Chapter 32

“Hello.”

Caleb slowly stood up, brushing the ash from his knees and palms. The people said nothing in response, huddling closely together like startled animals. They looked like what Caleb imagined campers lost in the wilderness for a month would look like. Their hair was knotted, faces covered in smears of grey, clothes beaten and unwashed, strips of cloth torn from them and tied over their noses and mouths to block the ash.

The person at the front of their group, a man in his thirties with a scraggly brown beard, holding a dagger made of pure white bone, took a step forward. He looked Caleb up and down with appraising eyes, holding his dagger defensively.

“Where did you come from?” the man asked. Caleb recognized his voice. It was the same one he’d heard yell when he was above the maze.

“Outside,” Caleb said. He did his best to move slowly and speak plainly. These people were obviously a bit skittish. They likely had been trapped within this Dungeon since the advent of the System – which meant nearly two weeks. He didn’t want to spook them.

“Outside?” the man asked. He sounded disbelieving at first, but upon seeing Caleb’s insistence, started to lower his weapon. “Outside the Dungeon?”

Caleb nodded. “Yes. Have you been in here the entire time?”

The man ignored him, instead turning back to his two companions and speaking in hushed tones. After a few moments, he turned back around and stowed his dagger in his belt, cleared his throat, and held out a hand.

“Come with us. Please.”

***

Caleb walked with the three through the halls of the maze. They walked with confidence, following sets of markings carved into the stone walls at every corner.

Each of them – two men and one woman – were only level nine or ten. Not nearly high enough to be a threat, so Caleb had no worries about going with them. It wasn’t like he had anything of value to rob anyway. Just the sapphire gemstone in the pouch at his belt, which hadn’t been activated since he left Ridgeway. At least he hadn’t had to worry about Tyler and Chloe while he was stuck in this Dungeon.

“The world’s really gone,” muttered Liam, a man in his early twenties, around the same age as Caleb. They’d spent the last several minutes of their walk asking Caleb every question under the sun about the world outside.

He spoke with them honestly. Didn’t seem to be much point in lying. He told them of his experiences in his first Dungeon, getting back to the real world, seeing what had happened to the earth, Ridgeway, and all of the other Dungeon’s that he had cleared and claimed for his faction in the previous days. They drank his words in with amazement and awe and not a little bit of grief.

“Not gone,” Caleb corrected. “Just changed.”

Liam shrugged, eyes cast down toward the ground. “With all you’ve told us, I don’t think there’s much difference. I don’t think I’ll ever see my family again.”

Caleb wasn’t going to argue with the man.

The woman – her name was Sahara and around the same age as Liam – placed a comforting hand on Liam’s back. She offered a sad smile. “I doubt any of us will, but we’ve been battling with that thought since we first found ourselves in this Dungeon. At least now we might have a way out.”

Liam nodded, but didn’t look entirely convinced. “Yeah,” he muttered. “Just seeing someone new, it… it made me feel a bit hopeful for a second. Like maybe if we got out, life would go back to normal.”

“Sorry, kid.” Donovan – the man that had first spoken to Caleb upon seeing him – glanced back over his shoulder while leading them through the maze. “This is our new normal.” He turned back around and rounded another corner. “We’re here.”

The thin halls of the maze expanded, widening to roughly twelve feet across. Caleb followed Donovan and the others, passing by dozens of roughshod shelters. Canvases of torn cloth or strange leathery materials were stretched over spindly lengths of bone that were stuck in the stony ground like the poles of a tent. Some were nailed to the walls with small bits of jagged metal. And beneath them all, tucked inside the shelters, were people that looked like beggars. Their clothes were torn, faces dirty, and they watched with expressions of confusion or awe as Caleb was led through their city of tents.

He couldn’t help but notice that most had weapons similar to what Donovan and the others were wielding. Where did they find so much bone? Caleb hadn’t seen any creature other than the wyvern since entering the Dungeon.

The ash here felt thinner. It still coated everything in an ugly layer of grey grime. But at least it wasn’t as oppressive.

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Donovan led him through the maze, making a couple turns in the maze. Caleb noticed that it wasn’t just one stretch of hall that these people were confined to. Every intersection they came upon had people in every direction, huddled in their makeshift homes, gnawing at strange bits of meat, sharpening bone by scraping it against the rocks. There must have been over a hundred of them. How in the world did they all end up in this Dungeon? Where were they all when the System arrived? He couldn’t help but notice that they all looked nearly the same age, anywhere from eighteen to twenty-two, with only a few older outliers.

They reached a flap of something that looked like several articles of clothing stitched together and turned into a makeshift doorway. Donovan pushed past it and they walked into a small tent and sat on the stone ground.

One other man and woman were inside and they stopped their conversation upon seeing Caleb. They both looked to be in their forties.

“Who is this, Donovan? Why are you back so early?” asked the man.

“His name’s Caleb. We stumbled upon him while heading out to the east to continue our search.” Donovan sat beside the man and motioned for Caleb to take a seat. He was the only one still standing. So he sat.

“More like he stumbled upon us,” said Sahara. “He came leaping down from the sky, almost burnt to a crisp by that giant molten chicken.”

The man narrowed his eyes toward Caleb, then his eyes shot wide. “Holy shit,” he said under his breath.