Walking the last step, I finally reached the end of those damned stairs. It had taken forever to get down. Like, almost ten whole minutes! Whoever designed this damned place was a bloody imbecile.

It's natural rock formations.

That doesn't make sense! How the hell did rock formations make a massive open cave, with pillars evenly spaced out to make sure the roof did not collapse? And luck isn't an answer!

… Magic?

Gather around everybody, and witness the power of a single word. Magic! The only word that can explain everything you don't understand! The answer to things that didn't make sense.

Okay, now you're just being an arse.

Get your facts straight. Then, we can talk about me.

Whatever.

Looking around, I quickly notice that the second floor was radically different than the first one. With the first floor being a massive cave, this clearly looked man-made, with the walls made of weird gray-glowing bricks. Everything around here made me feel disgusted. Not like the puke-inducing scenes of the first floor, but more like the feeling when you walked into a cemetery. Everything felt like death itself, but also… kinda alive. The living dead, maybe? It was just… weird.

To my right, I hear the sounds of pebbles colliding, causing me to jump a little. This place was giving me the goosebumps, and making me dreadfully aware of my old childhood fears. Please don't be a zombie.

“Hello? Is someone there?”, I say in a clear voice.

Luckily, nothing answered, leading me to believe that it was just a rat. Nothing creepy at all. The only thing I could hear was my own echo, and that wasn't too scary. Weird that it was still being heard though. How big was this floor even?

Welp. Time to move in. Nothing to distract you this time.

Sighing way deeper than necessary, I took the first step of the many that I would most definitely later regret. Didn't need to be Diviner to see that.

“Hello? Is someone there?”, I hear an echoing voice say in the distant. It was weird. It almost sounded like…

My eyes widen at the realization. That voice was one I'd heard so much, that it was impossible to not recognize. Jack.

“Jack! Jack, we're over here! Jack, we're over-”

I try to shout out to him, but Maxime quickly covers my mouth, with her massive hands, stopping any more of my voice from escaping my lips.

“Don't believe what you hear, child.”, Maxime said, in a low voice. “This place is filled with many traps, specially designed to lure you in… Stay close.” After saying that, she gently released her grip on me.

While wanting to shout out again, I didn't. It was weird. We were much deeper inside this place than what a simple voice should reach.

After we begin moving again, I silently curse to myself. Shouting was a terrible idea. Our one task in this Dungeon Crawl was to not be detected. We had already been detected on the first floor! That couldn't be good for my grade at all. Maybe, if we were not detected on the second and third floor, it could have replenished my grade from that failure. But… I just had to shout out, letting every creature on the whole damn floor know, where we-

A scuttle to my left grabs my attention. Looking over, though, I see nothing but dust moving around as a person had just walked through. That wouldn't really make sense, though. That way was a dead end, and I had detected nobody walking trough. A trap that activated maybe? Some of them activate by detecting voices?

It's either that, or it was just a rat. Who knows?

The sheer ambiance of this place was turning my already paranoid self into a bloody maniac. There was a scuttle from gods know where every third second. Weird footprints were beginning to appear more and more. One second you see a single footprint. The next there's three. It was obvious that monsters were near me, but where they were I just couldn't figure out. They were not attacking, which made me both relax and tense. It was good that they were not attacking, but why? I didn't know their location. They could just put in a knife in my back, and I wouldn't even realize it before it was too late. Why weren't they doing anything?

The further I distanced myself from the entrance, the more things I began to notice. Footprints were rapidly appearing around me, and the sounds of scraping stone where becoming louder and louder. And that wasn't the thing that made me paranoid. It was the statues. Those way-too lifelike statues. If they were not obviously made of stone, I would have thought them as people standing still.

But still, nothing attacked me. The only thing that could cause me to die right now was my rapid heartbeat.

How I hoped that would last.