Allen's POV

I was getting bored, each of the quests designated by the guild were too easy, they say being an S-rank has its perks but now I wish I refused the promotion, because there is nothing special about being S-rank. They force us to go to emergency missions whenever and also to take the first descend in a dungeon when they are discovered, but that isn't even the worst part of those dungeons, usually the reason the guild sends S-ranks is so no one else can go to the dungeon and they get all of the loot for themselves, barely giving any of the S-ranks in question. 

There is a new dungeon alert, and I get ready to be sent out by the greedy guild masters, and they do.

"Allen git yer ass in here!" An old dwarf shouts. Figures, he is the most greedy of them all, constantly taking all of the rare materials for a cheap price, but it seems only from S-ranks and the lowest F-ranks, because they have us by contract and them by naivety. 

"Yeah yeah, hold your hammers Tony, I got it, you want me to hurry up and leave to get the loot as soon as possible." They don't mind when I say such things in their face because it is completely true. 

"The little shit's right." The Guildmaster got a glare from the dwarf. "This dungeon seems to have inhabited an old dragons cave, seems to have formed when the dragon died. You all know what that means..,."The Guildmaster gave a wicked grin. "Lots of treasure. If a dragon had died there the mana had to be thick enough to create the dungeon so there will probably be a lot of strong monsters, but the reward will be worth it. Allen here will be leading the first team to clear the way for the harvesters and foragers to loot the place clean, but we must leave immediately so the church cant get there first." The Guildmaster then formed the group and told my squad to go ahead and so that's exactly what we did.

My squad had to hurry and thankfully, the place was still uninhabited by other groups but the dungeon was weird. It had a signboard much like the shops in the market and it was practically glowing

"Dragon's Arcade..."

"Allen, what could that mean?" the healer on the team, Tina, asked

"I dunno, but there is 'Dragon' in the name, so this has got to be the dungeon."

"You don't think this dungeon will have any dragons do you, Allen?" Jack the scout asked

"We cant deal with dragons." says Johnathan our tanker. This team of ours was common, Me the Leader and main attacker; Johnathan the tanker; Jack our scout and ranger; Tina our healer and support mage. Johnathan was right though, we weren't the best team to be dealing with dragons, dragons were categorized as an SS-rank threat. We were an exploration party not subjugation, but the guild commanded us to do so and we had to go regardless of the danger. 

"Whether or not dragons are in there will have to be once we get inside, who knows maybe there are only slimes inside." I responded much to the relief of my companions. We walked inside and passed through what seemed to be a small barrier of sorts leading into the cool cave. My squad and I grew a little panicked but as we found out, the barrier was only there to keep the dungeon cool, not lock us in as we might have thought.

We got to the end of the passage and a gate locked us in. The dungeon had been eerily empty up to this point and we knew something was coming, but all we could do was to continue on. Once we got locked in we heard a voice in our heads.

Once Every person obtains 20 Tokens they may attempt the Games or Move on. Once all tokens have been used you will be moved to the prize corner. If you do not have enough tickets, you will go to the entrance with the tickets you have earned, all tokens return to the Arcade.

The voice fades and a bunch of skeletons start attacking us. My squad and I get into position. There was three and they seemed manageable to handle, but it reveals that the dungeon is an undead type, there is probably a lich for a boss somewhere, maybe a necromancer. Once my group finishes off the last skeleton 6 silver coins drop and the undead disappear. The coins are weird looking nothing like the siver coins used to purchase anything in the markets, they are not labeled with the royal emblem, they are labeled with a dragon breathing fire on one side and the other just reads "Arcade".

More skeletons spawn from nowhere and instantly my team is on the offensive again. Beating back now 5 skeletons they all fall down and this time 10 of those coins are in there place. Everyone in my group split the coins equally, each of us getting four and after that short break more and more skeletons surrounded us. In the end I ended up with 23 of the coins, Jack with 21, Tina with 24, and Johnathan with 22, and the skeletons stopped coming. We were all out of breath when the voice spoke again. 

All of you have obtained enough tokens to play some games or move on to the next stage. When you play a game you put in the number of tokens it asks for and you will get and amount of tickets depending on how well you play. Tickets are the currency of the dungeon and you can buy all sorts of food, drinks, and prizes with your tickets.  Happy Playing!

Our team was out of breath but Tina was the one who noticed what happened not Jack. A bunch of boxes with different looking items sticking out of them, two of which had weapons attached to them, and two of which that had odd looking helmets attached to them. Jack got up and stumbled to one of them that was holding a bow. As the voice had instructed Jack put two of the "Tokens" into the slot of the contraption  and soon a holographic screen was shown and words hovered above it.

[Shoot all of the Apples to Win]

When Jack pulled back the bowstring of the weird bow, a see-through arrow took the empty space and with some difficulty he shot at the apples that were being thrown on screen, missing a lot due to his tiredness. once he had finished with a ding the machine started to procure some sheets of paper out of its other slot. Each one had the word "Ticket" on both sides. Jack walked over a little excited. We were all a bit shocked too. 

"Did you guys see that? I put in the coins and it let me practice shooting! and then these things came out! I could well in fact say that was more fun then gambling and I was surprised that it wasn't a trap, but I can tell if things are traps, and none of those are traps, they are games. Also I got a weird notification or something."

"What notification?" Johnathan had been the first to ask but we were all curious to what Jack could have gotten."It says 'Move to Prize Area or Continue'. and there is a second menu saying I can buy some food in exchange for these tickets." We were all surprised. Menu Magic was difficult to due as it required lots of small details to work properly, often it was carved into status plates so you could project your information. Seeing as he got the menu as soon as he got those ticket things they must be enchanted with menu magic, which is exceptionally difficult. Jack told us to go ahead and get some tickets to find out for ourselves. 

We went ahead and did that each choosing a different game. Tina was surprisingly courageous and moved to the helmet game and when she put it on she stopped moving for a decent amount of time worrying all of us. When she finally moved and took the helmet off, the bottom of the machine spit out much more tickets then Jack's did. 

"That was soooo cool! It was asking me to create my own spells and test them against training dummies, but the fun part was it let me use offensive magic!" She seemed to want to go back into the machine again but Jack told her we should go one by one to watch the others back and she roughly agreed. 

it was Johnathan's turn and he went to the game that had a shield on it. Soon there was another holographic message.

[Block all incoming arrows]

The game showed a bunch of arrows that started flying towards Johnathan but much like the arrows in Jack's game, the arrows where all transparent. He blocked a decent amount but many went over his head and we watched as his point total decreased for each one he missed. Soon the game ended and the point total became tickets and the tree of them started to talk about what to get with their tickets. I was still in the dark as I had yet to play a game and there was one last game available that no one played. I walk over and stick the helmet on my head. 

I am now in a grassy plain and I am still wielding my twin swords in my hands. Soon I get a prompt much like the others, but this time something interesting pops up. 

[Slash and Burn the projectiles flying towards you]

I saw that there was an icon below me, when I thought about it I knew exactly what it was. It was a spell, and i knew how to shoot a fire ball using it. Soon arrows and apples started flying my way, and the arrows I would deflect, and the apples I would shoot a fireball out of my sword. I'm not going to lie, everyone was right, this is pretty fun. 

I got out of the machine and got my amount of tickets and now I saw the menu screens, Tina was right there were two menu's One asking if I wanted to go to the prize corner, and one asking if I wanted to get some food and drinks. I suppose as long as we kept playing these fun games we wouldn't go hungry, but as it would have it while I was in thought another door had opened and Tina and the others went inside, and they were waiting for me. I walked over and set foot inside the door refreshed from the battle and a new notification appeared. 

You may take the test and gain 50 more tokens as the next few games all are double the price as before, but more monsters will appear for you to fight. You will not die if overwhelmed you will only be kicked from the dungeon until  you choose to go to the prize corner.

We each got a notification that we assumed came from the tickets in our hands and it asked us if we wanted to fight for more tokens as tokens and tickets seemed to be the currency of the dungeon we all said yes in exclamation to the concept of more.  Soon more skeletons arrived but this time it was in a group of ten which were of moderate strength, but we managed to beat them all without wasting our breath and two more groups of ten came after that.

As the skeletons continued to come we stopped counting them and started to count the tokens being dropped instead and realized that the skeletons dropped between 1 - 3 tokens per kill. We all managed to get roughly over 50 tokens each but we were out of breath and sore, but there was more stuff in the next room. the skeletons stopped and we each got the message we could go to the prize corner at any time, but we decided to check out the food and drinks menu. 

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->Food

->Drinks

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As I was thirsty I chose the Drinks option and was met with an interesting list. 

 

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Flavors and Choices:

Lemon-Lime: 5 TP

Cola: 5 TP

Fruit Punch: 3 TP

Lemonade: 3 TP

Water: 2 TP

+Energy (Blueberry): 8 TP

+Energy (Tropical): 8 TP

Mist Ice: 10 TP

Stamina Boost: 15 TP

TP = Ticket Points

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