Note: This chapter has not gone to my editors and events may change before final release. The below is also unedited and in a raw non-polished form.

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“What the hell was that!?” Laura took a step back.

“I don’t know.” Hiro inched a bit closer.

Toaby studied the knob and the slit in the wall. He ran his finger across its edge. Peeking inside the hole where the door handle should have been, there was a small stone cylinder pulled outward. “Stay back for a second.” Pulling a spider leg from his inventory and using it as a pole, he pushed the cylinder in from a relatively safe distance.

It offered no resistance and made an audible ‘click’ after being pressed inward. The door jerked and popped open a few inches. As it did, the saw blade came back, but it wasn’t spinning. Toaby poked the blade to make sure it was truly disabled. It didn’t budge.

“I think it’s disarmed now.” Toaby put the spider leg back in his inventory.

“You think?” Laura took a hesitant step forward. “How confident are you?”

Toaby approached the blade and pushed it with his finger. Nothing happened. “Pretty sure.” A bit of tension left the room as all of three of them relaxed.

“What about Sam?” Hiro pointed the Sam’s body, but it faded from existence. “Well, that answers that question.”

Toaby shook his head. “I think he’ll be back in about twenty-six minutes.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Remember when we entered the dungeon?” Hiro nodded. “It gave us five lives. When Sam died, that reduced by one. It also said we had a thirty minute respawn timer.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“Yeah.” Toaby grinned. “That and the twenty-seven minute respawn timer over Sam’s name. Not sure which one gave it away.”

Laura laughed. “How did you not see that, Hiro?”

Hero, red in the face, responded. “Sorry, I was a bit preoccupied with the murder of our teammate!”

Hiro’s further embarrassment just made Laura laugh louder. Toaby even joined in on the merriment.

“Should we wait for Sam or go in?” Toaby questioned.

“He seemed pretty excited to go through the dungeon. It might be rude not to wait.” Laura commented.

Hiro shook his head. “What if there are more traps? It’s best that we explore ahead and disarm everything we can.”

“Hiros right. Keep your eyes open for anything out of the ordinary. Does anyone have over thirty hit points?” Laura and Hiro both shook their head as Toaby pulled out a spider’s leg and declared, “I’ll go first then.”

He pushed the door open with the leg and the sconces on the wall ignited in purple flames that gave the entire room an eerie ambiance. It was a long hallway with mosaic patterns on each wall. A quick glance revealed no immediate threats, so Toaby took a step inside. He was in the middle of taking a second step when Laura shouted out for him to stop.

“What!?” He froze, mid-step.

“Look on the floor. Theres a pattern on it.” Laura pointed to the stone that Toaby’s was about to step on. It had a black spider on it with webbing coming from its rear. Laura helped Toaby back to the entrance. “Let me just try something.” She grabbed a dagger from her inventory and threw it at the stone. Darts shot from small holes in the left wall into small holes in the right wall.

Toaby gulped. “Good find.”

Laura pointed to where the darts came from and where they disappeared into. Every spot with a hole had a similar black spider pattern on it as the floor. “I wonder.”

Carefully retrieving her dagger, she repositioned herself and threw it at a red spider painted on the floor. Flames shot downward from the ceiling. They stayed active for a full minute before the flames dispersed. When they did, everyone gazed upward and found large sculptures of red spiders hanging from the ceiling. Smoke was trailing from their eye sockets.

“So red is fire and black are some kind of dart.” Hiro commented. “What about the green and blue spiders?”

“I was going to try those next.” Laura attempted to recover her dagger but wasn’t able to reach it where it laid on the floor without stepping on a trap trigger, so she grabbed a fresh one.

Throwing it against the nearest green spider released a noxious green gas from the spaces in-between the floor tiles. Everyone quickly held their breath and exited the room, coughing. Toaby checked his status.

You have been poisoned by Weak Spider Venom. You will take 2 additional poison damage every second for 5 seconds.

Weak Spider Venom has affected you for 1 (2 - 1 constitution save) poison damage.

Weak Spider Venom has affected you for 2 poison damage.

Coughing, Toaby chocked out, “Is everyone alright?”

“I think so.” Hire coughed out, his eyes watering.

“I will be.” Laura added.

Toaby waited for his debuff to be gone before asking, “What’s everyone’s hp look like?” He was at twenty-two of a thirty max. His constitution only kicked in twice to resist some damage.

“I still have ten.” Hiro replied.

“Five for me.” Laura added.

Puzzled, Toaby inquired, “What are your max hit points?”

Hiro was the first to answer. “I only have a four in constitution with a hit point max of twenty.”

Shocked, and a little angry, Laura said, “Twenty! You have twenty hit points from four constitution? How is that possible? I have three constitution and my max is nine!”

“Wait. How did you survive the spider venom them? It does ten overall damage.” Questioned Toaby.

“I have a skill that helps reduce the time of debuffs.”

“You got that as a leather worker?”

“Yeah. It helps deal with tanning things like snake skins.”

Toaby’s stomach felt strange. He knew Laura was lying but didn’t want to call her out. Not publicly, at least. That would give away his truth seeker skill, and that was something he felt like keeping secret.

Shrugging, Toaby dropped a bombshell. “I have thirty hit points with three constitution.” It stunned both Hiro and Laura. “When I got my class, the prompt said it had an HP multiplier of ten. I thought that was common.”

“My class didn’t have an HP multiplier listed, but it had a zeal multiplier of seven.” Hiro added.

“I received a multiplier to my stamina of ten and it listed my hit point multiplier as three.” Laura commented.

“Hiro,” Hiro cocked his head at Toaby, “what’s zeal and how much stamina do you get for each point in agility?”

“I get five stamina per point and zeal is a third white bar I have under my hit points and stamina. I consume it when I use my advanced sword combos.”

“First, that sounds awesome and you’re going to have to show some of those to me and second, it looks like five is the default for what we gain for characteristic points unless its listed otherwise. I get five stamina for each agility too.”

“That would make sense since I get five hit points per constitution and five from stamina as well. Another bit of the system uncovered. We’ll have to share this with everyone when we get back.”

“Right. And we can confirm our theory by checking with others in the settlement. Still…” he paused to look at his character sheet. “With a multiplier of ten, I should probably put more points in constitution. Become a tank of some kind.”

Hiro nodded. “Sounds like that's what your class was meant to be. I mean, you would need a lot of hit points to fight multiple criminals and bring them to justice.”

“I guess.” Toaby shrugged.

“I think we should wait for Sam. It’s going to take a little while for us to naturally recover our hit points and he’s back in a little under twenty minutes, anyway.” Laura suggested.

Toaby nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”

Laura sat at the table and took out a few balls of spider webbing from her inventory. Pulling out a thin wood dowel, she started separating the useful parts of the webbing from the mush and spinning in into a spool. It wasn’t perfect, and she appeared to be making a lot of mistakes, but she was using her downtime effectively.

Hire took the seat opposite of her and placed his sword horizontally in-front of him. Pushing a palm against the blade, he started muttering incantations. A ghostly white light dimly emanated from his hand and traveled up and down the surface of the metal.

“What are you doing, Hiro?” Toaby inquired.

“I’m channeling spirits around me into my sword. Its one of my class skills. It will eventually allow me to add unique effects to my swords, such as elemental damage. As of right now, it just gives me a small damage boost and helps keep the blade sharp.”

“Your class sounds fun.”

“Thinking about trading in the badge?”

Toaby chuckled. “No. Didn’t know that was a choice, however.”

“It was in the pamphlet. It said you weren’t stuck with a class and could switch. It was vague on how though.”

I really need to see if I can get one of these pamphlets inside here. “Well,” Toaby took a step back. “I’ll leave you too it.” Hiro nodded his appreciation before going back to his chanting. I need to get a downtime skill. Something I can do when we're waiting on someone or before bed because I’m bored. He kicked a loose stone across the room.

The party waited, and all jumped when Sam appeared next to the dungeon entrance.

“Sam!” Toaby squawked out.

Sam waived. “Hey, guys.” He rubbed at his waist. “That was a rough death. Seeing my severed bottom half as my top half fell to the floor.”

They all shared a group shiver.

“What happened to you after you died?” Hiro asked.

“Well, good news. I didn’t go to Helheim and, better yet, I didn’t lose experience!” If he didn’t have their undivided attention before, he had it now. “Yeah. Instead, it replayed our time in the dungeon to me. I stood off to the side, kinda like a ghost, watching us. It went all the way to when I died and then just replayed itself. It was like a video. I could pause, rewind, slow it down, all that jazz. The whole time it was playing, I had a countdown to resurrection and a listing of our remaining lives. Good to know none of you died without me.”

“Interesting. Perhaps it's a way to think of strategies while your dead.” Hiro looked to the group for confirmation.

“Maybe. It’s good to know we don’t lose experience though.” Toaby added.

“The designers or AIs probably made dungeons more difficult where they expect people to die and thought taking experience from us each time was too harsh. That would help explain why they gave us extra lives as well.”

“Soooo, I hope you all didn’t go to far without me.” Sam commented.

“I told you he would have been mad if we continued without him.” Jested Laura.

“Whaaaaaat! Did you guys beat it already? I was only gone for thirty minutes.”

“Not even close.” Toaby chimed in. “Let me tell you what we found.” Toaby explained the different colored spiders and what their effects were.

“Hmm… Let me see them.” Sam cracked open the door to the next room. When toxic smoke didn’t bleed through, he opened it fully. “It doesn’t look like we can avoid stepping on some traps.” He pointed to various spots on the floor where avoiding a spider would be near impossible. They were either clustered too close to one another or the distance between safe to touch stones was too great. “That means we have to disable the traps somehow. You all may want to get closer to the door for this next part.” Sam gathered a couple spare rocks on the floor.

“What are you going to do?” Toaby questioned.

“I played video games all the time on the outside.”

“How? Weren’t you incarcerated?”

Sam shook his head. “Nah. I got arrested for…” he paused briefly to think out his next words, “let’s just say, stupid crimes. I was sentenced to twenty years' probation but as a condition of my probation, I wasn’t allowed any electronic devices so I volunteered for Yggdrasil.”

“What!?” Hiro, Laura and Toaby said collectively.

“I was an orphan with literally no family or ties to community. I wasn’t married, didn’t even have a girlfriend. It was twenty years without electronics or prison. I choose the video game prison. What gamer in my shoes wouldn’t?”

“I think a lot of people wouldn’t.” Toaby added, dumbfounded.

“Then you don’t know true gamers. You know some people commit crimes just so they can get into this place, right?”

Toaby did know that from his days working at Techavant. It accounted for at least ten percent of the Yggdrasil’s population. Of course Techavant would deny that until its dying day, but multiple criminals during sentencing said they only committed the crime so they could get into the system. With most judges on their payroll, the government either never found out or were in Techavant’s pockets as well.

“Can you just tell us what your idea is?” Laura dryly added.

“Yeah. As you can see, we can’t get across naturally. So I’m going to do this!” He tossed a stone at a green spider.

Gas started filling the chamber as everyone but Sam swiftly exited. Sam ran to the door but turned to throw more stones. He tossed one at a black spider and then a red. Darts shot out of the wall as fire rained down from above. As everything started happening at once, Sam exited and shut the door. Before the door shut, they all caught a glimpse of Sam’s plan.

The darts were being sent directly into the fire. None appeared to be exiting the other side, instead they were incarnated. As the door shut, a loud explosion shook the room. Dust fell from the ceiling as everyone regained their balance.

“What the hell was that?” Laura asked.

“My brilliant plan!” Sam opened the door. The entire hallway, ceiling and all, was wrecked and charred.

“Let me change my question. What the hell just happened?”

“He disabled the traps.” Hiro answered.

“Yup.” Sam said smugly. “The darts got burned up, and the fire ignited the gas which destroyed the vents in the floor and the statues above us.”

“What about the blue spiders?” Toaby pointed to one of them on the ground.

Sam shrugged. “No idea.” Everyone’s eyes went wide. “I don’t have all the answers, but avoiding one colored spider on the floor is better than avoiding all four. There are barely any blue ones, anyway.” Sam walked into the hallway. It was only twenty-five feet long, so he quickly reached the other side without incident. “See. It’s fine. Just don’t step on the blue ones.”

With jaws dropped, the party followed the crazy, dungeon-loving, gamer to the next room.