An impish operator with a mana headset looked smugly at a translucent crystal screen floating above his office desk. On the screen was a lanky human in gym shorts and a gray synthetic t-shirt with black sleeves. The human’s posture was slightly slouched, his narrow brown eyes squinting into the darkness beyond the window, a severed steel pipe in his hand. The impish operator began to speak, his bulging eyes still glued onto the screen. “This cycle’s progenitor seems incredibly average. How long do you think he’ll last?”
His senior, an older human man sitting at a control tower in the seat to the right, puffed out a plume of blue smoke from a pipe. “First boss room.”
“Really, Berndith? He’s alone! I don’t think we’ve seen a lone progenitor since… when was it…”
“The Red Cloak, fifty seven cycles ago,” said Berndith, finishing his junior’s sentence.
“Right, quite a while ago. I wasn’t here yet. I think this one will die in the first room. How did he manage to get initiated alone, anyway? Isn’t there some protocol to bring a good handful of initiates in at the same time?”
“Normally, yes. Something’s off this time around,” Berndith replied. “The whole system is online weeks before schedule. I don’t even think the dungeon is fully prepared.”
The impish operator seemed to have not heard what his superior said. His eyes glinted with greed. “Oh, I wish we could record this. Do you know how well a video of the progenitor of a world seed getting skewered in the first room would sell?”
“About ten million zed, maybe twenty million to an enthusiast. But don’t do that. I know a guy who leaked a progenitor death tape before Airing Day–plenty of progenitors die, you know. It’s not a big deal. But you don’t want to mess with the top brass, Ifrim. They’ll have you eaten alive.”
“It can’t be that bad, just don’t have to get caught, hee hee–” Ifrim started to gloat before getting cut off.
“No.” The senior operator known as Berndith placed his hand on his junior’s shoulder. “Don’t even think about it. You’ll get eaten alive. Literally. The last guy I knew who did it got thrown into the Tar Pit, and trust me, you don’t want to be there.”
The junior operator gulped, any thought of greed fading away when he heard of his predecessor’s ill fated end. Even imps knew of the infamous Tar Pits.
—---
Zack peered through the grainy window of the subway car, seeing several lit torches in the distance. They appeared to lead into a hallway of some sort.
The soothing female announcer began to speak as the subway car’s doors slid open once again, bidding him to leave the well-lit and clean, white hospital-like interior of the car and venture forth into the darkness.
You have arrived at Delver’s Alcove Station.
Please watch your step as you exit the car. Subway service will be terminated for the duration of the stay. Return service will be available at 3 AM local time.
A fare of ten iron coins will be required to board the return service.
You will begin by searching Delver’s Alcove for iron coins. The Initiation has begun. Good luck, travelers.
A fare box erupted violently from the floor of the car, causing Zack to flinch in surprise. There was a narrow slit carved onto the top of the box.
New quest! Collect ten iron coins. Completion (0/10).
You have reached the entrance to the dungeon Delver’s Alcove. To return to your home world, collect ten iron coins for the return fare.
Time remaining, 5:49:59
Reward: You will receive the privilege of returning to your home world.
After waiting for something else to happen, nothing did.
No point wasting time here. I’ll get going.
Truth be told, he felt a bit guilty going on an adventure into some magical homicide dungeon rather than studying. This was going to have quite the impact on his GPA. And if this involuntary spelunking episode pushed his grades below the threshold he needed to maintain his hard earned Charterhouse scholarship… the monsters in this dungeon would have hell to answer for.
Swallowing his rage, Zack brushed the notifications to the side and emerged from the subway car into a gothic looking platform with overhanging structures, platforms with metal poles, and a single wrought-iron gate hanging open that led into a dark dungeon corridor illuminated by torchlight, rows of torches lining the descent into the abyss.
As he exited the subway car, the lights on the car spluttered before shutting off completely. The car was dead, presumably staying that way until five hours from now, when it’d return back to Wharf Street Station.
Speaking of which, the track that the W train rested on was only one of ten tracks. The other tracks appeared to be unoccupied.
Maybe there’s supposed to be other trains coming here? Could be other people around if that’s the case.
He wanted to call out once again but decided against it this time around, remembering that earlier achievement’s warning about hostiles. Instead of shouting and possibly drawing unwanted attention to himself, he picked up a pebble and threw it down the room, then hid behind a pillar.
Like before, silence was the only response he got back as the stone clacked against the floor. He was alone.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
Zack exhaled softly, his vision now returning to a menu bar indicated with three thick horizontal bars inside a square with rounded edges that now rested at the bottom left of his sight. It looked similar to a smartphone icon. He touched the menu with his hand, bringing up the windows he had minimized previously until they reached the forefront of his view.
The first window showed the quest that he’d just received to collect ten iron coins.
You know, this is starting to feel awfully like some kind of dungeon crawler game forced into reality. At least it better not be one of those mobile games with energy and gems and stuff.
He brushed the quest window to the side again, marveling at how the holographic blue box obediently followed his hand gestures.
The next window was what he was looking for. It pulsed slowly with a golden glow, indicating the window’s high importance.
You have been granted [Boon of Requirement]
A blessing from an unknown source. This is the first instance of such a blessing being generated in any records. You will be granted a randomly generated boon that most fits your required need.
Analyzing need.
Out of 10,172,558,000 lifetimes, the number of lifetimes in which passenger Zack Baker survives until the second –redacted– Phase is… 0.
You die on the surface 9,915,264,000 times.
You die in a dungeon 257,294,000 times.
I managed to die ten billion times? How the fuck…
Zack gulped. He thought of himself as hardy and resilient, so to hear the system tell him so unsubtly that he sucked at surviving to such a degree felt embarrassing.
Your situation has been analyzed. The outlook is bleak.
Your requirement is surviving an unavoidable fatal stellar destiny. This requirement is Impossible to fulfill. A blessing cannot be generated.
…
Error.
Due to the extraordinary number of deaths that passenger Zack Baker has accrued across multiple lifetimes, the Karmatic Clause has been invoked for this lifetime.
Difficulty restriction has been overridden by an ancient rule.
This requirement’s difficulty has been reduced from impossible to near impossible to fulfill.
Generating a unique blessing to fit your required need.
…
Unique blessing generated: [??]
This blessing’s true nature cannot be revealed to you in your current state. You must prove yourself worthy of this blessing.
[??] demands an offering: Defeat your first enemy.
Reward: Stellar memory fragment.
The window finally ended.
Holy shit.
Those were the only two words that occupied Zack’s mind after getting veritably blasted in the face with back to back mind-shattering revelations.
First of all, it appeared that he didn’t just suck at staying alive– he seemed to be doomed to die across not one… not two… not three lifetimes… but every single lifetime across both the foreseeable and unforeseeable universe. Ten billion to zero was no fluke, and the Fool’s words made a lot more sense now.
Secondly, whatever was happening to him right now was so unusual that even this ‘system’ running the floating blue box operation had trouble processing things.
He knew he got very, very lucky this time around–but that luck didn’t come free. Everything in this world had a price, even a man’s life. In exchange for his life, he was now a pawn in a game far too complex for him to understand.
He might be totally clueless about the machinations of cosmic deities or ancient rules or any of this fantasy gibberish, but he did know one thing. He was going to be the most stubborn pawn to ever grace this multiversal chess board, and if he went down, he’d go down kicking and screaming, fighting till the very end with everything he had at his disposal.
Time for this disposable pawn to get to work. I might die some day, but it sure as hell won’t be today. Now let’s see how bad a dungeon that killed me two hundred million times can be.
Closing the window, he immediately got to work. He began by pacing around the platform, inspecting it. Just like the Wharf Street Station platform, there was no way to go but forward into the corridor engraved with strange figures and drawings of hieroglyphs that he could not understand. The entrance to the dungeon.
Taking a torch from the wall, Zack entered the dungeon with his steel pipe in hand, and a flaming torch in the other.
New Achievement! You have entered a dungeon.
You have entered Delver’s Alcove, a dungeon prepared for the assimilation of this planet. This is a level 1 dungeon. You will be allowed to choose a class at the end of the stage based on your points accrued during the stage.
Reward: You have received information about the assimilation.
New Achievement! Lone traveler.
You have entered a dungeon alone. You are awfully confident in your skills, aren’t you? Good luck, because you’ll be needing it.
Reward: Five lesser health potions.
New Achievement! Style points.
You have entered into a dungeon that will be graded. Any additional points will increase the pool of points that you can purchase with at the end of the level.
Reward: Reach the end of the level to utilize a special shop carrying special items.
New Achievement! A beginner’s guide.
Your journey has just begun, and it is fitting for you to be given a beginner’s guide to traversing the dungeon.
Reward: You have received the Tutorial.
The achievements were now being read in a voice that spoke directly into Zack’s head, allowing him to delegate his vision to scanning the dark corridor for any possible monsters from emerging from the shadows, as the system messages had warned him about before.
He noticed that a new menu item had appeared at the bottom of his vision-screen, depicting a small flask. Zack touched it, already suspecting what it would contain.
An inventory menu popped up, and within it was a stack of five red health potions in the first slot. He wondered where the map that was given to him from an earlier achievement had gone, before realizing that he now had another menu item right beside the inventory icon. In fact, there were several more menu items appearing now, most of them grayed out and inaccessible, including the map and tutorial functions for now.
Zack decided to experiment a bit with the inventory menu first before proceeding.
So how does this work? Do I just...
He reached for the stack of lesser health potions and simply grabbed at the air near the floating icon. Right as he did that, a light appeared around his hands, and the potion flask appeared out of thin air as if it had been 3D printed on the spot. So this was what it was like to have a magic inventory.
This new reality with magic and dungeons and everything was obviously foreign, and yet felt so close to home. Inventory menus, health potions, collection quests... to be honest, everything felt uncannily ripped straight out of a video game or a comic. Zack felt right at home using all of these functions. He felt exactly like that gorilla in a video he saw on the internet a few months ago–in that video, a zookeeper demonstrated to a gorilla how to use swipe motions to scroll through photos on a smartphone, and the gorilla easily grasped it after seeing it demonstrated for the first time.
Everything about this system felt like it was designed for humans in mind, intuitive to a suspicious degree, and here Zack was that gorilla. Not that he was complaining. He’d rather not die a miserable death due to a convoluted system, and yeah, he needed every break he could get.
Anyway, he had to go. Time was ticking, and he needed to secure ten iron coins before he ended up in another death scenario. With the heavens stacked heavily against him, Zack brandished his steel pipe and walked forward, taking the first step through that wrought iron gate into the abyss.