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 in 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 for a moment before looking away, which only made Josh grow bolder and angrier. Suddenly feeling very protective of the secret only he knew, 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 medieval 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.

  Then the guilt came back, and he realized that he had not tried to stop Josh because he wanted to spare the dickhead from a world of pain. He didn’t want Josh to discover the treasure trove he had discovered. Josh, stupid as he was, would have died—probably. But what if he managed to get out alive as well? He didn’t want to see what 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 a bit torn and damaged like they would have been after 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.

  Josh saw him hold his head as Michael massaged his temples to try and sort out what he was feeling.

  “It’s just a concussion, man,” said Josh, “it will pass. Let’s get out of here.”

  However, as the two walked, Michael soon began to fall behind his friend, a thing that had never happened before on their hike together. Josh noticed, turning around with his hands on his hips.

  “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 forgive you.”

  “You are full of shit,” Michael growled. He 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.

  “What?”

  Michael’s eyes flashed dangerously. “You know what? Let’s get back to the car. This hike is over.”

  “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. It was a mistake to come on a hike with a stranger. I should have known.” He shook his head, muttering. “You look like you could stab me in my sleep.”

  “I lost my cellphone 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.

  They fell into step, slower than their usual paced. They had only circled around where they had parked the car, this was just a test hike to see if they could actually challenge the trail together, and they were confident they could get there before sunset. After a while, Michael began to fiddle with his retrieved pack and started to scarf down all the food that he had packed for the trip, gulping down copious amounts of water as well. If only he had brought the pack with him inside the cave, he thought, then he wouldn’t have had to rely on the dungeon’s charity with the rewards just to survive. As he thought so, the sinister and evil hallucinated voice of the dungeon merged with the memory of the actual voice, making him wonder whether the thing really was as evil as he made it to be. It did save him, giving him the right skill not once, but twice, and then food so that he wouldn’t starve.

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  “Why are you so hungry?” asked Josh. “You’ve been in there ten minutes tops, all in all.”

  Michael only grunted, trying to make Josh drop the matter, because he had no explanation he could give as of now. When he had emerged from the cave to discover that only ten minutes had passed, he had been as confused as Josh was now.

  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 when his mana ran out a strange sensation began to wash over him. 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… 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 at his city and continued alone to his own place. By the time he got home, his mana was the lowest it had ever been, bare dregs of leftover energy. He hadn’t gained a single mote back after healing himself on the trail, unlike when he was inside the dungeon.

  The air felt stifling and suffocating.

  Michael’s home was on the second floor. From the window, he could see 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 unceremoniously dumped it all onto his bed, plopping heavily beside it with a deep sigh that came from his heart.

  He felt tired, weak, hollow and pissed off.

  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, claiming injury.

  Thinking about magic it made the itch grow bolder. 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. They were unassuming, unmarked and smooth. He was about to dismiss them as worthless, barely scrap metal to be sold so that he could pay rent this month, when his finger touched the cold surface of one of them. His jaw dropped to the floor when he realized that it was chock-full of mana.

  Sorting through them, he discovered that 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 the stack of coins in moments, absorbing their mana until three of the four 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. Then, he stared at his last Copper-coin worth of mana, sitting like a heavy burden on his bed.

  He was at full capacity, but what if he needed to heal himself again? In fact, other than mana he also needed food if he ever needed to use the healing skill, and his fridge was empty. It looked like a trip to the grocery store was in order.

  Minutes later, he found himself driving towards the grocery store, making plans about things he didn’t know would come to pass or not. He had tried to procrastinate a bit, let his mind decompress, but the lack of a cellphone was making it rather difficult. Already, Michael was not looking forward to having to spend a good portion of his leftover money to get a new one, the specter of rent looming over him and threatening to make him homeless, or worse.

  He decided he would buy a cheap phone, for now. 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 fired as a reward. How dare he ask to be able to live rather than survive. As he was, 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 beater truck, having to cross most of the suburban sprawl 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 proper flashlight, 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 just in case he ever needed to use magic again. Perhaps, while he was at it, why not get some more skill stones?

  Later that night, he browsed the internet because he couldn’t sleep. 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 and some stories about spirits but 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 it.

  Well. Michael could be the next Bezos, he reckoned. He let his ambitions and dreams surface to his awareness for a moment. Unlike those people, he would not stop delving. Some miserly mundane fortune was nothing compared to the wonders of magic. 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 he could really feel like himself.

  By the time he was asleep, having skipped karate class, he was vibrating with desire to go there again. He wondered if Sensei Stephan would miss him, his chosen one who always seemed to learn the katas and moves before everyone else, the very same man who then got beat up for it. The next time he was going to show up, things would be different.