Mark Tanner slid face first down the slick spiral tube with his two backpacks stacked on his feet. The No. 14 Passage was not wide enough, by design, to hold a man and a pack in parallel. Even Deep Goblins, diminutive pschyo killers that they were, would have a hard time standing up in the two story multi spin loop. Orcs, Zombie Dwarves, Kobolds were all too big to fit in, even if they slid on their belly. And while Drow could manage it, drow also had a finely tuned sense of self preservation. No Drow went into a hole a half mile under Kansas without first sending some lesser breed down first.

  After all, Drow were important, the Lords of the Deep. Just ask them. They'd tell you, at length.

  His sweat drenched mauve tunic and tan trousers made the near vertical slide even faster. Get deep enough underground, and temperature stabilized in the low fifties. Go deeper, and the temperature continued to rise. Eventually, you'd find the molten core. Mark was far enough down and near enough to heat sources that the temperature hit a hundred twenty all the time. This deep temperature fluctuations from day or night, winter or summer just did not matter. But as a Level 70 Jack of All Trades, he could survive, if not totally enjoy that temperature.

  The heat shot up, and he spoke a Word of Command: Drop. These were the words that God had used when He said 'Let there be Light.' The same words Mankind would have learned if they had not Fallen. It was not Magic. It was the command code for the Universe.

  Shooting down and even, he saw a flutter in front of his face. A bridge dropped right in front of the exit, and he shot out over the bridge slide above a fifty foot deep chasm that fell into a hundred feet deep magma flow. Temperatures shot up to two hundred fifty and he took some damage.

  -1 damage from heat.

  If one of the Drow had slid down they would have had a quarter second to regret their choices before they impacted a pool of boiling magma. But he had the drop bridge which retracted mechanically as soon as he passed and triggered a pressure plate on the far side. Safe in the next tunnel, he slid through a Magic ward against heat he had inscribed, and temperatures fell to a hundred degrees. Slowing, he came to a halt in front of a sturdy wooden door bound by iron.

  You have healed to full health at 432 health points.

  The door was another trap. Touch it, and wooden spikes would jab into your hands up to your wrists. Spikes with fishing hooks that would unfold inside your wrists. Once you were then locked in place, the door would fall on top of you, and slowly over the course of several hours digest you before pulling itself back into place.

  He glanced at it.

  Identified Wooden Devourer. Rare. Magically bound by Mark Tanner. Full health.

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  War was not just killing the enemy. Making the enemy fear you so that they had nightmares about you was also useful.

  The fourteenth pebble in the wall on the left counting up from the stone floor was his button. He scrambled to his wyvern leather boots, grabbed both backpacks of holding. The red one was made of salamander leather by his own self, and could survive dunking in magma. The blue black one was made by the long dead and deeply missed crafter and ffriend Kelsie Needlehand, and was invisible to enemies.

  Pushing the pebble, a hidden door in the opposite wall opened. He took the steps down, skipping the odd ones as he did not want to activate the ceiling holes which would drop acid slimes into the curving descending stairs. On his way, he smirked at the nose of the giant tunnel worm that poked out the side wall. His enemies had nearly gotten him that time. Sure he had laced wards of dispelling along with a Word of Command into the walls so that whoever or whatever came out of the walls would be suddenly and painfully integrated with the wall, but he had not expected a giant worm that could slide through the earth and stone like a fish through the sea. In his arrogance, he had thought something able to stop a forty foot monster was enough. Well, when his enemies had sent an eighty foot worm, that had almost not been true. Only quick and frantic dodging had saved his life that time.

  He got to the next door, and spoke.

  "Hey, Biggie?" The iron door opened an eye on its panel.

  "Yeah, Mark?"

  "How are you doing?"

  Not all of the monsters come to Earth hated Mankind. Iron elementals tended to like humans in a minor way. However, if you were an iron worker of some kind, they really liked you. So when an injured Biggie had stumbled across Mark's path, they had made a deal. Mark would hide his essence as an elemental, and Biggie would serve as a door to Complex Twelve.

  "I'm doing pretty well. Give me another seventy years, and I'll be back to full health. You?"

  "Still kicking. Brought back some items for Plan 9."

  "Time travel. Ironfriend, I don't know."

  "You oppose it?"

  "Oh no. I'll go back, but I remember everything that happens to me. Courtesy of being closer to Eternity than you son of Adam."

  "So what are you afraid of then?"

  The door sighed like a creaking mess which told Mark what he really wanted to know. Complex 12 was currently safe. He could not just build one fortress, not with tens of millions of creatures hoping to get the experience point boost that came when Mankind was finally finished.

  "I didn't tell you because I want you to hope but time travel is a bad idea."

  "Really?" He kept his voice mostly calm and his smile small. Iron elementals were not that good at reading human body language.