Rek dove out of the manic creature’s way, just narrowly avoiding the crushing impact of its fists. Rolling back onto his feet, he unleashed a swarm of Dancing Lights onto the [Bully]’s face.
The monster roared and swatted at the bright assault. The spell wouldn’t do it any real harm, but it would provide him with the distraction he needed to prepare his real blow.
Nary had the last light been swatted away that Rek managed to unleash his Earth Bolt. The linoleum floor underneath the monster erupted into motion, a jagged shard rising to slam into its gut with enough strength to force the air from its lungs.
The monster heaved, breathless, before stumbling back onto a knee. Rek was quick to capitalize on the opportunity presented. His new body was slower, less agile than what he was used to, but a goblin was always nimble on their feet. He crossed the distance between them with light, feather-quiet steps and leapt onto the creature’s face using the shard of the floor as a stepping stone.
The pencil held out, he thrust it into its eye socket with merciless precision. The impromptu weapon found easy purchase in soft flesh, digging deep until Rek heard a loud, wet squelch. The [Bully] froze then, its one good eye wide with confusion, before its body shuddered and collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.
Rek leapt away from the corpse, his breath heavy and his eyes keen. He waited a moment before he approached it again. A test of its breath proved that the monster was dead, and only then did he dare lower his guard a smidgen.
He’d won, he thought once the fugue of combat had cleared. It was a mere level one, but it was his first victory in the new world. His first victory at home, and he savoured it for what it represented.
The culmination of a five-year long adventure, all of which had led to this moment. He smiled.
“I’m home, Earth.” he whispered.
And now, there was work to be done.
Rek bent low and prepared a quiet ritual for the creature. Monster or not, it was his duty as a shaman to ensure that its spirit enjoyed peaceful passage to whatever afterlife The System had planned for it. It was a simple thing, lacking his usual detail and depth.
Simple patterns for safe crossing drawn with the creature’s blood, along with a sacrifice of a part of his being. For expediency’s sake, he chose spit.
It took him hardly five minutes before he was done. He sensed no spiritual presence from the corpse, but spirits followed no schedule. It could be minutes or hours before it finally freed itself of its mortal shackles, if at all. Some simply ascended directly without any need for assistance.
Either way, it was time he didn’t have. Rek paid it a final prayer before he turned away.
[ Level Earned! 1 >> 2 ]
He smiled. If nothing else, he would enjoy how easily levels were earned at these lower rungs in the power hierarchy.
[ Rek At’Terra
Lvl. 2 - Goblin - Shaman
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STR: 8 – AGI: 10 – END: 7 – PERC: 14 – INT: 12 – DEX: 11 – CHA: 9 – M.CAP: 13 – M.CTRL: 14
---
Dancing Lights - Earth Bolt - Sense Spirits ]
His basic stats had all gone up by one as expected, as had his mana control. His charm remained untouched, which was also expected. The stat could only grow through actual experience, or if one was blessed with a class that allowed it the growth. Or items. Or powers. He supposed that there were a lot of ways to grow it, most of which Rek lacked. Not that he minded. Charm would be useful in the outside, dealing with people, but in a dungeon infested with monsters? He'd much rather maintain his special growth stats: perception, which had grown by two, and mana capacity, which had also grown by two.
It wasn't much now, but it was a foundation for greatness, and greatness was all he'd allow himself. Anything else would be failing everything he'd achieved to this day.
Dismissing the screen, Rek scanned the classroom again for any unwanted surprises attracted by the noise of their battle. He found none. For now. Rek wasn’t quite so optimistic as to believe that things would stay that way for long. He’d need to forage up some supplies and settle his bearings fast.
Fortunately, the classroom was a bounty of veritable options to those able to find them. Searching the alien desks revealed all manner of goodies hidden within them, from paper-cutters to chalk, rubber bands and even the odd phone or two. Rek couldn’t help but grin at the sight of the electronic devices, recalling the many early days he’d spent in the other world hoping for his phone if only to look at pictures of his family. The phones he’d found had no such memorabilia. Most of them were locked, and five years in a fantasy world did not teach one tech-savvy hacker skills.
He still took them along, piling them into a backpack he’d salvaged from the ground along with everything else he deemed of value. The backpack trees scattered about too proved to be a fount of good materials. With plenty of tape and books on hand, Rek decided to make himself a set of improvised armour by taping the thickest tomes around his chest and back, and thinner volumes around his arms.
It was enough to provide some protection whilst not being too cumbersome. He didn’t expect it to stop an enchanted sword, but it might prove enough to deflect a monster’s maw for long enough to save a limb. He also improvised a longer blade by breaking off part of a wooden ruler and sharpening the tip until it could be used as a make-shift sword. A few experimental swings left him dissatisfied with its heft, but for now, it would do.
Afterwards, Rek spent the rest of his time scavenging for food and water. Those perishables he found like a few sandwiches and other packed lunches, he tried a bit of before storing at the top of his pile. The non-perishables he buried deeper into his pack. They would be his lifeline, at least until he found a permanent source of food in the dungeon.
With everything else achieved, there was only one final task for him to complete.
Rek strode up to the enormous wall of posters. His eyes danced over its surface, taking in the monumental number of designs and words and sickeningly bright images plastered over its surface. Most of it was strangeness personified. Words that meant nothing coupled with images that went nowhere. Like clutter, born to occupy space and little else.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
But within the overload of garbage, there would be gems. He was sure of it. Of all the places in a school, a notice board felt like the kind of place the dungeon would hide the information he sought.
It took some doing. The minutes ticked by unceasingly. At one point, Rek had been forced to drag over a chair to better access the more highly placed posters. Eventually, he managed to find what he’d been looking for. A School Rules flyer for Kodak High School Dungeon.
Rek swallowed thickly. He knew that name. It’d been more high school and less dungeon during his time on Earth, though the Induction had clearly changed things. More importantly, it was confirmation that he’d arrived back in his hometown.
Back to his life, and his family. The upwelling of glee was nearly overwhelming, and it was only years of experience and an iron will that allowed him to contain himself to a wide, bright smile.
Home.
Rek preened at the news, and it hadn’t even been what he’d been seeking. The rules on the flyer were of far greater importance, at least as far his survival was concerned. Rek steadied himself, taking comfort in the unexpected revelation, before he glanced over the flyer.
It was a simple thing, only three rules printed in thick bold font over a tacky word-art plastered page.
Do not run in the halls.
Raise your hand before addressing a teacher.
Always be on time with your assignments.
Fairly simple as far as Dungeon Laws went, but he wasn’t complaining. He much preferred this compared to reams of minor, hard-to-keep-track-of laws. He'd dealt with those sorts of dungeons a few times, and they were always more headache than they were worth.
It’d have been unlikely for a low-level dungeon like the school to be made that difficult, but one could never underestimate The System’s sadism.
He memorized the three rules before stuffing the flyer into the backpack. He’d need to test that these three were indeed the laws at some point. It would have to be his first priority.
With everything he needed in hand, Rek made for the edge of the classroom. The room had four doors within view that could serve as an exit, each shaped more oddly than the last.
He chose the nearest one. It looked like a bendy straw.
The door creaked open with a soft groan, revealing the hallway beyond. It was as strange and nonsensical as the classroom, twisting and bending in erratic ways, ensuring that he had no real sight-line to the end. A dozen corridors branched out from just the portion of hallway he could see, and twice as many doors dotted the walls in no particular pattern.
There were no [Bullies] that he could see, though he did spy some level ones scavenging along the hallway.
[ Wimps ]
The scrawny creatures boasted of six long limbs on their either side with a build that suggested speed. They were bedecked in a strange assortment of clothes far too large for their size, and their overly large eyes and ears made obvious that they were better equipped to sense danger than pick a fight.
Their names in peaceable green instead of the [Bully]’s malevolent red only further cemented that theory. He could ignore them without worry.
The [Bully] he spied emerging from a room further afield was a different story. The monster spotted the [Wimps], roared and immediately gave chase. Slowly. Rek raised a brow. The monster did not charge, strangely enough, as the one he’d killed had. Instead, it very calmly ambled towards its prey, an eager hunger blazing in its gaze that conflicted with its restrained pace.
The terrified creatures it was after did not run either. They scattered very calmly, each [Wimp] walking away in a different direction. The [Bully] followed after the closest one as it crept towards a room.
Once inside, the [Wimp] erupted into a blaze of motion, disappearing into the classroom’s tangled interior. The [Bully] too gained speed once inside, its roars echoing in its wake.
Rek blinked before he thanked the stars for his good fortune. He couldn’t have asked for clearer confirmation that the rules he’d found were indeed the dungeon’s laws. No running in the hallways indeed.
He wondered whether the dungeon made it so that they were incapable of running, or instead whether it was the fear of punishment that kept them in line. It could go either way, and he had no desire to risk testing it himself. Stepping out once the coast was clear, Rek walked carefully towards the nearest room. He felt no force restricting his movements, so he could only assume that some sort of punishment laid for those that broke the commandment of the hallways.
An empty classroom greeted him, and after shutting the door behind him, he set to work clearing it of its offerings.
There was much of the same as in the other room, though he did find a working portable music player. Listening to modern rock for a few blissful moments brought back many fond memories. The other world had many wonders to offer, but tribal music had never scratched his needs the same way the songs of home could. Tucking away the treasure into the backpack, Rek dug through the rest of the room for everything of value before emerging back into the hallway.
Moving onto the next room, he found it occupied by two [Bullies] beating each other to near death in some kind of bestial struggle. Rek wasn’t sure what had caused the violence to erupt, though given what he presumed of their nature, it might’ve been anything and everything.
Eventually, a victor emerged, and it stood shakily triumphant over its fallen foe for all of a few seconds, until Rek’s Earth Bolt broke its neck.
The creature slumped to the ground, a corpse before it landed. Rek conducted a quick ritual for the two monsters before continuing with his hunt. The room had little of interest to offer him, and neither did the next.
The classroom after that, however, was where he struck gold.
A map of the dungeon tacked onto the poster wall.
A very terribly, horribly drawn map, with bits and pieces missing, but one regardless. And it made evident just how much of a labyrinthine, confounding mess the dungeon truly was. Even just the portion the map covered was enough to give him a headache trying to navigate its twisting corridors.
But he would do so. Because it showed the location of the cafeteria, and a cafeteria meant food and water. Trapped as he was in a dungeon, there was no place more important. Getting there would be troubling, and Rek spent the better part of the next twenty minutes trying to chart a course towards the room, ten of which had been wasted on trying to just figure out where he was in the first place.
With that headache conquered, Rek retreated towards the exit. He had a fair amount of distance to cover, and an indeterminate amount of time to do it in. No sooner had he left the room that he heard a screech that tore away his attention.
A distance away, right in the middle of the hallway, were three creatures battling each other. Two of them were insectoid things that vaguely resembled a roach.
[ Driss Lvl. 1 ]
The other was a short, stocky pink thing with thin arms and a thick torso.
[ Orayi Lvl. 1 ]
Both were blue-named, which meant that they were no dungeon monsters. These were invaders, the same as him. The insectoid things were struggling against the orayi despite the numbers advantage, their individual attacks failing to score any real damage against the orayi’s thick hide.
Victory seemed close at hand for the pink thing, but Rek was unbothered. He was far more interested to see what would come after. Because the three were moving around. A lot. Jumping. Dashing. Running.
They weren’t aware of the rules yet, clearly. Their loss. His gain.
It didn’t take long for the dungeon to answer their violation.
The only warning he received was a sudden chill that crawled up his spine. After years of experience, he knew well what that feeling meant. Rek turned on his heels, ready to dive into the nearest cubby hole and wait out whatever ill omen the dungeon had summoned upon the poor fools.
He was too late. Stood right next to him was a thing.
He hadn’t sensed its approach. He couldn’t even feel it even as it stood right next to him. But it was there, and it stared down on him, an eerie grin on its lips.
[ Hall Monitor Lvl. ??? ]
Rek blinked. A question-marked. His better sense immediately took control. He was calm. He did not run. He didn’t even twitch. His fingers tightened around the handle of his improvised sword, though he had no intention to use it.
The three rules echoed in his mind like alarm bells. He knew what to do, and far more importantly, knew what not to do. So, he met its gaze and remained absolutely still.
The creature was a lithe monstrosity in the vague shape of a man. A dark, slender figure bound underneath a pale face. Its skin was stretched taut around its mouth, as if it was just a mask, and two hollow eyes studied him keenly.
A plain white, plastic lanyard hung from its neck; the words Hall Monitor printed in bright red across its surface.
It said nothing. Just stared for what felt like an eternity before it nodded.
Then it disappeared, and the hallway went quiet. Glancing to where the three invaders had been, he saw nothing but a few blood stains dotting the ground.