Chapter Nine) The First Customer. Or, The writings on the wall.

Just in case Alice something or other had lied, or to be charitable, was just wrong about my ability to talk to the Fighter Trainees, I put up the descriptions of where the worst two portals could take people on both sides of each of the alcoves with arrows pointing at the portal they described.

I did my best to carve a translation of the same thing in my best high school Spanish. At the very least I was fairly confident adding El Diablo at the end of the Spanish bit I remembered would get the point across.

Then I went back and carved the requirement for unlocking the skills in both languages and a warning that they might only be able to unlock the first three skills they tried.

After all, I could, well at least I hoped I could, fill the words in with stone again after I knew if that was true or not.

Who knows what might be true after I made the arrival portal and people started showing up?

So. Equipment set up, I hope. Skill room in place. Monster to fight. An Exit.

I made an alcove in the wall opposite the entrance to the long hallway and called up a portal.

“Panel. Time for the grand opening. Lock chevron six.” Which was enough for the Panel to make the gate real.

Panel is a good… whatever you would call it. It gets me.

The silver metal ring appeared, and filled with red light that seemed to stretch out into a great distance, and…

Nothing.

I waited for a bit. Expectantly. And… More nothing.

"I guess there ain't much of a lineup yet. Or do I have to wait until word gets around? Panel… Did I miss something?"

Which for once got a response written out on the white screen “Tutorial Guides will receive a countdown of ten when Trainees are due to arrive.”

“Well then… Guess I need to find something to do.”

Should I make another entrance gate? Or better yet… Focus.

[ Tutorial Dungeon Entrance Portal ]

[ This portal is aligned to accept Fighter class trainees from designation -Yet another world being trashed by idiots- ]

“Huh… A bit judgmental, but I can’t say they’re wrong.”

Don’t poop where you sleep. Most people figure that out by the time they’re old enough to get potty trained, but somehow they never scale it up to where they live no matter how old they get.

So now what…

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...Red gate brings people in, blue gate sends them off. That's one of them Dobber effects isn't it?

...I guess I can fill in some of the rock I took away making the place. Make the place a little nicer. Some arches or something…

I top off the first five feet of the hallway out of the room so the top of the exit is only about ten feet up, and after taking a good long gander at it, I carve in the state flag of Texas above it with the lone star in a box at the top, and the lower part split into two boxes side by side.

I can’t do colors, but I put some shallow parallel angular slashes on one side to mark the red part, and a bunch of dots around the star to mark the blue. The white part I leave blank.

You never have to do anything to show something as being white, which now that I think of it seems a bit racist. Even if you just do things that way because the paper is usually white.

I think I might be overthinking this. That tends to happen when you got too much time on your hands.

I miss having hands.

After that, I started carving some bits of advice and quotes here and there on the various walls. I even give credit when I remember, or misremember who said them.

It kills some time until a set of Screens and a number appear in the air in front of me. Which makes me wonder why. This is part of the setup for me making this dungeon which is usually all done with the Panels, not whatever it is I figured out on my own.

“10”

I take a pause in carving, "Every man longs to fall into the arms of a woman, without falling into their hands." At "arms" as the panel hovered there for a second then vanished. Then I wait.

At somewhere longer than a second, but less than three, I get a new panel with a “9”

“Well, looks like we got a live one. Guess I can finish this up later.”

And it would give me time to try to remember who said it. I think it was an actor, like Jodie Foster’s granddad or someone like that. An old time guy, but not super old.

It’s going to drive me crazy.

Maybe I can ask the Trainee?

Or. “Hey Panel?”

It didn’t know. Or respond

I got to the equipment room just after “7” and waited.

Just after “1” vanished, a fit looking young woman with a head full of curly reddish brown hair came out of the arrival portal and stumbled forward since she came flying in at about a foot above the ground.

She had on what looked like a dark blue surgical scrub shirt but it was made of something with a looser weave.

With that, she had a set of dark brown pants held up with a flat tied off strap like a set of sweat pants, along with a set of soft light brown canvas shoes, almost like moccasins but with finer stitches rather than thick leather straps.

As she got her balance back, she pushed her hair out of her eyes with an annoyed look, seemed to read something in front of her before waving it away, then slowly turned as she took in the room with a growing look of disbelief.

We had everything I had set out, every last bit and bob.

“You don’t have to take it all with you, I just wanted to give everyone as many options as I could give them since… Who knows what you might end up needing, or what it might turn out you know how to use.”

Her head whipped around, as she spun in place. “Wha..? Who’s talking? Where are you?”

Before I could respond, her eyes locked in on where I had set the weapons and she ran across the room to grab the now very real mace. Holding it in a two handed grip, she turned around and gave the entire room a determined look.

“Ah, hi. You can call me Tex. If I do something to show you where I am, are you going to try to take a swing at me? I’m afraid that I kind of look like a glow in the dark pinata, but I promise you I’m not full of candy.”

Or am I? I mean, I doubt it, but who knows?

Her eyes drifted up to where I was floating in the middle of the room, about six feet off the ground. About head height back in my day of having a body, a human body anyways.

“The light…?”

Well, yeah. “And now you’ve seen the light. But I think you’re already past the part where you decide if you want to walk into it or not… Although now you got me curious if I’m solid or just a ball of actual light. Maybe you could just poke me with the mace a bit. Lightly?”

Did that sound weird?

The woman lowered the mace a bit and stared at me. “You sound...Texan? Why do you sound like a someone from Texas?”

“Well, because I’m from Texas. Or at least I was. Then I died and got stuck with this job. You?”

She wasn't letting go of the Mace, but it was dangling in one hand along the side of her leg now.

“Allysiaria told me I had to choose to become a Hero or a Support person to pay off my creator's debt. And I only had three choices, Fighter, Servant, or Nanny. And Fighter would pay off the debt the fastest. How did you get Ball of Light as an option?”

Heh. “Short version. Someone else screwed up, and I got stuck with Dungeon Guide or try again at random.”

She sighed. “I got some time, and I would like to know more about how things work in the afterlife. So tell me the long version.”

“Well…”

Let that be her first lesson. Never tell an old guy to feel free to jabber on.