Chapter 50

Chapter 50

He was going to complain about the pain still radiating across his recently injured arm to Athela when he paused in what he was about to say...and a lump in his throat began to form. Farther back in the darker recess of the cell, past the blond man, there was a pile of four small bodies. All of them human, all of them children, and all of them dead with dark marks of bruising around their necks... Riven had a good idea where they’d come from, considering there was a school bus out there in the front room of the temple.

Riven went rigid and immediately turned away, but he refocused his attention as the other man got up and placed his head against the thick cell bars. In the torchlight, it was evident that the guy was a natural athlete. “So as I was saying, you’re from Earth?”

He looked to have the body of a long-distance runner, was just slightly shorter than Riven by half an inch, and wore a pair of sweatpants with a tight black shirt. The man looked up at him, and their eyes met, and he sluggishly drawled out a reply. “Yes. These creatures killed any who resisted and dragged them away, and after I saw what they did to my friend Shawn, I pretended to be unconscious as they dragged me here. What is this place? We were trying to outrun some monsters, and all of a sudden we drove through a fiery door that appeared out of nowhere and ended up here...”

His voice carried with it a very slight, almost unnoticeable Irish accent. Worry was etched into the man’s features, and his grip against the bars of his cell tightened, but he remained composed. “First the world goes crazy and invading monsters roam the streets, killing everyone, and then we’re transported to some woodlands where the trees came alive to attack us. Now this... I end up here, I watched my friend get killed before I’m saved by magic-wielding humans. At least you’re human, though. My name is Ben.”

Ben extended a hand through the cell bars, and Riven grasped it to shake firmly. It was nice, after all these weeks, finally seeing another person. Talking to another person...though Riven could tell Ben didn’t feel the same way about the situation.

“My name is Riven. This is Athela, and this is Azmoth. Apparently we’re in hell, in a dungeon called Negrada. I have a lot of questions for you, too, but that can wait for later. As can our explanations for what we know individually. Here.”

He began fidgeting with the keys and trying them out, one by one, on the cell. The keys were a little different than the ones he was used to—they were larger, thicker, and had different protrusions at all angles along the circumference of the circular rod that formed the base of the key. However, he was able to get the lock open soon enough, and Ben stepped out.

Ben warily glanced Azmoth and Athela over. “They seem friendly enough... How did you get two of them on your side?”

“Long story,” Riven stated sourly underneath his hood as he glared at the pile of small bodies. “I don’t feel like talking the entire thing through right now.”

Surprisingly, Ben wasn’t in much of a state of shock. Nor did he seem overly grateful about being saved. Rather, he seemed sad. He glanced around the room, quickly accepting it for what it was, and let out a slow sigh. “This is terrible.”

Riven watched him as he slowly strode up to where the corpse of the woman he’d known was lying. Her heart was carved out, and what was left of her after Azmoth’s shattering attack to kill the caster was still tied down to chunks of the broken stone altar.

Something didn’t add up.

“There was one other person I’ve personally met here in the dungeon who claimed to be from another planet...but he’s dead now. Saw another girl, but she ran off. Before that there were people in my tutorial, too, and they were all from Earth as well. Then there was my friend and my sister, and the system prompt I originally got before starting this whole mess said if I survived the tutorial I would get to reunite with them. So that’s the current goal. I’m not sure about all the pieces to the puzzle just yet, but from what I can gather, this is some kind of event that’s merging Earth with another world, or worlds in the plural, and into a multiverse of some sort. I can’t get answers from my minions because of some kind of rules set up by the system...and I’m on a unique starting path when compared to most of the other people from Earth. Again, this is a hellscape dungeon, instead of the tutorial dungeon most people go through, and I had to choose between taking the hard road myself or sacrificing the people I’d made acquaintances with for an easy way out. Obviously I’m here, so I took the hard road.”

There was a very long pause.

“I see...” Ben replied flatly, eyes boring into the stone floor beneath his feet. They both stared silently at the floor, and then Ben spoke up again. “Well, I’m too deep into this shit to question your sanity. So... What’s with your demons?”

Riven gave a slight smile and motioned over to his minions—outlined in the firelight of the torches along the walls. “I started a path that appears to be molding me into a warlock, even got a class title for it. You get race and class points to add to your stat page with every level up, but if you don’t know what I’m talking about, then you’re farther behind than I’d hoped for.”

“Yes, I know about the leveling system. One of my friends leveled up by running over one of the monsters in our way. Any chance you know of a way out of here?”

Riven shook his head sourly. “Not yet, but I’m working on it. Surprisingly enough, I think this dungeon is an extension of the core system worlds—which are worlds outside the realm of Earth, from what I’ve been told.”

“To Elysium?”

“Yes, if I’m understanding things correctly. Elysium is apparently a bunch of interconnected worlds. Like I mentioned earlier, it’s a multiverse of some sort, like the ones you read about in comics as a kid...but I’m not entirely sure how it works.”

Riven took the next ten minutes explaining the various things he’d learned since getting there. He explained how quests worked, system notifications, skills, attribute pillars, how he’d gotten his own class title, and how there were various ways to orient to a given pillar if Ben found the means through happenstance or study. He explained stats, the hidden health/mana/stamina that everyone apparently had, and he explained in detail what he’d been doing there in the dungeon for a couple weeks while trying to find a way out. Lastly he told Ben about the “Dao” that was currently not available until the tutorial was over, whatever the hell Dao was, but it’d been mentioned enough times to likely be important. Then again: Weren’t his pillars Dao-related? Ugh. He really needed to get his head on straight; maybe when he got out of here he’d figure things out.

Ben took it in stride and at face value, taking in another deep breath and shaking his head in wonder as Riven finished his condensed version of the story. “We’re really fucked, then, aren’t we? And no, I don’t know what Dao is, either.”