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Every runner knew about the Dungeons. Labyrinths that spanned miles underground with vaults within them, containing hundreds, if not thousands of coins, before their doors would lock and everything within them vanished into thin air, leaving nothing but stone in its wake. Hax had never been near one, not for a lack of trying but because they spawned at random, until the six thousandth nine hundred and thirty eighth day moon of his life.
He, Rowl and Mongey had set up a shack off the edge of a village. They heard the Dungeon before they saw it. It groaned, creaked and rummaged underneath their feet, hollowing the ground. Their tent shaking and the metal poles rattling, slowly rising above the ground.
“What the fuck.” Rowl said, the first of the three to notice. Hax and Mongey both stared at him, Hax opened his mouth to ask ‘what?’ Only for a pile of dirt to explode right where he stood. He jumped out of his skin and inched away from it.
“What was that?”
“Do I look like I know?”
“Maybe we should move for a while until this passes.” Mongey said, after a second of silence. “We can always look around afterwards.” They didn’t reply, simply packed their stuff and started to jog into the nearby forest, The ground continued to shake under their feet but no more dirt explosions occurred. The trees stood strong, roots somehow fine as the world was terraformed underneath them.
They reached the beach when the world stopped shaking. A good thing because otherwise they might slip into a sand hole and get buried underneath it and left to suffocate. Hax wandered over to the water, brushed the worst of his fringe out of sight, held a hand to the top of his eyes to block out the sun and looked out to spot whatever might have caused the world to shake.
A golden sandstone temple, smaller than what they typically looted, sat to the left of them. A gold block sat on top of it, glistening in the sun.
“I’ve never seen a structure generated like that before. Do you think the world made a mistake?” Mongey asked.
“Structures don’t generate that badly. It’s more likely to lack a roof at all, if the mispawn is because of a ruined portal.”
“You think it’s a ruined portal spawning on top of a desert temple, which is also buried?”
“Guys. Do you think maybe it’s some kind of new structure that’s been added in recently? Because, I think it’s like, slightly too rectangular to be a desert temple,”
“I don’t see it.”
Hax pulled Rowl to his side, and spun him around a few degrees. Rowl rolled his eyes at the motions until he squinted and, “That is too long to be a desert temple. But new structures don’t create themselves where players exist.”
“Could it be a dungeon?” Mongey asked.
“No? They only spawn in jungles?”
“I mean those like, structures that HBG has been reportedly looting recently. Y’know, the ones that made Feinberg really rich?”
“The Labyrinths? Don’t they have to travel really really far to access them?”
“I thought so but, maybe not.”
“Do you want to check it out?”
Rowl received his answer in Mongey and Hax sprinting towards the entrance. The sand skidded under their feet as they vanished round the corner and towards its entrance. Rowl caught up to them seconds later. It is like a desert temple besides the odd shape and the golden lines trailing across the edge, spiralling into a pattern at the top of the entrance and the grand double doors, with golden handles. Hax touched it, pressed down and the hatch unlocked so he could pull it open.
“Hey. Do any of you guys know how these things work?” Hax asked. He took his hand off the doorknob and turned to face his friends.
“It can’t be that hard to figure out.” Mongey replied, pushing the door open, “Should just be as simple as get in, get the gold and leave.”
“But don’t they lock in like when you’re robbing a bank and you accidentally trip a wire and suddenly all the metal doors around you start closing?”
“That’s not how bank robberies work.”
“No, no. Like in those really fancy banks that they rob in the movies. And you make one mistake and suddenly you have to break out of jail except there’s no jail in the Dungeons, you’re just like stuck there.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Did you guys not hear about Skycrab? He was messaging people, saying he was done and then they just never saw him again. I was just saying, what if the reason why that happened is because the Dungeon is something like a bank robbery and if we open one of the vaults wrong, it’s like crossing a laser in a spy movie?”
“Ohhh.”
“Do we think that’s likely the case?”
“We’ll find out when we go in.” Rowl said. He pressed his hand against the weight and pushed the door open. It revealed a dark hallway, sparse torches lit the halls, enough for them to see where they were heading but not much more. They stepped inside side by step and promptly triggered the tripwire hook, attached to the sandstone blocks they were standing on and went tumbling straight into the ground.
Hax’s head pounded as he opened his eyes to find a large, circular room with a giant hourglass in the middle. A pipe filled with sand was running up to the top, filling the timer from a small hole in the top. He rubbed his head and then scrubbed his eyes and the massive hourglass in a large circular room still remained. Mongey groaned beside him and pushed himself off the ground.
“Where are we?” He asked, also taking in his surroundings with wide eyes, “Am I dreaming? I feel like I’m dreaming?” His voice echoed across the room, bouncing across the walls, over and over until the sound and tone of his words remained but the words themselves did not
“No. You’re not dreaming. I’m here too. Unless I’m dreaming and imagining you waking up.”
“Don’t suggest that, it’s hurting my brain. Is this the dungeon we were looking at earlier?”
“I mean, I think so… But how did we get here?”
“We fell.” Rowl said. He’d pushed himself up and dusted off his beige jumper. Rather than looking around, he tilted his neck upwards to find the hundred or so block drop from the ground. It explained why the world had rumbled without disturbing the tree's roots. They were deep, deep underground. “The better question is why we didn’t respawn.”
“I’m not sure? Maybe the structure had something to do with it?” Mongey suggested, also pushing himself up. Hax refused to hang around the floor any longer, after being the first awake as well, and also stood up. He wandered down the stairs into the centre of the room. Rowl tapped his foot on the stair after him before deciding they were safe enough, and besides, if there was a trap, Hax would certainly set it off first.
On the main floor, several tunnels became apparent. Twelve of them in total, some leading to well lit rooms while others led to poorly lit, cramped tunnels that vanished into the darkness. A few of those tunnels had intricate markings, blue, red, green, and gold running above their open gateways, like symbols. Similarly, was the blocks of sand, too stiff to be typical sand. Hax picked up a handful, watched it trickle down his hands when an notification pinned on his communicator:
NEW ITEM ACQUIRED: Time keepers sand: Normal sand, except it can be used to fill the sand timer to prevent a lock in.
Hax read the notification out. Rowl stepped backwards to stare at the tube running down the sand, which was increasingly slowing down. He followed it until he spotted the end of the tube sat on the floor, a small hole outside the timer.
At a closer look, the hourglass had hours associated with it written over the glass, the lowest being one hour and the top being twenty four. The very top was green while the bottom was a deep red.
“Guess this is how we get locked in.” Mongey said, staring at it, “Do we just put the sand through the cracks and hope it all works out?”
“I’d assume so.”
A large bell echoed across the room. The centre of the timer opened up and sand began to trickle down to the bottom. Hax scooped up the rest of the sand and shoved it in a pile besides the hole. He smiled. “I think we should gather all this.”
He stepped forward to start grabbing more sand when Rowl rolled his eyes and said, “No.”
“No?”
“The vaults must be down some of those tunnels that we can see. Try and make the most of the time we have with this sand searching for gold rather than collecting sand. I can do that. You’re communicator is working, no?”
“Does that make you the sandkeeper?”
“If calling me that makes you leave.” Rowl turned to Mongey, “You too. We’d better make this worth it.”
“Do you not want to do any running?”
“I am okay as long as you both come back in time and do not get locked in. Are both your communicators working so I can tell you if time is getting low?”
Hax sent a quick text to Rowl and his communicator lit up, the bing sound reverberating across the room. He then spoke into the bottom of the mic, “Hello, hello.” The words, crackling slightly but still recognisable echoed from Rowl and Mongey’s communicators, creating a feedback loop between them all until Rowl turned off his communicator.
“Good to know they still work. Now can we start looking for money?”
With that, Hax took off down one of the tunnels. Mongey's footsteps bounced around the main hall, getting quieter and quieter until Hax was so deep into the tunnel he couldn’t hear anything but himself.
The tunnel smelt of faint must and iron. The walls glimmered in the dim light of the torches. Hax slowly lifted one out of its metal holder. It could be like a jungle temple, he thought, where tripwires were ever present and one wrong action led to an attempt on one's life. Runners had mostly mapped out jungle temples before deciding they didn’t offer as much iron and gold as they desired. They would map out the Desert Dungeons, the Labyrinth (what were they calling it?) one day too, but for now, Hax was mindful.
There was no click of a tripwire being activated and Hax adjusted the smooth cylindrical torch in his hand to get a strong grip. He pressed it up close to the wall. The glittering wasn’t dust like he’d initially assumed but instead chunks of gold, embedded into the walls. He pulled the pickaxe out of his inventory and began to mine away at the wall until the chunks of gold fell out. Hax grabbed them from the floor and tucked them into his oversized pocket and continued down the passage, examining every block for the slight gleam of the reflection of light. It was because of this, Hax saw the less saturated, grainy, and when he ran his fingers across it, sand trickled down to the floor.
He mined it with his pickaxe only to find it slow, the thin hook falling through the block like sand. He switched to the shovel to find the block of the timekeepers sand falling into his inventory.
He picked up his communicator, and announced, “I just found some of the timekeepers sand in the passages.”
Mongey yelped down the lines. Rowl asked Hax to quieten down, he could be heard perfectly fine without shouting over the communicator before he said, “Keep a hold of it. When you clear the tunnel, drop it off for me.”
“Do you not want me to give it to you now?”
“I have enough for now. Just don’t forget about it.”
“How did you even see that? It’s so dark in here?” Mongey called.
“I just took a torch out?”
“Did you not worry that it would kill you?”
“I don’t know, I think I was just thinking about jungle temples and how we can hear tripwires before they activate so I figured I had enough time to run away you know. And then nothing happened, which makes sense. They already have us under a massive timer, why’d they add more deathtraps? It just doesn’t make sense.”
Silence down the communicator until Mongey said, “Thanks for that.” and turned his communicator off with a beep. A second beep follows from Rowl’s end so Hax follows suit.
He hums along to a tune he can’t quite remember where he first heard it as Hax continues to mine the pieces of gold from the wall. Mid-way through tearing out a chunk of gold with his pickaxe, a small hole formed in the wall, and deep groans emanated from within it. Hax stumbled back, listening. They’re zombie groans Hax blinks before peeking his eye through the hole. When there is nothing in the darkness, he mines out the rest of the sandstone, small clumps of rock hitting his feet and holds his torch to the hole alongside his eye. The heat makes him wince but he squints, pushes past the headache of his brain melting and spots a spawner. There’s gold within it.
A green hand reaches across the hole. Hax jumps back before it can grab his shirt.
It’s just a zombie. Hax laughs and brushes imaginary dust off himself. Thank god no one else was there to see him or they’ll think he’s chopped, scared of a zombie? C’mon! He’s dealt with much much worse, it was just the shock. He takes the sword out of his inventory and slashes the zombie until it collapses into a puff of smoke, leaving only its foul, rotting flesh.
Hax pockets the rotten flesh, years of instincts have taught him to never overestimate how much food he has. He’ll need to ask Rowl later, when he runs out of steam for the day, if there is food in the centre or if it is something he needs to concern himself with. For now, however, he shoves the torch through the hole, in order to prevent any more zombies spawning from the lack of light, and starts to mine out the spawner in hopes of reaching the gold within. The bars fall apart under the harsh ministrations of being yanked by one Hax in their corners.
Sixty four golden coins, an older currency but still tradeable, were left in the spawner once the zombie egg had been destroyed. Hax scooped them up and the clinked in his bag as he began to go through the dungeon again.
He reached the end of the tunnel after a few minutes of mining out the walls of all their gold. A handful of rotten flesh sagged in his pocket and the gold had begun to weigh him down. The pathfinding was easier than he expected from something he had come to internally refer to as ‘The Labyrinth’ but it did not remain that way.
Hax came across a staircase, of slight jumps or a fall to water at the bottom. He opens up his pie chart instinctively, but the entire thing spins out of his control. There are too many spawners and mobs and he doesn’t know what a magma cube spawning in the Labyrinth represents, is that where he is supposed to go or avoid?”
He chooses to fall to the bottom.
The water splashes the edges of his trousers, adding an additional weight that drags behind him. The sensation of dampness is weird, because the labyrinth itself is so warm, partly because it from the desert and partly because no air can get in or out, leaving it to warm up. The tunnel offers three different options, one a tunnel and two rooms. One room bubbles and cracks with the distinctive sound of lava.
Hax peaks his head inside to spot parkour. At the end is a small pile of coins, equivalent to what he already has in his bag. It’s simple enough, two and three block jumps except every block has a fence caught in the middle. Too much momentum could lead to him tripping and falling off the platform because he tumbled over it. He’s fully capable of doing it. Other challenges runners get invited to participate include harder parkour but also, that parkour isn’t typically over a pool of lava with dubious respawn mechanics in a dungeon that has a history of making people disappear.
Hax pulls out his communicator, “Hey.” He says. Rowl and Mongey come back with a respective ‘hi’. One of them (although it’s unclear who through the communicator) follows this up with a large sigh. “Do any of you guys know what happens if we die in here?”
“Please do not die.” Rowl says, before he explains, “I imagine it would be similar to dying normally? You would respawn with nothing where you last slept, what makes you ask?”
“I found some parkour but don’t worry, I can do it I’m sure.”
Before Rowl (or Mongey, although Hax would guess that Mongey simply did the maybe murderous challenges under the impression he would deal with the fallout if it happened, and therefore, is in no position to judge Hax’s decision making skills) can attempt to talk Hax out of what is, frankly, a great idea, he hangs up on the communicator. He has the foresight to take off his pouch and leave the hundred or so gold he’s collected to the side so it will not burn if he fails.
Hax does a small sprint before jumping just before the edge of the safe zone. He lands on the block fine, arms wrapping around the fence post to keep himself stable, when he realises the fence post doesn’t just mean he might trip and fall but it also prevents him from sprinting a lot.
He doesn’t get enough momentum for his next jump, and promptly falls right into the lava. Hax burns for all thirty seconds before he wakes up back at their base. The first thing he does is check his communicator, to see disappointed messages from Rowl and Mongey, asking him what happened and if he was planning on coming back.
Hax laughs and sends a quick back saying, yes, he’s heading over now.