Chapter 04

“Josh! Stop!” Michael tried to yell, but his friend was not slowing down.

He couldn’t run after him either, as his body was too damaged to reach him in time without stumbling and possibly breaking his ribs all over again. Left with no other option, Michael did the only thing that came to his mind in the few seconds that he had available before Josh was caught into the dungeon and unable to escape. He threw his shield at him, hitting him in the back and making him stumble to the ground.

Hands bloody, Josh got up with murder on his face. He cursed. “What the hell is wrong with you, man?”

He stared down at Michael, making use of the sloping terrain to appear much bigger. Michael held his gaze, but he was feeling rather guilty for having thrown his shield at him, and it must have shown on his face because Josh seemed to grow bolder and angrier. Still, Michael managed to mumble something through his guilt.

“You don’t want to go in there. It’s too dangerous.”

“You’re nuts!” Josh declared, throwing his hands in the air. “Seriously, throwing a shield at me?”

Michael felt a rush of blood to his cheeks, like he had been called out for doing something he shouldn’t have done. And perhaps Josh was right: he shouldn’t have thrown the shield at him. He had acted rashly in what little time he had before his friend could no longer be retrieved. Did he do it solely because the dungeon was dangerous? It didn’t take much thought to realize that it was far from the only reason. No, the other—important—reason was that he didn’t want to see what finding out about magic would do to a person such as Josh. Michael was learning a lot about his so-called friend, and he wasn’t liking what he saw.

Josh studied Michael for a long second. “Why do you look like you’ve seen a ghost? Seriously dude, it was just a cave. You look like you had a nasty fall, but honestly you only got yourself to blame for that.”

“Trust me,” Michael said, but his words lacked conviction this time. Then he thought about the boss goblin, and how screwed he would have been without a healing skill and food. “You don’t want to go in there. Can’t you see all the… blood…”

Then his face fell. Sure, there was a little bit of blood on his clothes coming from the scratches still bleeding on his legs. But there was no trace of the battle, of the blood that had been spilled there, and his clothes were no longer torn and damaged, but simply covered in dirt and grime like he had indeed taken a bad fall. For a moment he thought that perhaps Josh was right, and he had hallucinated everything after hitting his head, but he could still feel his magic waiting to be used.

“Why are you holding your shoulder like that?” Josh demanded, “did you hurt yourself that badly? Don’t tell me we gotta leave the trail so soon. You should have told me it was a treacherous cave, man, I was about to go in there myself. What if I fell and hurt myself like you did? I could never.”

“I tried to tell you,” Michael was fuming now, thoughts of violence coming and being ignored by pure willpower. He was not a violent man, never having gotten in a fight with a person before, but Josh was making him wish he was.

“Well, you almost didn’t try hard enough,” Josh complained. “What if I fell and hurt myself like you did? You’d have to carry me back to the car.”

Michael’s eyes lit up. “The car, yeah. That’s a good idea.”

“What, you wanna leave now? Listen, let’s put the cave and all that behind us. I’ll even let you keep your shield and…” his eyes locked onto the dagger, which Michael was holding so tight his knuckles were white. Josh took a couple of steps back. “What is wrong with you?”

“You are letting me keep the shield? You know what? Never mind. We are leaving.”

Josh was about to retort, but nodded instead. “Yeah, let’s. You don’t seem too stable right now. You look like you could stab me in my sleep.”

“I lost my phone too. You lead the way.”

Josh snorted, muttering something that sounded like a curse and a mocking comment under his breath. Michael was quite content that he couldn’t make out the words because he wasn’t feeling very patient today.

They fell into step. Michael immediately reached into his pack and started to scarf down all the food that he had packed for the trip, gulping down copious amounts of water as well.

“Why are you so hungry? You’ve been in there ten minutes top, all in all. What happened in there?”

Michael only grunted, trying to make Josh drop the matter, because he had no explanation he could give his friend as of now. A person who felt less and less like a friend the more he talked, by the way, proving to be an unpleasant presence where it mattered the most. At least Michael now knew an important thing: that time seemed to not have passed at all while he was inside.

Once his hunger was sated, and he wasn’t feeling woozy anymore, Michael started healing himself again. Before long, his steps were steady and his shoulder wasn’t hurting as much anymore, but then his mana ran out. It wasn’t too bad, he thought at first, since he would only have to wait half an hour before he had enough mana to get another significant portion of healing done.

Then he noticed something strange. The uncomfortable sensation of being out of mana, making him feel like he was missing something fundamental about himself, like gnawing hunger that could not be sated by mere food… it wasn’t going away. Before long, he was beginning to sweat as the itch that was a lack of mana grew in intensity without him being able to scratch it.

They got to the car and drove in silence. Michael dropped Josh and continued alone for several more miles until he reached his city. By the time he got home, his mana was the lowest it had ever been. He hadn’t gained a single fraction of it back since he healed himself on the trail, unlike when he was inside the dungeon. It felt like he was suffocating.

His eyes fell on the small pile of loot still sitting under a tarp in his truck, barely hidden from view. Grabbing a large bucket he used whenever he deigned to take his dirty clothes to the laundromat, he made the trip down and back up to fetch his stuff feeling like a burglar trying to hide his stolen goods. He dumped it all unceremoniously onto his bed, plopping heavily beside it with a deep sigh that came from his heart.

He felt tired, weak, hollow and pissed off at his asshole of a friend. It had been a new friendship, they met online only a few weeks prior and it was one of those sorts of friends you should never go on a hike with, but Josh had been the only one willing to go with him. A grave mistake, perhaps, but what was done was done.

Michael looked at his calendar. Since he was back early from the trip, he would have to resume his routine two days earlier than planned. He had karate lessons later that day, and he wasn’t looking forward to that. Perhaps he could excuse himself from going due to his injury.

Thinking about it made it hurt more. In order to distract himself, Michael started sorting through the loot he got from the dungeon, purposefully not thinking about whether it was a good thing that he had gotten it or not, because that thought would invite a much more unpleasant one that went along with it: whether to return there or not. His gut said to return there immediately, if only to make the sensation of being out of mana go away, but his rational mind did not agree.

Then he saw the copper coins he had been rewarded with for defeating the goblin boss. His jaw dropped to the floor when he realized that they were chock-full of mana. They had so much of it in them, that it seemed to radiate off them like a sweet scent from a freshly baked pie, stimulating his magical appetite in ways that were making him feel woozy. He was upon them in moments, absorbing their mana until three of the five coins were nothing but dissolving motes of dust.

A part of his mind made a note that his current mana capacity could be described as 3 Copper, while the rest of his being rejoiced at the sensation of being whole again. He immediately started healing his body, raiding his fridge when he needed to and absorbing the other two coins. In the end, he was left with 1 Copper worth of mana when his body was fully healed. That, and an empty fridge.

Being at one third mana did not feel pleasant, but it was a long way from being completely out. Having an empty fridge was worse, though, considering how hungry he felt. It looked like a trip to the grocery store was in order.

He was driving towards the mall mere minutes later. He had tried to procrastinate a bit, let his mind decompress, but the lack of a phone was making it rather difficult. Already, Michael was not looking forward to having to get a new number, with all the work that went into getting a brand-new phone operational and getting all his friends’ numbers back.

He decided he would buy a cheap phone, for now. Rent was due soon, and he barely had enough to make ends meet. He had tried to ask his boss for a little raise, just to be able to actually live rather than barely surviving, and had been rewarded by being fired. He had enough to survive a month, then he was screwed.

Whatever, at least he had magic. His thoughts always gravitated around it, and he found himself at the mall in a daze. The city he lived in was small enough that he got there in ten minutes, even with his beat-up truck, having to cross most of it before coming upon the gigantic mall that had no reason to exist in a place so small and remote. But that’s how malls worked. They attracted people to them, not the other way around, and already he could see hundreds of cars parked in the gargantuan parking lot slowly being baked by the early summer sun.

By the time he was in the mall, he had already decided he was going to buy some supplies just in case he decided to delve the dungeon again. By the time he left, he had a new phone, a torch, and what little gear the rest of his money could buy. He already had a backpack at home, and now he could fill it with rope, food, water, batteries and… a gun. He had bought a gun. Not at the mall, but on the way home. Rent was out of the window this month.

By the time Michael was home, he was salivating at the thought of getting some more coins to replenish his mana, perhaps even some more skill stones.

Later that night, while browsing the internet in bed on his new phone, he tried to see if there was any mention of strange things happening around that section of the Trail where he had found the dungeon. There had been some disappearances, a lot of injuries—more than the average for the rest of the trail—and some stories about spirits but, frankly, nothing concrete. But then he got an idea, and he started looking up people who had had a sudden windfall soon after going on a hike. He found a few posts. From people who had found themselves on the trail, or so they had claimed. They had all come home changed, and a few of them were powerful and rich now.

The latest of them had gone there more than a year ago, though. Michael simply couldn’t find anything more recent, and they all talked about other parts of the Trail that he was unfamiliar with, almost as if the dungeon had decided to relocate itself after those people stopped delving in it.

Well. Michael could be the next Bezos, he reckoned. Only that he would not stop delving, unlike those fools who thought some miser amount of power would suffice them. The dungeon rewarded the strong who could come on top of a hard situation, and Michael thought he had finally found the one place where his mindset truly worked. By the time he was asleep, having skipped karate class, he couldn’t wait to go there again. He wondered if Sensei Stephan would miss him, his chosen one who always seemed to learn the moves before everyone else, and who got beat up for it. The next time he was going to show up, things would be different.