Take the nondescript path

Suspecting the fortified path to be a trap, you head down the plain tunnel and hope you won’t be running around blindly again.

For another hour, you move onward with the same lack of direction from earlier. Just as you start to regret your decision, you come upon a large cavern littered with rock formations. This would make a good place to rest.

After you set up camp, you find yourself rapidly growing tired. You promised yourself you wouldn’t let your guard down until you got out of this place, but the hours of wandering have sapped your strength. You fade in and out of consciousness for a good half-hour before you finally doze off.

In your dreams, you live out a fantasy of yours. You waltz into your village carrying the fruits of your adventures: relics of an ancient civilization, the heads of slain foes, and enough gold to forge a throne out of. Ah, yes, and your friends and family bound out of their homes, their feet lightly touching the gravel with deliberate steps.

Wait.

Your eyes snap open and you hold in a scream. You are surrounded by . . . things. You jump up and clumsily pull out your sword, still groggy from waking-up. There are Rat-Men surrounding you from virtually every side. The only exception is the passageway you came through. These creatures must be Kobolds. Rat-Men aren’t true Kobolds, mind you, but they were often mistaken at distance for the small, humanoid reptiles that have since gone extinct. The name stuck.

If you had to guess, you’d say the Kobolds number about thirty strong. There’s no way you could fight this many of them and win, even if their individual frames aren’t as tall or muscular as the average human’s. Thus, your options are to run or to surrender.

God knows what the Kobolds want with you, but resisting and getting caught will only make it worse. On the other hand, it is possible for you to escape if you lose the Rat-Men in the winding tunnel networks, but where would you run to? The outside? The barricades from earlier?