Inside the Shadow Maze.

John managed to avoid crashing his bike on the way home and that despite Sylvia's tendency to slip her hands in his boxers, putting a strain on their anti boner enchantment.

Passing through the only room of the above ground floor he checked the tablet like device on the pillar.

"Hey, look at that. I can add more rooms and floors to the castle now. I don't have the stuff for complex rooms, but let's see... I could add another floor for 100 stone units, with some resources farming it will be easy." he told Sylvia.

"I will try to spread watch flowers around, it might help locate the spots when they appear. Are we going to go down now?" she replied.

"Yeah, let's gear up." he put on his full combat gear and got a few things out. He gave Sylvia the second tool belt he had bought on his first trip to the hardware store, he loaded it with a flashlight, a few spray cans, spools of rope, glowsticks... He prepared the same for himself and started walking downstairs to the entrances of Maze.

"Which one are we going to try?" asked his green companion.

"I have no idea, all five look identical to me. We shouldn't split, it wouldn't be safe. Let's just say we pick this one, it is facing towards the entrance behind the forest. Of course it wouldn't be that simple. I don't even know if all of the tunnels are linked together or if the entrance we take matters. We will just explore a bit, see what it is about and try to mark what we can.

After knotting the end of a rope spool to a hook he installed he walked into the strange dark corridor and stopped instantly.

Crunch!

He aimed the beam of his flashlight downwards to see what he just stepped in. The ground at the entrance was littered with mice skeletons and scarab exoskeleton. It seemed like the mice of the dungeon were stopping the beetles from going inside and the beetles were stopping the mice from spreading in the tunnels. More worrying, some of the night blue shells were nearly 6 inches long.

John hadn't had any trouble with any creature in his kingdom yet, would it still held true in this strange place.

"Be careful where you step." he warned Sylvia.

The tunnel didn't continue straight ahead, just like he expected it soon took a sharp turn. It went left and downward so sharply that it was almost an about turn one floor lower. It then went right after a dozen meters. Soon he finally arrived at his first cross. He took a spray can out and marked the way home and he tunnel he would pick. The paint kept glowing very faintly after being exposed to the high power flashlights and reflected brightly any ambient light, making them impossible to miss for him. He also cracked a glowstick and pushed it in a crack of the wall under the marking. He had decided to number the tunnels to always know how many crossings he was from the entrance.

"Let's continue!" he announced, taking the right hand tunnel. The beetles seemed to flee the beams of light, scurrying away in holes to hide themselves, some burrowing into the mud. The ones he was seeing looked sometimes big for normal world insects but none were monster big.

"It's really cold here. And so dark..." said Sylvia. John realized that it wasn't the best environment for her, being used to and depending on sunlight.

"I don't know how long you can go without sunlight, if you start feeling unwell tell me immediately." he ordered her. She nodded in agreement.

Beetles were not the only thing in those tunnels. They could not survive only from the few mice at the entrance, not with kilometers of tunnels. Some sort of fungus and mushrooms were growing on the floor and walls. And seeing that there were still scarab shells laying around, beetles were also on the menu.

"There really isn't much to it. Right? I mean it's our 23rd turn, it goes up and down, left and right, it's dark, damp, there's mushrooms and beetles that flee when we approach. I thought there would be more things." said Sylvia, clearly less enthusiastic about this adventure after half an hour of walking in dark corridors. John agreed with her on that, having modern equipment and lights probably reduced the difficulty of exploring this place. Without light he wasn't sure of how the creatures lurking in the dark would act... The clicking sound of their legs were unsettling but his Gamer's spirit prevented him from panicking about the fact that he was deep underground in an uncharted labyrinth crawling with giant insects.

"I know, me too. I really underestimated how hard it would be to find this thing. And it is only one of 5 tunnels. How could I do that? I would need a quicker way to explore it, if only this summoning thing did not suck so much... Hey what is that?" he could see something different at the end of one of the tunnels of this crossing. After carefully marking it, he advanced with caution to what seemed to be a large room.

It was big and circular, mushrooms bigger than he was were growing there. In the center stood a large rock that was glowing faintly red.

"John look !" said Sylvia, pointing to the side of the room.

The center of the room was a resource spot, but there was something even more interesting here. An old chest, half buried and covered in grime.

Not seeing an obvious lock John used "Clean" to see more clearly how it worked. The top of the chest was flat and had some kind of mechanism on it seven interlocking flat rings, with a few grooves linking them. Each segment of the circles had a sort of rune or symbol on them, some of them were apparently missing.

"It looks like a puzzle lock. But I don't understand the symbols so I have no idea how it works. I can turn the rings and using the grooves move segments from one to the other... But I have no idea how to unlock it. Sylvia, just try fumbling around with it, I will harvest the resource spot. " he told her.

With one lamp aimed at the stone and the other at the chest they each started their work. Sylvia was turning the rings and John swinging his pickaxe. The loots of this spot were different. There was copper and gold in this one.

After 5 loots and 30 units of stone John stopped, Sylvia had just called him. "What is it Sylvia?"

"Look, it seems that some of the symbols are looking a bit like each other and like the one at the center of the disks." she explained. John looked more closely, she was right there looked to be seven series of symbols, except that they were all scrambled around. Sylvia apparently had started to gather one of them on the correct ring.

"It doesn't make sense, there's not enough of each kind to fill each ring and those there are not in any series! Wait! I get it, there's a notch at the center of those grooves. Those extra pieces fit there facing empty segments on the rings around them. Well done Sylvia. Please continue gathering the symbols together, I will help you finish once I am done mining that stuff. " he thanked her.

His next loot was very lucky, he got a ruby. Followed closely by 12 units of copper ore and 12 of stone.

Swiping the sweat on his forehead (he should have removed his armor to do that) he went to sit with Sylvia. It was time to put this thing in overdrive. Using Move and reflexes honed by thousands of hours of playing video games he started turning the seven rings at once, solving the puzzle like it was some sort of rubbiks cube.

Soon enough he had all the series gathered on the right disks, Sylvia was astonished at how fast he was doing it.

John stopped and grabbed the top of the chest, pulling hard on it...