As soon as Merrick entered, the magical feeling was replaced by a swirling dust cloud that his feet kicked up. Coughing as he made his way forward through a short hallway into the lobby of the Main Gallery, Merrick wondered what his boss left behind for him to find. There was a nagging thought about the absurdity of it all.
The last year of his life, ever since he started to play that game, seemed unreal. When his boss mentioned his "new skills" did he mean when he found a way to hire a hacker or that he had managed to summon a magical dagger out of the game world and into the real one? There was no way that Merrick's boss, the mysterious bookstore owner, knew about the second one. Despite that, Merrick was sure that was what his boss had been referencing.
In the lobby of the Main Gallery, Merrick looked around and marveled at the architecture. Despite the age and lack of care, it had clearly been a sight in its day. The Main Gallery stretched upward into a high domed ceiling that hinted at the existence of at least three upper levels before the clock tower.
Merrick's appreciation for the ancient and the forgotten started to outweigh his addiction to gaming and his need to know more. Why had the Hilltop Gallery and Atheneum failed? Why had it even been built? There were secrets hidden in this building, Merrick knew that to be true, but first he had to find his way to the top and that meant finding the path to the clocktower.
At the center of the lobby there was a service desk. It was just as abandoned as the rest of the room, but Merrick found an old paper map. The stairs to the clocktower were just at the end of the lobby. A quick look in that direction revealed that Merrick would need to find another path.
One of the bookcases had fallen over and was lodged in the doorway. It reminded Merrick of the damage done to his Faction in Dungeons Below. If he had the help of Crudle or Muster, then he could unblock the path but for now it might as well have been a Snorlax.
Using the map, Merrick did find a path around the blocked door. There was a service elevator in the basement that would take him up to the upper floors. From there, he should be able to get into the clock tower. It was possible but unlikely that there were bookcases blocking each of the doors.
There was a strange smell in the air as Merrick moved from the lobby toward the basement stairs. It was a musty sort of smell that made him think of a retirement home. With each step down the hall toward the stairwell, it grew stronger. The scent suddenly shifted to smell like natural gas. Merrick reached for the nearby wall as he noticed there was a shifting mist swirling around him. Had he walked directly into a gas leak without noticing?
Panic started to settle in as Merrick tried to use his sleeve as an air filter over his mouth and nose. A voice reverberated off the walls, he could barely hear it over his own thoughts but it sounded a lot like his boss's voice.
"You should be more careful entering someone else's domain. Prove your competency with those new skills by breaking out of this."