Jeremy collapsed in a dusty hallway. His back hurt a lot, but thanks to his spider silk cloak and leather armor, the arrow had bounced off his back, leaving a nasty bruise.

  The orcs shouted and pounded on the door from outside, but were unable to enter. They must need the letters to unlock the secret entrance again. Without a rogue character with a high perception or knowing where to look for the dungeon letters, it would be difficult for them to duplicate Jeremy's actions... He hoped.

  Whew...

  Why were the other adventurers scarier than the monsters? How many different worlds belonged to the dungeon universe?

  He could kick himself for being so sloppy! He'd known someone or something was looking for him, but he'd gone to sleep anyway. He was lucky to be alive. Flint had every reason to be disappointed in him.

  Jeremy looked around and found himself in what appeared to be a school hallway, with one door on each side of the short hall and a larger double door at the end. This place looked and smelled dusty and ancient, as if nothing had been here for a long time. Fortunately, the hallway appeared free of monsters and traps.

  Both hallway doors had a small window. Looking through the windows, he saw two empty classrooms, complete with desks for both students and teachers, and old-fashioned chalkboards at the front of each class.

  He drank a healing potion to stop the bleeding from his face and ear. Then he pulled out a high-grade dungeon ration and ate it, then another. How many did he need to raise his stats? He could eat four at a time now before he was stuffed. He drank some water and rested. The orc's pounding stopped. There was silence.

  Flint stood in front of him, glaring.

  “Oh, shut up, Flint. I don't want to hear it. You're right, I shouldn't have gone to sleep with dangerous adventurers nearby.”

  “I have yet to say anything.”

  “Yes. But I know you want to.” Jeremy studied the hallway, looking for anything useful. “And why didn't you wake me?”

  “I tried,” Flint responded. “I am much weaker when you're sleeping.”

  “I didn't know that,” Jeremy said, looking through both windows. Maybe the classrooms were empty, and maybe monsters would appear as soon as he opened the doors.

  “Okay, Flint. How's this for a plan? I get out my bow and arrows, turn the doorknob on one of the classrooms, run to the end of the hall, and see if anything comes out. Good enough for you?”

  “No. But it will have to do.”

  “Or you could go inside the room and tell me what's in there?” Jeremy asked.

  “I'm afraid I cannot get through the door, Jeremy, but I believe it's safe to say there are monsters in both classrooms.”

  “Indeed.”

  Jeremy pulled out his bow and arrows, adjusted his spider-silk cloak, and activated Sneak. Thanks to the orcs stealing his mana collecting charm, he'd have to be far more conservative in using his active skills. Worse, not having the mana charm made him feel cold and empty inside and more than a little angry, both at himself and the orcs who'd robbed him.

  He slowly turned the doorknob to the classroom on the right and backed away quickly. After a minute of nothing happening, he crept back to the door, opened it a crack, and peeked inside. All he saw was a large, dark form before something hit the door like a freight train.

  “Run!” Flint shouted.

  Fortunately for Jeremy, the monster was so large it had trouble squeezing through the classroom door, twisting to the side, using its many legs, it slowly pushed itself through the doorway.

  It was taller than him, twice as wide as it was tall, and five times longer. How did that thing fit in a classroom?

  He had just enough time to grab his bow and start shooting arrows at the giant, many legged, many eyed monster cockroach while backing frantically away from the roach's charge. His arrows bounced off its thick exoskeleton, forcing him to do something he hoped he wouldn't have to do. He grabbed one of his charmed, poisoned arrows, aimed at one of the thing's tiny black eyes, and fired.

  The arrow sought out the eye of the rapidly moving creature—a perfect hit. Jeremy's back collided with a large double door at the end of the hallway. He jumped and used the doorknob to propel himself up and over the creature. It slammed into the double doors below him with a boom, raised its head with impressive speed, almost catching him in its mouth. He had just enough time to kick off from its head, but not enough to avoid it when it twisted to the side and slammed him against the wall of the hallway.

  Ow. That hurt. He struggled to get up and put distance between them. The roach began to shake, its huge body twisting and curling, foam coming out of its mouth.

  Whew! That poisoned arrow really worked! He hoped it wasn't a one-time use thing. He'd wanted to save those arrows for a special occasion.

  Jeremy heard crawling and scratching noises. Over a hundred much smaller roaches poured out of the classroom. The smallest was the size of a wiener dog, and the largest the size of a Doberman. He backed up against a wall and slashed and stabbed them with his sword until they stopped coming.

  When it was over, he reclaimed his arrow and drank another healing potion. His cloak protected him from the worst of it, but his body was one big bruise, both from the bites and being slammed around by their mother.

  He'd gained another ten healing potions and a small packet that identified as

  High-quality roach steak. Poisonous as is, but when properly cooked, it will raise your strength, endurance, and vitality. Something you could desperately use.

  This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

  The packet was tiny for such a giant roach; it weighed a couple of pounds inside its paper-like wrapping. He shrugged and put it in his pack.

  He'd also made over 1000 dc.

  “Good work, Jeremy,” Flint said, appearing next to him. “For a change, you were not a complete idiot.”

  “Shut up.”

  Pushing past the monster roaches being reabsorbed into the dungeon, he entered the classroom and found it was a disaster. Children's desks were in pieces, and the walls, floor, ceiling and large chalkboard were covered with scratch marks.

  He walked back to the classroom door and peeked through the door's tiny window again. As before, the window showed him an empty classroom, undamaged desks and chalkboard, and a clean, undamaged tiled floor, walls, and ceiling. He shivered.

  The broken teacher's desk and a dented cabinet lying on the floor were the only things that might hold anything useful. Both were locked, and he didn't know how to open them.

  A hidden compartment in the wall held a small piece of chalk. Identify told him nothing.

  On the scratched-up chalkboard was the faint drawing of a tiny woman with equally tiny bars in front of her. As he studied it, the piece of chalk left his hand and rose in the air.

  “Help mee! Help mee!” the chalk wrote next to the woman. Squares appeared on the chalkboard.

  The blank squares appeared to be for five words. From top to bottom, there was: a six-letter word, a three-letter word, a six-letter word, a five-letter word, and at the bottom, a twelve-letter word.

  Was he supposed to guess the words? Not only did he not know where to start, but he was in a dungeon school that couldn't spell.

  Since there was only one five-letter word, he guessed skule. He picked up the chalk and started with an S. The chalkboard accepted the S, the K, U, L, and E. That took care of the first word. There were two six-letter words. They couldn't both be dunjun, could they? He tried a D on the first word. The letter vanished, and a vertical line appeared coming from the woman's neck and going up.

  Flint stood off to the side, watching.

  They were playing a game of hangman? At least he knew how to play this. He tried D on the second six-letter word. This time, he was successful. So he had DUNJUN SKULE. What about the rest? He stared at the chalkboard. Welcome to dungeon school, student? The last word had twelve letters, so that couldn't be it. Learn at the dungeon school? A horizontal line connecting to the first appeared connecting with the teacher's head when he tried an L. Come to dungeon school? That couldn't be it either.

  For the top word, he tried a W. It stayed. So WELKUM. He spelled it out dungeon style. WELKUM. He put the letters in. The top word was welcome. The next word would be? He tried a T. Success. So To would be? He put T, U, E. Or Tue. This gave him WELKUM TUE DUNJUN SKULE. What was the last word? Student, child? Adventurer? He tried an A, D, V, E, N. He grinned, definitely adventurer. But how did you spell that in dungeon? A twelve-letter word. He tried a C.

  Failure. A horizontal line appeared connected to the noose. One more and this woman would hang. He took a deep breath. Okay. T. Success. A.D.VENT Now what? a C? No. The dungeon didn't seem to like C. The alternative was S, then an H. Adventsh. The next would be a U and then an R. Was the next letter a E or a U? Knowing the dungeon, he guessed a U. And of course, the last had to be an R. ADVENTSHURUR.

  WELKUM TUE DUNJUN SKULE ADVENTSHURUR.

  The piece of chalk rose again. “Yue hav freed thu teecher frum her horribbil prisun. Now yue must reskue her frum monsters!”

  Two-dimensional, baseball-sized, packman-like monsters appeared on the chalkboard, and moved toward the woman, who backed away from them until she reached a corner of the chalkboard.

  Not seeing an eraser, Jeremy tried erasing the monsters with his hand.

  Ow! The monsters somehow bit him through the chalkboard, making his hand bleed. He grabbed the piece of chalk and drew a line between the woman and the monsters, creating a wall. This worked a little better. The monsters attacked the wall, tearing it down in seconds. He drew a second wall behind the first, but that was the last of his chalk.

  He needed to do something quickly. The top corner of the chalkboard was badly cracked. He jumped up, grabbed it, and pulled with all his strength. The piece of chalkboard came off. He moved it to the lower corner where the monsters had the woman trapped and were breaking through the chalk wall.

  He put his piece of the chalkboard up against the lower corner, and she quickly moved onto his piece of the chalkboard. He yanked his piece away, just as the monsters broke through his second chalk wall, leaving the monsters futilely biting at the edge of the chalkboard.

  Whew, that was close.

  The monsters somehow became three-dimensional and popped out of the chalkboard. Jeremy screamed, stumbling away from the now basketball-sized, giant, floating head packman-like monsters. He drew his sword, hacking at their tooth-filled, floating heads.

  Jeremy tripped over a desk leg, picked it up, and jabbed it into a monster's mouth as it floated toward him. The monster's teeth made short work of the desk leg, but not before Jeremy stabbed it several times with his sword. Avoiding the teeth, he kicked the head like a football, sending the monster flying across the room.

  He ran behind the remains of the teacher's desk. When a second floating monster came close enough, he tipped the desk over onto the thing. The monster squished, splatting green fluid on the floor.

  Jeremy backed into a corner, waiting for more monsters, but none came. It was a long time before he stopped shaking and hyperventilating.

  He collapsed with a groan, throwing up his dungeon rations and shaking so much he couldn't stand, his bones filling with molten lava. Between the orcs and dungeon monsters, he'd pushed himself too hard and was paying the price. He wasn't sure how long he lay on the junk-strewn classroom floor, but when he could move again, his pain tolerance had gone up a level.

  “One of these days, that's going to happen when I'm in the middle of a fight,” Jeremy said, pulling himself to his feet.

  “I'm not so sure,” Flint responded. “You seem to have these mana sickness spells when you're in places of relative safety. Perhaps mana sickness is your body's way of recovering from excessive stress.”

  Jeremy pushed the teacher's desk upright, picked up the piece of chalkboard containing the teacher, and put it on what was left of her desk. A tiny piece of chalk appeared out of nowhere.

  “Thank Yue, Brave Adventchurur.” The chalk woman reached out from the chalkboard and handed Jeremy a gold key before vanishing.

  Jeremy took the gold key and used Identify.

  Charmed object.

  He tried it on the desk. The key turned in the lock, and it opened. He got a packet of candy that Identified as.

  Smarties. Will raise your intelligence.

  Unlike the smarties from his world, the candy tasted horrible but added a point to his intelligence. He opened the cabinet. He found five glowing yellow flasks that Identified as.

  Mana replacement potions, gold grade, used mainly by spell-casters.

  “Since you are in school now, Jeremy, try sitting at one of the students' desks. You might learn something,” Flint said.

  “What desks?” Jeremy grumbled, looking at the wreckage of the room. He found pieces of a desk with three legs, velociduck taped it together, and stood it up. Then he did the same to the remains of a chair. He sat down in front of the desk, carefully, since the broken chair barely held his weight.

  He was about to ask, “now what?” when five shapes appeared on his desk. Four squares and one circle. Curious, he touched the circle.