Jacob stood over the burning, crumpled body that his soul inhabited only a couple of frozen moments ago. His entire being was numb while he hovered above the wreckage, with only the memory of pain, confusion, and delirium providing a facade of feeling. Those phantom pains were his only companions while time stood still.

Next to the car and tree that it had collided with was a phone, ejected out of the car and laying in the snow. Unlike the car, the phone wasn’t broken at all as it laid in the snow. The screen was white and covered in a single question with two buttons.

“Do you want to live?” was followed with a green button labeled ‘Yes’ and a red button labeled ‘No.’ In a different place or time, he would have pressed yes in an instant. He couldn’t help but watch the car burn in this frame of a moment. The pools of blood and smell of burning flesh wasn’t just from his expired corpse.

He tried to ask the phone or the air around him if clicking yes or no would save his family. He didn’t get an answer. He didn’t feel like either option would save or doom his family. The phone, or whatever caused time to stop, was only going to save him.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered to them, knowing they would never hear it. He floated over to the phone, passing through the snowflakes that hung in the air like ornaments, and pressed yes.

“Remember, if you fail, your second chance is gone,” wrote the mysterious being in the phone. When Jacob finished reading the parting threat, the world around him collapsed and everything went black.

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Welcome, Dungeon Master

Jacob woke up to a mechanical voice echoing in his ears. He looked around and discovered that he was in an underground dome-like room. The stone around him was…unnatural, carved without inconsistencies or imperfections into a perfect geometric shape. There were no entrances, exits, or dust on the floor.

He tried to turn his head, but when his brain sent a signal through his nerves to his neck, there was no movement. He tried to move his hands and legs, but those were missing too. When he tried to move his eyes, his vision refused to change. Jacob panicked and writhed, sending his thoughts into the walls of his mind in hope that a hole would be made.

Dungeon Core Unsuccessfully Revived;

Using Core Health…

The mechanical voice announced something and a purple fire appeared around him. Though he didn't feel any pain from it, the memories of him burning underneath smashed metal resurfaced. That nightmare of being trapped in the wrecked car invaded him, and for a few moments it was like he was back there, dying after the crash. He screamed and tried to scrub his mind of it, but it had infected him.

Dungeon Core Successfully Revived

Jacob was launched out of wherever he was and felt himself float in the air, like after he died. His nerves managed to connect to something, and he brought his arms in front of his eyes to see them. Instead of blurry flesh and clothes, his entire body was made of a large shadow.

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He forced his hands together, and felt only a slight resistance as they pushed through each other.

He looked around and discovered the prison he had been trapped in. There was a large, coarsely cut gemstone that reminded him of rose quartz. It glowed and cast the entire space in a strange light. The shadows and darkness around it were odd, like he was in a video game with weird lighting.

Generating Dungeon Fairy…

Jacob flinched a little bit as something popped in his vision. A blue screen, or perhaps text box, appeared in front of him suddenly, startling him and for a moment, made him remember the flashing of the car lights reflecting off the tree and snow. He forced himself to try and calm down — now wasn’t the time to be a coward.

He read the text box, his list of questions growing larger as he finished. He knew what all the words meant, he even knew what the term ‘Dungeon Fairy’ meant, but he had no clue what any of this was doing here. Dungeon Fairy was a term used by the game Dungeon Heart for the player’s assistant, but it was far too strange for that to come with him after his resurrection.

Now that he thought about it, he had a mobile port of Dungeon Heart on his phone, the same one that sent him here. Was there a connection…no, that would be ridiculous. The worst thing he could do here was create connections or conspiracies that weren’t there.

Small specks of light, like tiny stars, appeared in the air around the glowing gemstone before falling into it. Jacob fled away from the gemstone, worried that the gemstone was going to explode. After all, this was like the animations played in many video games and anime.

Right as it looked like it was about to explode, the mass of light within the gemstone instead collapsed and formed a hand that shot out. The hand grabbed the air and seemed to pull the rest of itself out. The hand turned into an entire body that emerged from the gemstone like an insect from an egg.

The thing was a humanoid the size of a large child, covered in a static sort of mellow white that looked like it was displayed through an old TV. There were few features on most of its body aside from shape. It had two, slightly-too-small auroric butterfly wings on its back and two large, purple eyes on its bald head.

The thing turned to him and said, “Greetings, Dungeon Master.” This thing’s words didn’t feel like sound, they felt like the information was directly injected into his head in some form of telepathy.

Jacob didn’t want to answer it back. There was something unsettling about it, though he wasn’t able to put his finger on what bothered him. The thing was justifiably creepy, its wings didn’t move as it floated off the ground like him, and there was something deep within its purple eyes.

Creating Dungeon Entrance…

The weird crystal gemstone pulsed and the energy began to melt the stone walls. Except the stone wasn’t melting from heat, instead it was like it was turned into clay or wax. An unseen force began to sculpt the stone and form a tunnel out of the dome-shaped room. The tunnel didn’t grow very far before it opened up into a dark, truly dark, cavern.

Dungeon Entrance Created

“Would you like a tutorial, Dungeon Master?” The thing asked.

“Ahh…sure,” he said, worried that not answering would make his already strange situation worse.

“You cast spells and use abilities using command phrases. For example, saying [Status] will summon your status screen.” The thing paused, as if waiting for Jacob to say the magical words.

Jacob hesitated and the silence became more awkward as he became paranoid. After all, this second life wasn’t given for free. Who knows what would happen if he caused trouble or made a mistake.

Warning! Dungeon Under Attack!

Before he could say anything, a text box appeared in front of his eyes while an alarm sound clawed his ears and the mechanical voice narrated it to him.

The dungeon was under attack? Jacob turned his head towards the glowing crystal and then to the strange butterfly humanoid as he pieced together what was going on.