The four trudged on without conversation. The path eventually spread out into a diamond, four pairs of lines of pillars extending away, one for each point of the shape. In the dead center of the formation was a crate, square and waist-high.

"Everyone stand still, I'm going to look at that crate," Frank told them, breaking the silence.

He walked over. Nothing happened. He poked it with his sword. Nothing happened.

"It's safe, come over," Frank said.

All four of them stood around the crate. It was a roughly put together box of wood, the top crudely nailed shut. Frank used his sword to wedge it open, much like he had done to their enemies previously. The top came off with a creak and fell to the floor, clattering on stone. Frank peered inside.

Inside was a stack of pants. They were made of heavy, coarse linen, the soft grey colour indicating it had not been dyed. Frank removed them from the box. Immediately, a message appeared.

Linen Pants Imbued With a Forgery of the Flame of Vitality

Self-repairing

Frank pulled everything out. There were four pairs, two were larger than the others.

"Looks like one for each." Said Rina.

"Do you find it kind of creepy that there's this shit just lying around waiting for us?" Bill asked.

"Compared to anything else that's happened?" Maria responded.

Frank handed them out.

"I recommend wearing them right away. Equipment is always more durable than something mundane. I'll change first. Everyone else stay aware in case something comes."

Frank then proceeded to unsling his pack, put down his sword, and rapidly remove his boots and pants. Bill and Rina were largely unaffected, but Maria pointedly turned away. Soon he was changed. The linen wasn't exactly comfortable, but it was better than the gambeson by far. A little coarse and scratchy, but making up for that partly was that it was cool to the touch.

Then Bill, Rina, and Maria also changed, one by one at Frank's insistence. The odds of an ambush this early in any dungeon were basically zero, but the habit of never having more people unable to act than necessary was an important one to instill. With everyone changed, Frank addressed them.

"There are two options here. We can go directly away from the entrance, or we can go to the side. One will take us to the end, the other to some diversion."

"Aren't there three options?" asked Maria.

"Two of the options are the same with the info we have, so if we decide to not go straight which way we turn doesn't matter. This time, we will go to the side, so that I can show you what leaving the main path entails.“

“What do you mean by that? Didn’t we got left last time instead of straight?” Maria responded.

“There’s a logic to it. Anything that brings you in the direction you left the entry room is the main path. Anything that veers directly away from this is a diversion. As for what a diversion tends to be, better to show you.”

Frank re-situated his pack and grabbed his sword, leading the group to their left. Walking for ten minutes, the featureless pillars were at first identical to their previous path. Then, without warning, both the floor and the pillars changed.

It was not an abrupt demarcation, the scenery changing like moving into a different room. Instead, their surroundings had changed in every direction, as if they had without warning and instantaneously moved. The square pillars had become rounded, the grey stone of both them and the floor now lacked striations, instead flecked with black specks. The ceiling moved down, still high up but now clearly visible.

“We’ve diverged,” Frank told the trio as they looked around in confusion.

“What the hell happened? Did we teleport again?” asked Bill.

“I honestly don’t know. I just call it a diversion.” Frank answered.

“You don’t know?” asked Rina, concerned.

“Not really. You stray from the main path and things change. At first, things just kinda, look different, like these pillars. But the further you go the weirder it gets. Eventually, it stops making as much sense, and no one I know ever went much further than things starting to not make sense. Nature of how things work starts changing, along with the things themselves. If we explored around here until we found an enemy they’d probably be different from the ones we fought before.”

“What do we do here then?” asked Bill.

“Nothing. For whatever reason, the further you go out the worse the rewards are. Enemies are worth less, equipment is less common. I’m showing you more so you know that this is what’s here. We can walk back now.”

A few steps the way they came and the surroundings changed in a disorienting fashion once more.

“That’s so weird,” Rina said.

They returned to the crossroad, this time taking the main path. It took several minutes before a change showed up on the distant edge of their vision.

“Is it always spread out like this?” asked Maria. “It’s all so huge and empty.”

“Yea. Usually, there’s a lot of walking through empty areas punctuated by interesting things.” Frank said. “It’s honestly mostly walking. Looks like we’ve got something to do up ahead.”

Looming in the distance was a large stone building. It was a perfect square. Impossibly large slabs of the same material making up the pillars were simply stacked together, and a large entry had been carved out of the block facing them. Above the entry, the only adornment visible. A stylized inset of a flame.

Once it was in view, the approach took another twenty minutes. The entryway and flame slowly morphed from distant and small to near and monolithic. When they finally stood in front of the entrance, it dwarfed them.

Frank led them inside. A staircase, rising out of the floor and travelling up in a square, without any rail or support or side, was the only object in a large, featureless room, with the exception of a single suit of armour.

Derelict Iron Armour Animated by a Forgery of the Flame of Constitution

Level 1

An easy target. It’d be about as dangerous as its cousins of vitality.

“You three should try and fight it,” Frank told them. It began to lurch towards them. Both Frank’s words and the noise of the armour moving echoed in the enclosed space of the huge room.

“Are you sure?” asked Maria. “That thing is super dangerous and none of us know how to use a spear.”

Frank looked down. The thought of what he was about to say was a sad one. “Everything from here on out will be dangerous. Everything. Maybe forever. Best to get used to it now while you have someone who can intervene if it goes sour.” He told her.

To their credit, all three of them steeled themselves and approached it, though Maria looked hesitant and Rina noticeably trembled. Bill didn’t have any qualms, in comparison. That was the worrying one. The question remained. What would Bill do when he fully grasped the situation and abandoned the explanation he’d concocted.

Being scared was normal. He had known people who were always scared. They kept their wits and acted despite that. As things had gotten worse and more people fell, that kind of person became more common. The fear tended to amplify instincts for self-preservation.

He watched the three approach the armour and followed a short distance behind.

“Spread out to flank the thing. Bill approach from the front, Rina and Maria pick a side. Bait out its attack then topple it.”

They performed admirably. The armour focused on Bill, who stepped out of the way when it went to attack. Then they all rushed it, and it fell backwards.

“How are we supposed to defeat it?” Rina asked. She poked it with her spear, but it was obvious that their weapons wouldn’t be able to do much.

Frank handed her his sabre. “Just whack it on the neck with this till it separates.” He said.

Twenty minutes of hacking later, the three of them switching off, it was finally defeated. The armour’s high constitution reinforced it’s joints, making simply levering off the head impossible.

Derelict Iron Armour Animated by a Forgery of the Flame of Constitution (Level 1) defeated. 25 EXP to Frank, 50 EXP awarded to Bill, 50 EXP awarded to Rina, 50 EXP awarded to Maria.

All three stood there, exhausted but accomplished, watching as the corpse disappeared.

Frank addressed them. “You fought because you chose to. Everyone who didn’t make that decision died the last time I went through this.”

He killed the mood again, but this time Rina decided not to let things fall to silence.

“You said everyone died? How exactly did you go back in time to avoid that?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I woke up in my bed after being crushed by a collapsing building.” Frank replied.

“So it wasn’t intentional, it just happened?” she continued.

“Yea,” Frank said.

“You know,” said Bill, “You don’t act the way I thought a time traveller would. I always imagined if someone did they’d hurry about getting affairs in order and move with absolute confidence.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Frank stated.

“I mean, you said everyone died, and then you get sent back in time. Shouldn’t you have a plan to save humanity or something?” Bill continued.

“I have no idea how I would do that unless I can figure out magic,” Frank said.

“There’s the magic?!” Bill asked, excitement clear.

“Yea but no one I ever met was able to use it except scrolls. And Anna. But she didn’t understand it either. And didn’t remember when she got it.”

“So someone did figure it out? That means humans can learn magic. Dude, I could be a fucking wizard.” Bill said happily.

“If you figure it out tell me how. It’ll help everyone. The main reason everything went so poorly in the end was we didn’t have it.” Frank said.

Frank stopped talking and looked at the staircase with its sharp turns and narrow, tall steps. “Looks like this is the way to continue. Follow me up. Don’t fall. Better to crawl up then risk that if you struggle to balance.”

Frank, Maria, and Rina began to ascend the staircase. Bill looked at it, took a deep breath, and followed. It was a high staircase, relative to what you would see outside, but it only took a couple of minutes to reach the top.

Upon summiting the staircase, Frank arrived on the roof of the building. A few feet away was, incongruently placed, a sofa and a water cooler. The sofa was a minimalist mid-century design, the same colour as the stone they stood on. The water cooler was just that, a standard office affair. Its tank was full, and there was a stack of little paper cones on top.

Frank immediately walked over poured himself a paper cup, quenching his thirst. The others followed his lead and did the same.

“I thought you said things make less sense when we go off to the side. It’s making less sense now, going forward.” Maria said, looking oddly at the egregiously out of place furniture.

“It gets way worse if you keep travelling out. This is all normal.” Frank replied.

“Since we have water here, we can take a break and eat something. This probably represents the halfway point of the floor. The second half won’t be so empty of enemies.”

He sat down on the couch, placing his bag between his legs and his sword on the ground. Maria and Bill followed his lead, but Rina did not move immediately. Once the other two sat on the couch, there was no space for her. She looked at them plaintively for a moment before sitting down on the hard stone instead.