CHAPTER 3 – THE DEVIL IN THE BASEMENT

Mist seeped through the black door's seams and began to take form on the other side. It was still a bit surreal. When I did this, I didn’t really understand how it worked. To me, it just seems like I simply walked through the door.

The room was lit by four bright light crystals. The room was small enough to be lit by only this many. Extravagant red banners, outlined with gold embroidery, decorated the walls. Giving the treasure room a regal feel to it.

In the center of the room, on an ornate rug with similar patterns to the banner, a large chest filled with jewels, enchanted weapons, and gold coins. I stood there in awe staring at the chest. The treasure in the room alone, someone could live a life of luxury for several lifetimes.

I approached the chest wishing there was some way to dig through the treasure and inspect it. However, in my current condition, not having an actual corporal body, I couldn’t.

As I stood there, greedily eyeing the chest, a cold chill ran through my entire being. Something akin to what I felt when I had vanished. A sudden fear rushed over me as I looked up saw a dark hooded figure walking towards me.

“What are you doing down here! Get back upstairs and patrol,” it shouted.

Even though the voice was oddly feminine and reminded me of getting scolded when I was younger, the fear did not subside.

It approached even closer when I didn’t respond right away.

“Hmmm…” it let out as she lowered her hood.

I was immediately drawn to her blue eyes that seemed to stare through my very existence. Well, she probably was seeing straight through me…

She reached up and pulled her hood down—vibrant red hair out of her robes, letting it fall down onto her shoulders. I continued staring at her blankly. How could such a divine beauty give off such an impending sense of dread?

She continued looking me up and down, “There shouldn’t be any specters in this Dungeon. Wait, you are not quite a specter, are you. What are you?”

“…” I was still stuck in some sort of feedback loop at what was going on.

“Hey, it's rude not to answer a question when you asked,” she began to pout.

“Uhh… Uhh… Hello, I’m not exactly sure what I am, young miss,” I stammered.

“Young miss,” She repeated bashfully, “You can call me Zozi,” she smiled.

“Zozi? Wait, you can understand me!”

“Yeah, I guess I can,” putting her finger to her chin, “I’m not quite sure why that is. Maybe your some sort of new rare monster,” She said, her eyes wide and her smile growing more prominent as she closed in on me, inspecting me as if she had just gotten a new toy.

“You think? I mean, I was attacked by people when they saw in on the road.”

“The road? You mean you weren’t always in the Dungeon?”

“No, I used to live in Ullmet. I took a job to guard a caravan and was killed by some dire wolves,” my head dropping down as I thought about it.

Zozi quickly took a few steps back and brought her finger to her chin once again, contemplating something.

“Well, your not human, right?” she asked as she stared at me.

“I don’t think so, not anymore. I remember dying… and I don’t have a body,” I said dejectedly.

“Phew, well good. I’m not supposed to talk to humans. My father said; No going to the surface, no influencing humanity, and keep the dungeons running,” as she numbered them off on her fingers.

“Wait… you're not human?”

“Oh no, I’m what humans call the dark god. I don’t like that name much. I mean, I don’t do no mean stuff or nothing. Sure, people die in the dungeons, but I would help them out if I could.”

“The dark god Zozrollal? I thought your name was Zozi?”

“My friends call me Zozi,” she said, beaming a smile. “Well, I really don’t have any friends, but I always imagined that’s what they would call me if I had some.”

It made sense if I thought about it. Why would a cute girl be in the treasure room of a dungeon? The boss hadn’t even been defeated yet.

“Well, my name is Ruten. Nice to meet you. I guess we are friends then.” I tried to smile, but I wasn’t sure it was getting across. My detached ghost form jaw hanging half off.

We continued talking to each other, and I explained my situation of how I ended dying and going into the Dungeon so that I wouldn’t disappear again.

“So, coming to the dungeon really kept you from fading?”

“It seems like it so far.”

“Well, since your not technically not part of humanity, I think I should be able to help you out. I can link you to the same energy that circulates the dungeons. So when you leave the Dungeon, you shouldn’t disappear then.”

I wasn’t too sure about being linked to the same power that powers the Dungeon, and I hadn’t given up hope yet on being able to find someone to resurrect me.

“I appreciate it, but I haven't given up hope on someone being able to resurrect me.”

“Resurrect you? Resurrect what? You have no physical body to bring back,” Zozi plainly stated as if it was common knowledge. “You need to have something to bring back, and if the body isn’t in good enough condition, it won’t work.”

I stood there, dumbfounded for a second. I knew there was such a thing as resurrection, but I didn’t know how it was performed.

Zozi continued, “A priest may be able to purify you if you want to move on. Actually, that is what they would probably do as soon as they saw you. You do look pretty grotesque.”

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She waved her hand. A body mirror appeared in front of me, revealing my horrid form. This was me, a pale mist that looked like a body that was missing flesh. Exposed bone on my forearms and legs, my throat was ripped out.  One side of my jaw hanging half off. I would have emptied the contents of my stomach right then if I could.

I turned to Zozi and nodded, “I do look pretty bad. I’ll take you up on your offer,” if it was the only way for me to explore the world, I would have to risk it.

Zozi looked at me excitedly, “I do have a favor to ask, though. If you can go back up to the world above, would you bring me back some treats?” with an expectant look while waiting for my reply.

“Sure, I don’t mind, but how am I supposed to do that? I can’t touch anything.”

“We will figure something out, I’m sure,” she sounded confident, so maybe she had a plan in mind.

Zozi reached forward, placing her hand on my chest where my heart would have been. A brilliant light erupted from her hand, and a burning sensation wracked my chest with pain. Like I had been stuck with a hot fire poker. As the light subsided, so did the pain leaving the dark god's emblem branded on my chest.

Did I just make a pact with the dark god? She is supposed to be evil and humanity's bane. However, I just don’t see it how could such a cute cheerful girl be evil incarnate.

I felt energized and no worse for wear. I didn’t realize how sluggish I had felt only moments before. I could feel the energy filling my being. It didn’t feel ominous or evil like I would have expected from a power coming from dungeons.

“I think I can feel the energy. I would have thought it would have been a bit more sinister, though, no offense.”

“Uhh… that’s kind of rude,” Zozi’s face forming a frown. “I told you I ain’t evil or nothing. I am just doing what I was ordered to do by my father. My power is just as divine as my brothers and sisters,” clearly pouting now.

“No..no… I’m sorry I didn’t mean it that way. I was just a bit surprised. You said it’s the same source as the power for the dungeons, and people say the dungeons are evil, so I just thought, you know,” doing my best to apologize.

My flustered apology must have worked because Zozi laughed.

“Don’t worry about it were friends, right! More importantly, we need to get started on operation tasty treats!” as she pumped her fist in the air.

Zozi waved her hand once more, and the full-length mirror vanished, and in its place was a wooden mannequin.

*****

Zozi explained that specters and some other ghost-type monsters can possess objects to move them. The mannequin she had summoned was for me to attempt this.  At first, it was hard for me to get the hang of, but before long, I moved the wooden arms and legs ever so slightly.

My progress was slow, but the more I practiced, the easier it became. Still, for some reason, I didn’t really feel fatigued from continually trying. It must have been the mark Zozi put onto my chest that filled me with the energy to keep going.

Every time I made some more progress, Zozi would cheer and clap excitedly, keeping me motivated. Her motivation was the operation tasty treats, as she put it.

Apparently, not long ago, an adventure had lost his entire party to the Dungeon. As a last effort to survive, he had prayed to the dark god to let him live. It was tradition to offer up prayers and leave and offering, so the man had offered up a piece of bread glazed with honey. Ever since then, she has been on the lookout for any food adventurers leave behind.

Zozi was forbidden from interacting with humanity, so she couldn’t help the man, but he did manage to find his way out of the Dungeon. Her task was to build these dungeons and keep them operational until they were conquered. Then she would be tasked with creating a new one somewhere else. There was a total of 40 dungeons she was supposed to keep active at all times.  So when one was conquered, she would build a new one.

When I had asked why her father tasked her to build dungeons, she thought for a moment then replied, “He said it had something to do with trials for humanity, but I’m not sure really what it meant.”

I decided not to continue probing into this father's business. It was bad enough to be mixed up with someone called the dark god, but this father would be the father of gods then? I really didn’t want to get mixed up with someone who was that powerful.

When my training had yielded enough results to walk the mannequin around the room, Zozi clapped her hands together. “It's about time to up the difficulty; give me a second.”

Zozi outstretched both arms in front of her and closed her eyes, and began to focus. Unlike before, when things simply poofed into existence. A complex glowing magic circle appeared on the floor in front of her. I could sense an unfathomable amount of mana coming from her. In front of her, bones and muscles began to form as a body began to be built. A fully developed humanoid body wearing simple farmer's clothes crumpled over onto the floor when it was complete.

The body looked eerily similar to me except with broader muscles and a more defined chin. Zozi must have made it based on what she thought I had looked like before I was eaten.

“Wow, that was amazing!” I said

“Ahh…. that ain’t nothing,” as she flexed her arms and slapped her muscles. “You should see it when I make a dungeon,” She smiled, obviously happy with my compliment.

“So, you can make humans too?” I asked.

“No, this is just a unique one-off. It’s not quite human. I can’t make souls or anything. Only father can do that, I think. But I can make golems pretty well. So I just made a golem out of flesh,” she beamed.

The absurdity that this made sense to me was a testament that I began to acclimate to this world I found myself living in.

I started the same way I did with the wooden mannequin. Slowly sliding my mist-like form into the golem body. Trying to attach to it the same way as the mannequin was exponentially more difficult. It seems the golem had lungs, heart, blood, the same as a real body. All these tiny little factors upped the difficulty by a lot. When I finally could wiggle the golems fingers, Zozi shouted with glee, “One step closer to operation Tasty Treats being a success!”

“What wasn’t confident?” “Grreara….whha,” the voice came from the golem at the same time.

I was shocked. Did I just speak? It wasn’t coherent, but it was something. I could cry….If I could figure out how to make the golem body do it.

I continued working on controlling my new golem body. I couldn’t tell how long we had spent down in the treasure room of that Dungeon practicing the control of my new body. It could have been days or weeks I had no way of telling. However, I didn’t once feel tired; it was strange. I should have easily reached my physical or mental limit by now and needed a rest, but of course, I wasn’t quite human anymore.

 When I had finally mastered the basics of walking, running, and speech Zozi announced it was time for my debut in the town of Ullmet. She handed me a pouch and a shortsword like I was used to. I hadn’t done any training, but it was probably to keep me from standing out. I wasn’t sure I would be able to use it if I needed to.

“That bag is enchanted, so don’t lose it, okay. It can hold a lot, and best of all, the food won’t rot or go bad while it's in there.”  Zozi continued, “I put some money in there too. All you have to do is think about what you want to take out, and you will grab it. If you want to put something in you, just have to open the bag and think about putting it in there.”

“Why give me something so important? ”

“This is part of operation Tasty Treats. I want you to go and buy a bunch of yummy things from Ullmet. You put them in that bag, and then I can eat all I want,” she said with a self-satisfied smile.

With a look of concern, she continued, “You should be pretty durable.” Then she placed her hand over my heart where her emblem should be. “But don’t let that seal be destroyed. It’s the source of your mana, and I would feel awful if you disappeared.”

With such an honest show of concern, I could only do my best to put her mind to ease. “I’ll be fine,” I said, striking a similar pose as she did when she made my new meat suit and slapped my bicep, giving a toothy grin.

“I’ll clear a path out of the dungeon for you just in case,” she said while holding back a snicker.

*****

I made my way back up out of the Dungeon with not a lot of trouble. Whenever I almost ran into one of the dungeon creatures, they would skitter off in a different direction, avoiding me. This must have been what Zozi meant when she said she would clear a path for me.

When I stepped out from the twin black gates that were the dungeon entrance, I was greeted by several guards setting up for the day. It was still dark out, but I could make out the sun peaking over the treetops in the distance.

“Hey! What are you doing here!” one of the guards shouted as I was apprehended.

“Uhh…Nothing sir. I am just leaving the Dungeon.”

“Yeah, not buying it, son.”

The guards restrained me and marched me to a smallholding area in a building near the entrance.