Four players stepped into the cavern on the far side, each of them armed and armored. A group of rats immediately attacked them, so the players were too focused on that to notice me.

The player in front was broad-shouldered and stocky, with chainmail armor and what appeared to be a plate chest piece. He held a large metal shield and was swinging a sword at the rats. I guessed that he had a warrior class, or maybe a more specialized version like stalwart or bulwark.

Off to the side was a second man in chainmail, though it looked like he was wearing some kind of sports jersey over the top of it. He was too far away for me to get a good look at it, not that it would do much good if I couldn’t. I’d never been a sports guy and wouldn’t recognize which team it belonged to.

Jersey guy was holding a pair of scepters, one in each hand. I couldn’t make out any details of those weapons from that distance, but he fired one at a rat, waited several seconds, then fired the other. He alternated back and forth, showing that those scepters were weaker than the one I’d used so recently, but they were ready for reuse much faster.

To the other side of the shield guy was a dark-skinned woman who was completely bald. The woman was tall and slender, wearing leather armor and holding a wooden staff. She held out her hand and fired blast of blue energy, revealing herself to probably be an arcanist.

The last of the four was a blonde girl who stood in the back, behind the others. She appeared to be in her mid-teens, making her younger than most players, but appearances could be deceiving, especially when respawns are involved. To match her apparent youth, the wore a flowing green and gold dress, with a matching witch style hat.

At first, the witch girl didn’t seem to be doing anything besides hiding behind the others, but then she held out her hands which began to glow. A few seconds later, three figures appeared on the ground in front of her. Three rabbits with horns on their heads.

“A summoner,” I said in realization.

The four players had already drawn the attention of every rat in the cavern, and they were quickly being swarmed. However, they were holding their old. The guy with the shield stood in front, trying to get the monsters attention while jersey guy and magic lady just cut loose at the rats. And then, not to be outdone, the summoner girl unleashed her three horned rabbits, which charged in and began attacking the rats.

I stood back and watched the fight, though I held my mace ready in case any of the rats came at me. None did. I briefly considered joining the fight, but I didn’t know them and they didn’t seem to need my help anyway.

Once the fight was over and all the rat monsters were dead, the four players finally noticed me. The summoner girl actually pointed at me while saying something that I couldn’t hear. After a few seconds, they began walking in my direction, looking wary but not outright hostile.

“Hey,” Jersey guy called out.

“Look at those robes,” the woman with the staff told her associates. “She’s a new respawn…”

“You’re right,” the shield guy responded.

The group all stopped and quickly talked among themselves, keeping their voices low. Then the summoner girl stepped forward and continued towards me. Three horned rabbits trailed behind her.

“Hi,” the summoner said in a friendly tone. “I’m Bunny.”

“Bunny?” I asked, glancing towards her cute rabbit monsters.

Bunny shrugged at that and gave me a friendly smile. “I needed a new name after I respawned, and it seemed appropriate.”

“I can see that,” I commented.

Before I could say anything more, she explained, “I don’t know if you know this yet, but respawned are legally different people than who they were before.”

“I am aware of that,” I told her. “Though, I haven’t really considered what that means since I woke up in that pool.”

I remembered when players first appeared, emerging from Labyrinth entrances and claiming to be people who’d died, regardless of the fact that they didn’t look anything like those people. It had created a lot of controversy, especially once they were able to start proving their claims.

Nobody had wanted to deal with Uncle Bob returning and trying to reclaim the inheritance that he’d left behind, or a dead wife coming back as a man and expecting to continue her marriage as though nothing had changed. There had been lawsuits. Lots of lawsuits.

Eventually, it had been decided that the respawned were legally separate individuals from whom they’d been before. They had no claim to their previous identities nor any of the wealth or relationships that they might have left behind. On the other hand, they were also free from old debts and obligations.

“I am…,” I started to say, only to pause and consider what name I should use. I couldn’t be Carl anymore. Carl was dead and gone. I was someone new, and that meant, I needed a new name. “Maggie,” I finally told Bunny. “You can call me Maggie.”

“Nice to meet you, Maggie,” Bunny said with a friendly smile. “My friends and I were just in the Labyrinth training…”

“And trying to find something to sell,” the guy with the Jersey offered from where he still stood back.

“That is Ace,” Bunny introduced the man in the jersey. “He won’t tell us what his class is.”

“Everyone needs an ace up their sleeve,” Ace said with a grin.

“The guy with the shield is Turtle,” Bunny introduced him to me. “He’s our bulwark.

“Nice to meet you,” Turtle said as he slowly came closer.

“Nice to meet you too,” I responded politely.

“I am Olivia,” the dark-skinned woman said, introducing herself as she came over to join us. She had a serious expression on her face and was giving me a wary look. “I am an arcanist. That means, I manipulate arcane energies.”

“And I am a summoner,” Bunny offered, gesturing to her three horned rabbits. “I can’t really summon anything besides these guys yet.”

All four of them were giving me expectant looks, and I knew exactly what they wanted to know. I briefly considered following Ace’s example and keeping my class to myself before deciding against it. If nothing else, being somewhat open with them might earn me a bit of trust.

“Invoker,” I told them. “I’m an invoker.”

“Damn, that’s rough,” Ace said with a wince while Bunny nodded agreement.

“Sorry to hear that,” Turtle told me sympathetically. “Invokers usually have it pretty rough to start with.”

“I’m doing all right,” I assured them with a faint smile. “I was just wondering, how the hell do I get out of this place? I’ve been wandering around down here for a couple hours.”

Ace gave me a look of surprise. “You’ve been down here for a couple hours? As an invoker?”

“We are pretty far in,” Bunny pointed out. “I mean, when I respawned, I was only a couple hundred meters from the entrance.”

“Same here,” Turtle said.

Ace smirked and suggested, “Maybe you got turned around and accidentally went further in.”

“Possible,” I said, though I didn’t really agree. After I’d left the room with the respawn pool, I hadn’t seen any options to head the other direction.

“It appears that you might be an outlier,” Olivia commented thoughtfully. “You’re lucky that you survived on your own long enough for us to find you.”

“You can come with us,” Bunny told me with a grin. “We were just heading out of here ourselves.”

I considered that for a moment before nodding. “Thank you. I’d appreciate the help getting out.”

With that, I shifted my mace to the other hand and shook out my arm again. I wished that I had a way to carry my mace that didn’t involve me actually carrying it in my hands, but such was life.

While I was doing that, I looked around at the dead rat monsters that were scattered around the cavern. The ones that I’d killed first had already begun melting away into a thick black goo. Most monsters did that when they died. In spite of what they might have looked like, they weren’t real animals. Instead, they were some sort of artificial beings that were created by the Labyrinth, sort of like living artifacts.

“This way to the nearest entrance,” Olivia said, using her staff to point to a side tunnel that I hadn’t really noticed.

“The second closest one is a three-day trip,” Ace told me as he drew his scepters again.

After this, the group began moving again. Turtle took the lead, marching forward with his shield at the ready. Ace and Olivia went second while Sunny and I followed up in the rear. Since they were letting me march at their backs, I assumed that they either trusted me for some inexplicable reason, or more likely, they assumed that a new invoker couldn’t possibly be a threat.

We ran into a couple more rats while walking through the tunnel, though they were killed off well before I had a chance. Between Ace’s scepters and Olivia’s magical blasts, the little monsters were quickly killed.

The tunnel opened up into another cavern, though one that was a little different from the ones I’d seen before. The walls, ceiling, and floor all appeared to be made of some bluish crystal, and there were crystal spikes jutting out from the ceiling and floor like stalactites and stalagmites.

“I hate this room,” Bunny complained, almost looking like she was pouting.

“Keep your eyes up,” Olivia warned.

I looked around the cavern but didn’t see any of the rats that I’d become so familiar with, so I looked up to see what Olivia was warning of. It took a moment, but then I spotted it. There was movement up near the ceiling.

A moment later, something dove down from the ceiling and came right for us, nearly crashing into Olivia before it abruptly changed direction and flew away. In that moment, I got a look at the monster. I was a large bat with small pieces of crystal along the struts of its wings.

“My pets can’t ever reach them,” Bunny complained. The horned rabbits hopped around near her feet as though trying to demonstrate how high they could leap and how lacking that height was.

“I don’t have that problem though,” Ace exclaimed with an eager grin.

Ace made a show of spinning his scepters, one in each hand, and then firing off both at once. Two pulses of energy shot out and hit the bat as it was turning to dive again. The monster crashed into the ground a short distance away, the impact finishing it off if the blasts hadn’t.

The bat’s death acted like a trigger, because a moment later, a dozen more bats swooped down from the ceiling. Several of them flung crystal shards as they dove, making me leap to the side to avoid being hit. Turtle flung his shield over his head and backed up, blocking another shard from hitting Olivia.

Olivia stepped out of cover and fired a blast of blue energy, missing any of the bats. She quickly stepped under the cover of Turtle’s shell again, remaining there for about ten seconds before stepping out and firing another blast.

One of the bats swooped down close to me and I swung my mace, but it was just out of range. I grimaced and tried again, only to miss a second time. I could see why Bunny hated those bats because I was starting to hate them too.

A shard of crystal dropped on me from above, grazing my shoulder and tearing yet another hole in my robe. I silently cursed, then decided that I was done with holding back.

“GET DOWN HERE, YOU WINGED RATS,” I yelled, right before flinging an ‘Invocation of Spite’ at a bat that had been in the process of swooping down towards Bunny.

The blast hit the monster and knocked it out of the sky with a loud shriek of agony. It smashed into the ground and was still twitching, at least until a horned rabbit impaled it.

Several pairs of eyes turned to stare at me in surprise, but before anyone could voice a question, the bats drew their attention back. I took several deep breaths, trying to ignore the residual effect of my ability. Instead, I focused on the bats that were still coming. One of them got close enough that I was able to hit it with my mace, breaking its wing and bringing it to the ground. A couple more hits was enough to finish it off.

I managed to fire off one more ‘Invocation of Spite’ before the fight ended. The last of the bats hit the ground and was immediately torn into by the only horned rabbit that remained. I just slumped over, resting my arms and catching my breath. Damn, I loved how much easier the extra vitality made recovery after a fight.

“I’m guessing you stumbled into a primal while you were wandering around,” Ace said, giving me a curious look.

“Something like that,” I agreed, deciding that they didn’t need the details. “Now, I don’t see an exit sign, so where do we go from here?”