Chapter 3-4
While the behavior of dungeons is now empirically well-understood, many questions remain unanswered. To date, no one has determined where a dungeon’s actual physical location lies. The act of passing through a portal disrupts all known tracking Skills and Spells, rendering them useless for attempting to locate the other end of the portal.
In pre-System times, the word ‘dungeon’ referred to an underground prison. However, despite extensive subterranean exploration below multiple stable dungeons, no abnormalities have been located. There are even those who claim that the environs of a dungeon lie not on Earth but in some other parallel dimension.
- Rufus Veres, Level 37 Verbose Historian, A Brief History of the System
When I’d entered the Tutorial, there was no sensation of movement – I was one place, and then the next, with no in between. Entering the dungeon was exactly the same. The instant the timer hit zero, the portal in front of me vanished, along with the empty moonlit landscape around us.
We appeared in the greenest, wettest area I’d ever seen. I blinked as my eyes watered from the bright light – it certainly wasn’t night in here. Once I could see again, I looked around in stunned amazement. In front of me, past Elin, were towering brown columns rising high above us. Their surface was textured like – dead gods, those are trees! I looked up, seeing branches with thick, green leaves. They were so much bigger, so much more vibrant, than the desert plants surrounding Sunland.
This must be what it’s like when you climb the Angel’s Spine… it’s beautiful! I’ve only seen trees from miles away, I never imagined this!
On my right, about ten yards away, rose a sheer rock cliff. There was a strange sound coming from behind me, like soft thunder, but going on and on. I turned around and water falling from the top of the cliff, arching down to splash on a pile of boulders. It formed an enormous pool, maybe fifty feet across. I’ve never seen this much water so close in my life… I can feel it in the air, like it just rained.
There was so much water it was even spilling out of the pool and flowing away in a broad stream easily ten feet wide. It took me several moments to remember that we were in a dungeon, I was so amazed by the sights and smells and sounds around me. I gathered myself slowly and looked around more carefully, not seeing any movement aside from us, the flowing water, and some of the branches lazily moving in the air above us. The dungeon was brightly lit, though I couldn’t see the sun anywhere, and the sky above us was grey as if covered in clouds.
<All right,> I started talking into the Comms when I was interrupted.