Lions, Tigers and Bears

[Survive the Waves and leave the Maze]

Or

[Take the Path and face the Queen's Wrath]

[YOU HAVE 24 HOURS TO DECIDE]

I woke up with excruciating pain in my hands. I thought that time in stasis would heal it but it just feels like my hands are extremely sore. Wherever this system or voice teleported me, it did not really look like a maze anymore. It looked more like a cave room. It was not too stuffy but looked like bats were gonna drop from the ceiling any minute now.

" I guess that's why you don't chop an ogre's brain stem" I muttered under my breath as I stood up

"Who are you guys?" an unknown voice asked

Lost in my thoughts I didn't notice the two humans waking up as well.

"HUMANS! Do you guys know what is happening outside?!" The girl asked desperately. She had black hair and was wearing bloody street clothes.

The other human was a guy way taller than me, like 6'9 with a muscular stature. He looked mixed with brown hair and blonde splotches all over his head.

"Finally! Other people… I don't know what is out there, I was strolling around a park when I blacked out and landed in another dimension! I'm Andre by the way" the giant responded with relief

"Me too! I was in a park when I was zipped away" I concurred

"Wow, I was also in a park, so I guess this maze takes people from parks, pits them in another dimension and gives them superpowers? What kinda messed up shit is this!" The tall female shouted with frustration.

We all relaxed and sat in a circle not as wary of each other as before.

"Oh, I'm Rod, I guess we should introduce ourselves"

"I'm Sam, from Toronto, 18 years old" she said uniformly

"Okayyy, I guess I do mine again, I'm Rod, from New York, 23 years old" I said with some pep

Being with people is something I never thought I would take for granted. But in the maze, I got reeeaaallyyy lonely. I didn't get too crazy but the loneliness felt palpable and I truly missed people to talk to.

"I'm Andre, 20 years old, from Melbourne, but I grew up pretty much everywhere, I'm an Army kid," the giant said

"Wow so I guess we are all from around the map, so how did we all teleport here? And did you guys have to fight any monsters in the Outer Maze?" I asked with curiosity

"Yeah, I had to fight these murderous rats the size of small dogs. Their teeth were the size of my pinkie, it sucked to say the least." Sam replied

"Y-yea I also had to fight these crazy foxes, they were pretty small but really fast." Andre replied

The conversation continued like this, kids just talking about an experience, with no concern over the time limit we had. Soon the conversation steered to our powers and how we cleared our parts in the Outer Maze.

"Instead of telling you, I should just show you," Andre said while smiling

He then put his hand on the ground and waited a couple of seconds. Then suddenly but slowly, a thin pillar of crystallized diamond began to rise out of the ground under his hand.

"Damn that's cool" I said

"Yea I agree" Sam added on

Sam then stood up abruptly and said

"I won't allow myself to be outdone"

She then started rubbing her hands together vigorously like she was starting a fire and then she made a finger gun and pointed at the wall. Then a flash of purple struck the wall leaving a scorching hole in the wall and the hairs on my arms raised.

"Woah! What the hell was that!? That's so freaking cool!" I jumped with curiosity

"A little something called plasma," she said smugly

"Wow so we have a guy that can find diamonds and a girl who can basically shoot stars out of her hands. My power is more low key and less flashy. Andre could you pass me a diamond?" I said

Andre broke a piece of diamond off like nothing and tossed it to me. For the first time, as quickly as possible, I siphoned 50% from the diamond. The diamond was the size of a banana so I was only able to take 50%. With the leaves, my max is about 60%.

"Oh my god! Did you slow down time?!" Sam exclaimed

"No, he just slowed the crystal down. What is that power?" Andre replied

"I can take kinetic energy and use it," I said sheepishly

"Wow and you acted like we had OP powers, that power is just unfair!" Sam shouted again

I did a meek shrug and said "I don't like to brag and powers are only as powerful as the person who knows how to use them."

Both agreed and we continued to talk about the purpose of the dungeon. We all concluded that it was to train us for some reason but we couldn't find the reason. So we got to talking about the choice the Words gave us.

"We are surviving the waves right?" Andre asked

"Yep, I don't like facing the wrath of queens," I said matter of factly

"Yea, let's just survive the waves, it probably gonna be to train us again, so we probably won't be in too bad a shape" Sam added

Like the Words heard us, another announcement came through

[SURVIVE THE 72 WAVES]

[Healing is accelerated when wave ends]

[SACRIFICE GIVES WAY TO POWER]

[THE WAVE STARTS NOW]

Somehow I still had my knife, so I got ready.

"We should have a plan ready if we are going to be facing 72 waves of beasts." Andre offered

"You're right, I have an idea for all of us to not only survive but get stronger. I am not entirely accurate with my plasma beam, and I'm guessing you guys also are not too great with your powers so we can use this time to get even more OP" Sam explained

"We use Rod to decisively slow down some monsters, I shoot them and we use the diamond to protect us and possibly create some high ground. I used to play RPG's and the best way for us to get stronger is leveling up our skills. So if we all use our skills we can level up."

The cave was about half the size of a football field and the ceiling was 40 ft high. There was definitely some magic at play because the cave was not this big ten minutes ago.

"That makes sense but it takes me energy to find diamond and use my skills. If I can't find a diamond I can compress carbon to make diamond but it costs me 3x as much energy."

"Can you create a mini-tower to add space between us and the monsters?"

"I can but it would drop my reserves by half"

"Okay, create the tower and rest up and me and Rod will protect you. You'll have to be our tank, I'll be the archer. Rod, what is your fighting style?"

"I think on paper I would be a Mage but with my knife and my speed, I think I'd go for a more Rogue/Assassin role."

"Great, then Andre and I will be up on the tower, Rod. You will have to go around taking out some pests and slowing down some big targets for me to hit."

"Are we all in agreement?"

"Yep," me and Andre said at the same time

"Then let's get cracking," Sam said while cracking her knuckles

"That is so cringe!" I said while chuckling

…

Soon a portal spawned out of the wall at the opposite end of the cave. The purple pawed rabbits, puppy-sized rats, and small foxes started swarming out of the portal by the dozens.

"Are we sure this is training, it feels like it is trying to kill us" I shouted uneasily

"Don't let the rabbit touch you with their paws it can paralyze you" I explained

The mini-tower was constructed as a simple box that Andre and Sam were on top of.

I would be able to jump on top of the box if I used some extra KE but I would save that option for an emergency.

The foxes were the first to reach us. I rushed at the foxes with my knife out ready for battle. They had small bodies so I was able to suck KE out of their entire body and deliver a swift stab to its head. Without missing a beat 4 more foxes rushed at me. I slowed them down and used the KE to rush out of the situation; as a thick purple beam vaporized all the foxes that tried to chase me.

I turned to Sam and gave a thumbs up

"Can you make the beam thinner so I don't get vaporized?"

"I can try, but right now try to kite them into a huge clump so I can make them into a mist"

"Alrighty" I responded

Completely undeterred by the deaths of the foxes, a swarm of 20 rats rushed at me with feral abandon. I siphoned some KE from the first two rats and took off. A searing beam of plasma followed in my wake, vaporizing almost all of them. I finished off the rest and bounded to the rabbits.

"Hello rabbits my old friend" I muttered under my breath

The rabbits were a little larger than the other monsters so I just siphoned KE from their leg to keep them in place and I would slice through them. It wasn't very graceful like a samurai but I was just faster than them and it looked easy.

We would continue to fight the wave, hundreds of rabbits, rats, and foxes poured through the portal. Exhaustion was not descriptive enough to explain how tired I was. Because I could siphon KE, I never got too low on my energy reserves but my body and mind were tapped out. The wave wasn't even over; we had to take shifts in killing the monsters.

Andre was actually very instrumental in this plan. With his diamonds, we could create a mini-maze that we could use to segment the hordes and cut them down with minimal effort.

"It has been 5 HOURS! When is this fucking wave gonna END!" Sam yelled with desperation

She had the highest kill count by far but also had the smallest reserve with no way to quickly replenish it. Andre and I had to help her to scale down her power so she didn't run out of energy.

He actually had the second-highest kill count, he could spawn diamonds out of the ground at a pretty decent speed that they would normally dodge but because I was there, all his attacks hit their mark. Being 6'9 he was also pretty strong, he would take diamond pillars as thin as a staff and obliterate them. The diamond was as tough as you'd expect and made a great alternative to me using my knife.

…

[WAVE ONE HAS CONCLUDED]

[NEXT WAVE IN 48 HOURS]

12 HOURS

We have been fighting for 12 FUCKING HOURS

We are basically walking dead people. The shifts only worked for the first 7-9 hours until everyone was just exhausted. We killed thousands of rabbits, rats, and foxes. I thought they would pile up but Sam would basically disintegrate most of the corpses and we would use the rest to reinforce the diamond walls.

As soon as the words said the wave was over, we all collapsed. We all had minor scratches and injuries so the healing was comforting and helped us slip into oblivion.