She led me to the front door. The whole front entrance to the apartment was just carved stone. Even the cheap shoe rack was there, but it was carved stone with all the shoes like carefully chiseled pedestal sculpture to decorate a shoe department.

"So while looting, I noticed this." She flourished her arm at the wall.

It took me a few seconds and another refresh of the light spell to realise that the front door was in fact not actually there anymore. The handle itself was just a protrusion of stone sticking out of the wall. It did not turn.

In the place of the front door was a facade of a door. More of a carved bit of lines and grooves that did not even give the deception of going deep. Despite seeing that it looked like the door was stamped on the wall, I attempted to pry at the groove with my fingers only to snag my nail on a rough bit of stone and it tore part of my fingernail off. Rather painfully.

You have taken damage. Would you like to heal?

"No." I grumbled to myself and sucked on my fingernail. "It's not even that much damage. Of course I don't want to heal."

"See." Suze said and knocked on what sounded to be the thud of her knuckles against stone. "It's even carved a little bit to look like door, but there's no way to turn the handle."

I tapped my fingers onto the edges of the door again, trying to distract myself so that the slight throb in my finger could be forgotten. "Maybe it's supposed to be a puzzle."

"No. This is not a puzzle."

"Was there a quest when you came here earlier?"

"No. It's not a puzzle. I've just told you that."

"Humour me."

"Pretend that you think I know what I'm doing. I may ignore quest text, but I would have known if there was something like a clue. I actually enjoy puzzles."

I tried very hard not to let on that I was unconvinced but Suze knew me too well.

"You don't believe. Well, whatever Kaylee. We have a timer. Figure it out. See if you can solve it without YouTube to help."

"Hey!" I said, a little bit hurt.

"Kaylee, don't kick away the tent pole. And stay calm okay? I love you girl."

"Right. Right." Okay she had a point. I was more likely to watch a solution of a puzzle on YouTube or Twitch than to solve it myself. My algorithm was just spoiler videos of dungeon strats and whatnot for a Raid. Also game lore. Suze did like solving puzzles, but she was more likely to solve it by running right through a room to trigger all the traps and then tank the mess while in DPS gear while I desperately attempted to heal her ass before the rest of the DPS could catch up and help mop up the mobs.

"This door is not a door. You know this. But it is a challenge." Suze smiled with exhilaration. She was definitely enjoying this. "Find a way out it's telling us. Very philosophical."

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"This is not some Magritte Ceci n'est pas une porte thing."

"Oh, yes it is. The door is not a door. The toilet is not a toilet."

I added in exasperation still pawing all over the stone wall looking for cracks or crevices and failing at it, "The window is not a window!"

Suze gasped. "No. It is not."

"You look like you've figured something out."

"Let me go check something. Can I have one of your balls?" She giggled a little.

"Cute. Sure."

Suze went back down the hallway almost running into the darkness, so I quickly whipped one of my light balls after her. By whipping I meant I watched it float gently in her direction. I would have to figure out how to increase velocity of the things too. Did that upgrade?

"This is bad design." I murmured to myself. "If this is a tutorial level, it's brutal. Barely any dungeon dressing. There's no rhyme or reason to the UI design and the quest text was almost an afterthought. Oh, incidentally, you have only a few minutes left before you die and no explanation how anything works! Awesome."

I looked up at the stone ceiling and shouted, "What kind of dungeon has a low level mob able to petrify you? This is really, truly the worst design. I don't know what full petrification is, but it could have seriously wrecked me!"

"You tell 'em!" Suze yelled.

I called down the hall to her. "I have played three different MMOs from first level and you never release a game for newbies without at least explaining the rules. Or giving people a rulebook. Or having a goshdarn tutorial level with low stakes combat in a zone that's easy to get the heck out of."

From down the hall, Suze yelled. "Yep!"

I pried at the stone door handle again, but it didn't budge. I then ran my fingers down the indentations in the stone wall that marked where the door jamb would have been if it wasn't just a solid wall of stone. I even held one of my balls excruciatingly close to the wall looking to see if maybe there was some hidden text, indentation, or some sign of a trigger to open the door.

Nope. Nothing.

I tried yanking on the door handle and then pushing. Nothing happened.

"Not much time left!" I yelled down the hallway.

Silence.

"Suze? Hello?"

I hadn't heard from Suze for over a minute of quest countdown. I gave one last look at the door and turned to go find my roommate. I even jogged a little bit to feel like I was going faster.

Our kitchen slash living room slash dining room was empty. Not that we had much in the way of communal furniture to fill the space. Both of us spent most of our money and time in our rooms with our computer rigs.

It didn't take me long to explore the rest of the apartment and the bathroom. That included both of our bedrooms. If there had been anything spawned in either room, Suze had definitely looted all of it. The problem was, Suze was nowhere to be found.

I thought in horror about the hole. I was about to go back into the bathroom when I heard a scraping and scuffling sound then some swearing come out from what had been my own bedroom. I ran into the room.

Suze stood in the open window, her feet on the stone sill. She hung there, awkwardly bent so that her head pressed up against the top of the window head. She wavered precariously.

I lunged toward the window and grabbed at Suze's ankles.

"Holy shitballs. Woah woah, Kaylee! You're going to push me out."

I released Suze, but only a bit. I clung to her feet. One of the balls of light bobbed just beyond reach and over the giant chasm just outside the empty window. My heart dropped. It was a long, long way down. "What are you doing? Do you have a death wish?"

"A good point. What happens if we die? Do we spawn in a graveyard. Do we have to go retrieve our corpse?"

I didn't think I wanted to answer that question. I hadn't really thought about how spawning worked.

"So, I think I found us a way out of this mess. How do you feel about free climbing?"

"How about no?" I looked down at the hourglass as the last trickle of sand slid into the bottom. I thought about turning it over, but instead decided to loot the hourglass into my inventory.

Ding. Ding. You are out of time. It is Ate o' Clock. Quest failed?

What did it mean Quest failed -- Question mark?

Welcome to the Tutorial Level.