Today’s Earth date: September 4, 1991

Our adventure officially begins in the morning. We’ll take the road to Teagaisg and then use a tunnel to cross through the Breaker Mountains to the port town Cuan. The Water Temple is up the coast from there.

I should be sitting in a classroom right now. Instead, I’m packing weapons, armor, and supplies for a year-long quest.

Am I excited? Kind of, but this is all a lot of responsibility to take on suddenly. If we fail, an entire world is overrun by demons. If I think about it too much, I start to get sick to my stomach.

We’re down to four Heroes, and we haven’t even started. Most parties have six, but our fighter and our rogue are refusing to take part in any way. We have a wizard, a ranger, a cleric, and a paladin. I don’t like what that means for our odds. At the same time, I get why someone wouldn’t want to do this.

-The Journal of Laszlo the Paladin

***

Holy hell was riding in a carriage boring.

The first full day was long but tolerable. Wayne wasn’t able to sleep in the carriage like Fergus, but he found his bedroll to be quite restful when they made camp for the night. He had barely set his head to pillow, and he was out.

And it was a pretty nice pillow. Soft, wrapped in silk.

The carriage ride Fergus purchased on their behalf included a service where their tent was set up for them, with a thick rug on the ground and everything. The bedrolls were close to mattresses, the blankets were soft and warm, and, as we’ve established, the pillows were comfortable too.

Wayne doubted the Chosen Heroes got to glamp. Apparently, journeying independent of local warriors and servants was a recommended requirement for maintaining their “other world” purity. If they showed up to the Water Temple with an armed escort, they wouldn’t be able to enter.

Supposedly.

That felt very handwavey to Wayne, and he was thankful none of that applied to him. He very much preferred to be partied with Fergus and have a leisurely journey.

To pass the two remaining days of travel ahead, he spammed Probe as often as he could, which was every ten minutes or so. He had no way of knowing if that earned him experience, but he had nothing else to do. At worst, he wasted his time. At best, he gained a new ability and perhaps got to warn the caravan of a coming attack. Hiding behind a tree wouldn’t hide a bandit from Probe.

Fergus said that was unlikely for a caravan of this size. Not only were there a lot of people, but the armed guards looked serious and hard. They were not the easy targets bandits liked.

Probe.

Probe.

Probe.

Probe.

They stopped for lunch on the second day, a brief rest where they ate bread, cheese, and jerky–all foods that didn’t need to be cooked. The stop was too brief for anything more elaborate, which was fine with Wayne. Staring at a tent roof was more boring than looking out the window of the carriage, so better to be moving.

He stepped away from the road, heading to the treeline to piss.

His back was visible to the rest of the caravan, so he had not gone far, and he wasn’t dumb enough to go any deeper into the woods than that.

Probe.

A few pixels of yellow at the edge of his screen caught his eye. He might be dumb enough after all. They had only just stopped, so he had about thirty minutes to himself. Memorizing the current view on his HUD map, just in case he had trouble getting back to the road, he went into the forest, making for the yellow.

Halfway there, the yellow dots neared the center of his HUD. He saw only one or two more than he had from his first Probe. If yellow represented loot, the patch was smaller than one of the wagons, so there wasn’t exactly a horde hidden here.

And it must be hidden pretty well. Standing on top of where the yellow dots should be and looking around, he didn’t see so much as a stray brick. It was all trees, leaves, and dirt. If his theory about the HUD map condensing all of the readings to a single layer was correct, regardless of how high or low they appeared in real life, the treasure had to be buried. He had no way of knowing how deep.

Digging today wasn’t an option, but he made a mental note to mark the location with Fergus. They could come back later with a few shovels and few men to use them.

To ensure he didn’t miss an obvious entrance somewhere, he did a loop around the yellow dots. When he was farthest from the caravan, his HUD caught the edge of a heavy yellow blob. He had time. The walk to his first waypoint had taken a little less than five minutes. If he hurried, he could check out the blob and be back with time to spare.

With his stats as they were, he could jog almost indefinitely. He still hated the act and experience of jogging, another carryover from his first life, so he had no desire to become one of those kids that Naruto ran between classes just because he could.

As he approached, he saw what looked like ruins. The destroyed keep on the Barnaby farm had been represented in a similar way, with faint broken lines and corners. The blob of yellow was “inside” the ruins, and a scattering of yellow dots colored the rest of the wide rectangle.

This felt much more promising. He gravitated toward a distinct square within the ruins on his map. Like all of the yellow dots so far, he saw nothing on the surface. A fallen tree bisected the square, and it was nothing but dirt on both sides.

Wayne charged Sword of Water and hurled balls of ice at the ground around the tree. It wasn’t an efficient way to dig, but it was better than using his sword or his fingers. The bounce of each attack carved a deeper and deeper gash next to the tree. Then one sounded like it hit a shield.

Dusting the dirt aside, he saw a metal door. If its dimensions matched the square on his HUD, it had similar dimensions to a cellar door in the States. The fallen tree was large, but his strength stat was high enough for him to roll it away from the dig site with immense effort and a sturdy branch for leverage. The first attempt broke it in half, revealing a fair bit of rot inside. He moved the other and hastily clawed at the dirt.

He found a handle.

He Naruto ran back to the caravan.

He didn’t really, but he felt like he was.

***

“Couldn’t we come back to it later?”

Fergus hadn’t heard of any structures or settlements being in this area before. That didn’t mean there never were. It meant that what Wayne found was likely from before their recorded history.

“If it was just buried, I’d say come back later,” Wayne said, “but I promised myself I wouldn’t put off living life here. I want to go down, so I think I’ll go down.”

“I’m afraid I’m not built for a dungeon crawl.”

Wayne laughed. “I wasn’t assuming you were joining me. That’s up to you.”

“So when we leave any minute now, you’re staying? Walking the rest of the way to Teagaisg?”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Wayne nodded.

“Well, don’t die. You have half my wine collection in your Storage, you know.”

Wayne laughed and promised not to die. He informed their driver of his intention and then convinced him to sell his personal camping gear. The driver could use the nicer tent with Fergus the rest of the way. He agreed, and the wagons soon moved on.

Standing in the road alone, the immensity of the wilderness around Wayne felt amplified. The farther away the wagons got, the more isolated he became.

He checked his stats:

Hero: Wayne the Guy

Level: 4

HP: 101

STR: 14

AGI: 12

VIT: 6

LCK: 18

He had done pretty well so far. If he was careful, he’d be fine. That conclusion wasn’t grounded in any actual data, but that’s how he had to think if he wanted this life to be different.

***

The doors were as large as he estimated they’d be. The heavy rusted metal covered a staircase that descended two dozen steps or so and turned. As he decided on what to do next, he noticed that the undersides of the metal doors were dented and scratched by an uncountable number of strikes.

Probe.

He felt the inner vibration of a system alert. He found a new skill from Lightspeed in his system:

Resource Values – Brings up a window in the middle of the Trade screen.

That was great and all, but not for a crawl. He’d worry about figuring it out later. Right now, he was confused about why Probe didn’t give him any new information about the dungeon.

With his sword drawn, he went down the stairs, using his magic headlamp to light the way.

When he turned the corner, his HUD map changed. He saw the outlines of a stairwell, but the rest of the map was blank, just black. Those stairs opened into a hallway where he could go straight or turn left. His map seemed to update as he went, a fog of war mechanic he gathered. He would try Probe again as soon as he could, but his latest working theory was that Probe was less effective underground, or perhaps was not effective at all.

In video games, he explored dungeons by always turning right. Even if the main route was obvious, he didn’t dare miss a chest or hidden item.

Thirty paces in, he realized he judged Railroad Tycoon too harshly. Having a HUD automapping what he had explored made navigation and satisfying his completionist tendencies much easier. When he didn’t reference the HUD, he felt as though he could get disoriented and lost fairly easily. To be extra safe, he cast Nee to leave a shrubbery trail as he went.

The ceiling was low. The brick walls were rough-hewn. The floor was simple pavers. And all of it was made from the same black stone.

According to his studies, monsters in this world were governed by the same simple biology as creatures from Earth. They needed food and water to survive. They had to reproduce to expand their numbers. Demons were the only exception. Coming from another dimension was as close to a video game monster-spawning as this world got.

Therefore, a dungeon with a sealed entrance was unlikely to be filled with goblins or orcs or rattlins. If they were inside at one point, they would have starved to death by now.

In the back of his mind, he knew that an empty dungeon wasn’t the only possibility. Plenty of monsters, like undead or constructs, weren’t subject to the rules of biology.

But let’s be positive.

If he was right about where he was in relation to the surface, this hallway ran along the outermost edge of the ruins. Coming to another point where he could go straight or turn left, he felt pretty good about his sense of the layout. That meant the hallway to the left went toward the center where something interesting was most likely to be.

Between that and the soft white glow at the far end, Wayne was willing to break his turn right rule.

Approaching, he found that the light he saw leaked out from under a heavy wooden door. It had an iron handle like a doorknocker. There was no keyhole that Wayne could see, so the door could likely pull right open, but he had thrown away too many character sheets in his previous life to not be paranoid. He waited quietly at the door for his Probe ability to become available again.

Probe.

The ability didn’t map the dungeon like he hoped, but he saw two new sets of information on his HUD.

The blob of yellow that lured him here was barely in sight. The distance between him and what he hoped was treasure seemed equivalent to the hallway he recently trekked down, if not a little longer.

The second set of information was two green Xs just on the other side of the door. On a HUD, Xs usually represented something that had died, but why hadn’t those appeared when he Probed on the surface?

He had yet to detect enemies with Probe, but he assumed those would be represented in red like the hellhounds. He rolled a mental saving throw and pulled the door open. A line of glowing white bricks ran the perimeter of the large square room. A large bed, perhaps larger than King but definitely fit for one, was in one corner. A wide round table surrounded by chairs was in another. And a couch akin to what a noble would have in their homes sat near a set of full bookshelves.

Once vibrant fabrics adorned every surface but were now grayed by dust and age. The rugs on the floor were heavy with intricate designs woven in, the major elements of the patterns visible even through the grime.

The green Xs were indeed corpses. Two skeletons were in the room. One in the bed and one seated on the floor, leaning back against the baseboard. They must have been here for a while because their bones were bare and covered with the same dirt as everything else.

Wayne was no forensic scientist, but he saw no signs that these people died violently. None of the bones had hints of a sword slicing across them. The skulls had no holes or fractures. And what remained of their clothes, which wasn’t much, looked rotted but not cut or torn. He looked around for hints as to what happened here.

He found a yellowed piece of parchment sitting on the table, its presence initially disguised by the thick dust covering its surface. The letter seemed deliberately placed, left out like a note that would say “Take the chicken out of the freezer” on Earth. Someone–probably skele one and skele two over there–wanted this document to be found.

He gently blew the dust off the paper and carefully brushed the rest away with his fingertips. He hesitated to pick it up, worried it could come apart in his hand before he got to read the note.

We’ve tried everything, and the doors won’t budge. Makes me wish I had become a Hero after all. Maybe I’d be strong enough to break us out.

Jason, I’d tell you this myself if you came out of your room, but I love you, and I don’t blame you for any of this. We did our best to make it here without losing who we are. I don’t know what else we could have done, but even if it was awful most of the time, you made it bearable.

If I’m already gone, please please please know that it isn’t your fault. I’m sorry I said what I said. I didn’t mean it.

With all my love,

Tammi

If you’re reading this because you came to plunder our home, fuck you.

The “I” in Tammi was dotted with a heart.

That was for sure a name from the late 80s and early 90s. That would make both of those skeletons Chosen Heroes, who would technically be his allies, hence the green X instead of red or blue. Which Chosen Heroes were they, though? None of the records ever captured their original names, so they could be the two Heroes who refused to fight or they were two Heroes who came back here to retire once the quest was complete.

Skeletons probably had some indication of their relative age, but he had no clue what to look for.

He had an idea.

He activated his new Resource Values skill from Lightspeed. He got the short, curt sensation of a negative reaction. He activated it again with the same result.

Well, that wasn’t the revelation he was hoping for. Thinking for some time, he realized that a skill that evaluated items usually required a target. You activated the skill, and then selected the item you wanted to assess.

He thought about the skeleton on the floor and activated the skill.

Nothing.

Gingerly, he put a hand on the skeleton.

Resource Values.

The following appeared in a glitched system window:

Chosen Hero Remains, Average Value of 86,500 gold coins.

Average value? Average of what, exactly? The system did not reply.

He repeated the skill on the other skeleton and received the same message. He put his hand on the headboard.

Exquisite Master Bed Frame, Average Value of 62 gold coins.

Resource Values wasn’t a flashy skill, but it would definitely be useful. Even if the value part of the message was wholly inaccurate, confirming that the remains were indeed from Chosen Heroes was an incredible confirmation to get so easily.

Why were there skeletons assigned a gold value? Another question he couldn’t answer. Maybe he should have dragged Fergus down here after all. He was far better read than Wayne and would likely have his own theories to contribute.

“I’m betting you’re Jason, and you’re Tammi,” Wayne said aloud to himself, looking first at the skeleton on the floor and then to the one lying in bed.

“Is your room down here too then, Jason?”

The bedroom had a second exit, so Wayne set out in that direction to see what Jason left behind.