Sector 341 002

I checked in with the chat on my way to the hallway. The page was full of text in conversations between the other groups. I guessed that it made sense that our forty minute challenge with a 25 minute break afterwards would leave us behind the pack, and, indeed, most of them had moved on to the next challenge.

Chat

Anyone heard from Alex's team? -Artemis

We're moving on to the next room. Many of us still have to complete a lot of rooms if we want to get out of here alive. -Luigi

We're fine so far. It's, uh, actually a written exam. -Kristen

Do not hand it in before you're all done and ready for something bad to happen. -Artemis

Look, I don't want to say this, but nobody has heard from Alex or the team in over an hour. You shouldn't wait for them if they might not come back. -Kristen

There were several scratched-out lines. Presumably from Artemis.

Shit, really sorry. It was rough going, but we're all alive and in one piece. -Alex

What the fuck took you an hour? -Artemis

Challenge took about forty minutes, then we had to get healed. It was rough, people were distracted. -Alex

Fine, I'm just glad you're all okay. Please update us regularly, I thought you were dead. -Artemis

I was about to write back about using the party ability that let us know where the most direct path to our living party members was, but decided to check it out, just in case I was going to make an ass out of myself. Sure enough, I could find a direct line to Anna, but not the other party members. It sort of made sense, if we were in a place where there was no direct path to our allies.

Shit, sorry, I assumed the party ability would allow you to check in. Guess we cannot meet up until it's over. -Alex

We're trying every time we hit a hallway. We should probably get going. Good luck! -Artemis

Luck to everyone. Entering next hallway now. -Alex

As we might have expected the hallway looked much like the first one, once again with many numbered rooms. At this point, our only remaining overlaps were the psychopathy room that we all shared, along with basically the entire rest of our sector and the Arcane Knowledge top 5 room, which I shared with Anna. So, unless we didn't find either of those rooms (and I was still very much against the idea of entering the psychopathy room), we would be splitting up here. Of course, if we found none of those rooms, all of us had passing grades so we could just pick a challenge room at random and all go through.

"Huh," Anna said. "What is it?" I said. "It's open," Anna said. "Don't touch that," Hannah said. "Nah, we had to check," Anna said.

And I saw what she meant. She had opened one of the doors behind us. In other words, we could enter any of the doors in front or behind us. Presumably this also meant that we could spend as much time and try as many doors as we wanted. Which definitely changed things.

"Not the same numbers," Anna said. "You can remember that?" Zack said. "Knowledge," we both said simultaneously. "Huh?" Zack said. "Attribute," Hannah said. "God, I hope it's not another fucking puzzle," I said. "Yeah. Best case scenario going forwards will get us closer to the exit. Worst case scenario, we have to find the right pattern of rooms somehow," Anna said. "How would we know which?" Hannah said. "No way to know until we hit the exit," Anna said. "Well, we could hit the same door twice. We'd know that they're not actually linear then," I said. "Nerd," Anna said. "Anyways, let's look for any of our specific doors, might as well start with completing the quests," I said. "Might be better to ignore going back for now," Hannah said. "In either case, let's make sure it's a choice we actually have to make before making it," I said.

We started investigating the doors one by one. It was pretty quick going- each of us picked a number we needed and we each went a different direction- two on the front doors, two on back, me taking the back right quarter.

I was about twenty doors down when a door right in front of me slammed open and six people pushed through it and fell on the floor in a disorganized heap.

"God, oh thank god we made it," a red-headed, thirty-something year old man with a significant mustache said. "Close the door. The door," a close shaved young black woman with expensive looking sunglasses said.

The rest of them were a mix of people who looked like they could have come from any metropolitan city, provided that city got miserable weather. All of them had very distinctly Earth clothes and hairstyles. And both of the ones who had spoken spoke with a distinct British accent. They only noticed me when I muttered "We're not in Kansas any more,".

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"We're armed! Don't come any closer," a squat older white lady said, raising an umbrella that definitely had a twisted Tower style to it. Uh, Tower as in The Tower, not Tower as in the Tower of London or whatever.

"You're not from our sector!" I exclaimed. "And how do we know you ain't one of them monsters?" The old woman said. "I'm Alex Vorhal. I'm from Illinois. I worked in data entry, for fucks sake," I said. "What filthy language! Youths these days," she said. "Wait, how do you know that? About the sectors?" the ginger man said, as they were all getting their bearings and getting back up.

This was about the point where the rest of my party rushed over.

"A fecking zombie!" a dangerously skinny young woman in a hoodie shouted at Hannah. "What's going on here," Hannah said. "We're all from Earth. We all have Journals. Look," Anna said, showing hers. "Hey, maybe we chill out and introduce ourselves and take a second to figure out what's what," Zack said. "Huh?" I said. "Y'know, chill out," Zack said. "Yeah, but when did you become the voice of reason," I said. "I like chillin'," Zack said.

And all in all we were all acting in such an incredibly human way, that we all came to the inevitable conclusion that we were, indeed, all from Earth.

So, we all took a breath and introduced ourselves. The old lady insisted on Mrs. Hockley, the red-header man was Arnold, the stylish black woman was Brooke, and the skinny girl was Emma. The remaining were two men, who turned out to be brothers, Raj and Ajit, I was pretty sure were Sikh based on the turbans and knives at their sides, but they didn't bring it up, and so I didn't pry. All of them were English, all from someplace called Birmingham and all except for Emma spoke in basically the same accent that I only knew as British, while Emma seemed to mostly communicate in swear words and slang. I started to pick up the varied utility of the word 'innit' within minutes of speaking with her.

"It's just us. The rest of the sector sort of fell apart," Brooke said. "It's the kids these days. Soon as anything went wrong they all lost their minds and started arguing. It's cause of political correctness gone mad," Mrs. Hockley said. "Fucking boomers crying about political correctness and everything, then get triggered by basic fucking grammar," Emma said. "Young lady!" Mrs. Hockley said. "People are dead. A lot of people. Stop looking for someone to blame," Raj said. "Right, you mentioned you knew your sector? We didn't really get what that means, except that there were probably other groups around," Brooke said. "Yeah, it showed up once before, in a quest. Ours is sector 341 001," I said. "Fuck, that means there was like sixty eight million two hundred thousand two hundred people here, minimum. That's like the whole of bloody Britain," Emma said. "How did you do that in your head?" Raj said. "Knowledge, innit?" Emma said, keeping the letter 'k' entirely out of the conversation. And, yeah, I found it just about as quick as her to do simple multiplication in my head at this point, now that I tried. "Probably more, it's pretty unlikely he stopped at 341 001," I said. "Could be something else. Like, this is the 341st Tower and we're sector 1 of, say, 999," Anna said. "Did you do any better than us? The voice said that sectors got above 20% on average, right? So we know that we were especially unfortunate," Raj said. "I think there's about 50 of us left," I said. "Should be 49, not counting the Kyrn," Hannah said. "Don't get jealous alright? Three quarters of their friends still died," Emma said. "Well, we did sort of get lucky. Someone managed to get about half of us organized, but we still lost about half of that number," I said.

So, we explained what we had gone through in the last few days, and the Birmingham group explained their situation. The first day had gone more or less like what we had experienced, including the part where Raj and Ajit had actually lost two strangers in a cafeteria. They had fought until it was clear that the others wouldn't be getting back up before running though, which made me either think they're cool, or that I was a piece of shit- I'd decide which when I had the time to think. They'd started trading and using Tower gold as currency, incentivizing everyone to go out and look for monsters to fight and loot to loot.

That turned out to be a mistake, when people started assigning excessive value to the useless discs. Some people sold all of their gear to hoard gold, others died trying to fight monsters too strong for them to get more money, and there had apparently even been rumors about some 'friendly fire' incidents that left the survivors richer than their fallen party members.

This had all been exacerbated when the bell rang and the monsters flooded their sector just as it had ours. From that point on it had been a desperate scramble for survival, where the vast majority of people had died, and the halls never got clear enough to risk going back for loot or gold. The group in front of us had been a group of ten at the start of the last day, and had done their best to stay out of sight, advance carefully from classroom to classroom and developed some great tactics to keep safe while still getting a steady stream of experience. The only real difference from our sector was that magical armor and weapons had been quite rare, and most of their items were in the form of jewelry and permanent enhancement potions. Their effects seemed a bit weaker than some of our gear, but on the other hand they mostly stacked and couldn't be taken away.

Then we explained what we had gone through, about Artemis and the Adventurers Guild, and how we'd managed to clear a path to the exit.

"That's what I was bloody saying, innit? A fucking mutual aid collective action type of shit," Emma said. "You did say it. Maybe we should have listened, but it wouldn't have worked. Everyone else was already out for themselves by the time we met," Arnold said. "Whatever," Emma said. "Anyways, it's not like we're like an organized movement or anything. Artemis just happened to be in the right place and the right time, and managed to make something resembling structure, so we could figure out how to get as many people out as possible," I said. "It's a good thing. We can probably join up, if this Artemis person is as reasonable as she sounds," Raj said. "I'm not joining some sort of a hippie commune. Not again," Mrs. Hockley said. "Well either way, we still have to get through these halls before we get to the point where we choose one way or another," Arnold said. "That's what I was thinking. The group is definitely open, at least for now. If there really are millions of people in here that could change things, but for now I'm sure you'd be welcome," I said.

We went over our Journal and Quest basics and found that they were pretty much identical. It was unusual by our standards that four of the six- Mrs. Hockley, Emma, Brooke and Ajit- were primary spellcasters, but other than that all of the stat names and advancement structure was pretty much identical, with the exception that the word 'armor' was spelled 'armour' in Ajit's spell description. Which, of course, meant that, since they were the only four surviving Arcane people of their sector, they had also qualified for the Arcane Mastery Extra Credit quest, which led them to the same room as me and Anna, which meant that we now really wanted to find it.

We began looking for it without much hope, agreeing to all just go through a challenge door together if we fail to anything, when Zack shouted: "Got it! Room 1912!"

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.