Steven found the trick to the floor, finally. He checked the timers in his status page. The floor timer read just over five hours. That seemed about right. He had spent a long time wandering around the open stone ground until he accidentally stepped on an invisible pressure plate.

The pressure plate sunk into the ground with a loud grinding sound and transformed the area into a stairway that led down.

His attention focused down into the suspiciously lit stairway, he was startled by another set of grinding and fell backwards.

Three giant tombstones grew straight up from the stone surrounding the stairway opening. Each one was as tall as he was, and all three of them embossed with the number 1.

Looking back to make sure he could still see the Red Eye from the stairway, which was barely visible unless unless he knew what to look for, he then moved down the steps toward the bottom landing. From there he could see a long hallway, lit by three torches on both sides spaced evenly down the walls. At the far end was a waist high pole sticking out of the ground.

Steven walked to the closest torch and happily yanked it from its fittings. He placed the torch on the ground and gently snuffed out the flames with his shoe before fitting it into his pouch. He liked free stuff.

Not actually needing the torch to see, he left the remaining five where they were and walked past them to the end of the hallway. There he met the pole and three doors.

The pole seemed to be a lever of sorts, as there were three grooves for it to move across. Each groove coincided with the direction of a door.

There was a door on the left, right, and straight ahead, each embossed with the number 1.

He had no idea which he should enter first, so picking at random he opened the right door by sliding the lever down the groove so that the pole was pointing at the door. The door descended into the ground, and this time he could see three new torches light up down the hallway that the door had uncovered.

It was all a little too easy. He hadn’t encountered any monsters, and aside from the time spent trying to find this small underground area there had been no issues at all.

Naturally, he became a little worried.

He didn’t dare take a step inside the new hall, and stood by the lever watching. After several long minutes he decided the caution didn’t pay off. There was no change down the hallway other than the flickering of the torches.

Steven took one step past the doorway and stopped. A moment later he took another step. Soon he was walking freely toward what he can now see was another room at the end of the hall.

He heard a slight grinding noise and a click, feeling his foot sink slightly into the floor. Glancing down he saw that he had stepped on another pressure plate similar to the one above.

He threw himself backwards, landing on his back and sliding slightly along the floor, just in time to see a dark line scythe across the hallway where it embedded itself horizontally into the wall. On closer inspection he found it to be a giant rusted curved blade.

The blade was long enough that, had he not thrown himself onto the floor, he would most likely be missing some part of his anatomy.

Back when he was alive, he tended to research any kind of video game he was going to buy. Even if just to make sure his spent money was getting its worth. But if that game had traps, no matter how popular and well designed, he always skipped it. He hated traps.

And now he was standing in a hallway with at least one that he could see. Luckily enough, it was avoidable by going low.

Looking down the hallway he could see no visible indicators of any type of pressure plates. No doubt they were magically placed by the dungeon itself, and completely seamless. He had to find some way to find the traps without killing himself.

There were three options he could think of. First, he could simply run down the hallway hitting traps and trying to memorize their placement before he died. This was not the preferable strategy to keep along the lines of not killing himself, but it also came with the added bonus chance of completely missing the pressure plate entirely. However, he felt he likely used up his luck avoiding the first trap.

Second, he could slowly walk forward, shuffling his feet and putting low amounts of pressure on the floor. This way it was possible he could find a pressure plate and maybe not activate it. He liked this idea, but smiled as he went over his third plan.

The third plan didn’t involve the traps at all. He hoped anyway. The thought was that traps are usually placed where they’re most likely to be tripped. In his situation, Steven guessed that would be the center of the hallway where it was most likely for someone to walk. He planned on walking down the edge of the hallway potentially avoiding the pressure plates until he made it to the end room.

If that failed, plan two. He hoped he wouldn’t get to plan one.

He moved over to the side of the hall where the giant blade emerged, put his back to the wall, and began to slowly sidestep towards the end. Several tense moments later he was nearing the end of the hallway, alive and in one piece.

Elated, he inspected the room that the hall fed. It contained what looked to be some sort of coffin or sarcophagus standing against the back wall. He took care to scan the walls for slits that blades could come flying out of, in case he stepped on another pressure plate. There seemed to be none he could see, and there were no exits.

A small sideways hop brought him fully out of the hallway and into the room. Before continuing further into the room, he checked his status page to see if the mana pill he had eaten earlier had worked. It had not, as his counter still read 102.

Next he checked his quest page, hoping for a new quest and clue as to what he should be expecting, but it was still blank.

But he didn’t really think he needed it. He guessed that as soon as he walked further in the room, one of several things could happen. The most obvious was that the coffin would burst open, dumping a dusty mummy onto the floor. It would then proceed to dramatically rise up and attack him or force him to back up into the trapped hallway. He would have to fight aggressively in the room, or fight defensively around the traps which would limit his chances of absorbing whatever was in the coffin.

His thoughts were interrupted by a creaking noise, and his attention snapped to the coffin. The lid was swinging forward, like it was a door.

The coffin had activated before he had even moved further into the room. He settled into a fighting pose and prepared to find out what this encounter entailed. Before the lid was fully open, Steven could easily see what was inside.

It was a skeleton. Strapped to its right forearm was a heater shield, polished to a mirror finish. He cast identify.

Lesser Skeleton (Heater Shield)

Mana 25

Strength - 3

Dexterity - 3

Endurance 3

Intelligence - 1

Wisdom - 1

Mimicries - 1

He had his next target, along with some potential attribute points and a new transformation. The lesser skeleton’s attributes were much lower than his own. Besides attacking with its bony appendages, all it seemed it could do was block with the shield.

Steven decided he needed to be a lot more aggressive than he had been since arriving in the dungeon.

Bolting towards the still motionless skeleton, he leapt forward the last several feet to deliver an absorption powered flying punch to the skeleton’s skull. As the punch was just about to make contact, the skeleton’s eye sockets lit up with an eerie orange glow and it yanked its head to the side, causing the punch to glance off the temple and slam into the coffin.

The skeleton reciprocated with a knee to Steven’s groin.

Thanks to his jumping attack, Steven had a lot more force go into his groin than he was able to deliver to the skull and coffin. Even with the Belt of Suppression equipped, the pain was unbearable and he dry heaved an empty stomach as the skeleton pushed him backwards.

Steven barely had time to register the white bone foot whistling towards his face before he felt the hard and surprisingly sharp bones bite into his cheek. He was thrown backwards in a bone crunching collision.

The kick hurt. A lot. His groin still radiated pain into his stomach. Steven wondered how he was still alive, or even conscious. He could swear he heard and felt the bones in his face crushed by that kick. The Belt of Suppression and 9 attribute points in endurance were certainly showing their worth.

He looked over at the skeleton to see it crawling towards him, hand over hand. The kick had broken the skeleton’s leg bones, and he saw its right foot with half a tibia and fibula attached on the ground nearby.

Steven’s mood brightened considerably as he retrieved the fallen foot. He pointed the appendage, the foot flopping loosely, at the crawling monster and laughed.

“Hah! You’re going to kick your own ass!”