Dan’s mana surged out of him as his palms made contact with the glass surface, skin searing as the machine greedily sucked in his mana. He could do nothing but scream as his hands were pushed against it, when the pressure on his hands alleviated he still could not pull them away as if they were stuck against it with glue. Desperately Dan tried to exit the game, but was met with a notification.

A city official has the right to punish you for severe actions taken that are against the law. Logging out now means you will not be able to log back in until the end of your sentence. Character deletion is not allowed either until the end of the sentence either.

What the abyss? Dan was meant to endure this pain for twelve hours before he could even try to escape their prison? Surely there had to be some kind of trick to dealing with this, right? Trying to calm himself down, as his body spasmed and he lost health from both the machine and his body convulsing, was difficult though after several minutes of deep breathing he finally began to calm down, it didn’t lessen the pain but he could box it off from himself.

Taking stock of the flow of mana he realized it was leaving his body similar to how it did when he was casting spells, specifically the resurrection one. Dan took another deep breath before trying to control the flow of mana leaving his body, as if he were casting a spell through his hands.

Blooded Coalescence (Novice II) - You got a rare skill so it’s going to take much longer to level this then the regular version.

He did it! He could feel his mana stabilising… until his mana was completely used and he saw his health begin to drop and red tendrils of it drift up towards the machine. He heard distant yelling but ignored it trying to focus on maintaining his health before he died. Slowly he got a hold of it, but far too late as he watched his health plummet downwards, and planned on giving himself up for another death.

Health is 30

Health is 20

Health is 5

Suddenly a pair of hands gripped his shoulders and yanked him back from the machine right before it would kill him and he could hear what was being said by the archmage on his throne. Looking around Dan noticed all the students and most of the staff had left the room.

Blooded Coalescence (Novice IV) - Three ranks in one training session? This is leveling way faster than just casting spells! Why not ask for another go?

“-necromancers often had this skill of Blooded Coalescence. Before we punish him again with this we should make sure there are no adverse affects to the accord and that we properly bind him in the dungeon. Take him away Reggie, I don’t want to see him again after the dungeon gathering routine in three days.”

The purple robed mage, apparently named Reggie, bowed to the obese mage and cast a spell on Dan before he could speak, before hauling him to his feet, and whispering in his ear, “Do not even think about trying to escape. Even if you manage to kill yourself to try to escape we will just recapture you and if you try running away we will kill you and recapture you. Now move, maggot, I don’t want to waste all day.”

Dan moved forward, there was not much he could do, besides just moving where Reggie prodded him to go. Through twists and turns they went, many of which didn’t even make sense, once he went down five short hallways but he kept turning right at the end of each and arriving somewhere else as if space didn’t matter. It would be far more fascinating if he weren’t being taken prisoner by this place.

Crossing one corner he was suddenly nauseated as the hall seemed to tilt around him and suddenly he was standing on the ceiling of the room, hanging by his feet. If his stomach wasn’t so empty he might have been sick, though with a low rumble Dan was reminded of the basic needs his game character shared with him. He continued onward though at the insistence of the purple robed mage who fared only slightly better than him. As the Mage poked him onwards he tentatively lifted his foot and was half surprised when he didn’t fall off and hit the ‘ground’. Placing his foot forward he took another step until he built up for moving through here, once he did his mind wandered to other things.

Dan knew he would have to log out eventually to feed himself but at least with the 2:1 time in game that would be a little farther off and after he managed to get out of the dungeon. This game was completely messed up and he expected the company to be swamped in lawsuits for how much pain the game could cause people to experience but despite all that, Dan somehow felt more alive in here. He was doing something you only read in fantasy books and it was thrilling. He was most likely going to find some way out in this dungeon down here. This was way more thrilling than what he was doing in his normal life. He almost wished he could stay here.

Finally the hallway they were walking down righted itself and the wooden walls gave way to an unpleasantly cool mossy stone. Dan was shivering already as he made his way through. He was lucky he still had his leather armor which kept the worst of the cold away from his skin. His gasping breaths through the silence spell were causing the air to plume up before him, showing just how cold it really was. After several minutes of walking through the stone corridor, Dan and his guard made it to metal holding cells. Not sure how he was supposed to get in, Dan tried to look at the mage as he muttered a word to magically open the door and pushed Dan in, closing it in behind him, leaving him with his three new cellmates one was a woman and two were men.

The woman looked up in pity as she looked towards Dan, while the other two continued to stare at the ground, not moving or giving any signs of consciousness. Finally when the Mage left Dan was able to talk and breathe normally. Before he could speak to the other person in the cell he had a notification forcefully pop-up in front of his face.

You have entered an isolated prison dungeon! As a prisoner, your respawn location has automatically been set to this cell. Players are unable to delete their characters while incarcerated. Experience gains are halved for prisoners. Reputation gains are halved in the dungeon, reputation losses are tripled.

Wow, that was a bit extreme. Making it out of here was going to be harder than he thought… though this was called a ‘prison dungeon’ so surely that meant he would be able to kill stuff and level down here. The archmage even alluded to that point. Before he could dive further into his thoughts the other conscious looking prisoner coughed and met his eyes. “Enjoying your stay here? You won’t be stuck in here too much longer I reckon. You’ll exit the game like the others and forget all about me. They haven’t been able to log back in at all since they left.”

Dan realized the unconscious figures must have been players who logged out, which begged the question why the woman hadn’t. “And why are you still here then? Surely it would be more enjoyable to leave and come back when… well, if you ever manage to get out.”

“Ha, the first one that came in here asked me something similar. I’m stuck in here, I came into the game under contract to my company in a pod. I managed to get a six month contract so I could earn enough money to feed my daughter. You can see how successful I was at that. She’s with her father until I’m out of here, and I doubt I’ll be able to see her again after he shows how irresponsible I was after not being able to make any money here… sorry, been awhile since I could rant to someone that could hear me. The mages aren’t very kind when it comes to that.”

Dan shook his head in disbelief. He had heard of some people joining the game in full immersion pods, but he hadn’t been lucky enough to order one himself. They were ridiculously expensive, not something an ordinary person could afford. Sitting on the ground across from the woman, he tried to calm her down and ask some questions. “I’m not planning on going anywhere until I can make it out of here. This is called a prison dungeon, does that mean there’s an actual dungeon where we can collect loot and level up?”

“We can do both of those, but… well I suppose I should just show you. Don’t expect to keep anything you find.” With those words she rubbed her eyes, which were starting to become frosty from her tears of frustration freezing in the cold weather, before standing up and leading him through the back of the cell between two pillars of ice and into a dim area.

“Welcome to the Mage’s Ice Dungeon. Your new home until you decide to go.” As Dan’s eyes adjusted he could see a circular ice covered entry room, with doors in each of the cardinal directions. The door opposite of where he entered the dungeon, to the south, was locked as well as the eastern door. The northern door’s lock was incredibly fancy, reminding him of the boss rooms from older classic RPGs such as Zelda, while the eastern one was an unremarkable, if sturdy looking, plain silver lock. It was obvious by the way the door was cracked they were meant to go through the western dungeon door first.

“Have you ever gotten through the eastern door?” Dan asked, surely eventually she would level up enough to actually be able to clear the dungeon solo. She gave him a sad look. “My best attempt is making it to level three with the second person to make their way in here and we made it through the eastern door… the monsters behind that door are level ten and higher though, we had no chance and the door sealed itself up that night.”

“Well what level are you now? You can’t say you’ve been stuck at three since then, can you?” She gave Dan another sad look and shook her head. All she would say is, “You’ll see tonight.” When he tried probing her again. With that knowledge he followed her into the far larger western room, which was adorned with majestic ice sculptures of various creatures, sitting atop regal pedestals, such as elegant swans, fierce tigers, and even a few deadly boars. From where he was at the beginning of the room they all looked almost real. Dotting the ceiling were pillars of ice, haphazardly placed and clearly unstable.

As Dan was about to walk further in, the woman held out her hand to stop him before picking up a chunk of ice from the ground and throwing it at the nearest swan sculpture. Unsurprisingly the ice swan didn’t like it and with a very inelegant screech launched itself at them and Dan was able to see the girl in action. She held up her hands and a line of grass shot forth from her hands catching the swan’s stubby legs. Not to be outdone, Dan held up his own hands to cast decomposing mist on the swan, causing the ice to crack and a watery blood to leak out before being absorbed by the mist.

With another flick of her wrist she sent out a trio of seeds flying as quickly as a bullet, all of them pelting the swan in its face. It didn’t like this though and with a screech launched itself at them, while breaking the threads of grass holding it down, forcing them back towards the door. Dan stepped up and reached for his shield, he then realized he didn’t have it. He had no clue when he had lost it and instead of the swan impaling itself on his shield it managed to peck Dan in the stomach, taking off twenty percent of his health in one hit. Trying not to give it another opening he backed off and dodged out of its way while the woman continued to pellet it with seeds. Dan couldn’t get an opening to cast any of his spells and just tried to stay alive as the water fowl came at him.

Finally after several minutes and Dan losing another chunk of health to the swan’s pecks, it went down. Dan sat down and tried to calm his racing heart. He couldn’t tank in here without his shield where had it gone even? He had it when he first came through… did one of the mages have some magical pickpocketing ability? It must not have been good enough to steal his clothes at least, he would have been freezing without them. He realized the woman might have been freezing herself, looking over at her he saw her wearing a surprisingly thick cloak. He hadn’t gotten a good look at her, but she was a bit shorter than him with auburn hair held in a bun, maybe middle aged, and grey eyes that looked as fierce and stormy as they were sad. Her cloak was plain black, but was thickly padded along the entire thing, which seemed lucky for such a cold dungeon.

“That was some good dodging, if you stay then I volunteer you as the tank for us. “ Her grey eyes seemed to be pleading with him as he turned away to look at the swan. In front of the swan was a dark grey staff, modeled to look as if the head of it was a swan perched upon it, staring death ahead of it.

You have found: Swan Staff (Rare) - This item allows you to channel spells through it for an increased 20% damage and lowers the casting time of spells by 33%. Durability 50/50

“This staff is crazy! I thought monsters didn’t drop loot in this game though?” Dan half asked as he was enchanted by the staff. It seemed almost custom made for him, removing the 20% penalty to his damage from his title and lowering the time it takes to cast his more lengthy spells.

“In dungeons it’s different, some monsters will drop loot. I heard in one of the prisons for regular players that all the items come with cursed effects, but these don’t seem to come with them though. Either way we won’t be keeping anything we find. When we go back into the room with three doors all the players are automatically frisked and our loot is collected to be given to the college. Check your experience, you should have gotten the same as myself, 100.”

Exp gained - 100 reduced to 50

“I did, so we need to kill twenty of these to get to the next level?” The woman nodded and elaborated. “Since we’re in a smaller group we gain more experience than a larger group would, and these are all level three and higher enemies, and since we’re level one we gain extra experience for killing higher level enemies. Come on, that staff will pay for a couple hours of peace to sleep tonight after the wiping.”

“Wait, but you said the staff would be collected, what if we left it here tonight?” She shook her head, “It would just disappear. And before you ask, no you cannot bait the enemies through the door so you can kill them and trying to throw it through the door will make it encounter an invisible wall. Either we leave the staff or we take it and give it up at the door so they don’t use the abyssal bell on us tonight.”

“Wait, if I had a way to take it with us through the door would I be able to keep it and do you know where I could hide it?”

“Well if you managed to outthink all these mages and do so then you could just leave it behind the entrance pillars in our cell. It’s where I put my stash. But since you can’t carry it through you won’t be able to keep it. Now come on, time is wasting.”

Dan stood there for a moment more knowing he was forgetting something after a minute of thinking he finally remembered. “Cladicus buddy, hope you don’t hate me for getting stuck here.” With that he activated his scan skill on the Swan.

You have scanned your first Ice Swan Your God has deigned to give you a reward!

You have learned Death Missile (Novice III) - This is a variation of Magic Missile, the most basic of spells. While using this on a target suffering from a damage over time effect you will do double damage with this skill and inflict the necrotic healing debuff. Damage is 1n per level. Cast time: Instant. Mana cost 15 per bolt.

Necrotic Healing causes the sufferer of the debuff to heal for 50% less for 10 seconds. Debuff is stackable up to three times and upon being healed with negative healing they will take damage.

This was a force multiplier! It didn’t do a ton of damage yet but the debuff would be a game changer. From the sounds of it even their health regen would be a ticking time bomb for them, he really needed to invest in some extra intelligence for mana.

Message approved by A from your Deity: Hang in there, doing a few things from my end to get you out. Keep scanning things though, this is a unique opportunity to get a few interesting creatures and some skills to help you on your end. I know if you leave now you can’t come back unless someone frees you. I’ll pull a few more strings to let you stay in longer if you want, I would recommend getting out in the next two days before then.

Dan left the room after watching the Swan sink into the frosty grey floor. How could he do that? Maybe there was some kind of mode that made time even faster in game? Nothing he could do about it now he supposed. He would worry about it when push came to shove. When he left the room sure enough the staff disappeared from his hands like… well he supposed it probably was some form of magic that did that.

When he walked into the cell he was greeted by the sight of the ice mage that had shot an icicle into his foot and that same kind of icicle jutting out of his new prison partner’s head. He had just enough time to raise his hand and try to ward off the impending icicle but before he could begin to even raise a finger an icicle slammed into his head, killing him instantly.