I stood inside what could only be known as a dungeon. Walking forward slowly, I go and inspect the floating orb. It doesn’t give off any sound and it doesn’t seem to be dangerous. I give it a slight poke with my finger and when I do a message pops up
Travel to Another floor? Y/N
I select yes but it then gives me an error saying I have not visited any other floors before.
“OK, I think I get it. I am guessing there are more of these orbs on other levels that help with travel.”
With that in mind, I go down the stairs. Luckily, I don’t need a torch, as the walls here give off a slight glow as well. The second floor was set up like your typical cavern. It wound in different directions and one could get lost down here. While traveling around I came across the first monster. Yup...no matter how you look at it, it's definitely a blue slime. Since I am here to train my magic, I launch a small blob of liquid fire at it. It burns really good, so good there wasn’t anything left of it.
I explored the dungeon, slaughtering any and all slimes I came across. I even came across some giant rats too but they were killed by my magic. My water blade magic was the best considering how fast they were. After several hours I have determined that the only things down here were rats and slimes. Deciding to stop for a break, I cooked up some dungeon rat. It wasn’t bad, at least nowhere near as bad as kobold. With continued exploration, I came across some stairs going down. Seeing as I was done with this floor I descended.
The third floor was more or less the same as above. While wandering around I came across a group of beetles, they were about the size of a medium-sized dog and were black with different patterns of various colors. With spear in hand, I conjure up a tiny fireball and launch it at one of the bugs. It passes through without any resistance and dissipates. I charge forward and finish up the other two pretty easily.
The rest of the floor only consists of these beetles. Fighting them is easy enough, their tactics are not the greatest but they always show up in groups. At first, it started at 3 then it started to increase gradually until I would fight groups of eight. Eventually, I started to get a rhythm down and I was able to defeat them with ease.
Is it me or this dungeon kind of easy? So far, I have not had any serious issues. On the fourth floor, everything changes. Instead of being in a cave, I seem to be in like some kind of temple or something. There are tiled floors and smooth walls manmade walls. I walk down the hallway for a bit before I notice my left foot sinking a bit hearing a click.
“Oh shit.”
A small dart comes flying out of the wall and hit me in my leg. I stumble back a bit before falling down.
“Crap. Of course, there would be traps here.”
Luckily it was just a small projectile but it might be poisoned. I do have a few herbs that could deal with poison so I get them ready in case I need them. I pull the dart out of my leg and inspect the wound. It seems to be just a small hole but I am not seeing any signs of there being poison. A few minutes later it turns out I may not need any medicine, but I'll keep an eye on it. I go back to the pressure plate and examine it. It is definitely raised higher than the other tiles, it looks like this floor has traps on it.
I am slowly making my way through the dungeon now looking out for any traps. So far, I have come across several pressure plates, rigged doors, trapped chests, and one pitfall trap. The pitfall just about got me. The pitfall had a tripwire mechanism that I didn’t see at first and I had to throw myself to the ground after tripping to avoid falling in. The chests I have found were all empty as well, nothing in them, which was kind of disappointing. I have also come to the conclusion that this floor has no monsters in it.
After a bit more exploring, I start to feel exhausted and seeing how this floor is mostly safe I decided to make a camp in one of the many empty rooms. After a quick meal, I crawl up on the floor and decide to talk to Teona in my dreams.
I am standing in my apartment bedroom. I am a bit confused, in the past, it was always either the beach or just the black room whenever I visited. I look around and find Teona. She is laying on my bed wearing some short exercise shorts and a tank top playing a video game about dragons and their dungeons.
“So, you upgraded the beach to my apartment huh?”
Without even looking at me she just nods and proceeds to backstab some poor villager.
“Yeah, the beach was fun but I found your home comfier. Plus, I discovered video games from your world.”
Great, she’s going to become a game addict. Well actually that doesn’t really matter, she doesn't really have a job...does she?
“Hey? As a goddess do you have a job you do?”
“Well, my main job is to make sure that everyone suffers from misfortune during some point in their lives. That’s also another reason for my disciples, they go around and spread some misfortune.”
“What about finding evidence or whatever about the reincarnation screw up?”
“Don't worry about that I have a friend helping me out.”
Ok well, I guess I know her job now and at least she is trying to help me. She slides over on the bed and motions for me to lay next to her while she grabs a second controller.
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“Wanna do some co-op?”
“Sure, why not. Probably be the only time I can play any kind of video game for a while.”
I join her in a co-op game ruthlessly killing random villagers. Since I am here, I ask her what I really came here for.
“So, this dungeon, how exactly does it work?”
“Oh yeah about that. That is actually the first dungeon in your world.”
I stare at her with a confused look
“What do you mean?”
“There was this one god here, has no domain, just kind of exists. Anyway, he was fascinated with some country in your world. Always going on about otaku life this and waifu that.”
“Oh...yeah must be Japan then.”
“Well anyway, he got hooked on the concepts of dungeons from various types of media and decided to create one. That’s where you are now.”
“Well, he seems to have put it in an inconvenient place.”
“No, he didn’t. It's quite convenient where it is at. Plus, he was interested in you as well so he wanted you to test-run his dungeon.”
Ah so that’s why I ran into it, wait just how many gods are interested in me? I will worry about that later. With my main concern answered, I spend the rest of my dream playing games with Teona and talking about nothing in particular. I wake up later, can't tell what time though because of the whole dungeon thing. I spend the rest of the morning looking for the stairs down and eventually find them in one of the many empty rooms. Floor five is much different than the rest, it is just a field with a few trees and some plants growing around. It even came complete with a sky and only one sun. I found it was actually just a single large room because barriers were blocking me from walking very far. Also, the stairs going down were not far from the entrance.
I collect any fruit from the trees and start collecting some of the herbs growing in the field. This is just my intuition, but I feel like these first few floors were like a tutorial. After collecting what my bag could fit, I continue down to the sixth floor.
The next floor was a large canyon with the canyon walls on both sides of going up. Looking up I see another sun in the sky...or is it ceiling? The land around me looks like an arid landscape. Also next to me was another pedestal with a levitating red orb. I walk up and touch it and it asks which floor I want to go to; it allows me to choose only the first. This is good I can now leave when I need to now.
I continue down the canyon for a bit until I spot what appears to be a small fort made of stone up ahead. I can't really avoid it either unless I can somehow climb up the steep canyon walls. I move a little bit closer to the fort, trying to gauge who or what may be in it. Stopping behind a boulder by the entrance I can see some short humanoid looking creatures with green skin and pointy ears. They have on crude armor but the weapons are iron.
“Yup, goblins exist. One fantasy trope checked off.”
I pull out my bow and nock an arrow and take aim the closest goblin. I fire the arrow and soon have another arrow ready. In that same motion, I start walking towards the entrance and fire at the last goblin. I rush up towards the entrance, move the bodies out of sight and hide behind a wall. Peering in I can see more stairs going down at the other end of the fort. I move slightly further in trying to scout the place and view any opposition.
After determining that I cannot storm this place I turn to leave. However, I end up bumping into a slightly larger goblin, he stands a head taller than the others and has bits of chain mail attached to his leather armor. He also has what appears to be a curved falchion as a weapon. Giving a loud shriek he charges at me, same with three others and a goblin mage.
“Crap! Why did I get so careless?”
Grabbing my spear, I aim to take out the least armored goblin first. I kill him with ease and turn around just in time to see a sword swing my way. I deflect it but the cheap wooden spear breaks. I crouch down and grab the dead goblin's sword and roll away. Standing up I see a ball of fire coming in my direction. I jump to my left to avoid only to land next to another goblin. The goblin swings his sword and I manage to kind of parry it but I still get a large gash in my right arm. I quickly throw a knee into his stomach and pull out my knife and cut his throat.
There are three more; two sword users and a mage. The two sword users come charging at me. I know I can't fight them both and my only real chance of survival is to run past them back towards the entrance and leave the dungeon. Plus, I can hear other goblins are being attracted to the sounds of fighting and I will be soon surrounded.
So I am about to do something stupid. Using as much strength I can muster; I throw my sword at the rookie looking goblin. Right after that, I grab the body of a dead goblin to use as a shield and charge the bigger one. The large goblins sword comes crashing down on me but it only goes in halfway through the corpse. That wasn’t the issue though, I felt a snap in my arm and instantly knew it had broken or at least got a fracture. Stifling a cry, I push the body with my good arm at the goblin creating an opening and I run out of the fort.
Out of breath I finally reach the orb. I quickly grab it and scream “FIRST FLOOR!”. My vision warps and I am now standing in front of the orb on the first floor. A bout of nausea hits me and I start to dry heave. A few minutes later and I collect myself. I start to inspect my right arm looking at how bad the damage is. I can see where it is broken a bit, it didn’t pierce the skin, which is good. I decide to head back home and patch up my arm, It looks like I won't be doing much exploring here for a while. even following the trail I left behind it still takes a long time to reach home.
I release the earth magic I have around my home and go inside. I grab some straight planks of wood and any kind of cloth I can find. I then try to mix up anesthesia as best I can with the herbs I have to kill as much pain in my arm as I can. With this setup, I decided to set my bone and splint it. I put my arm on the desk and I feel for the protrusion that is my bone. Taking short quick breaths and while trying to surprise myself I quickly push down and pop the bone back in place. My vision goes white and I feel a stabbing headache and bad case of nausea roll over me.
I lay on the floor for a while trying my best not to cry out in pain only having whimpers come out. I finally stand and finish splinting my arm and make a sling for it. I really wish I had healing magic. Thinking back to the events in the dungeon I start to get angry.
“SO STUPID!” STUPID, STUPID, STUPID!”
“I got full of myself and almost got killed.”
After a session of self-berating, I calm down and start planning. I need to get stronger and learn more. I look through my collection of books and see if there is anything, I haven't learned yet. I eventually find a book that teaches theory on neutral magic and chose to give that a go. When night falls, I have finished most of the book and decide to go to bed.
The next day I want to try to practice some of the light magic I read about. The book said it was the best element when it came to healing. I looked for any more books regarding light and only found one, it was just a journal though but it at least had some more information and at least how to use some basic spells.
That was how I spent my week, practicing my light magic and trying to understand how it worked. The weather started to get pretty hot and humid as well so I was guessing that summer was approaching. Seeing as I had been here for several months already, I am guessing it doesn’t snow where I am at. It was during one of these hot and humid afternoons that I finally learned how to use a minor healing spell. With this, I can heal my arm faster now.