Chapter 11: Moving On

On entering the first room, I immediately realized what Gnat meant. The stink of death hung heavily in the room. Four corpses were strewn across the floor. All appeared humanoid. One in particular caught my attention.

It was a candidate.

Fighting back the sudden heaving of my stomach, I stepped closer and crouched on my haunches next to the slim body. It was a dead elf.

The candidate's flimsy cotton clothes had been ripped to shreds and three gaping holes marred his torso, exposing his innards and spilling blood everywhere. It was a ghastly sight.

I closed my eyes and breathed in and out rapidly through my mouth. When I had my nausea under control, I asked, “Gnat, why is this body here?”

I felt my familiar study me. My eyes were still closed. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“Didn’t you say we had three lives? Surely this candidate couldn’t have died his final death in this room: the very first in the dungeon?”

Gnat chuckled. “You do have three lives, but you still die as you would normally each time, leaving behind a corpse and all your belongings. Players are only reborn after their spirits manage to escape their prison of rotting flesh. This can take anywhere between a few hours to a day.” He paused. “I told you: dying will not be pleasant.”

I swallowed. To be dead for a few hours—or even days—sounded horrible. “Where would this elf be reborn? Back in the Master’s domain?”

“No,” Gnat answered. “There will be a safe zone with a rebirth well somewhere in this sector of the dungeon. The candidate would be reborn there.”

I opened my eyes and glanced at my familiar. “So the elf would be separated from his party?”

Gnat shrugged. “Most likely. Unless they all die too, of course.”

Harsh, I thought. It seemed that even in a party surviving the dungeon would not be easy. I bet all those players who gifted their tokens to their party-leaders are regretting it now. I rose to my feet, and moved to inspect the other corpses close by.

The three other dead appeared to be of another species. They were uniformly green-skinned and small, with the largest being no more than three-feet-tall. The creatures had sharpened teeth, filed to gleaming points, and hardened black talons on their fingertips.

They were all also naked.

It seemed the surviving candidates had stripped their kills of their belongings, leaving the dead with only their small clothes. “What are these creatures?” I asked Gnat.

“Goblins,” he replied.

I stared at him, considering his response. “Are they real?” I asked finally.

Gnat tilted his head to the side and studied me curiously. “Of course, they are real. Why would you ask that human?”

I shook my head, not sure myself what had made me ask the question. “How did the goblins get here? Or do they live in the dungeon?”

Gnat snorted. “No one wants to live in a dungeon, not even goblins. Although there are rumors of strange tribes in some of the more remote and unexplored regions of the Endless Dungeon,” he admitted. “But as to your question, this sector of the dungeon was cleared and claimed by the unholy alliance long ago. For this trial, the Master would have populated it as he saw fit. The goblins and any other creatures you encounter will all have been teleported in by the Master’s servants.”

I nodded thoughtfully. So this sector of the dungeon is part of the Master’s domain too. From Gnat’s explanation it sounded as if the Master controlled it fully. I would do well not to forget that. I swept my gaze across the room again.

Like the dungeon’s entry chamber, the room was mostly unfurnished. Against one wall of the room, I spotted a wooden chest. Eagerly, I peered inside. It was empty. Disappointed, I turned my gaze upon the rest of the room. There didn’t appear to be anything for me to loot. “Do you see something of use here, Gnat?”

“No,” he barked. “Your fellows have done a good job stripping the room bare.”

I sighed. “Alright, let’s get moving,” I said, and slipped out of the room.

~~~

I explored each of the other rooms as meticulously as I had the first. After entering the sixth room, I became well inured to the smell of death, and my stomach stopped heaving at the sight of butchered corpses and bloody entrails.

The first twelve rooms that I investigated—six on either end of the corridor—contained nothing remotely valuable. I imagined a whole host of players had searched them before me and stripped them of every useable item.

The rooms had all been configured in a similar fashion. Each contained only one piece of furnishing: an empty wooden chest. The scenes of violence depicted in the chambers did not vary much either. In each room, there were between one to three dead goblins, and in rare instances a single dead candidate as well.

I drew some comfort from that.

For the level one and nearly naked candidates to defeat the goblin squads with so few losses meant the creatures were not exceedingly dangerous opponents. It boded well for my own chances.

The thirteenth chamber though—the one at the end of the corridor—was wholly different from the other rooms. For one, it was three times as large, and for another, it contained plenty more corpses.

Stopping in the room’s open doorway, I studied its interior intently. An open archway, situated on the right wall, led to another corridor and what I took to be the next section of the dungeon.

Heaped in the middle of the chamber were eight hacked up corpses. All goblins. From blood spatters on the wall and the copious amount of blood on the floor, it seemed like a violent battle had raged in the room. Nor were the goblins the only ones that had died in the room. Near the dead goblins was a smaller pile of four white clothed candidates—equally savaged.

Another two dead candidates were in the far left corner of the room. The pair were human and of similar size. More interestingly, unlike the other dead in the room, the two humans’ bodies were not riddled with wounds.

How did they die then?

I studied the layout of the room again. The two dead humans were separated from the slain goblins and candidates in the chamber’s center by a good few yards.

They didn’t die fighting the goblins then, I thought.

Stepping carefully into the room and giving the heaped corpses in its center a wide berth, I knelt beside the human corpses. There was a tiny glint of metal in the neck of each.

Darts, I realized. Each gleaming length of metal—no wider than my finger—was lodged deep in its victim, but the darts themselves looked too tiny to have killed the candidates. Frowning, I reached down to pull out one of the projectiles for closer inspection.

Only then did I notice the wooden chest lying beyond the corpses. It was closed. Some buried instinct cried out in warning at the anomaly. Why was this chest closed? All the others I had encountered thus far had been opened and looted.

Halfway to touching the darts, I pulled back my reaching fingers. Sitting back on my haunches, I inspected the tableau again. Given the candidates’ proximity to the closed chest, they had likely been attempting to open it when they had died.

Of course, I thought, suddenly understanding what had happened to the pair. They had triggered a trap. The darts were probably coated with poison—a particularly virulent one, too, to have killed the two so quickly. Good thing I didn’t touch the darts.

Is the chest still trapped? I wondered. I eyed the chest askance. Considering it was still closed, it likely was. But why had the other candidates not tried opening the chest after the first failed attempt? Unless…

I rubbed at my chin. I was assuming that both humans had died at the same time. But what if they hadn’t? Did the two corpses represent not one, but two separate attempts to open the chest?

I was sure one failed attempt would not have been enough to deter the other candidates from trying to loot the chest. Two failed attempts though… that likely had frightened even the most foolhardy amongst them.

I frowned as another thought occurred. “Gnat, why is this chest trapped?”

“I don’t understand your question, Michael,” he replied.

“All evidence suggests the chests in the other rooms weren’t trapped, so why was this one?”

“Ah,” the bat replied. “By all appearances, this room contained the final encounter of the first leg of this dungeon sector. Such encounters are usually designed to provide a tougher challenge.” Gnat paused. “Also, the Master will have configured the dungeon to become progressively more difficult.”

I winced. “Does that mean further areas of the dungeon will contain more powerful foes?”

“Undoubtedly,” Gnat replied.

I sighed. I was hoping he wouldn’t say that. It meant I couldn’t walk away from the chest. Even considering the risk of triggering its trap, I could not ignore the potential loot the chest contained. I would need every advantage I could grab to survive further on in the dungeon.

So how do I go about opening the chest? I wondered. And preferably without killing myself.