my brain go blank for a moment.

“Well… That’s something, isn’t it.”

Then there was another notice.

[ 10 ]