I followed the little guy to the console next to the pad as he hit the button for the settings and stared at the readouts.

  “It’s almost all yellow or green,” he reported back to the other two, who were moving in our direction. Quite a few were red, including one entitled Power Harmonics. I reached over and touched it to see what it would show. The screen changed to an error report, and the phase modulator was switched off. I switched it back on.

  “We keep that off, it makes it worse,” the guy said, showing how it was now reporting more errors.

  “Yeah, looks like it needs calibrating,” I said and hit the button for auto-calibration. It made no changes. Strange. I would have thought that would have done something. It had an options button, which opened up a field with numbers all over the place. No wonder the autocalibration was failing. Someone had set the tolerance ranges to the same value or the higher end at less than the lower end. Honestly, I was surprised whoever designed this interface even allowed that… I hit the restore defaults button. Clicked accept. Tried the autocalibration again and watched it trickle through; numbers which meant very little to me went from red to green.

  “You understand what it is saying?” he asked me when I went through a few more of the options and soon had them from red to green or yellow.

  “Some of it. Some words, like this one,” I said, pointing at something which wasn’t even in letters, “I don’t know, but these ones are about stabilising power so it doesn’t fry the circuits… I’m guessing the cores were burning out quite quickly?”

  “We’ve been lucky if they last a week,” said one of the other guys who was looking over my shoulder.

  “Can we teleport?” a worried voice asked. I looked over to see a woman dressed in white next to a worried-looking Clark and a small handcart with Jax on it being pushed by one of the other people in white.

  “Yes!” the small man said, “Sorry, I know you haven’t finished, but we should let the Healers do their duty.”

  I nodded and stepped to the side. The guy switched back to the main menu, selected floor 0 as the destination on the list and then nodded to the small group. They moved onto the platform, and the woman put her hand on the pedestal, which rose from the floor. With a wooshing noise, a barrier surrounded the platform. There was a loud humming buildup and then another whoosh noise, and they were gone. The barrier disappeared.

  “That was a lot faster.” One of the men said, wide-eyed, then he looked at me. “Would you mind talking me through what you have done? I think I need to take notes.”

  “I think that is about all I can do without a system manual…” I said, staring at the now mostly green system report with only one red. Too many unknown words in that one.

  “Thank you,” one of the engineers said, closing his notebook with a firm snap. “I don’t think I have ever seen it so green.”

  “You done?” Jacobs asked. I turned to look at him and nodded. “Good, we cleared a few more rooms while you were playing, and we think it will be a good time to take a break for dinner.” I looked at the system clock. Looks like I’d lost track of time again.

  “We going back up?” I asked him.

  “Best to.” The engineer next to me said. “This room stays the same between resets, but you don’t want to be caught in here when it moves. We move anything not robust out.”

  “When is the next reset?” Jacobs asked. The guy nodded at the clock counting down over the door. 56 minutes.

  “Don’t know why, I thought it was midnight…” I said.

  “It takes about an hour, but we like to start fresh in the mornings,” he nodded. “Thank you for this. I’ll let them know how much you have helped.”

  Peachy put her hand on the pedestal, confirmed our destination, and we felt the hum build up, the barrier take shape. There was a flash. Then we stood in a chamber up top, being waved out by a man in a suit. I saw Diane turn to say something to the person she had been speaking to, and then she walked across to join us.

  “Congratulations. Clark, let me know you all passed and that you are all responsible for saving his brother’s life. On behalf of Toreck, thank you. If you’ll come this way, I’ll escort you through the checkout process.”

  Diane led us through to the room we had seen earlier, with a group having their yield measured. There was a large stack of items on a cart already waiting for us. The items Clark had been carrying.

  “The first step is to empty out your inventories of everything you acquired on the delve. Expendables should go on that table. You then place your hand on that red crystal to confirm your weight.” We each followed her instructions. Despite that, we had only picked up a little here and a little there; between the eight of us, there was a substantial load of items.

  Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

  “I assume you wish to keep the crafting crystals?” Diane asked, and we nodded. “You can trade them in for an estimated half the worth of the item, but if you choose not to, we don’t count it as part of the split, only once you have had it crafted. Make sure you declare them like you do expendables next time you go in.”

  We sat back and watched the experts appraising our haul. Finished stripping out components from some of the scrap corpses we brought back. There was a lot of discussion around the Bull’s head, and in the end, Diane asked if we minded it being declared a trophy.

  “What’s that?” Peachy asked.

  “We display it as a worthy kill. The party who took it out, and what infamous deeds we know of, are listed.”

  “Not be a problem for Jax?” Darksider asked, “He almost died to it.”

  “In my experience, it normally brings solace in knowing what almost killed you has been ended,” quietly said the Magistrate, with a nodding Paul at his side. “Have we got the accounting for this group's first delve?” he asked Diane.

  “Yes, Sir,” she said, passing him a sheet she took from the lead appraiser. He looked down at the number, and his eyes went wide. He offered it to Paul, whose eyes then mirrored the magistrates, and then he nodded at us, with a satisfied smile.

  “Excellent work,” he said to us before turning to Paul, “Everything you promised. If the other team are successful, I think we can definitely discuss opening up our delve to your people.”

  “Ok, so very few of the items fall into the list, which makes splitting easier. We are happy to buy your share at fair market price, or you can opt to try and sell it.” Diane said

  “Sell,” I said. We had discussed it while the haul was being appraised, and none of us fancied traipsing around looking for buyers, and the bits we wanted were the crafting crystals and the few bits of gear.

  “Excellent, that makes it easier. So, excluding those items you are keeping, and split eight ways…”

  “Nine,” I corrected

  “Nine?” She looked up at me.

  “Clark should get a cut,” Jacobs said.

  “He fought alongside us, took damage. Seems only fair,” Ant said. It was something all eight of us had been in agreement on.

  “Normally assessors don’t get a cut…” Diane pondered. “But while it is a good first haul, it’s not enough to bribe him with…and if he was going to be swayed by anything, it would have been saving his brother. Ok, I can’t see any reason to reject that…nine ways it is.”

  We stepped out of the appraisal area sixty gold and nine silver better off, just in time to see another group coming up the ramp, apparently having left it to the very last minute to finish their delve. They were being led by a tired-looking middle-aged man in the armour of the local delvers, and behind him were five very familiar faces. The archer looked up at us. Her eyes went wider. A big grin split her face as she gave us a huge wave. Voice, Daisy, Sam and George followed her gaze, and we got a bunch of waves from them as well.

  “What do you mean, they are all mages?” Diane's voice exclaimed.

  “Thanks for the group,” Ant told us, pulling my attention back to the group. “It’s been eye-opening how far behind we are.”

  “Nah, you were pulling your own,” Peach responded. “And thank you as well. It’s been fun.”

  “I think we should take a trip to Landing,” Chango said. “Pick up some magic.”

  “And healing… definitely need healing if we want to push the delve!” said Beatnik.

  “Looking for a guild?” Darksider asked.

  “Thanks for the offer, but we have some friends who are in the tutorial, and we have already agreed to form one with them. One question, though… How do we get to Landing?” Ant asked.

  “Oh, yeah, let me share my map,” Darksider said, “but you might be better off heading west…”

  “Ava, has there been any news I should know?” I called out as I opened my fridge to decide on what to have for dinner.

  “There has been some movement in the stock exchange, but nothing you have shown interest in. Most of the tech news is fixated with Velkaria today.” Ava responded. “Would you like me to find a stream for you to watch while you eat?”

  “Sure,” I said as I pulled the defrosted chicken from the bottom shelf. Something quick. Not too heavy. Chicken stir-fry it is. Having decided, I pulled some of the fresh vegetables out of the veg section of my fridge. And the dried noodles from the cupboard. I filled the kettle and then moved to the island to prep the veg.

  “So Selvenia, what can you tell us about the Elves?” A male voice asked. The screen was showing the roof of a wooden hut.

  “So character creation is much like the other factions. I’m playing a cute wood elf, and when I woke up, I was lying in a hut… well, here is the video of my first experiences.”

  I gave the noodles a couple of minutes to start before I started cooking the chicken stir-fry while Selvenia went through a tutorial session. The Elf starting town was situated in a forest on the edge of a cliff, and offered a spectacular view over a much larger forest below. The start of it involved the narrator leaving the hut at the top of the tallest tree and slowly walking down, learning the basics in different chambers.

  I sat down to eat as the narrator talked about her experience learning how to shoot a short bow. Looks like the claims that the elves were united in the race description were an exaggeration. The high elves shooting their long bows were clearly looking down on the short bow-using wood elves. Both races were giving a cold shoulder to the lone dark elf player, even though he was out-shooting everyone.

  I finished my meal and looked in the freezer for tomorrow. I grabbed a portion of diced beef and put it on a plate in the fridge to defrost. The washing up went into the sink to be done later, and I headed up to get back in the game.