“Do I have to do it?”;

“You’ve got no choice, rich kid”.

Charles sighed as he received the large glowing syringe in his hand. A gooey blue liquid was slithering from end to end, and bubbles formed when he shook it. The needle was shining under the neon lights. He couldn’t chicken out now, as he promised them he’d do it. Closing his eyes, he stabbed the needle into the side of his neck and pushed the plunger.

Blankness.

“I think he’s dead”, said Matthew. A foot was prodding his body, and someone shook his shoulder.  

“He’d have been useless after all”, said Lucy. Someone opened his eyelid and shoved a bright light upon it.

“Dead”. He wasn’t dead, but his muscles refused to move. His brain was sending the signal, but nobody down there answered.

“We should at least give a try”, said Andrea;

"Fine, but I won't breath into him".

Four hands rolled his body and ripped his shirt, showing his bare chest. They pushed the palms of their hands rhythmically upon his sternum, while one of them was humming a song. Another one opened his mouth and breathed into him. A cold gel was applied to the skin of the chest.

“Clear!”. After a buzzing sound, his body convulsed from the shock and his eyes pried open.

Three shapes loomed upon him. Charles rose his back from the hard ground. Rubbing his eyes, he found them looking down at him. Blood was flowing again from in his veins, but now they were glowing like the substance he injected into himself.

“Where’s the defibrillator?”, he said. He was still in the barren room of before, with the same people: Matthew, the thug; Lucy, the girl with short hair, and Andrea, the more beautiful of the two.

“What defibrillator?”, said Lucy;

“We don’t even have a bathroom here”, said Matthew;

“Then how did you reanimate me?”;

“Nobody did”, said Lucy. His shirt was still buttoned. It must have been his imagination. Charles rose from the ground, even if it seemed that the whole room was spinning around him. He was fine, as he went through worse times: one time he fell during a game of cricket, spraining his ankle, and his mom had to call their personal doctor to fix it. Truly a horrible experience.

 “Will you tell me what this dungeon is now?”, said Charles. Lucy pushed the ON button of the projector in the middle of the room. After a countdown, the title appeared in the center of the screen: So, you’ve been trapped in a Dungeon.

 An enthusiastic male voice started talking under photos of nature, birds chirping, squirrels holding acorns, and a deer running through the woods.

“America”, he said, “The greatest country on Earth”. The US flag waved on the screen, followed by a woman wearing ‘50s clothes pulling an apple cake out of the oven and putting it on the windowsill. The camera moved to blonde children playing in the garden and laughing. Everything was fine until everybody turned into skeletons under a wave of fire.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Until the Apocalypse happened”, said the man, and his voice raised under the shrieks of burning people, “We should have listened”. A middle-aged man appeared on screen in an empty room such as theirs.

“Hi, I’m Taylor Johnson”, he smiled, “You may already know me from such post-apocalyptic movies as What to do now that I’ve tentacles and.. well", he cleared his voice, "Nothing else, until now". Someone was banging their hands against the thick metal door behind Taylor, but the actor didn’t mind.

“If you’re watching this video, it means you have been trapped in a Dungeon”, growls came from outside, and a voice calling for help followed.

“You’ve nothing to worry about”, he said, “Many people escape from dungeons every day, but first you need to know what to do”. The image of a pyramid with many floors appeared next to him, “Every dungeon consists of many levels, full of enemies and traps, and you need to defeat to a boss to reach the next one”, the next images depicted a giant lizard which breathed fire, “To escape you must destroy the core after having defeated the final boss. Easy as a piece of cake!”. The next image was of a glowing magic ball in a large room.

Taylor moved towards an old vending machine, while a splatter of blood covered the porthole of the door. “You can buy powerups after killing enemies at the Power-o-matic machine in every safe-room!”. He inserted a banknote inside, but the machine spat it. He maintained his smile as he kicked it, and, after mashing on some buttons, a large syringe like the one Charles used before came out, “Inject this liquid in yourself and you’ll feel stronger than ever!”.

After a roar, a giant clawed paw pulled the door from its hinges.

“Just a moment”, he said, and grabbed a shotgun, loaded it, and shot at the paw lurching towards him.

“There’s nothing to worry about!”, he said, ducking to avoid another attack, and he blew off half of it with another shot. The paw fell on the ground, showering the actor in blood. He turned towards the camera again, “Well, I hope now you’ve learned how to survive in a dungeon!”.

Lucy turned off the projector.

“But he didn’t teach us anything”, said Charles. A Dungeon? He never heard of them, even if one time he overheard his father talking about one on the telephone with another a woman who wasn’t his mother and neither his secretary.“Go to the machine”, said Lucy, “Let’s see how strong you are”. Charles nodded. He’ll show them that he wasn’t the spoiled rich kid they believed him to be. He pressed the STATS button of the machine, and a small window opened, with a needle coming out.

“Please”, said a robotic voice, “Provide a blood sample”. Why everything had to do with blood? He sighed as the needle sucked the red liquid from his wrist vein.

“Completed! The First Vector has been successfully installed. Now we can retrieve your basic stats”. The other three huddled behind him as the numbers rolled on the screen.

Name: Charles Title: Spoiled Kid Class: / Strength 0 Endurance 0 Agility 0 Constitution 0 Dexterity 0 Perception 2 Intelligence 0 Willpower 0

The roaring laughter behind him made him blush in shame. “Goddamn, you suck!”, said Matthew, while Lucy started coughing. The only one who comforted him was Andrea, who patted his shoulder. “You don’t have anything to be sorry about”, she said, “You’ll get better”.

An alarm made a screeching sound, and the room was illuminated by a flashing red light.

“The safe-room will open itself in three minutes”, said a robotic voice, repeating itself. The laughter stopped, and both Lucy and Matthew bolted towards a rectangular wooden crate. Andrea opened the fridge and pulled some cans and bright drinks in glass bottles to put in a knapsack.

“What’s happening?”, said Charles, as Lucy was putting on a pair of brass knuckles, and Matthew pulled a spiked baseball bat from the crate. Andrea opened the cylinder of a revolver and was putting the only bullet she had inside it.

“We can’t stay in the safe-room forever!”, said Matthew, “Move your ass and take a weapon!”. A weapon? His mom wouldn’t even let him play with a pair of sharp scissors.

“Here”, said Matthew, giving him a lead pipe, “Pick this”. The weapon was heavy in his hands and made him nearly fall.

“The door is opening”, said the robotic voice. The wheel at the door started to turn with a pneumatic sound, and white smoke started to enter in the room from the gap.

“Let’s move!”, said Lucy.