The ground stopped rumbling a while ago, and the last of the rocks seem to have stopped falling from the ceiling. All is quiet.

I sit up heavily, shrugging off the rocks that were stopped by my shield. I really need to stop and repair these, I consider. I haven’t touched any of them since my funk after being dumped by Penelope. I was lucky I had them in my fight with Swift Tusk, even more lucky to have this one now, though its durability has gone down to 34/600.

Picking up my torch, I examine the aftermath of the cave-in.

Welp, my tunnel’s gone. Packed solid with rubble who knows how deep, there’s no way of telling how long it would take me to dig out that way.

But isn’t that an interesting coincidence? After all, this cave clearly stood for ages after being abandoned. What are the odds that it would collapse suddenly the same day I show up? It’s not as though I were going around recklessly smashing support beams or anything. Unless—don’t tell me—that guy is involved.

“That’s real cute, Ari!” I call, and my voice echoes back at me through the cavern. “Guess the exit was the other way, huh? Now I’ll never get out of here, is that it?”

Silence.

“Hey, don’t do me any more favors, alright, Ari? Crazy jerk…”

But what’s this? Is it my imagination, or does that end of the cavern look a bit brighter than this side? Curious, I extinguish my torch, and sure enough, the other side is glowing with distant light. This seems promising. Or ominous. I can’t decide yet… At least if there’s light, there shouldn’t be any spiders…

I relight my torch and pick my way across the rubble-strewn cavern. Then I remember my shields and stop halfway to repair them. It only takes me a couple of minutes to get them back into mint condition, and I’m back on my way.

As I near the light I see it’s emanating from a wide recess in the cavern. Closer inspection reveals it to be the wide mouth of another tunnel. It narrows slowly, but never gets as small as the first tunnel. I’d say this one is about fifteen feet wide and twelve feet high. The walls are lit intermittently with greasy torches. The work of miners? I hope they’re friendly.

As I begin my exploration of the fully lit tunnels, I find myself more and more baffled at each turn. I really don’t know what to make of this area. If all feels very random and eclectic, like a bunch of devs’ half-baked ideas smashed together to form a huge nothing burger. Or is that—an everything burger?

There are hostile goblin mobs, well dressed and clearly civilized. There are hobgoblin slavers overseeing miner goblins implying some sort of cast or penal system. All of this points to there being a society of goblins in this cave network, some kind of centralized city or at least homesteads, but so far as I’ve seen, there is nothing but tunnels, tunnels and more tunnels.

There are rusty mechanized mining constructs, clearly too old to have been pieced together by the goblins. Whenever I run into one I’m forced to run the other way. My aura doesn’t work on them and my level 1 sword isn’t going to do much to their 1,200 HP. Fortunately they are slow, so they’re pretty easy to outrun. Not so with the other monsters.

There are giant bats and cyclops spiders that shoot laser beams. There are cackling imps, evil clowns and rampaging donkeys, the menagerie never ends. To make things worse, these monsters are all between levels 10 and 15. In other words, the majority of them are way too OP for little old me, still stuck in the gear I got in area one!

I’m an idiot, I realize after an hour of this madness. Why did I leave Dustry without upgrading my gear? Without at least stopping to sell all the items in my inventory! Already it’s nearly full with random monster drops, and I seem to be nowhere near the exit!

It’s safe to admit I am totally, hopelessly, absolutely lost. Just when I think I have to be nearing the end of this maze, I reach another dead end.

I lose all track of time in this place. There is no day or night, no fatigue to mark the passing of hours. Only this endless dungeon with its endless mobs.

At least I brought plenty of health potions with me, I remember thinking in the beginning. But I’m going through them so fast, my stores would be completely depleted if not for the goblin spell casters, who drop two or three health potions with every kill.

Yes, the spell casters, a unique challenge. Unlike the crows I fought before, these were my first fully ranged opponents. Taking that jerk Ari’s advice, I’ve been chasing them down, cornering them with my aura, which fortunately isn’t too difficult to do in this dungeon. Unfortunately, I had to learn the hard way that my shield only blocks physical attacks, so all of the spells they launch at me do full damage. I do my best to jump out of the way and dodge them, but most of these hits are unavoidable, and I take them full on.

[-47 HP]

[-51 HP]

Potion time! I’m really chugging these things. I don’t know how my stomach hasn’t turned into its own potion reservoir at this point!

On the plus side, fighting so many powerful monsters is giving me a ton of exp, my character and skills have been leveling up left and right.

[Character name: Revelator

Level: 13

Race: Human

Class: Defender

Subclass: None

HP: 805

Constitution: 42

Strength: 7

Agility: 21

Intelligence: 2

Luck: 1

Skills: Aggrovating Aura (2), Armor Crafting (4), Baba’s Vanishing Haze Aura (3), Cooking (5), Greater Shield Proficiency (6), Improved Block (7), Interceptor, Jewel Crafting (4), Noxious Spores (8), Shieldsmith (7)

(total armor 345)]

[Aggrovating Aura level 2: Enemies have a harder time ignoring your punchable face.

Increases threat generated when dealing damage.]

[Noxious Spores level 8: A cloud of deadly spores follows you, devastating your enemies.

15 ft radius

-0.8% HP/second

5% Life Leech

Stops enemy regeneration]

[Baba’s Vanishing Haze Aura level 3: You are clouded in an eerie mist, obscuring you from your enemies.

15% chance to evade enemy attack

Cooldown 30 Seconds]

[Improved Block level 7: Uses the shield to block the next enemy attack.

Blocks 100% of the next physical attack, damage inflicted redirects to the shield’s durability.

Cooldown: 12.8 seconds]

Block. It’s a skill I’d nearly forgotten about. I’d been relying on the Interceptor skill so much since getting it, but when one is trapped in a dungeon with mobs several levels higher than one’s self, well, one tends to utilize every last resource available.

After killing another host of goblins, I stop to gather their loot. I manage to pick up 30 health potions, for which I’m thanking my lucky rabbit’s foot. Without the extra dropped health potions, I’d have died in this place a long time ago…

I’m just finishing up my looting, looking anxiously at my nearly bursting inventory bag, when I hear a hair raising roar in the tunnel up ahead.

Gulp!

I start towards the sound, shield raised. Out of the shadows a looming figure appears, so tall its horns nearly scrape the ceiling. Half man, half bull, the staple monster of any labyrinth.

The minotaur. Level 15 monster, 3,200 HP—and you know that thing hits like a semi-truck.

“Rooooarrrrr!!”

Oh, hell no.

I’m not even going to try to face that thing! I turn and run back through the tunnel the way I came, the minotaur right on my heels, swinging axes into the cave floor and sending shock waves that send me stumbling this way and that.

He’s slowing me down—he’s gaining on me!

Besides this, I’m facing another problem. I’ve cleared these tunnels of monsters, but it’s only a matter of time before they respawn. If I don’t stop charging blindly forward, I’ll have pulled every mob in this cave with my Aggrovating face!

Ok, change of plan.

I skid to a halt and spin on my heel to face down the minotaur. I’m a little surprised to see that thing’s been caught in my aura all this time. And it’s killing mobs even faster now that it’s leveled up.

Maybe I actually can kill this thing!

But first, I’ve got to take care I don’t aggro any more monsters. Steeling my determination, I charge back the way I came, not for the minotaur, exactly, but for the space between it and the wall. It’s a narrow fit, and that guy will definitely get in a few attacks of opportunity. But it’s my only shot.

Crack! It levels a blow across my shield, sending me hurling into the wall.

[-39 HP]

Oof. Oi. Good thing I had my shield up! 

No time to rest, I have to move past the minotaur and start back down the other side of the tunnel. On the way he lands a savage blow across my back.

[-140 HP]

The blow launches me several feet, but I hit the ground running. Dang! Even with the pain simulation sensors turned down, that one had me almost seeing stars.

Drinking down a health potion, I hear the minotaur roar in fury, then turn and run after me. In no time at all I sense he’s back in my aura. Perfect. Now I just have to keep this up for another minute. So long as I don’t trip, I should be just fin—

And there’s the jutting bit of stone right in my way. It catches my toe and sends me barreling forward in painful somersaults. Dang it!

I’m scrambling to find my feet, but of course the minotaur is already on top of me, sending its terrible axes crashing down on my shoulders.

[-135 HP]

[-126 HP]

I’m dazed by pain. There’s nothing I can do as the monster continues raining blows down on my unguarded body.

This is terrifying, I realize distantly. This is the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me.

And, I’m going to die.

[Heart rate accelerating. 145 BPM. Automatic system shutdown if heart rate reaches 150 BPM.]

[Heart rate 151 BPM. Activating relaxation protocol.]

Finding myself suddenly sitting on my familiar bench on a soothing spring day, I don’t know if I’ve ever been so relieved to be kicked out of the game.

For so long, I’ve seen nothing but monsters and black stone, I was starting to forget what the sky looked like.

“Wow,” I murmur, leaning back on my bench to look up at it through the gently blowing wisps of willow branches. “Clouds are…so fluffy…”

“Would you like to try a relaxation simulation?”

“No, thanks.”

Time passes. I don’t know how many minutes. I’m sure my heart rate has returned to normal by now, but somehow, I can’t make myself go back to face that creature.

“Hey, Tina. How many days have I been playing Tetra Chronicles, now?”

“User Austen has been immersed for three hundred sixteen hours and thirteen minutes. That is just over thirteen days.”

“Wow.”

“The maximum immersion time of twenty days has not yet been reached, but it is nevertheless recommended by SMark company medical staff that users log off regularly and exercise their bodies outside the capsule between sessions. Is this something you would like to do at this time?”

“…Yes.”