Scene 2

Matthias moved over towards the other door in the roughly ten by twenty foot stone room they were in. "We need to check out this other door and see if there's food somewhere. That basin full of water from the spring in the wall is probably safe to drink but we left the pizza in the car. All my supplies are in the car. All I have is this machete and this knife."

Cleo digs into her handbag, producing two knives of her own. And her propane torch for her dab rig. "I have this, no snacks though, they were in the bags from the Dollar store in the back seat with the pizzas. I do have a bottle of water though. Just the one, half drank. But we can refill it there at least, " she said gesturing at the stone water basin against one of the walls in the room.

Matthias shrugged with a smile, "Better than not having anything to carry any water with. I almost picked this one perk called Supply Kit more than partly because it came with a canteen of water. I don't know what's going on, but I know what they told me in the Boy Scouts. Always be prepared, and we are woefully underprepared right now." He looked at the other door's label.

He pressed the circle and it clicked inwardly a half inch or so, then the door slid to the left revealing a loose forest scene with what looks to be a clearing ahead through some trees.

He looked over to Cleo, "Want to go check this place out, probably best to use the buddy system for now."

She nodded and moved to follow him, "Lets d&d this bitch!"

He laughed and they stepped out into the forest. Noticing the change in smells as they crossed the doorway distinctly he looked around to get a good sense of the surrounding area, scanning for movement and danger first. That's when a series of new notifications polluted his field of view again, which he dismissed as soon as they appeared. Something about new quests, "Did you get those notifications too?"

Cleo nodded, "Yeah, I'm looking through them now. Looks like we're in something called a Challenge Dungeon, that is Level 16. And we are meant to hunt beasts in the dungeon, looks like two for the first level, with space for more tasks waiting to be revealed. We also have to kill a boss beast in addition to our two beasts each. But also, this dungeon is being invaded by Hellspawn it says, and it will give us extra rewards for each one we kill."

Matthias thought long and hard as he looked around listening to Cleo. He moved slowly and quietly towards a strong looking branch laying a few feet away under a tree. It was maybe 8 feet long, almost perfectly straight naturally, with a nice sharp point on one end where it had broken from the tree above it. He pulled his knife and began whittling the point into a more solid wooden piercing point before moving on to cleaning the knots and small branches from its shaft. Cleo watching him and looking around them as he produced a crude wooden spear in a few more minutes than he wanted to admit.

"I got a couple skill levels in woodworking, a new achievement for crafting this spear, and something called a Path Point. You should probably try to do the same, better to have spears than knives when fighting beasts. Not that I know what this system thinks beasts are. Could be dragons or wolves, either way seems like a spear problem not a knife problem." Matthias says in his best radio narrator voice. That was one of the things people loved him for, his character voices and oration stylings. He leaned into it now, as something everyone didn't know was it was his way to deal with nervous energy building up inside him. 'As long as I can keep my cool I shouldn't black out. That would be bad right now.' That last thought not helping his stress levels in any way.

"Okay so just carve a point on a stick?" Cleo asked him, grabbing a nearby branch that was mostly straight and a little longer than she was tall.

"I mean, yeah basically. I just want the point to be solid instead of having thin edges that will lead to cracking the tip." Matthias explained as he started on another one while looking around the area a little further from the doorway. Thats when he looked back at the doorway and realized it opened out of a large tree, one of the largest trees he's seen in a long while. Easily about 12 feet wide at the base of the trunk where the doorway opens from. It was closed now, but still had the same outline and circle just like the doorway had on the inside where it was a stone room. 'Curiouser and curiouser' he thought.

They worked on spears until each had three to work with. Matthias was noticing the knife he was using was starting to rust while he worked with it. This was concerning him, because he'd never watched steel rust in front of his eyes. It wasn't so fast as to be breaking down yet. Just little rust spots appearing on it as he worked. He cleaned them off the best he could as he finished working and said, "Make sure to clean your blade off after that, and then lets go check out that area ahead with less trees. I'm not seeing any food or other beasts around this tree. I wonder if it is an effect of the safe room, like it pushes the creatures away from the doorway? Maybe, I don't know."

Cleo replied, "Is yours getting all rusty looking too?" She gestured with her knife as she asked.

"Yeah I'm not sure why it's happening so fast, but that means we have to take extra good care of our knives since we can't go to the store to buy new ones at the moment." Matthias reasoned.

"Really? You think amazon will deliver here?" Cleo sarcastically asked.

"Dork" Matthias said. They moved off towards the clearing ahead. The trees didn't look that different than those around Josh's driveway really, except that weird one that had the doorway. And as they approached the clearing it revealed itself to be a prairie field as vast as any rural area in Oklahoma. Far to the west, if the rules of the sun were the same at least Matthias thought to himself, were a set of mountains as big as those you might see driving into Colorado from Kansas, so tall they were capped in snow. To the north and south were just more prairie with rolling hills and various grassland shrubs. The forest stretched as far as they could see on this eastern edge of the prairie to the north and south.

"We should climb up a tree to get a better view of the area, maybe we will see something to hunt." Cleo said.

Matthias looked at the trees nearby, without some rope, there was no safe way to climb any of them. There weren't even any good vines nearby to try and make some makeshift rope with. There were a lot of long grasses in the prairie though. He shivered at the thought of trying to braid useful rope in any length from what is effectively long grass. There was a flash next to him. Cleo was holding a large backpack, fully packed with a canteen and bedroll attached to the frame of the backpack.

She smiled, "I spent a perk point on that Supply Kit. Seemed like a good idea, it comes with rope so we can climb this tree, and a climbing hook."

Matthias felt his stress levels rise a little more, then breathed deeply and said, "That should work, we can hook a branch and climb up pretty easily."

It took Cleo three tries to get it to hook, the problem was it hooked a small branch further out from the trunk than was safe for Matthias to try climbing up. She shrugged, "I can go up and just move the rope so you can climb up near the trunk."

"Be my guest," he replied. Looking up the twenty-five feet of rope she'd have to climb without anything but the rope to grip. He began planning where to stand so he could catch her if she fell.

She grabbed the rope, wrapped it around her body and looped it around her foot, effectively quick rigging an ascending safety rope grip like it was nothing and beginning to climb, adjusting the rope as she climbed so she had a footrest of the loop as needed. In no time she was up to the branch and unlooping the hook. She moved it to the trunk and retied it around a thicker branch a little higher up. She looked down and said, "Tell me that wasn't some Lara Croft shit, I knew doing those climbing classes was gonna help someday."

Matthias laughed as he said, "HOLY SHIT, that was pretty cool! Totally unexpected. Not trying to diss you, just saying I did not expect that." And with that he started climbing the tree with his feet walking up the trunk until he was pulling himself atop the branch. They both looked around from here and saw movement on the other side of some nearby low rolling hills.

There was a herd of big turkeys, really really big turkeys, that were picking at the grass in a little valley between a couple hills. But beyond the herd, creeping closer, was another of those giant goats from hell that had hit the car they were in earlier. Cleo seeing this said, "We can take one of those turkeys in the chaos of that thing attacking the herd," and rappelled down the rope too fast for Matthias to process what she'd said.

He blinked and scrambled down after her, giving chase to try and catch up before she got to the top of that hill the turkeys were on the other side of. 'I think turkeys can be dangerous in herds, I swear I heard that somewhere. We do not want to be in the middle of a panicking herd of birds.'

She was smaller and faster than him, not by a lot, but just enough he had to run full tilt to catch her before she got to the hill. He put his hand on her shoulder as she slowed near the hill. He whispered urgently, "Wait, if that thing attacks we don't want to get it's attention. It will scatter the herd and I bet they run towards the trees. We can climb up the tree again and throw spears down at one that runs under."

"Damn, that makes too much sense. Lets do that. But I want to get a closer look first, lets peek over the hilltop." Cleo says back to him quietly, then crouches and duckwalks as she nears the hill's top. Matthias sneaks behind her, cursing under his breath. They crest the hill though and he's glad he got a look. Those turkeys are as tall as or taller than him one and all. And he's six feet tall. The goat thing is getting closer as well, though on opposite sides of the turkey herd as they were. It looks a little smaller than the one that hit the car, but still easily 10 feet long and as tall or taller than the turkeys. 'Except that one turkey twice the size of the others, we'll call him megaturkey."

"There are dozens of giant turkeys down there. We could get trampled out here, you're right we should get back to the tree and hope they run that way." Cleo whispers.

Matthias nods and together they sneak back down the hill and then run for the tree with the rope in it still. Just as they get to the rope they begin hearing a cacophony of noise from the direction of the turkey herd. The hill they had been atop is covered in fleeing turkeys as they stand there looking. Cleo races up the tree with Matthias quickly behind her, after tying off their spears to the rope so he can pull them up behind him. They barely get themselves pulled on top of the branches before the turkeys were hitting the tree line. Matthias scrambled to his feet and yanked the spears up. Cleo grabbed one and threw with a miss. Matthias threw one as well and hit the left hip of the oversized bird. It screamed in pain in such a way that they felt the sound vibrating their chests and heads, making them a little dizzy.

Cleo threw another spear at it, "Just shut up and die already!" she screamed as she released the spear then nearly fell from the branch. Her feet slipped and she planted her pelvis onto the branch with her legs straddling it. She hugged onto the branch with her arms to stop herself from falling further. The yelp that punctuated her slip and fall was so high pitched it blended with the strange yells of the turkey in such a way Matthias didn't even notice she yelled. He just launched his second spear and hit the turkey in the head through the eye. The noise ending immediately. This left just Cleo screaming. He looked down at her, "You okay little buddy?"

Her face scrunched up in rage, "How many times do I have to tell you don't call me 'Little Buddy'?"

"Oh, oops. Yeah sorry about that. I'll remember it eventually, I swear." He said with a half-grin. "So that means you're good though right? Soon as the others clear the area and we're sure the goat is not coming this way, we'll get down there and start cutting this guy up and cooking him."

She laughed, "Imagine selling those turkey legs at the Ren Faire!"

Matthias laughed at that, "You could feed a whole household on one of those turkey legs."

"You're gonna feed a whole hobbit with one of those for sure. This hobbit." Cleo chuckled.

They watched for a while and when they were sure it was safe they decided Matthias would carve up the turkey while Cleo kept a watch out above him from the tree. He went to work on the carcass and had the Supply Kit's tent roll as a field table on the ground where he could place the meat in strips to prepare it for smoking. He remembered seeing a hickory tree not too far back towards the doorway tree. The Supply Kit had a multipurpose shovel/hatchet tool he could use for that. It took the better part of an hour to finish, and Cleo only had the patience for about twenty minutes before she wanted to come down. She gathered branches for use making drying racks and started digging a smoking trench based on what Matthias described they would need. By the time he was ready for smoking wood, she had a good sized trench going and makeshift meat drying racks propped over the trench. She was grateful their friend Josh had been so into crazy survival hacks and had introduced their gaming group to so many ideas over the years. She was lost in memories of their lost friend when Matthias said, "Lets go together after we pull this canvas full of meat up into the tree while we're gone. We need to get the right wood to use for smoking the meat so it tastes good."

Cleo grinned, "There's so many jokes with what you just said I'm not even going to touch them, the make themselves."

Matthias laughed, "Shut up, you know what I mean."

They moved back towards the hickory tree he remembered seeing off behind the doorway tree.

They found themselves at the root of the tree in about 5 minutes of walking cautiously while keeping an eye out for danger. Cleo had the backpack strapped onto her back, it was bigger than she was. But she carried it easily enough, which was only mildly disorienting to watch, Matthias mused to himself as they gathered branches and packed them into the backpack that seemed to work like a bag of holding. It really didn't have a huge amount of space left inside it, but it had some, especially after they had removed the tent and bedroll back in their tree where their meat was currently hanging wrapped in the canvas cover of the tent. He chopped a couple of the lower branches of the tree as well, before they were out of material that was easy to collect. He spotted something deeper in the woods though that might be better. "That's all of this we can get easy, I think that's a pecan tree back there though. If so, that would be good as well." He said pointing to a tree about 40 or 50 feet away from the doorway tree.

When they made it to the other tree, they discovered something else was already there eating the pecans on the ground. A small rabbit with a single horn on it's head. Matthias stilled immediately and put his finger over his mouth in the be quiet sign as he looked at Cleo then pointed to the rabbit. He knelt down on his knees and moved forward, spears gripped in his left hand held behind him, his open right hand palm out like you might hold food out to an animal. His tone gentle and even, "Hey there little buddy, you doing okay?"

The rabbit stopped munching on a pecan and tilted it's head to look at him with one eye. It scurried away from him after a moment, heading deeper into the forest. The undergrowth got heavier this way, obscuring visibility to follow the rabbit but Matthias couldn't resist. He hopped up into a crouch run after the rabbit. Cleo tried to follow, but lagged behind more from surprise than lack of ability to keep up.

Matthias gave chase for a few minutes before realizing he was moving too far from the doorway tree. He looked around for signs of the rabbit but couldn't see it anywhere. "Damn, I wanted to try out this pet bond contract, that thing was cool." Cleo traipsed up behind him through some brush at that point. He looked back at her, "We should probably work our way back. I lost the rabbit."

"Seriously? All that just to turn back now? Whatever, lets go." She said in a huff and turned, the oversized backpack slinging around with her motion nearly knocking him over. He dodged back, and then heard a clicking noise in the trees above him. He looked up to see a large tree-frog, neon green with orange spots. It opened it's mouth and spit an orange colored goo in his direction. He'd just dodged back from the backpack and hadn't regained his balance so when he tried to avoid the goo hitting him, he slipped and got hit in the shoulder and down most of his left arm. The moment it touched skin, it felt like his skin was warming up rapidly like it was cooking. It turned red wherever the goo touched. The pain rapidly ramped up to levels he's never felt before. He screamed out and Cleo arrived at his side, pulling him onto his feet and dragging him away from the frog as it spit another ball of goo their direction.

They ran. As fast as they could, Matthias' screams continuing to modulate with his ability to breathe and run. As he did so, with Cleo keeping him moving, the skin on his shoulder and arm began to dissolve, being scraped off by branches as they passed them. His shirt already dissolved everywhere the goo had touched. He'd already ignored the notification that had popped up when he'd been hit, but he could tell he was taking damage over time without reading it. He needed to get back to the safe zone, it had a healing buff. He remembered noticing that when he looked at his character sheet after waking in the safe zone. That was the only coherent thought in his mind as he ran. All else was pain.

Cleo was freaking out while they ran, she did not want Matthias to die but did not know how to help him either. So she kept him moving back towards the safe zone room. 'There's that stone water fountain against the wall in there, maybe we can wash off the goo.'

In mere minutes they were hustling through the opening doorway to the safe zone with Matthias' muscles still sizzling audibly as the goo kept burning his flesh away with no fire. Matthias dove into the basin full of water and scrubbed at the area of the goo on him. The pool of water went red from his blood flowing into the pool with his vigorous washing of the goo covered wound site. His screaming finally calmed to bitching loudly within a half hour or so. But remarkably, his skin was starting to regrow as well. It was slow but it was happening.

Cleo said to him when he calmed down from bitching for a minute, "We should revisit spending our perks now. I think saving them might not have been our best idea. The Supply Kit alone has been super useful. I saw a couple classes as options too. None of them looked right to me though, like not fitting of me. I'm looking at Tactile Enhancement right now though. It's a Lesser Perk. Since I already spent my medium on the Supply Kit. If I'm reading the description right, I think this one will make me better at crafting things by hand. Which seems like a good idea, as that's how things are made as far as I know when you don't have machines to make them for you."

Matthias took a deep breath, "Yeah, you're probably not wrong. I'll take a look now while I'm still healing my HP back to full." And with that, he closed his eyes and focused on the Perks section and brought up the Perks List. 'I wish there was a way to sort and search this list.' Then the display changed and a search field like he was used to appeared at the top of the list. He searched for 'Helper' and it autocorrected to Companion. The list got much shorter now. With only a few options, and only two of those really looking interesting to him. One was an AI companion, which made him think of J.A.R.V.I.S. and Iron Man, but it had a requirement of a computational device at least Tech Level 3 or higher. Both of their phones had stopped working though, they checked that when they woke up in the safe zone the first time. They don't even power on, just blank black screens. 'Oh well, this Spirit Companion option looks cool. It knows magic and may choose to teach you magical secrets bit in the description has me interested. I want to cast fireball too, though it says the spirit will have a random elemental affinity so no telling what I will get if I pick it. But it's only a Lesser Perk and it says I can ask the spirit to show itself to others as well. YOLO.' He purchased the perk.

A man with curly hair, dark and semi-shaggy, with a beard, wearing only a pair of sunglasses visible above the water said from beside Matthias, "You are an interesting one that is for sure Matthias. I'm Ari, your Spirit Companion until you die. Which seems like if you keep up what you've been doing shouldn't take too long."

Matthias nearly jumped out of the basin as his voice raised 3 octaves, "WHOA Where did you come from?"

Ari rolled his eyes, behind his sunglasses. Then, realizing the problem, pulled the sunglasses off and rolled his eyes again before saying, "You spent the Lesser Perk Point, selecting Spirit Companion, I got assigned to you. So I arrived." He shrugged.

Cleo looked at Matthias talking to the basin like someone else was sitting there with him. She grew worried, "You okay there Matthias, you are talking to the air."

He looked over at her, then to Ari, then her again. "Wait, you don't see him?" He asked, pointing to Ari who remained invisible to Cleo.

Cleo nodded negative, "See who? You're starting to freak me out Matthias."

Matthias looked away from her to his side, "Come on dude, I know you can show yourself to her, it was in the perk description. You can't leave me looking insane."

With that, Ari appeared in the basin with Matthias. He smiled at her, "Nice to make your acquaintance Miss Cleo, I am Ari, Spirit Companion to Mathias."

Cleo blinked. She hadn't said her name nor had Matthias. She was still more than a little freaked out about her experience changing it on her status screen. She'd argued with the screen and it had changed her name and awarded her a skill called System Interference. This guy knew what was on her Status screen somehow. 'To be fair, he just appeared from being invisible to just me not Matthias so he's probably got some fancy magic.' She smiled, "Pleased to meet you. Do you know why we're here and can't get out?"

Ari stood and pulled a robe from somewhere out of sight, slipping it on as he walked through the side of the basin like it wasn't there. He said, "The why is easy enough according to Matthias' logs you were drawn into a dungeon via some kind of defense protocol I've never seen. It seems to be some kind of base system protocol I am unfamiliar with the function of. I can however explain why you cannot leave through the safe zone dungeon exits. They are a simple gated portal, to prevent low levels from wandering into them. Normally they would prevent people like the two of you from entering a Challenge Dungeon like this. But, you were transported through the Waystone network itself into a dungeon as a secondary effect of creating a simple one way bridge into a dungeon capable of containing Hellspawn."

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