A quiet crack rolled through the tunnel. Not from the dungeon, this time, but from Merrick closing his eyes and rolling his neck and shoulders. He overextended his arms and popped his elbows shortly afterwards, taking a few deep breaths to center himself.

  ‘Stop stalling, you’re going to miss the portal. The caravan won’t wait for you,’ the tiny voice in the back of his head whispered to him. His sleep had already been fitful the night before and the sleep deprivation was starting to get to him. He was hungry, tired, injured, and nursing a body-wide, somehow, headache from using his [[Merge]] skill too many times.

  “The last thing I’m worried about is some caravan that I’m not going to be able to get to anyways, considering the miles of rock between me and them.” Even as he said that, though, Merrick took a few steps forward.

  There was an argument to be made about combing the room before he left it, picking every herb and foraging for food. Merrick decided that it’d be pointless if he couldn’t at least find another entrance though.

  He’d fallen into a dead-end room that showed signs of having not been visited in years. That either meant that no delver had ever been this deep and he was going to starve to death eventually, or that they’d mapped the tunnels down there and decided that the goodberry bush wasn’t worth going out of the way for. Luckily the church had made it common knowledge that the dungeon had already been cleared and tamed, so it had to be the latter.

  Assuming nothing killed and ate him first, his survival checklist started with finding signs of human trespass then food and shelter after that. It was a short list. A list in progress really.

  One foot in front of the next Merrick traversed the twenty-foot tunnel into the next room. As he got closer, he saw that the room was much better illuminated than the room before, filled with rows and rows of orderly plants that looked nothing like the jungle of brambles the rest of the dungeon was composed of.

  Well, the plants looked the same but the arrangement didn’t. If he didn’t know better, he’d say a farmer had cultivated the entire room. It was honestly his first thought, but a nagging voice in the back of his head told him that wasn’t the case. Not only because no farmer would ever delve so deep into the dungeon, or because that row of goodberry bushes are known to be impossible to plant by hand, or even because there were no tools or human structures where the farmer live.

  No, it was obvious for a single reason. It was too perfect.

  It was eerie, to Merrick, the way the trunks of each tree lined up perfectly. Every trunk was the same width, had the same number of branches coming off of in the same arrangement of each of its neighbors. The bushes all looked freshly trimmed into identical shapes. Hells, even the brambles were neatly coiled like they were rope rather than a vicious plant that greedily consumed all available space it could place down feelers.

  Due do the even spacing between each plant, Merrick was at least able to see down the various rows of plants and verify that there were no large dungeon spawned monsters waiting to liberate his head from its shoulders. Just orderly rows of dungeon plants and a massive horn that he was trekking toward.

  As he finally approached the horn in the center of the room, he was able to figure out what it was. What had appeared to be a massive bramblekin horn from the distance was actually an empty cornucopia. Merrick was able to fit through the mouth of the cornucopia without crouching, though only barely. Not that he was going to test that.

  “Same rules as a mysterious hole in the wall, dungeon. I’m not walking through that. I don’t need a scouting class to know that screams trap.” Merrick began to walk the perimeter of the horn only to stop in his tracks. Directly on the other side of the horn was a workbench. Not just any workbench either, but one covered in alchemical flasks and tools. Merrick’s eyes twitched as he did the mental math on what he was looking at.

  Pure, unblemished flasks with clear demarcations for measurements. A massive scale that stood as tall as Merrick’s chest, seemingly made of gold with intricate jewels spread throughout it. There was even a still and alembic flask, with heating apparatuses and hot plates nearby. The workbench itself looked like it’d been carved out of a single tree truck as well, expertly covered in engraved scenes and mosaics.

  With extreme caution, Merrick backed away from the workbench and moved back toward the tunnel before making a trip around the room as was usual for him. Honestly, he should have checked the perimeter before going to the center of the room, but the distant horn had stoked his curiosity.

  A quarter of the way through his scouting trip, Merrick started to get a bad feeling and abandoned his caution to start jogging. By the time he’d finished his lap, he was out of breath and ready to start crying. The room had only a single exit, the tunnel he’d entered it from. Somehow, Merrick had found himself in a dual chambered prison cell of isolation.

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  He had begun to come to terms with the fact that rescue would not be forthcoming, he was going to have to find a way to locate the escape chute and squirm his way up a near vertical shaft for thirty miles.

  He was going to die there.

  “You know, dungeon, the church says you’re supposed to be fair. That the gods created dungeon for the good of the sapient races and bound you all by their rules. That every delve was supposed to be both a trial to improve oneself and a test to make sure that one was worthy of the gift. You’re not allowed to kill me like this, I’m pretty sure.”

  Merrick attempted to reason with whatever entity had been spying on him. He cried, he pissed on their name, metaphorically and literally after writing the words ‘stupid dungeon’ in the dirt with his fingers, and he grieved.

  After so many years, he’d finally figured out what his innate ability was supposed to do and it had led to his doom within the same day. Well, his greed had led to his downfall he supposed. Or the dungeon, considering it had sicced a boss spawn on his party that should have been guarding the entrance to the next threshold.

  Merrick couldn’t even find it in his heart to blame James for pushing him down the escape chute. He’d been planning on using his friends as living bait as well, if only a little more indirectly.

  ‘You need to get moving, you’re going to miss your ride’.

  “Shut up.”

  ‘This is solvable, it’s just another puzzle’

  “There isn’t a divot to leave the room, there is no puzzle.”

  ‘There must be a puzzle, you said it yourself. Go find the puzzle. You’re going to miss your ride.’

  “I’m hungry. I don’t want to do a puzzle.”

  ‘You can’t eat, you need to take the portal in the morning.’

  “There is no portal in the morning, I’m going to die down here.”

  ‘Go. Merge. There is a puzzle, the dungeon wants you to merge.’

  “I’m exhausted, I feel wrung out.”

  ‘Then make potions. You saw the table. You’ve seen the plants. Solve the puzzle. Catch your ride.’

  “I’m losing my mind,” tears left clean streaks down Merrick’s dirt-stained face as he argued with the tiny voice in his head. After he’d finally lost his will to continue, he’d also lost his capability to tune it out.

  “The stupid voice has a point though,” Merrick decided, “If I’m going to die anyways, I may as well play with the obviously trapped alchemy tools I’ve been able to afford to touch.”

  Merrick wandered back to the center of the room, around the cornucopia to the workbench, and stood in front of the ostentatious display of wealth for a few moments. He’d decided he’d play with the potentially cursed tools, but he had no idea what potion he should attempt to make.

  Although most of his potions were created out of exclusively failure dust, a few of the exotic ones needed reagents to interact with for optimal outcomes. A few of those reagents even grew in the dungeon he was standing in, usually much more shallow in the dungeon and therefore affordable for the habitual debt accrue.

  Merrick pulled back the large chair that was tucked into the workbench and was mildly surprised to see there was a hand-woven basket in the seat as well as a large basket on wheels tucked under the desk. It even had a rope so he could pull it behind himself, almost like he was an apple orchard picker.

  He moved both receptacles out of his way and plopped down in the chair, thankful that it had soft cushions. They might even be the softest thing that Merrick had ever felt, he decided. He stood up and turned around to look at the chair itself.

  It was seemingly carved from a single piece of wood like the desk, a deep rich color of wood he didn’t recognize, and had large purple cushions of some variety that appeared to grow from the wood itself. With his head cocked to the side, he attempted to locate a single seam on the chair or between the chair and the cushion and came up short, almost as if the thing had grown from a seed that way. He picked it up and set it down once. Then twice. Then a third time.

  “That settles it, the chair is leaving with me,” he stated with all seriousness, his hand and finger on his chin in a thinking pose and eyes filled with resolve. “It’ll be a little more annoying to dig a grave large enough to sit in with the chair and still be buried, but its worth it to carry this comfort into the afterlife.”

  He turned back around and plopped his shredded adventurer’s pack onto the table before plopping his semi-shredded adventurer’s bottom back in the chair. He repeated his inventory from before, eyes lingering on the new addition of a tier four* horn and contemplated what potion he should make.

  The only dusts he had on himself were the ones from his failed attempt at merging a second gooderberry for Mary and Rod, which limited his options. If he had a few more dusts, he could at least make a rejuvenation potion to help ease his full-body ache. Those had always been a great help when over extending his brute force attempts to use his skill in the past.

  A few moments later, Merrick smacked his head for the umpteenth time that night and stood up to go collect some rocks and branches. He’d started succeeding so many times, he subconsciously forgot he could fail on purpose to create dusts for alchemy. How he’d forgotten that when it was almost the only thing he’d done for the last few years he wasn’t sure.

  “Dungeon, is it still considered a failed merge if I failed the merge on purpose? Surely a success is dictated by the outcome, in which case getting the dusts is a success since those are what I wanted in the first place?”

  Merrick’s [Skill Log] seemed to disagree with him and a [Catastrophic Failure] messages later, he had enough dusts to brew a batch of rejuvenation potions. A quick check nearby confirmed what he assumed to be the case and the large brass keg next to the distiller was prefilled with what appeared cleanly distilled water. Perfect for potion brewing.

  It took a little while to adjust for the much higher quality equipment than he’d ever used, but the potions turned out more perfectly than he’d ever made them before. He quaffed one right away and sighed in relief as both his over-extension of his skill induced aches and the general exhaustion from not sleeping both seemed to seep out of his pores.

  “I guess I should put this new burst of energy to use. Already decided I didn’t care about trapped tools, I guess I’ll investigate the inside of the horn as well.” Merrick patted his new chair goodbye and promised he’d be right back as he grabbed both baskets from beside him and began his half-orbit around the cornucopia once more.