Ping.

  I paused in the middle of the muddy forest, glancing at my portable, where the ping had come from. It was the sound that it made whenever someone messaged me through NodeLink. That meant it was either Ruth or Jonah in the Party Chat.

  Nimbus, who was hopping ahead of me, stopped and looked over his shoulder at me in annoyance, twitching his long ears at me. “What are you staring at, Aaron? We need to keep moving. We wasted too much time on that last fight with those Mana-Touched Deer. We don’t have time to—”

  “It’s a message from Jonah,” I said, interrupting Nimbus as I opened the Party Chat. I breathed a sigh of relief. “Looks like he’s alive.”

  Nimbus turned to face me, still wearing an impatient look on his face. “Any other details?”

  I bit my lower lip as I scanned the message from Jonah. “Not really, other than Jonah has been defeating lots of enemies and getting a lot of rewards. Sounds like he’s been amassing Time Spheres, too, so he should have plenty of time left on his countdown timer like us.” I looked up at Nimbus. “Wait, why am I telling you what Jonah’s message says when you also have access to the Party Chat?”

  Nimbus scratched his ear. “Because it’s easier to have you tell me what it says than it is to read it myself. I’m all about efficiency and not wasting effort, you know.”

  I rolled my eyes and wrote out a quick message to Jonah:

  Me: Thanks for the update, Jonah! Nimbus and I had a tough time against our first enemy, a bunch of glyphcrawlers, but we’ve only fought one enemy since then and it was a couple of Mana-Touched Deer. They were easy, especially after I hit them with a modified Splinter Glyph. Still not sure where we are in relation to you or Ruth, but we’re making our way to the exit and hope to meet you there regardless.

  Jonah: Good! I haven’t heard from Ruth since the start of the room. Have you? Her radio silence has been concerning.

  Me: No, I haven’t heard from her, either. Ruth, are you there? Are you reading our messages? Ruth?

  Nimbus: No response. Who wants to take bets that she’s still—

  Me: We aren’t gambling on Ruth’s life, Nimbus.

  Nimbus: We wouldn’t gamble actual shekels. I was thinking bananas.

  Jonah: Ruth, if you are reading this, please respond as soon as you can and let us know if you are okay. Otherwise, we’ll see you at the exit. Keep following the signs if you aren’t already. Talk to you later.

  I closed the Party Chat just then, though I didn’t resume moving because I was now thinking about Ruth and the signs.

  It sounded like Jonah had made the same discovery about the wooden signs pointing to the way to the exit that Nimbus and I had discovered shortly after defeating the glyphcrawlers earlier. Thanks to the fog and darkness, the signs were easy to miss, but Nimbus had pointed out the first one, which had been nailed to a gnarled oak near our spawn point at the start of the room. The arrow-shaped sign had pointed forward into the trees, with a message, scrawled in faded red ink that smelled vaguely of blood, saying that the exit was up ahead.

  We quickly determined that the signs were the main clue to getting out of the room. They could have been red herrings planted by the dungeon itself to mislead us, but we seemed to be making progress through the room. We also fought no other mobs than a couple of Mana-Touched Deer—think normal deer with glowing green eyes and antlers that shone light—that we took out with surprisingly little effort. It helped that I’d learned how to increase the radius of Splinter Glyph so it would only hurt our targets and not us.

  Combining that with Nimbus’ Arcane Pulse meant that the Mana-Touched Deer never stood a chance. I got another 10 Words from that encounter, which seemed really low, but I didn’t mind. I added half of them to my Casting Pool to cover the cost of that single Splinter Glyph and the other half into my Banked Progress. The Mana-Touched Deer also dropped a Time Sphere, which once again reset the timer.

  As for the Words I earned from defeating the glyphcrawlers, I dumped it all into my Banked Progress. I hadn’t used a lot of Words from my Casting Pool and I wanted to get stronger as fast as possible, so I still wanted to dump as many Words into my Banked Progress as possible.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

  I still found the abundance of Time Spheres suspicious. Why was the dungeon giving out Time Spheres to us so generously? It seemed to negate the downside of this room, which was the timer. Nimbus told me not to worry about our luck when I brought up my concerns, but, of course, I still kept thinking about it regardless.

  But I was more worried about Ruth now than about the signs or the Time Spheres.

  Jonah was right that we hadn’t heard a peep from Ruth since the start of the room. I’d been so busy with our mob encounters that I hadn’t given her safety much thought, which made me feel like a bad friend and party member.

  But maybe it just meant that Ruth was having a harder time with her enemies than we were and didn’t have time to message. Jonah did have a point about Ruth being the party’s Pulse, which meant she was our designated healer, and healers were not known for their combat prowess. The party page showed that she was still alive, though it looked like she’d lost a quarter of her health recently.

  Yet I knew from experience that merely being alive in this room didn’t automatically equate to being safe. I’d been alive when those dang glyphcrawlers had tied me up with their webbing and nearly killed me with their ultimate spell. Ruth might be in a similar situation.

  Sadly, there was nothing we could do to save or help Ruth. All we could do was keep going forward and hope that all of us made it to the exit before the timer ended. If we were quick, maybe we could then backtrack to find Ruth or Jonah if either of them hadn’t—

  Suddenly, I heard a shout from Nimbus: “Aaron! The exit!”

  I looked up to see that Nimbus had already resumed hopping. He stopped at what appeared to be the end of the muddy path, sitting between two trees, staring at something beyond them. He was excitedly hopping up and down, splashing mud everywhere in his excitement.

  I rushed up behind Nimbus and peered into the next clearing.

  Nimbus was right.

  A wide clearing, similar to the one we’d emerged in at the start of the room, opened up from this point. A thin mud trail, with shallow puddles of water on every side, led from the foggy forest to what looked like the room exit on the other end. It was a simple wooden door identical to the one we had used to enter the room, complete with the same Life and Decay glyphs from before. In fact, I almost thought it was the same door until I noticed how the area surrounding it was very different from our starting area.

  A quick glance around the area did not show any mobs or even any hints of mobs. But that did not mean we were free to cross to the exit. There could have been mobs hiding somewhere nearby, though there didn’t need to be. I didn’t see either Ruth or Jonah, which was troubling. If they weren’t here, then we wouldn’t be able to move on to the next room despite having reached the end of the room.

  “Aaron, do you see the door?” Nimbus pointed with his nose at the door. “It must be the exit!”

  I nodded, still scanning the clearing. “Be careful. There could be traps.”

  Nimbus rolled his eyes. “You are too paranoid sometimes, you know that, Aaron? The dungeon doesn’t need traps at this point. We are the only ones who made it this far, after all, and we need the whole Party to advance to the next room. That means even if we walk right up to the door and try to open it, we won’t be able to. Traps would be unnecessary. This is probably the safest place in the dungeon.”

  I pursed my lips. “Not terrible logic there, but—”

  “I say we wait here for Jonah and Ruth to catch up to us,” said Nimbus. “The countdown timer is still an issue, but we could probably find some simple mobs to fight to reset the timer until Jonah and Ruth arrive.”

  Nimbus hopped onto the muddy path, forcing me to walk after him to avoid getting separated. “Right, but don’t you think we should go looking for the others since we can’t leave until the whole Party is here?”

  Nimbus shook his head as he hopped, splashing mud under his feet. “That would require going back into the forest and getting lost. We don’t know where they are and can’t even use your portable to find them. Besides, it sounds like Jonah, at least, is on his way here. I’m sure that Ruth is, too. She’s probably just focused on surviving.”

  It was hard to keep the doubt out of my voice as I spoke. “All right, I guess, but—”

  Snap.

  A net erupted from the mud under my feet, completely covering my body in an instant. I let out a yell as the net pulled me into the air, coming to a halt several feet above the muddy path. I hung upside-down in the net, which felt rough and taut against my skin, breathing hard as my head spun from the sudden change in position.

  “Aaron!” said Nimbus. “You okay?”

  I turned my head over my shoulder and saw Nimbus sitting on the path ahead of me. He was outside the net, meaning that he had somehow avoided it despite being ahead of me on the path. His ears were up and alert, nose quivering with concern and confusion.

  Then the room blinked several times around us and a red notification with white words pinged into my vision:

  WARNING: Codex anomaly detected by dungeon defense systems. Activating defense protocols … please wait … defense protocols overridden. Allowing hacker to manifest …

  That wasn’t good. What kind of Codex anomaly had the dungeon detected? I immediately flashed back to my trial back in the North Forest Codexium. Was this dungeon glitching out like my Arcane Simulation?

  Or was there something far more malicious afoot?

  Nimbus must have seen the notification, too, because he immediately grunted and said, “Aaron, did you see that warning notification? I don’t like it. I don’t like it one bit.”

  My portable pinged and I saw a message from Jonah:

  Jonah: I just got a strange warning message about a Codex anomaly somewhere in the room. Any idea what it’s about, Aaron?

  Before I could answer either Jonah or Nimbus, a male voice, high and cruel, spoke from the trees around us. “Thanks for walking into my trap. I will ensure it is the last thing you ever do.”

  patreon.com/LucasFlint

  Codex Trial sign up and download page