Evren was standing in front of the wrought iron gate, frowning. The wagon was behind him, with the side boxes, the top, and the shelves removed, and it wouldn’t fit through the gate. The wheels were too wide. He could take the wheels off and it would fit, but then he’d have to take everything out of the wagon so he could drag it through, then put the wheels back on, and everything back inside, then the shelves and the top, and all the boxes…
It was seriously getting to that point. He also found out that when he gets on the other side of the gate, the skeletons find him in range and come running. He was now looking at the gate to see if he can pop the hinges and take the gates off, but it looked like he was out of luck. Evren turned around and looked at the wagon, trying to lift it off the ground with telekinesis, which he did, a few centimeters before he got a headache and let it back down to the ground.
Having no choice left, Evren began to empty the wagon. Fortunately, he made the false floor so it could be removed, and the tools were a lot of weight in the wagon. He moved the wagon over to the fence, which was only about a meter high, and tied the pull poles in the upward position. He then backed up, took a deep breath, and cleared his mind. His focus was solely on the wagon, picturing it rising up and over the fence, and setting down on the opposite side.
He stayed like that, motionless for a while before he began using telekinesis. First, he focused on the wagon, getting a feel for it, imagining it going over the fence. He then lifted the wagon up without hesitation. He got it high enough and when it was halfway over the fence, he was assaulted by a headache. Clenching his teeth in pain, he managed to get the wagon to land safely on the other side of the fence. He then fell to his knees, sweating profusely. For some reason, he was out of breath.
He fell back to a sitting position and looked to the gate to see if anything was approaching his wagon. It seemed the skeletons didn’t react to motion, just the living. Satisfied, he lied back on the grass resting. His consciousness drifting, but never fading. He was so drained, he felt that if he used his sensory field even a little bit, he would pass out.
Evren finally got up after an hour. The headache had subsided, and he no longer felt dizzy or nauseous. He stood and looked at all the stuff he had to put back into the back of the wagon, and then looked inside the gate to see if there were anything wandering around. Seeing nothing, he grabbed his sword and secured it around his waist. He then walked through the gate and began moving the wagon, so its back was to the gate.
Two skeletons came out of the dark mist of the graveyard and attacked Evren. Even though they were fast, their movement was slower and weaker than the skeletons that he met outside of the Aernide Fortress, so they were easily dispatched. They left milky white mana gems behind when they fell. Evren got the wagon in position and began loading it again. He used this opportunity to re-arrange some of the items, moving some of the lesser needed items to under the false floor, and the items he noticed he needed more of, such as food, he moved to the boxes he would be able to move in and out of the wagon.
After two hours and fourteen skeletons, Evren finished loading the wagon. As Evren prepared to pull the wagon, he suddenly asked, “Now, where am I supposed to go? If I’m supposed to enter some crypt, this is going to be a problem.” He said as he looked back at the wagon. Taking a deep breath and shrugging, Evren began pulling the wagon along the cobblestone path, occasionally stopping to fight off the skeletons. The cobblestone path led straight through the center of the graveyard. There were no paths leading off of it, and the sides were filled with tombstones he wouldn’t be able to get the wagon past.
After about six hours, Evren ran into a large group of skeletons that he thought was guarding the exit, but he was wrong. Then after another two hours he thought, ‘Maybe this is some test of endurance?’ Approximately an hour and a half later, Evren noticed a gate ahead, with a fence similar to the one he saw at the beginning. The gate was a wooden one and much wider than the first one. He opened the gate and pulled the wagon through. He wasn’t sure if etiquette required him to close the gate behind him, but he didn’t.
Beyond the gate, two hedges, one on each side met in the middle and lead to a passage. The passage appeared to be as wide as the cemetery behind him, but there was a wall, about two meters tall on either side. When Evren went to the wall to look on the other side, he was stopped by a barrier before reaching the wall. It felt like stone, but it was transparent. The wall was on both sides of the passage, and Evren wondered if it was some sort of illusion to give the feel of going to the next level without making it look like the same stone passage. As he traveled, the ground below him began to slope downward in a straight line. It eventually opened up to a wide area that looked exactly like the previous floor, minus the wall and gate.
As he followed the cobblestone path, he found it branched off at one point. The skeletons were faster, and hit harder, but they were still at a manageable speed. But now they came in groups of ten or more, which was pushing his capabilities. On many occasions he had to stop and heal his wounds before moving on. Four times he had been led to a dead-end, and once he had to stop and use his sensory field to figure out if he was heading in the correct direction.
When he reached the end of the 22nd floor he decided he would take a break in the passage leading down to the 23rd floor. As he had done previously, he pulled the wagon against the wall and blocked off the other wheel to keep it in place. He wiped himself down, ate some jerky and dried vegetables, and got some sleep. He woke a few times because the dungeon was making noise in the corridor. Every time Evren woke to the noise, he would check around with his sensory field and not find anything, thinking the dungeon was just trying to set the mood.
The 23rd floor had a variety of skeletons on it, there were goblin and orc sized skeletons along with the human shaped ones, which acted similar to their living counterparts, just a bit slower and with less intelligence. These all came in packs of ten or more. Evren’s pace through the floors had slowed considerably. He figured by the time he found the passage to the next floor his day would have been over, and he would need to take a break again.
The cobblestone paths were even more confusing, many times they would swing back around to a path he had already visited. Once, he found himself back at the beginning of the floor and couldn’t figure out how that happened. When he finally reached the other side, he was exhausted. He had been on the floor for close to an entire day and had been fighting almost non-stop the entire time. His sleep in the passage down was sound and uninterrupted.
On the 24th floor, more types of skeletons were added, this time ogres and trolls. Fortunately, the trolls didn’t have the regeneration capabilities the living versions had, but they were much stronger than the human and orc skeletons and nearly as strong as the ogre skeletons. The larger ones didn’t come in packs of ten or more, the were included with the pack of ten or more. In addition, roaming packs of five to seven skeletons would occasionally join the fights. A couple times, Evren had to run around to thin out their numbers before he could start whittling away at their health.
After a day of travel, Evren had to stop and rest for a while. He knew he couldn’t fall asleep, but just resting and not pulling the wagon for a couple of hours was enough to recharge him. He would still occasionally get a wandering pack of skeletons, but not large packs. Approximately two hours after he finished his break, he found the passage to the next floor. Evren followed the passage down to the boss’ chamber and rested there.
The boss’ chamber looked like the entrance to a crypt. It had two large stone doors that was wide enough for the wagon to fit through. In the inside was a large sarcophagus that opened as he approached. “Wow, this dungeon is really trying to sell the mood.” He said with a chuckle. As the skeleton began to rise from the sarcophagus, he said, “What? No spooky fog?”
What emerged from the sarcophagus was a huge humanoid with a bull skull for a head. In its hand it held a large double-bladed battleax. Evren cast ‘avalanche’ in front of him and began launching head sized rocks at the skeleton with telekinesis. After the volley of ten rocks, the skeleton was looking rough. Its left arm had broken off at the elbow, several of the ribs were broken or cracked and hanging, and the hip had been shattered, leaving the skeleton struggling on the ground.
Smiling, Evren lifted one of the rocks up with telekinesis and made it float several meters over the skeleton and let it fall. It smashed the bull skull of the skeleton, thus ending the boss fight. Evren pulled his wagon over to the skeleton to retrieve the reward, which was a milky white mana gem, and a battleax looking exactly like the one the skeleton was using, but smaller, more suitable for a human to use. Evren swung it a few times, shrugged and tossed it into the back of the wagon.
