When Jeremy touched the circle on his damaged, barely functional desk, the desk flashed orange and chirped happily. Five more shapes appeared—four red squares and one blue one. He touched a red square. This time, the desk flashed red and buzzed angrily. The squares vanished and reappeared. When he touched the blue square, the desk flashed orange and let out a happy chirp.

  Next came four octagons and one hexagon. Jeremy continued picking the unique item. Each round grew harder, pictures instead of shapes, pictures with only a tiny difference setting them apart. Then everything stopped.

  A small cube materialized on the floor beside Jeremy's desk, growing until its top reached Jeremy's belly button. It bounced up and down and chirped like a happy, excited puppy.

  Five holes appeared on the cube, just large enough for Jeremy to put his arm in. Each hole was labeled with a shape: four red squares and one blue. Jeremy chose the blue square and put his arm in, reaching into the cube until he found a coin. As he grabbed the coin, the cube let out a happy chirp, and the other four holes snapped shut. He'd gained 1 dungeon coin, but if he'd guessed wrong, he'd have lost an arm. The four holes reopened, and the five shapes on the cube changed.

  “One dungeon coin. Really?” Jeremy said, holding up the coin.

  Flint appeared next to Jeremy. “It appears you've acquired a Monster Cube, Jeremy. One of the dungeon's favorite educational toys. Now, as always,” Flint conjured his whiteboard. “DON'T BE AN IDIOT,” and tapped the whiteboard for emphasis.

  “So I'm supposed to risk my arm for 1 dc?” Jeremy asked. “You're right, that does seem stupid.”

  “I believe the rewards get more valuable the longer you play, but the game gets harder, and it's unlikely you'll find anything in that cube worth losing your arm.”

  This time, there were four octagons and one pentagon. Jeremy reached into the hole with the pentagon and gained five dc.

  He kept pulling out items, hoping for something useful. After ten more tries, he'd gained fifty dc, three healing potions, a mana potion, and two poison remedies. On the tenth try, he got a yellow potion that supposedly cured dungeon-related diseases.

  His success continued, but the box looked far too happy about it.

  “Okay, this time I have five different colors, no drawings, nothing else, just five colors.”

  “Perhaps you should take a break,” Flint said.

  “The colors are red, violet, pink, orange, and green. Four of the colors have red in them, so I'm guessing green.”

  “Are you sure enough to risk your arm, Jeremy?” Flint asked.

  “I'll use my left arm,” Jeremy responded. The box chirped happily and bounced up and down in agreement.

  Flint groaned and put his head in his hands.

  “You just want to eat my arm, don't you, Box?” Jeremy said.

  Box chirped happily again and bounced up and down like a little monster puppy.

  Jeremy reached in with his left arm and grabbed something. The other four circles snapped shut, and he pulled out a packet of smarties. Whew! Success!

  Next, there were five complicated pictures, all of them different. Jeremy needed to find the unique one. He ate the smarties while looking over the pictures. Nothing stood out. Sadly, the increase in his intelligence didn't help.

  Flint cleared his noncorporeal throat. “It's possible you can return to this after adding more points to your intelligence and wisdom.”

  “What if I put some Velociduck tape on my sword and reached in with that?”

  “You could try,” Flint responded, “but I don't think it will work, and I suspect cutting an additional hole in the box will simply destroy it.”

  Sure enough, when Jeremy put Velociduck tape on the end of his sword and tried to insert it into the box. All the holes closed and didn't open again until his sword was a safe distance away.

  He studied the drawings. “That drawing is the only one with a circle.” Jeremy reached into that hole. He was just about to grab the prize when.

  Flint shouted, “STOP!”

  “Why?” Jeremy pulled his arm from the box, confused.

  “Because if you look carefully at the other drawings, you will see one of the drawings is circular, and the one next to it has lines that form a sphere, which is a three-dimensional circle, and the fourth drawing has a circle that's facing sideways, making it difficult to see.”

  “I knew that. I was testing you.” Jeremy did his best to appear calm, but inside he was shaking. He'd come very close to losing his arm.

  He put his arm in the one drawing that didn't have a circle or circular object and grabbed his prize. As he pulled it out, the other four holes closed. Jeremy held a glowing white vial.

  Potion of greater healing. Platinum Grade.

  “I would advise you to save that,” Flint said. “Knowing you, you will need it, though I strongly suspect it would not grow back your arm.”

  Jeremy looked over at Box. After almost losing his arm, he had no desire to test his luck further. “I believe that's it for this dungeon classroom,” Jeremy said. “Let's check out the other one.”

  The monster box tried to follow them out of the classroom, but Jeremy pushed it back inside and shut the door. The last thing he needed was an arm-eating monster box following him around.

  Jeremy slowly turned the knob of the second classroom and inched the door open just enough so it was no longer closed. Then he ran to the other end of the hall and activated Sneak.

  At first, nothing happened. Then, CRASH! Something big slammed against the door. The second crash sent the door flying off its hinges, hitting the other side of the hallway. A huge, hairy, brown, eight legged, four eyed rat came out of the classroom. It was so large that it could barely squeeze through the door. Wait. Was that a monster gerbil?

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Jeremy held still and waited. With Sneak activated, and wearing his spider-silk cloak, he should be pretty much invisible.

  The monster gerbil looked around, then started sniffing the floor, moving toward Jeremy. This made sense. It couldn't see him, but it could use Jeremy's smell to track him to where he stood at the end of the hall. He slowly pulled his bow back. His bow and arrows were also nearly invisible. Combined with Sneak, the monster gerbil didn't notice.

  Jeremy waited until it was ten feet away to shoot. At that range, hitting one of its eyes was easy.

  Jeremy fired two arrows into an upper and lower eye.

  Raarrr! A huge claw lashed out, catching his leg and slamming him into the side of the hallway as the dying monster gerbil fell on top of him, pinning him to the floor.

  Ow. He groaned, trying to pull himself out from under the monster. It was so heavy he could hardly breathe. To kill a monster, then get crushed by it. That was so unfair.

  But he'd gained another level.

  He pushed his way out from under it as smaller monster gerbils, the size of Saint Bernards, came out of the classroom. Using the first gerbil for cover, he slashed and stabbed until the hallway was still once again.

  In addition to healing potions and dungeon coin, he received a packet of monster gerbil meat. When prepared properly, it would increase strength, vitality, and sense of smell? Sounds useful, he thought. This dungeon was strange.

  Once the monsters were reabsorbed by the dungeon and he'd drunk a healing potion, he paid the second classroom a visit.

  It looked much like the first classroom, that is a complete disaster. He used his key to unlock the filing cabinet and found a pencil and notebook full of blank paper, as well as five puzzle boxes, each just large enough to rest comfortably on his palm. He fiddled with the puzzles and even attempted to open them with his new key. With no success. Identify got him.

  Charmed Objects

  Flint appeared next to him. “I could tell you how to open them, but I would be doing you a disservice in doing so.”

  Jeremy stuck the boxes in his pack, not bothering to answer.

  On the room's chalkboard, he saw three drawn figures that looked like a human, a monster, and a rectangle. As in the previous classroom, chalk rose in the air and drew two wavy lines, which he guessed was a river, and a small boat floating on the river. Then it wrote directions.

  As best he could tell from the horrible spelling, there was a monster, a human, and the human's lunch. The boat pilot, Jeremy, could only take one of them across the river at a time. He needed to get all three across the river without any of them being eaten.

  The problem was, if left alone, the monster would eat the human and the human would eat the lunch.

  He thought he'd encountered a problem like this back on Earth. He would have to take the human across first; this was the only way to stop something or someone from being eaten.

  He pushed the human-shaped drawing into the boat and used his finger to push the boat across the river.

  But now what? If he brought the lunch over, the human would eat the lunch while he returned for the monster. If he brought the monster over, it would eat the human while he returned for the human's lunch.

  But... He pushed the boat back across the river, picking up the monster and bringing it across. Now he moved the human back to the boat and pushed the boat across again, dropping the human off on the other side, picking up the human's lunch, and leaving the human behind. Once the human's lunch was safely on the far side of the river, he returned for the human.

  Mission accomplished.

  “Yae! Gud work adventshurur!” the chalk wrote. A hand came out of the chalkboard and gave him what looked like a green plum. Identify revealed as:

  The Fruit of Wisdom

  He ate it. It tasted like lemon-flavored sawdust. But it added +1 to his wisdom.

  He did what he'd done in the first classroom, and velociduck taped a desk together and fixed a chair so if he was very careful, it would hold him.

  This time, instead of a test, a small box appeared on his desk with a red button in the middle. When he picked the box up, he received instructions.

  Push down on the button and do not stop.

  So he did and waited... “Now what?” he asked the room, but nothing told him what to do next. While pushing the button, he searched the room, finding a box of paperclips, a second pencil, and a small pencil sharpener. All of which he packed away in case they might be useful in the future. He continued to hold down the red button, hoping this wasn't some dungeon practical joke. He waited.

  Finally, he heard a click, and the box opened.

  It contained what looked like some oversized yellow blueberries. Identify gave him

  Willpower berries.

  And Identify had gone up a level. He ate the berries, which, of course, tasted horrible, but they gave him +1 willpower.

  Three holes appeared in the wall beneath the chalkboard, labeled 1,2,3. Drawings of three men appeared above the holes. From the writing on the chalkboard, one of the holes contained a treasure, the other two contained death. Two of the figures could only lie, one could only tell the truth.

  “What color is my pack?” Jeremy asked. An obvious way to determine which was lying. None of them answered. A piece of chalk rose in the air.

  “Thu figyurs can onlee anser kwuestyuns reegarding thu holes.”

  Jeremy sighed. Great. Okay, how should he do this? One figure would tell the truth, but he had no idea which.

  He took a break and ate another dungeon ration. “Let me guess, Flint, you know the answer, but you're not going to tell me.”

  “Of course, Jeremy,” Flint said. “Particularly in this case, because the answer is rather obvious. If you're not a complete idiot, you will figure it out.”

  Great.

  Jeremy paced the room, thinking it over. How could he tell which ones were lying? What if he phrased the question differently? He addressed the first figure. “If you were the figure next to you, what hole would you tell me to use?” he asked.

  “Hole 1, or 2,” it answered.

  “If you were the third figure, which hole would you say to use?”

  “Hole, 3,” it answered.

  The figure in the middle said “hole 1, or 2,” both times. But the third figure said the same as the first—that is, 1 or 2 for the middle figure and 3 for the first.

  The answer was simple. If one lying figure was asked what a second lying figure would say, they would, of course, lie, that is, say the correct hole. The honest one would give the wrong answer both times, that is, tell the truth, knowing the other two would lie.

  Jeremy stuck his hand in the third hole. He didn't feel anything, so he reached until his arm was up to his shoulder. Something constricted his arm, squeezing until it hurt, then released him. When he yanked his arm out, there was something in his hand.

  It was another packet of smarties and a small vial of a colorless substance.

  Testing potion. Will raise your Intelligence +3, Wisdom +3, and Willpower +3 for a short time. An item that can be useful, if you're intelligent enough to know when to use it.

  He ate the smarties.

  Carefully searching the classroom again, he found a box of crayons and a book of scratch paper for drawing. He packed these away while eating more dungeon rations.

  How late was it? With no means to keep track of time aside from the brightness of the ever-present torches, he had no idea. “You'd think a school would have some kind of working clock or something,” he grumbled. He curled up in the classroom for the night.

  Without a rogue in their party, the orcs shouldn't be able to figure out how to get in. He hoped.

  But he barricaded the door to be safe.