"Congratulations! Heather Goldblum, Michelle Baker, Bart McKenzie, Elmo Garcia, Sonya Harris, Elin Davies, Kim O'Hare, Elwin and Leon Bell, Jonas McCain, and Owen Andrews have completed the secret challenge of getting past the minotaurs without fighting them! So far half of the starting contestants have completed a challenge and four have completed two! Let's see if any of them can survive this game to return to their own world."
The announcer's voice boomed shortly after they left the room with the minotaur. Kim estimated that they had just barely gotten out of sight of that room and she wondered what stupid turn of events this was. After all, if they didn't have Elmo's ability to view the stats of others, they likely wouldn't have known to offer them food in the first place.
Yet, there wasn't anything she could do about it. After all, all the evidence pointed to this whole thing being created by a patriarchal prick to begin with. Which begged the question why she'd felt any amount of surprise at learning about this development.
Though, that also didn't remove the corridor ahead of them. The one that no one had been down so far, and none of them really knew what to expect. Which actually gave Kim a sense of anticipation she hadn't felt in a really long time. Probably not since she first started testing out security systems and gotten rather good at bypassing them.
Then they turned a corner and what everyone saw before them was something that stopped everyone cold in their tracks. None of them had expected to see anything like this. Even seeing a room with the boss sitting in the middle of it, waiting for anyone to enter wouldn't have been as surprising to them as this was.
Before them were a pair of large double doors. These were the only doors any of them had seen since the room in which they all first saw each other, not counting the secret door. Kim couldn't help but feel surprised, not only at the doors, but also the fact that it hadn't even been five minutes since they had lost sight of the room in which the minotaurs had been in.
"You know, I think we're at the boss' room," Owen commented. "Now all we need is Patrick and Patricia to arrive and we'll be as strong as we can be."
"Should we wait?" Kim asked. "I know we talked about it, but we don't know how strong this boss is and we might need all the help we can get."
Owen nodded. "Alright, but I'd rather not wait too long. Who knows if the boss gets stronger the longer we take or if someone else might come here and take a crack at the boss first," he said.
"Hey, if someone like Stanley comes here, we can always enter ourselves so we don't miss out on the challenge completion," Jonas remarked. "After all, I'm pretty sure defeating the boss will get us another challenge completion."
"Then with that said, how long should we wait?" Michelle asked. "I mean, we could still wait all day and not have them show up. Although, I think we spent most of the day getting here anyway. So, who's to say if it won't be getting dark soon?"
Owen sighed. "Anyone have any idea if the Pats went to look at the other empty point on the map?"
"No, I don't think they did," Patrick commented as he and Patricia came around the corner. "I think they just were moving slower than the rest of you. You know, taking a break here and there."
"Well, at least we didn't have to wait very long," Elmo remarked.
"Good," Elin said, sounding bored.
"So, any idea how to open these doors?" Elwin asked.
Kim looked at the doors and realized the door handles were just a little over her head. She could easily reach them, but that didn't mean she'd have the leverage necessary to pull them open.
"Any suggestions?" Kim asked, not sure what to do about them herself.
"What about if we try to cut through the door?" Bart asked.
Jonas knocked on the door, resulting in a solid sound. "I don't think that would help us any. I think the wood on the doors are pretty thick."
"Does anyone have any rope?" Michelle asked. We could try to tie a rope to one of the handles and try to pull them open that way.
If anyone had any rope, no one said anything, which Kim would have been more surprised if anyone had some rope.
"There's no keyhole, so it's not like we need a 'boss key' or anything," Elmo remarked.
"Maybe they open inwards?" Elin suggested.
Elwin, Leon, and Owen then took one of the doors while Kim, Michelle, and Jonas took the other one. As they pushed with everything they had, the doors didn't budge.
"Well, that was a bust," Michelle commented. Then looking at Elin she added, "Good suggestion, though."
"What if we try to break the walls down and make a way through around the doors?" Bart asked.
"I don't think any of us would have enough stamina to fight the boss afterwards, even if it did work," Owen replied.
"What if there's something we missed before we got here that lets us through?" Elmo asked.
Kim considered Elmo's statement and couldn't deny that it had possibilities. After all, nothing that they'd done had seemed to accomplish anything. Which meant that there probably was something that they'd missed. Either unintentionally or because it was at the other point on the map none of them had been to.
"Hold on!" Jonas called out, about twenty feet behind them this time. "Let me try this."
Jonas put his hand to a block in the wall and to Kim's shock his hand passed right through. Then he clearly did something because a loud 'Click' could be heard sound all around them.
At first Kim thought that was going to be it until the walls, floor, and ceiling began to shake as there was a loud rumbling noise.
"What'd you do?" Kim asked Jonas, looking at him not completely sure if he'd realized what was going to happen.
"I found a level to pull," Jonas replied. "I thought it was weird because I could hear the air flowing into it, but I couldn't see it."
Kim shook her head. "Well, as long it didn't cause a cave-in, I guess it should be fine," she said as she turned to look at the doors again.
"Look! The doors are open!" Heather cried, pointing at the doors that had swung outward a little, Darkness could be seen past the doors.
"Well, this is ominous," Sonya remarked, taking one of the doors in her hands and tugging with all her might, she started to pull it open just a little more.
Eventually she stopped, Now the opening between the door was wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side into the boss' room.
"So, what's the plan?" Owen asked before they entered past the doors. "Should we bum rush the boss as soon as it appears or try something else?"
"Well, first we need to see what the boss is capable of, so we can't be sure what it's capable of. Maybe bum rushing it is the best thing to do, maybe it would be a disaster to do that," Kim said. "Let's first get it in sight before we make any real strategies about it."
"Who's to say we'll be given that luxury," Elwin said. "If we go in, the boss might attack before we even get a chance to see it."
"Maybe, but I think we should be more cautious," Kim replied. "If we don't try to learn as much about the boss as we can, then we're probably not going to do very well against it."
"How about if Elwin, Leon, Michelle, me, and Owen keep the boss busy if it attacks us and then once you've done whatever you need to, to learn whatever you can about the boos, then you tell the rest of us and we'll try to work out what to do from there," Bart suggested.
"I like it," Elin said.
"Not bad, runt," Michelle said affectionately, rubbing Bart's head.
Bart blushed, looking like he was embarrassed, but pleased at the same time. At the moment, he looked nothing other than just a kid.
"So, let's go in then," Kim said, leading the way into the room.
She was aware of everyone following her. Though, as the last of them passed the doors, they heard the doors slam shut behind them, startling Kim and enshrouding the entire room in darkness.
Kim wasn't sure how long it was, but she noticed that there seemed to be lights somewhere in here. It moved along the walls, and eventually there was enough light that she could see that they were candles that appeared to be lighting themselves.
Kim looked around and didn't see anything. The room looked like it might be around two hundred feet by two hundred feet, some decorative arches holding up the ceiling above them.
What came down out of no where, shook the ground so hard, Elin, Elmo, and Bart fell down. Kim almost fell herself and suspected that the others were much like here in that regard.
What the creature that had come down looked like a giant hairy green rock. Kim was pretty sure it's skin wasn't as hard as a rock, but she wouldn't put it past whoever set this whole thing up to have put in a twist like that.
The creature roared at them, it's dark green eyes glaring its intense hatred at them. Kim reached over and pulled Elmo all the way up as he was almost to the front of the group himself already. "Do what you have to do," Kim told him. "We need to know as much as we can about this thing, right now."