The orc bandit leader, Daver, saw a faint mirage from what could only be a scout or assassin standing in front of him and his small band of warriors. He shivered. The king's guard outmatched them, and he knew it. “Why are you here? We have done nothing to offend you or the king.”

  “Why am I here? An excellent question,” the more visible orc fighter, Drog, responded. “We have orders from the king to bring this guy in, alive,” he motioned to the youngest of the bandits.

  The youngest bandit, who was also the strongest and highest leveled of Daver's warriors, a teenage orc fighter named Noster, snarled and grabbed his axe, pushing past Daver. “Try it.”

  Drog seemed to move ten paces in an instant, appearing next to Noster, punching Noster's helmet with his fist. He dropped to the ground, stunned.

  Drog tossed down a magical net that thoroughly entangled the young orc, despite the young orc's struggles and curses.

  “What would the king want with Noster?” Daver asked, not understanding.

  “Don't know, don't care. King commands, I obey.” Drog stepped forward, grabbed Noster's tusks and yanked them from his mouth, causing the other orc to cry out in pain and spit blood on Drog's boots. “The king will send these tusks to the humans and inform them he had Noster killed. Now that Noster is dead, what should we name this orc? How about Little Rampage? Little Rampage, if the king likes you, his healer will give you new tusks. If the king doesn't like you, your lack of tusks will be the least of your concerns.”

  Rampage's response was to curse the other orc through his bloody, damaged mouth and struggle with the net.

  “As for the rest of you,” Drog said, looking over at Rampage's four companions. “Our king is more understanding than you might think. Who wouldn't want to burn human villages and kill the inhabitants? But your king needs fewer bandits on his borders, causing problems, and more soldiers in his army. If you take the king's oath and join his army, the king is willing to overlook your previous banditry.”

  The four remaining bandit orcs looked at each other, then at the much higher leveled party in front of them. They had no choice if they wanted to live. “We will take the oath,” Daver said.

  “Good.” Drog dragged Rampage to his horse and tied the end of the net to his saddle. “We will need your tusks as well, and you will also get new names. Welcome to the king's army."

  ***

  Much like the first floor of the dungeon, the door behind Jeremy vanished as soon as he entered, turning into a stone wall. He stood on a hill, looking down at two rows of colorful stores flanking each side of the red path.

  When Jeremy used Detect Trap, he saw nothing.

  The stores were bordered by stone walls approximately three times his height. Past the walls appeared to be an endless maze or labyrinth.

  The sky and setting sun looked real, and Jeremy wondered how high the dungeon ceiling was.

  It would have been hard to say what was wrong with this view, but the sky was the wrong shade of blue, and the sunset had the wrong shades of red and orange. The two small, reddish moons hanging out in the sky gave the town's main street—no, this entire floor of the dungeon—an eerie alien feel.

  Flint appeared next to Jeremy and joined him in looking down on the second floor of the dungeon. “I believe it's time for another lesson.”

  He pulled a whiteboard from the air. “I hope you were not foolish enough to believe Banxi when he said this was a fun floor. For you, in particular, this may be the most dangerous floor of the dungeon. I would like you to reflect on these four words.”

  The words “DON'T BE AN IDIOT!” appeared on the whiteboard. Flint tapped the words one at a time with his cane.

  Jeremy ignored Flint and started down the hill.

  “For reasons I don't understand,” Flint called after him before appearing in front of him again, “The second floor of the dungeon is the dungeon's educational floor. Where adventurers are educated in dungeons and adventuring, here, being an idiot is dangerous, and you, in particular, should be concerned about this. If you have any spare points, I'd suggest putting them in Intelligence, or perhaps Wisdom.”

  “This floor appears empty,” Jeremy said.

  “The lack of monsters in the labyrinth suggests that at least one other group of adventurers roams this floor,” Flint responded. “If I may, I'd like to suggest we avoid those adventurers until we know more about them.”

  Flying creatures appeared in the distance. As they got closer, Jeremy could tell they were bats with wingspans as wide as he was tall.

  Jeremy remembered that bats don't hunt by sight. They used echolocation, sending out high-pitched sounds and using their advanced hearing to locate their prey by the echoes. His spider-silk cloak wouldn't hide him from them.

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  Great. When they came closer, he pulled out his bow and arrows.

  He fired, hitting the lead bat dead center, and it dropped from the sky. He did the same for the next three, taking care of the bats, though more were on their way.

  Jeremy approached the four bats, flopping impotently against the ground, still trying to get at him. In addition to their five-foot wingspan, these oily-skinned, hairless creatures had large mouths full of sharp teeth. Their tiny, hate-filled, red eyes glared up at him as they pushed forward on their weak hind legs, trying to kill him. He finished them off with his sword.

  Flint appeared next to Jeremy. “Remember, you get more experience from low-level monsters when you kill them with your bare hands.”

  Jeremy was more concerned with the bats giving away his position. He couldn't hide from them, and that was a problem. Bats circled something in the distance, and he wondered if it was a second group of adventurers and if they had noticed him in turn. He needed to find cover.

  He retrieved his arrows and picked up two of the dead bats, continuing down the red path leading to the shops.

  While having no intention of spending any more time on the path than he had to, he wanted to get an idea of what sort of traps were waiting for him.

  The first building had brightly lit blue, Chinese-like hieroglyphic letters that translated as CANDY STORE. Inside, there was row after row of delicious looking candy. He knew the store was a trap, but the question was, what kind of trap?

  He cast Detect Traps.

  Nothing.

  He used Identify on the candy.

  Candy is bad for you.

  Great. He threw one of the dead bats he was carrying into the store. The bat knocked over several rows of candy, but aside from that, nothing happened. Curious, he entered the store that had every imaginable type of candy. He grabbed a square of hardened red candy the size of his hand and bit into it. It tasted great.

  YOU HAVE BEEN POISONED!

  Jeremy started vomiting.

  Flint said nothing, standing off to the side using his cane to point at the whiteboard and DON'T BE AN IDIOT!

  “This candy tastes great,” Jeremy said, to annoy his unwanted companion. He shoved several pieces of candy into his pack.

  Moving on, he came to the second large building. This one had bright red Chinese-like hieroglyphics that translated as TOY STORE.

  “Oh wow!” Jeremy said, looking inside. “They have go-karts! I've always wanted a go-kart.”

  In addition to a neat looking blue-and-violet go-kart, there was a train large enough for Jeremy to ride on, every imaginable type of puzzle, including one that looked like a spherical Rubik's cube, and pretty much every other toy imaginable, and some that Jeremy wouldn't have imagined and had no idea what they were or what they did.

  Like the first store, he checked for traps and nothing came up. So he waited for another bat to attack him. He grabbed it, flung it down, and stomped it to death, then threw the body into the toy store to see what would happen.

  The dead bat slammed into several toys, knocking boxes off the shelves. At first, nothing happened.

  Then a handle came out of one of the boxes and started turning. The box bounced slowly towards Jeremy, speeding up as it did so, and music began to play.

  Dat da dat da-da-da-da-da.

  The box bounced faster and faster, moving straight for Jeremy.

  Dat-da-dat-da-da-da.

  “Run!” Flint shouted.

  Uh, oh.

  Jeremy turned and ran away, fast...

  BOOM!

  The explosion knocked him flat and showered him with pieces of stone.

  Groaning, he slowly got to his feet. The explosion rendered him temporarily deaf. The front of the toy shop had been blown apart, and toys were scattered all over the street.

  Flint stood in front of him, pointing at his DON'T BE AN IDIOT! sign.

  Neat! Toy jack-in-the-bombs! Fortunately, he'd gotten far enough away to escape the worst of the blast.

  More boxes, disturbed by the explosion, started bouncing in Jeremy's direction.

  He ran again, using every bit of his rapid movement skill to get as far away from them as he could.

  BOOMBOOMBOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

  He was knocked off his feet a second time. Getting up, he didn't stop until he stood behind the candy store, using it for protection from the explosions. There was silence. Jeremy breathed a sigh of relief.

  BOOM!... BOOM! BOOM!

  Silence.

  BOOM!

  Flint appeared next to him. “Jeremy, did you have to do that?”

  Jeremy laughed. “Jack-in-the-bombs. That is awesome!“.

  Looking back, he saw something that gave him chills. The circling bats in the distance were closer to him than they'd been a short time before. Whatever they were circling was also moving in his direction. After what he'd done, the entire dungeon must know he was here.

  Great. Time to go.

  The jack-in-the-bombs had destroyed both the toy store and the wall behind it.

  He climbed the ruins of the toy store and the wall behind it until he stood on top of the wall flanking the town.

  Looking around, there was a labyrinth as far as he could see, made up of the same stone as the rest of the town.

  The labyrinth looked empty, abandoned. He waited, watching for any movement, anything. All he could see was that whatever the bats in the distance were circling were getting closer. He got a quick look at one of the figures below them. Identify revealed.

  HUMAN SLAYER!

  Little Rampage. (Level 19) Child-Fighter-Berserker.

  Race: Orc

  Oh, oh. Seeing the large black letters, a sick feeling of terror raced through him. Considering the humans he'd met, it was quite possible the human or humans this creature had killed deserved it, but he wasn't about to hang around and take that chance.

  He jumped off the wall and fled into the labyrinth.