“People mistake the endless forest for being monotonous, but it’s precisely those small breaks in the monotony that are the floor’s own natural signs of the changing landscape and unknown opportunities...”

So far it all looked the same, but Max knew what he was looking for.

He still had a while to go.

He picked up his running pace.

* * *

Eli and his brothers had been running north for at least twenty minutes.

The forest all looked the same and they had been heading this way so far with no sign from the kid.

“Stop,” shouted Patrick.

They all came to a halt.

Eli turned back to the middle brother, annoyed. “What is it?”

“How do we know we’re going the right way?” he asked.

They’d been running this way on the blind faith that Big Nose had been telling the truth, but what if he hadn’t?

“How deep into the forest are we prepared to go?” asked the middle brother, raising a good point. “We don’t have food or supplies and if we get lost out here there’s the potential we never get back.” Kendrick laughed at that. “Can you imagine dying on floor-2? After all we’ve done, it would be a truly pathetic death. I rather die in the tower-zone at the hands of a traitless. Even that would be mildly less pathetic.”

Eli looked around as his brothers bickered.

He then spotted something.

He held up his hand, a signal that his brothers knew meant to shut the heck up.

He walked over to a tree and found a fresh cut in the tree by a knife.

The kid was leaving a trail so he doesn’t get lost, Eli surmised. But where the heck was he going?

* * *

Max rushed through the woods.

He held his compass in one hand and slashed at the trees in another.

He had to keep running until the monotony of the forest broke, then he would know he was getting close.

The woodlands all looked the same and then suddenly they didn’t.

Max slid to a halt.

Just ahead of him the monotony of the forest came to an end.

A large open cave stood in front of him.

It was the first and only cave he’d ever seen during his time in the endless forest.

None of his research had mentioned a cave.

None of the climbers he’d spoken to had mentioned a cave.

As far as he knew, he might be the first climber to have ever discovered this place.

Which was exactly what he was hoping for.

49

Max took a hesitant step into the shadows of the cave.

A fallen leaf crackled beneath his boots as he stepped deeper into the darkness.

RUSTLE!

Max’s shoulders jumped and he instantly took on a fighting stance.

Here we go, he thought. Monsters.

But then nothing happened.

Nothing appeared out of the darkness.

Max blinked and sighed with relief.