Jeremy's skin grew scarred and pitted from the creepy crawly attacks and the diluted Chrysoti spider poison coming into contact with his skin. Healing potions helped a little, but his face and body were developing permanent scars. With only one additional level increase for eleven days' work, it hardly seemed worth it.

  He also kept working on his makeshift light spell. He could make a much smaller, dimmer light that lasted for hours before he'd run out of mana.

  And he'd also created a variant of the light spell.

  Crude Heat Spell: Any cruder, and it would cease to be magic.

  Which he could use to light a fire. Flint continued to remind him that this was the absolute lowest class of magic, that most sentient life forms discovered before they thought of living in caves. However, it was a start, and he continued to practice.

  Squeak grew to the size of a pony and was becoming a valuable asset, proudly clearing out passageways all by itself.

  Jeremy was down to three and a half vials of spider poison from his original five. He hated using so much, but it had been his only practical way of killing the creepy crawlies.

  Each stretch of passageway cleared gave him a pebble. Some pebbles were harder to find than others, forcing him to spend hours searching for secret compartments, but each passageway had one. He suspected they were part of an unknown puzzle, though he still had no idea how to solve it.

  There had to be a secret entrance to tougher monsters and better monster loot. But where?

  The next day, while Squeak cleared a distant passage, he saw a faint marking on the floor, a circle about six inches across. The surface of the circle was bumpy and uneven. After a bit of work, he found a pebble that fit inside the circle as if it belonged there. Whatever this puzzle was, he strongly suspected this was where it was supposed to go.

  Two days later, he had Squeak finish clearing the red path and adjoining passageways. It would be obvious to any adventurer that this floor was occupied, but it couldn't be helped. He now had every dungeon pebble from this floor of the dungeon. All he had to do now was figure out how to put it together.

  The next day, an adventurer came through.

  ***

  The adventurer was a little larger than Jeremy, with gray, scaly skin and long horns. It carried a large club. After using Squeak to ensure there was only one of them, Jeremy crept up on it and used Identify.

  Name: Ssrepti Stonescale

  Race: Draconian

  Sex: Male

  Character Class: Fighter.

  Level: 5

  “He's lower leveled than you, but he's bigger. Remember, fighters can do a lot of damage, and Draconians are known for eating humans,” Flint said as they studied the approaching Draconian.

  “Squeak!” Squeak said for emphasis.

  “You think everything eats humans. But why is he only level five?” Jeremy asked. “And why is he walking with a limp?”

  He stepped forward, dropping Sneak.

  As soon as the draconian saw Jeremy, he roared, raised his club, and charged.

  Jeremy remained still, keeping his hands out. As the other adventurer approached, Jeremy could see that the draconian was wounded. His tough, scaly skin had been subjected to numerous attacks of the tooth-and-claw variety, including long scratches he suspected were from the second floor's bat monsters.

  The draconian stopped in front of Jeremy and roared in a language filled with hissing, “Stand aside! I'm a mighty warrior!”

  Jeremy didn't move. The draconian didn't look like a mighty warrior; he looked young and frightened.

  “You came to this dungeon by accident, didn't you? And now you're trying to get home,” Jeremy said. He reached slowly into his pack and held out a healing potion.

  Ssrepti Stonescale stared at Jeremy for several seconds, then roared again and jabbed Jeremy with his club. “Stand aside!”

  “Certainly,” Jeremy said, backing away, still holding out the healing potion. “But before you continue, I wanted to warn you of dangerous beings you may encounter on the upper floors.”

  At first, Ssrepti looked like he would keep going. Then he stopped, grabbed Jeremy's healing potion, and drank it. “What beings?”

  “Four like me, one tall, with pointed ears. Two are big with heavy armor, and a smaller one about my size. Do not let them see you. If they catch you, they will kill you for fun. There are also seven orcs. They're big and mean. I don't know if they'd kill you, but be careful. I don't know what else you'll encounter on the upper floors, but watch out for those two groups.”

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “I fell into the dungeon. I want to go home.” Though the healing potion seemed to be taking effect and the damage to his skin was receding, Ssrepti's language took a whiny tone. “Why would you help me?”

  “I was pushed into the dungeon. I didn't want to be here either.” Jeremy pulled out a second healing potion. “Take this. I don't know what else waits for you on the upper floors, so be careful.”

  Ssrepti grabbed the second healing potion and pulled himself up, so he looked down at Jeremy. “I want another healing potion.”

  Jeremy pulled out a third potion. “This is all I can spare.”

  Ssrepti took the third healing potion and, without another word, continued down the red path.

  “Why did you give healing potions to that ungrateful creature?” Flint asked. “You could have at least asked for something in return.”

  “He didn't have anything to trade,” Jeremy said. “That medium quality club and basic dungeon pack are all he has. He's me in another life. A frightened child trying to get home.”

  “If you're no longer that person,” Flint asked. “Who are you?”

  “I'm an adventurer.”

  ***

  “Squeak!” Squeak returned with another puzzle pebble. Jeremy had gotten so frustrated earlier that he'd kicked the pile of pebbles across the passageway.

  Jeremy sighed. “Thanks, Squeak,” he said, taking the pebble. He still wasn't used to how his shadowy, amorphous blob familiar could slide over any surface. In this case, it slid across the stone floor with Jeremy's pebble floating in its middle.

  Jeremy returned to working on the puzzle. From the indentation on the floor and bottom rocks, he could tell this puzzle would become a circular sculpture. However, he kept messing up the pebbles that were supposed to be placed on top of the initial stone layer.

  This time, he used his velociduck tape on the bottom layer of rocks to hold them firmly in place and carefully placed pebble after pebble onto the puzzle, spending hours to ensure each pebble was in the correct location.

  Finally, after two days of frustrating puzzle solving, the last piece fell into place, and the stone statue fused into what looked like a short, fat praying mantis with arms and legs tucked in against its body.

  “So what do I do now?” Jeremy said, as much to himself as his two companions.

  “I told you to stay on the red path,” said a gravelly voice behind him. “What you do now is go back to the red path and leave this dungeon.”

  Jeremy's head whipped around. It was Boggan.

  If Jeremy's kick had landed, he'd have sent the little garden gnome into orbit. Unfortunately, his foot went through Boggan's body as if it weren't there. Jeremy drew his foot back and tried again with the same result. “I did stay on the red path, and my friend got killed!” he shouted. “I had to run for my life! I can't go back on the red path because adventurers keep trying to kill me!” Jeremy stepped back, breathless from his anger and exertions.

  To Jeremy's surprise, Boggan looked away. “In our defense, it was mean kids who killed and ate your friend, not dungeon monsters. But you are right; that was not supposed to happen.”

  “What do you want?” Jeremy asked. “I've been here for over a year. Why are you showing up now?”

  “You've been here one of your years, three of your months, and eleven of your days,” Boggan responded. “We know you want to go home, and though strict neutrality agreements bind us, we will bend the rules for you.”

  “Wait. Who are we?” Jeremy asked.

  “The Children's Dungeon consists of multiple entities, including myself. But more importantly, when you reach any safe room in this dungeon, we're prepared to transport you to the last safe room of the dungeon on the seventh floor, allowing you to evade monsters and hostile adventurers at the same time. You will have to sneak past the hydra when it's in a semi-torpid state, but since it's a baby, it is in a semi-torpid state most of the time, and with your Sneak skills, you should have no problems getting past it and jumping through the portal. If you hurry, you can be home by tonight.”

  There was a long moment of silence as Boggan's words sank in. Jeremy could go home? He wanted this so much he could taste it. He could feel the warmth of his home and smell the hot chocolate. “Why would you do that for us?”

  “Because you are about to do something stupid that will get you killed,” Boggan responded.

  “Wait just a second,” Flint spoke up. “After all the many stupid things Jeremy has done to get himself killed, why are you here now?”

  “I haven't done anything that stupid,” Jeremy responded.

  “You opened the door to the Chrysoti spider lair with no plan for what you'd do when they came out and attempted to kill you,” Flint responded.

  “An honest mistake.”

  “You went to sleep, knowing perfectly well there were some scary human slaying orcs in the area.”

  “I was tired.”

  Boggan cleared his throat and pulled himself to his three feet of height. “This thing Jeremy is about to do is stupid compared to his previous activities, and his odds of surviving are far lower.”

  “Jeremy,” Flint said. “Though I don't believe Boggan's reason for making this offer, I have never known the dungeon to break its word. If the dungeon says it will do this for us, it will. Let's go home.”

  Jeremy wanted to go home so much that he was on the verge of tears. In a small, choked voice, he said, “but then I'll be weak.”

  “You are stronger than 99.99 percent of your people,” Boggan responded. “You have the skills and dungeon coin to live out the rest of your life in comfort.”

  Jeremy snorted. “My world is certainly overrun with monsters by now. I don't even know if my family is still alive.”

  “Though your world will face many challenges, your world has years to go before those challenges become significant. I can guarantee that as far as monsters are concerned, your family is fine.”

  “Compared to the elf spell caster Mezirma, I'm weak; compared to the orc, Rampage, I'm weak. I barely survived those meetings. What happens when someone like that comes after me or someone else I care about, like my mother?”

  “You do the obvious thing and run away and hide, Jeremy,” Flint responded. “Playing to your strengths of running and hiding, and sacrificing a nonessential individual like your mother to preserve your own life is a perfectly acceptable survival strategy.”

  There was a long period of silence.

  Flint floated next to Boggan. “So we'll be leaving then. Come on, Jeremy, let's go.”

  Jeremy turned away. How did this statue thing work? He pulled it back and forth. Then he turned it. With difficulty, he twisted the squat praying mantis statue slowly to the right, so it faced directly away from the wall. With a loud cracking noise, the wall behind the statue turned into a door.

  “Jeremy?” Flint sounded perplexed.

  Jeremy pushed the door open and stepped into the darkened hallway. The heavy stone door slammed shut behind him.