Jack walked back through the closed and stuck church doors, and got to work. Or at least he tried to. Upon touching one of the broken pew pieces, he got an annoying popup. Message? Voice? 'I have to figure this out', he told himself.
[Select Default Action for Item Type]
[Convert to Mana]
[Store in Stasis]
[Research]
'What the hell? Uh... wait, stasis? Whatever I collect has time stop for it? That could be seriously useful', he said to the messages, which didn't react. 'Store in stasis', Jack said.
[Stasis Storage room not designated.]
[Dungeon only contains Core Room.]
[Collected goods temporarily deposited in Core Room.]
[Please designate Stasis Storage room.]
The pew that Jack had tried to pick up looked like it had been disintegrated and blown in a strong wind. Then, with a thud, it appeared out of thin air and clattered to the ground against one of the walls close to the front corner left of the podium.
It's not like it took any time really, so Jack touched each of the other pieces of seating present, each of them relocating themselves like the first one did, all landing in a pile on top of each other. Though, it wasn't a clean or organized stack like the lumber stacks you see in video games or even lumberyards.
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"Did you hear that?" Mael said to Snyl, showing his scout's anxiety.
"Came from the ghost town, sounds like", Snyl replied in his nonconfrontational ranger way.
The men weren't old enough to be middle-age, but weren't young men anymore, either. They'd worked for the Exterminator's Guild for a few years now, but this was the first time either of them had heard anything except local wildlife in this area.
"Let's go. Be careful", Mael warned. He wasn't sure what it could possibly be, but it didn't really matter. You could never be too careful.
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Jack went back around the church, and touched the chest again.
[Clear a space for the Dungeon Chest before Dungeon Chest can be relocated.]
'I did though', he answered the unresponsive message.
[Clear a space for the Dungeon Chest before Dungeon Chest can be relocated.]
'Okay, I'll go look around and make sure nothing's there, then.'
There was more than enough room to put the chest inside, as long as it was against the opposite wall of the pew stack once Jack looked. No, wait. He looked again at the floor, seeing that there was debris that came off the wood as it aged and rotted before he showed up. He tried picking up little pieces of splintered wood shards and flaked paint.
[Select Default Action for Item Type]
[Convert to Mana]
[Store in Stasis]
[Research]
'Seriously? Fine, just store in stasis.'
[Stasis Storage room not designated.]
[Dungeon only contains Core Room.]
[Collected goods temporarily deposited in Core Room.]
[Please designate Stasis Storage room.]
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
'For fuck's sake. I need a broom or something. Doing this by hand is obnoxious. And not in the fun way like me.' The storage questionnaire message popped up with every little bitty bit that Jack tried picking up. 'Were these all different things? Why can't it just be the pile? You know what? I don't care.'
He got it close enough that it was probably fine, or so he thought, and he went back outside to check if he could move the chest yet.
[Dungeon Chest must remain near Dungeon Core.]
[Select new valid location for Dungeon Chest.]
'Jeez, finally', Jack said to nobody except himself as a simple exclamation not meant to be heard. Luckily, no one could hear him. Not even the two men that had started creeping closer, mostly hidden in the overgrown and wild plantlife. Their slow movement didn't even make sloshing noises in the water that went up to their waists, and the native insect life hadn't woken up yet to sound an alarm by lack of noises since the night was too young.
Jack stood in the church again, looking not pleased, but relieved that he had finally moved the chest. 'Good thing it didn't weigh anything! That foot in there weighed tons, literally. And the chest was made out of the most brittle wood there was. Heck', he thought to himself, 'those wooden airplanes that the Boy Scouts give away break their wings if they even bump a leaf. And that's what's containing the giant super dense, super radioactive, super heated, super heavy hardened blob of nightmare lava?'
What sounded like priority messages, now definitely audible to Jack at least, started sounding rapidly.
[Invaders in Dungeon!]
[Invaders in Dungeon!]
[Invaders in Dungeon!]
[Invaders in Dungeon!]
[Invaders in Dungeon!]
[Invaders in Dungeon!]
'Ahh! Shut up! Cancel alarm!'
[Cancel invasion alarm?]
'Yes, damn it!'
The messages were no longer being displayed, and the noise was gone. Jack was reminded of sitting at a booth in a fast food place, and feeling like someone was looking at him. He turned around, and someone sitting in the direction he felt being watched from quickly averted their gaze.
But the feeling was still there.
There was a noise outside.
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"Shhh! Be careful!", Mael whisper-screamed at Snyl as Snyl slowly moved his foot off of the remains of the stair that had just given way.
Snyl beckoned to Mael, pointing at the church's door handles. The oversized double-door looked partially off its hinges, and didn't really look like it could be opened without applying force. But, scouts were better at stealthily entering somewhere than rangers were.
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[Deploy monster to protect Core against hostile forces?]
The message just appeared. Jack was hiding behind the podium, not knowing what was coming in, but it obviously was. The system was even bugging out, so he was definitely in danger from whatever it was.
'Yes', he answered the message.
----------------------------------
Snyl and Mael pulled the double doors open, with them creaking loudly.
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[Monster appreciates high vantage points for ambushing. Deploying to top of Bell Tower.]
'Bell tower? This is a church after-'
There was a deafening crash combined with a loud church bell being rung right next to Jack's head, mixed with the sound of the same bell being smashed into uselessness, followed by a loud cracking of wood, a splash of water, and two high-pitched men screaming in unison.
----------------------------------
But opening the door was no where near as loud as the giant stone monster's destruction of the church bell as it appeared out of no where above it as it crashed straight down. The door's creak also wasn't as loud as the as-of-yet unidentified monster, known only to Jack, with a face larger than either of the men were tall, crashing straight down and through the floor.
The door was very quiet in comparison to the two men screaming as they saw the same angry face staring at them as it rose up in the air of its own accord.
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The scout and ranger saw more than enough, and without conscious decision, turned and ran.
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[Congratulations on defeating your first adventurers!]
[Deploying Reincarnation Reward.]
'Reincarnation reward? Okay, that sounds good. What do I get?'
----------------------------------
Something big, another something big, fell down from the sky. Though, it could have appeared from lower than that, but it wasn't like the party was looking UP... not outside, at least. Definitely inside from now on, they'd look up. Whatever it was that fell, it landed at the edge of what used to be the church's front, directly over an overgrown walkway. Right in front of the fleeing men.
Thinking it was someone that might need help, the plan was to grab them and drag them away so they could get help later from somewhere else. Here wasn't safe.
But that's when a cloud moved and more of the moonlight illuminated what had fallen.
It was a man, though he could have been of any age. He was simply too injured on every part of his body to be able to tell. Besides a lot of cuts and broken bones and large, dark bruises, the most notable thing about him was just how BIG he was. If the two men that were just forced to discover him stood on each other's shoulders, they'd maybe come to this man's own. If his legs weren't broken and he could stand. And if he was alive, which he very clearly wasn't.
----------------------------------
[You've earned your corpse and everything in its pockets!]
The annoying message let him know he won himself. 'If only I knew', Jack said in his mind to himself, 'I'd have stocked a backpack before transmigrating.'
He went out of the now open door, and looked outside. The two men were really very small, barely half his own height, based on how big they looked next to the body. 'Is that really me?' he asked rhetorically.
Now alone again, he got closer and took a look. 'Man that guy's all jacked up.'