The room was round and huge. The door that Fox came from was in a cylindrical column and now he could see that there were 3 more equal columns from his left, equally spaced from the wall behind him and from one another. On the other side there was what appeared to be a stone gate, that was closed. Now he new why it took so long to go down, he had come from the ceiling, all the way to this level.
The thing that caught his attention were the images on top of every door in the columns. On his column there was a silhouette of a man, the man's left hand was holding something like a fire, and on his right hand a pistol.
The column to his left was a knight with a two-handed sword. The third one was the image of an archer. And the last one was strange, there was no silhouette, only a skull. If in every door there was a person like him, did the person in the last door die?
Not long after, a sound came from the third door, the one with the archer, and from it, came a young Caucasian man, around 20 years, 1.78m of height, with blond and messy hair. He was wearing a leather armor, bag, bow, quiver with arrows and some knives here and there. He looked strong, but also gave a feeling of speed, like a leopard ready to attack its prey.
The man, that looked like an archer, turned his eyes to Fox. He couldn't see his face, but Fox was a tanned Caucasian, around 1.66 meters of height, short dark hair and a big full beard. He was wearing a military armor, without symbols on it, and a huge gun in his hands and a pistol in his waist. Beside that, he had 2 undead around him, and it appears as if they were under his command. However, none of the three showed hostility to him. While his thoughts were wandering, Fox spoke:
"Do you speak in english, my friend?"
"Ye… Yes sir" A little surprised by the sudden events, he answered without thinking.
"You can call me Fox, buddy."
"Yes sir, I mean Fox. I am Johnny, are you also a player?"
"Just like you, and probably like the guy in this column in the middle, if he can come out alive, that is."
"What do you mean Fox?"
"Note that in every column there is a symbol representing what we choose as our expertise, however, the column to your left has the silhouette of a skull, so the person probably died in there, but we will know soon enough."
They started to chat and know each other. After a while, Fox discovered that Johnny liked to bow hunt with his father, and since he had the skills, he choosed the bow as his main weapon and, to make it better, he enhanced his body with better speed, agility and vision, to help him better use it. He also discovered that before coming here he fought 2 orcs without shield and armor, both fights within rooms of over 20 meters between him and the orcs, perfect targets for archers. Just like him with the "Control Undead", that had met two undead on his way here.
After some time chatting, they started to hear the sound of metal hitting rocks.
Shim
Shim
Shim
"It appears that our last party member has arrived" said Fox while looking to the knights door.
Soon after, the door opened with a bang, and a huge person, around 2 meters height, wearing knight armor and holding a 2 meters long two-handed sword, appeared, slowly he walked 2 steps and… BOOM.
The knight fell head on to the ground.
"Aaaargh... Aaaargh! I can't breath…
Too many steps…
Too much weight…
Too tired." Said the knight in english.
Fox was holding his laughter while wondering, "is this guy stupid? He choosed the heaviest armor available, and descended the stairs in one go."
After controlling his emotions, Fox approached the knight. "Are you ok man? I can help you a little if you want."
"I am just tired... Can you help me with that?"
"Actually I can." Said Fox while he started to chant a spell. "Lend energy", one spell required for the "create undead" spell. This spell allowed the user to give some of his stamina to someone else. After giving ⅓ of his energy to the knight, Fox asked. "Can you get up now?"
It was then that the knight noticed that even though he was still tired, he was now able to get up. After getting up, he took of his helmet, and from it Fox and Johnny were able to see that the man was around 23 years old, Afro-American, shaved hair and beard.
"Was that magic? Wow, that was incredible, a really strange sensation." Said the knight.
"Oh, sorry, I forgot to introduce myself. I am Mark "The knight"." Said the knight as he stuffed his chest and placed his hands on his waist.
"I am Fox, pleasure to meet you"
"Hi, I am Johnny"
After some time chatting, Mark told his story, it was kind of simple. He was raised hearing stories about knights, lords, dragons and beautiful princesses, he always dreamed of fighting a dragon and rescuing a princess and getting her hand in marriage.
It didn't take long for Fox to wonder about the last door, so he said "So now, 3 of the 4 people have arrived, the last one, I think is dead. but why is the door not opening? We should go have a look"
The 3 of them walked in the direction of the stone door. When they were about 20 meters away from the door, they heard a THUD tututututututu, and the door started to open. While the door was opening, they could see 3 armored boots, 2 in front and 1 behind. The one behind had bone legs like that of a skeleton.
"Arm yourselves, get ready for combat." Yelled Fox.
Fox, his skeleton and Johnny got behind Fox's zombie and Mark. They prepared to fight the new possible enemies. After the door completely opened, they saw there enemies. They saw two orcs in front holding a "tower shield" and a "flail", behind them there was a skeleton holding a bow.
Fox commanded while moving to the left to get a better position to shoot "The left is mine! His shield won't be able to stop my bullets. Mark, stall the other one. Zombie, knock the skeleton down and hold him. The rest of you, distract the skeleton." Fox then fired a wave of bullets at the orc, and as he expected, the bullets trespassed the shield and hit the orc. The orc that was marching in his direction started to slow down, and after another wave of bullets, the orc fell.
In the meantime, Mark was distracting the other orc, while Johnny and Fox's skeleton were shooting arrows at the enemy skeleton and Fox's zombie charging in its direction. The arrows didn't do enough damage to it, but it disbalanced him enough for the zombie to get close and knock him down. Zombies have more weight and strength than skeletons, which made it easy for him to hold the skeleton down.
With 1 down and 1 occupied, the only treat was the last orc, or that's what Fox thought. When he looked again, Mark had knocked the shield away from the orc and was raising his sword to finish him... "Shim!" , and the sword descended and cut the orc's head in half.
With both orcs down, it was time for Fox to get a new minion. By the time Johnny and Mark started to wonder what Fox would do with the skeleton, he started to chant the spell, and after finishing it, the skeleton stopped resisting the Zombie that was on top of him. A good signal, it means that he had succeeded, and now he had a new minion.
It was time to loot then. The only good thing was the tower shield. The one that Mark hitted was fine, but the other had some bullet holes on it, but was mostly fine. Fox also turned both orcs into zombies, and after doing it, he had to wait some time to recover his stamina.
Since no one wanted the shield, Fox decided to place them in his "bag". When they saw that both of the giant shields had disappeared, they thought that they were going crazy.
"WHAT? WHERE ARE THE SHIELDS?" Asked Mark.
"I placed them in my interdimensional storage item. You guys didn't buy one?" Asked Fox.
Both of them shook their heads at the same time.
"Then look for it later. It's an essential item for adventuring. Are you guys ready? We should continue now."
"Yeah, let's go" Answered Mark.
With the zombie walking 10 steps ahead of them and the 2 orcs walking 5 steps ahead, Fox formed a triangular formation to aid them on their path. And the skeletons stayed on there place, at the back. With all this set, they started to walk through the corridor.