Chapter 46

  Gabby sighed. It had been weeks since that idiot Antony had convinced her that entering the dungeon would be a good idea, and she was on floor three now, having figured out the floor puzzle on the second week on the first floor, and the second day on the second floor.

  The other part of advancing to deeper floors—defeating a training partner in combat—was relatively easy for her. She had a natural sense for how to fight, it seemed. And if the opponent were a boy, then, well, she wasn’t shy about taking advantage of that weakness and targeting them where it hurt.

  Especially if that boy was Antony. She grinned, thinking of his stupid face as his eyes widened in pain at the sudden blow to his sensitive bits. She’d challenged him to a duel for more than half of the required one hundred fights on the first floor and beaten him every time.

  Unfortunately she hadn’t won every fight. But still, she’d advanced quickly enough that she thought she was on the deepest floor that anyone had reached so far.

  It was another school, just like the first two floors had been, and just like the first two floors the teachers and ‘responsible adults’ were elves and dwarves with white eyes. She thought it was a little strange that rather than discouraging their students from fighting, the schools inside the dungeon actively set up matches to ensure that everyone fought at least once per day. Sometimes much more than that.

  The puzzle on the first floor had just been to figure out who the headmaster was. Or so Gabby had thought, because as soon as she’d reached one hundred wins she’d been instructed to speak with the headmaster about advancing, and then she’d had to track him down, which had been an ordeal in and of itself. When she’d finally confronted him, however, she’d received a prompt informing her that she was being moved to the second floor.

  The second floor was more of the same, except with fewer kids, and the kids that were there could fight better. Everyone was level two. Everyone was mad at someone for convincing them to go into the dungeon. Everyone was missing their families. Except those like Gabby, who didn’t really have any family to miss.

  That didn’t mean that Gabby was happy. She missed Antony because after she left him behind on floor one she hadn’t had a chance to kick him in the balls anymore. She sighed and walked through the halls of the old-style boarding school. There was one addition that was new to the third floor, at least according to the other students she’d spoken with, and she was going to visit it now.

  The kiosk looked like an ATM. She walked up next to it and began messing around with it, pressing buttons.

  Welcome to the Contribution Point Exchange!

  Current Contribution points: 30

  Gabby sighed as she looked at her pitiful amount of contribution points. She pulled up the inventory list and saw that anything meaningful that she could buy was worth more than she had. The weapons, even the pitiful beginner weapons, were all in the triple digits.

  She checked her inventory, but it literally only listed the clothes she was wearing and the uniforms that the school had provided for her back in her dorms. While she could technically sell them … she obviously wouldn’t.

  She spent a few minutes playing around with the screens, looking at some of the expensive items that she’d never be able to afford. There were sets of armor that looked beautiful, like they were constructed out of layered gold and silver materials, enchanted with runes and visibly magical scripts. But those items cost millions of points to buy.

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  She sighed and toggled the sorting menu the other way to see if there was anything that she could afford. She was surprised to find that there was.

  She could buy one hundred postcards for one contribution point. She was a little surprised by this, and she clicked onto the item to see its description in more detail.

  Postcard to the Outside:

  Let your family know how you’re doing with this simple postcard. Send them an image of yourself and your friends on one side (optional) and a brief heartfelt message on the other. Ask your teachers for help in forming the picture, and then write the message on your own! Once you’re ready to deliver the message, drop it off in the postbox in the office. The Post System will take care of things from there.

  Gabby blinked, because she was pretty certain she’d never heard of anything like that from the other students. She thought about it for a minute, then bought a pack of the postcards.

  She then scanned up a few items, sorting from least to most expensive as before. She found it there, listed for fifty points. Just out of reach.

  TitanSystem.App Tablet

  This Tablet has limited internet access, connecting its user to their TitanSystem.App account from any SafeZone inside the dungeon, or any Have on the surface.

  Communication with other Delvers is to be encouraged.

  Good luck, young delver.

  She bookmarked the item, noting that like that postcards it had ∞ listed as its inventory number, so she wasn’t worried about the system selling out.

  She backed out of the system and a prompt in her interface asked her to confirm the purchase, which she did. A moment later, a stack of fifty postcards appeared in her hand. She almost dropped them in surprise, because she had the distinct feeling that she’d been carrying them for a while despite them only just suddenly appearing by magic.

  But then again, magic was weird sometimes. She knew that because some of the kids she was dueling with had magic skills of their own that she had to counter. So the system’s delivery method wasn’t too off-putting for her.

  She ran to find her friends, and as she ran she came up with a strategy. If the others didn’t know about the postcards yet, she might be able to lie and say that they were worth more than they really were. She could be the middleman. She wouldn’t charge too much, but one point for a card to tell their parents that they were alive would be worth that much, right?

  She grinned and began to put her scheme into action.

  ~~~~~~

  Lawrence emerged from the dungeon, waking up in the exercise yard along with the six surviving members of the team which had started the delve with him. He yawned, stretched, and stood up. It was the middle of the night, but despite that the guards were on patrol of the last place the vanished prisoners had been seen, and within moments a response team was in place, shouting at the ‘escapees’ to ‘assume the position.’

  Lawrence turned to the others. “What do you think, fellas? How do we play this?”

  The others grinned. Of the thirty men who had entered the dungeon, the six who had emerged were the most ruthless, pragmatic, and dangerous.

  “I think I’m never going to ‘assume the position’ again,” one of them, a man named Bill, said simply.

  “Me either,” an equally dangerous fellow named Raymond agreed.

  Before all of them had stated their preference, one of the guards fired a bean-bag round at them. Lawrence caught it out of the air, held it in his hand for a moment, then dropped it with disdain.

  “Let’s just pretend that this is floor eleven, boys,” he said, cracking his knuckles. He reached down to the short sword he’d gotten on floor seven and stretched his neck.

  The boys agreed, and they went to work.

  They left carnage behind them, and within moments were out on the highway near the prison. They were dressed not in prison jumpsuits, but in the ragtag clothes that they’d scavenged off of the dead bodies of their fallen enemies inside the dungeon. Despite the change in wardrobe, they were visibly dangerous.

  Bill started singing a song from a classical musical about following a brick road of a specific color, and the others just sighed, knowing that trying to get him to shut up would likely result in bloodshed, so they put up with it.

  “When we do find someone, let me do the talking,” Lawrence said. “Whoever it is will likely have answers to how the world is changing, and—”

  “I’ll get the answers out of them, boss,” Raymond said eagerly.

  “—and they won’t need any ‘special convincing’ to share the latest news. Don’t forget we’re on the surface once more, and things are probably going to be different up here.”

  He flipped the reward he’d claimed for himself as party leader from the tenth floor. A Greater Haven Creation Token . “Who knows, they might even be happy to see us.”

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