There was no treasure or riches behind the door. Instead, all I saw was another tunnel, though wider than the last and oddly enough with pock-marked stone walls. There was an odd stench to the place and the moment I stepped in, it was as though the quality of the air dipped heavily. Like I was passing through some sort of invisible wall.
What exactly was the point of all this, if not for a vault or a bunker? Had my uncle built an underground home? No, that didn't make sense. There was way too much security. There were three doors to get to here, and who knew if they were more, though when I shone my light, I couldn't see the end of the tunnel.
I walked down for a few minutes, but after getting a message on my phone that my pizza was near I turned back, though not in time to miss the creature that stepped out from a dark corner.
Up to this point, things had been weird, but I hadn't truly been afraid, after all, it's not like there were monsters in Texas. The large grey-furred rat that stared at me with its beady black eyes, and dripping fangs, threatened to burst that conception. In fact, it did a moment later when it screeched and leapt at me. I fell back on my ass and scrambled away, my mind unable to comprehend what I was seeing. I knew rats could get big, but this thing had to be at least two feet tall, not to mention the size of its fangs.
It screeched once more and my fight or flight instinct kicked in. In this case, I chose flight. I had no weapon to fight this thing and I didn't want to find out what those fangs could do to me.
I sprinted down the corridor and practically leaped into the safe room, fumbling for the key to close the door. I could hear the rat's screeches getting louder and I cursed myself for being so clumsy. Thankfully I was able to find the opening and close the door just in time. The rat’s final screech cut off as the door slammed shut. I took a few steps back and bumped into the table. I stumbled and grasped for anything to keep myself up.
The smooth white material of the orb met my hand, and a few drops of blood from cuts I hadn't known I had gotten from scraps on the floor, dropped onto its surface.
What happened next is blurry at best as my entire body seemed to freeze, not just physically though. My mind came to a screeching halt and the last thing I remember before passing out was an odd wiring sound followed by a ring that sounded like the noise an elevator made when it stopped.
The next thing I knew, I was waking up to the sound of my phone’s voice call sound blaring away. I shakily got to my feet, wincing and placing a hand over the right side of my head, feeling a slight bump there.
My phone was on the floor, having fallen out of my pocket and I quickly accepted the call as I tried to remember what had happened. My thoughts were hazy as a voice came through the phone's speaker.
“Hey is this Kaiden? I’ve got your pizza.”
“Oh yeah, give me a minute, I…”
My words trailed off as the memories of what had occurred flooded my mind and with a wave of panic, I quickly looked at the door and sighed when I saw that it was closed. The image of the giant rat was clear in my mind and I shuddered as I ended the call and slowly made my way out of the room and down the hall to the ladder, making sure to lock the chain on the second door. I doubted the rat, even with its unnatural size, could get through the large door, but no need to take any chances.
I was feeling somewhat dizzy but I managed to make it up the ladder. I closed the hatch, and even though I knew the pizza guy was waiting, I took the time to fully spin the wheel until it was tight. Only then did I head back into the house and to the front door.
The delivery guy looked pissed but cheered up when I gave him a ten-dollar tip. I placed my food on the dining room table, but I didn’t start eating immediately. My gaze trailed back to the direction of the backyard. The last thing I remembered before blacking out was touching the orb, and then falling? I wasn't sure, but what I was sure about was that rats did not grow that big.
I opened the pizza box and bit into a slice while I used google on my phone to make sure that rats didn't actually grow that big. A few minutes of searching proved that I was correct, which should have relieved me, but instead, it worried me. What the hell was that thing then? Was it some sort of new and rare breed of rat or some monster?
“What the hell?”
A sudden feeling of vertigo overcame me, and I held onto the table as I waited for it to fade. I pressed a hand to my head, but apart from the bump, I couldn't feel any other sore spots or bruises. I was about to go back to research when a loud ding sounded followed by a transparent blue screen popping up in front of me, lines of text visible.
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[Admin Status]
Admin: Kaiden Anthony Lorde
Age: 20
Sex: Male
Species: Homo sapien(Terra - 13)
[Core Menu]
[Warning! Core link disabled! Critical damage sustained!]
[Unable to bridge connection.]
[Unable to survey full damage.]
[Physical contact via Admin required for link reestablishment.]
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The pizza slice fell from my hand and back into the box as I stared unblinkingly at the game-like screen that had just shown up in my vision. I hesitantly moved a hand to touch it, but it wasn't in front of me. It was like it had been plastered to my vision directly.
I probably should have been freaking out, but I’d always found doing such a thing wasn't really helpful, especially in a situation where your life wasn't actually in danger, although my mind was now filling up with questions as I tried to comprehend what was in front of me.
I might have thought that I’d sustained some brain damage from the head injury, but I knew enough to know that someone who was hallucinating would not have the mental faculties to consider the fact that they might be hallucinating, and in this case, it was better for me to treat this as real than fake until proven otherwise. First thing first was to check if it was as I thought because it did look very similar to things I’d read about in RPG fantasies and things I’d seen in games.
I turned my head, but the box moved with me, always at the center of my vision. Next, I began to read the lines of text which weren’t in English, but I still understood them, which was also odd since I knew the only language I should have known was English. The only thing that wasn't off was the numbers which I knew were just numbers.
The first part was pretty easy to understand and read like a status screen out of some game, but the next few lines made far less sense. What exactly did it mean by core and O-energy? The image of the orb came to mind, but somehow I knew that wasn't what it was talking about. I was just about to try and focus on some of the text to see if I could get it to reveal any more details when another screen popped up, and the first seemed to minimize and move to the corner of my vision.
If I'd thought the first screen looked like it was from a game, then the next was straight out of a game.
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[General Information]
Name: Kaiden Anthony Lorde
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Race: Human(Modified)
Gender: Male
Age: 20
Origin: Earth(Terra - 13)
Level: 0 | XP: 0% > 1
Entity Class: 0
[Attributes]
Strength: 8
Endurance: 8
Constitution: 8
Dexterity: 10
Agility: 9
Intelligence: 12
Perception: 11
Sense: 6
Willpower: 12
Wisdom: 9
Charisma: 7
Luck: 5
AP: 1
[Abilities]
[Ascension]
Body(Core): 1%
Mind(Core): 1%
Soul(Core): 1%
[E-Seeds]
Seed Slot I: O-Energy | OE: 0/0 (N/A) |
Seed Slot II: Internal Energy | IE: 10/10 (1/1H) |
----------------------------------------
“Have I been isekai’d?”
As far as I could tell I was still on earth, but this system looked like something out of an anime or light novel. The general information and attributes along with abilities and others I wasn't familiar with. Once again I tested the same thing with this screen to make sure it was the same. I moved my head and tried to touch it, but once again came the same result. It wasn't in the world, just my vision and it moved with me, always staying in my line of focus.
Just like I had for the last screen, I began to go through everything, treating this as though it was real as well. As far as I could tell it was. I knew I wasn't hallucinating and for certain, I knew this screen was real. I could see it, and it was too detailed to be fake, not to mention my ability to understand the language.
The general information section was self-explanatory and I glossed over it, for the most part, only stopping on the modified part next to my species and the origin. I knew Terra was another name for the Earth, so did it mean that I was on Earth thirteen, and what the hell did modified mean? I didn't feel any different, well apart from the popups and game-like system. My level was at zero which was not common in games. Didn't you always start off at one?
I moved over to my attributes and began looking over each. Most were pretty self-explanatory. The usual strength, dexterity, agility, and the others. It was simple enough but then came willpower and sense. What exactly did it mean by willpower and what was the difference between sense and perception? There was also the matter of wisdom and intelligence since I had no clue what it meant by either. Did it mean my brain power or my ability to think and understand? And what of wisdom? Was it referring to the ability to understand certain topics or the traditional meaning of wisdom or the RPG meaning?
My mind whirled with dozens of thoughts and questions. I always tended to overthink things so instead of continuing on like this I tried to focus on the attributes to see if I could get a description for each. I was taking things seriously and as though it was real because so far it had not been proven otherwise.
----------------------------------------
[Attributes]
Strength: Physical strength and the capacity to strike with and exert great physical force.
Endurance: Stamina and Vitality. The Physical capability to sustain an exercise for an extended period.
Constitution: Defense and resistance to certain forms of harm such as fire, heat, cold, poison, etc. The body’s physical and biological makeup.
Dexterity: Skill in performing tasks and actions with your hands.
Agility: Balance, coordination, speed, and reflexes.
Intelligence: Memory. The mind's ability to process information. The speed at which your mind can process certain types of information. The speed at which you can understand certain ideas, topics, and concepts. The ability to find answers.
Perception: Awareness and detection. The speed at which your mind can process physical information via sensations that come from the five senses; sight, touch, smell, hearing, and taste.
Sense: Unlike perception, this attribute is linked to the more supernatural senses. Spatial awareness, danger sense/sixth sense. The ability to sense emotions and feelings.
Willpower: Willpower affects pool size and regeneration rate of seed energies. Additionally, it can affect the strength of abilities involving seed energies, resistance to mental attacks, and manipulation of any kind such as empathic and telepathic abilities, hypnosis, etc.
Wisdom: Knowledge pertaining to the human-like dimension of issues. The ability to understand emotions and feelings. Why an entity performed a certain action, it's reasoning, its goals, etc. The ability to ask questions.
Luck: Effects rare drop rates within the dungeon, success, and manipulation/shifting/warping of chance and probability on things that should be random. Can cause the generation of unusual effects and an Increase of negative effects on opponents.
Charisma: Determines the likelihood others will like you or want to interact with you. Your force of will and personality. Gives a deeper understanding of how to interact with people both in the human range of emotions and non-human.
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To say it was overwhelming would have been a severe understatement. I’d played plenty of RPG games, but none had ever had this variety of attributes and such descriptions. My disbelief which I’d been holding back rose slightly at the description of all of the attributes and my personal numbers for each.
Despite knowing what would happen, I pinched myself. Nope, I was not dreaming. This, as far as I could tell, was really happening. The idea of being able to raise these aspects of myself got me excited but I curbed it until I actually saw results. This was like a fantasy nerd's wet dream and I just so happened to be a fantasy nerd or had been before most of my time had been taken up at work, or former work now that I'd been fired.
I had one AP point to use, one way of figuring out if this was a hundred percent true. I couldn't tell if my numbers were bad so I tried asking a question to the system mentally. At first, nothing happened, but then as though it had always been there, knowledge bloomed in my mind. Ten was the average for an adult male which meant I was severely lacking in multiple attributes. What was worse was that I knew why. My now-former job had been my life up until recently and I’d let myself go to put my full focus on it. I felt anger bloom but as I’d done so many times before, I pushed it down and shook thoughts of them out of my mind, not wanting to let them bring me down anymore.
At least some of my attributes were above average though. It put a smile on my face to see my intelligence and perception so high, and my willpower was certainly a surprise.
The attribute that would show quick results would be a physical attribute like strength or perception. In this case, I just went with strength even though a part of me wanted to go for luck or charisma. I’d known I was bad when it came to interacting with people, especially the opposite sex, but I hadn’t known it was this bad.
I didn't really know what to do, so I just winged it and tried to mentally allocate the point into the attribute. The point counter changed from one to zero as my strength score went up by one point. For a long moment, nothing happened, and I sighed, thinking it had been too good to be true when an odd numbness spread through my body followed by a short burst of heat.
My eyes widened as I gazed down at my arms which had definitely changed. I quickly checked the rest of my body, noting the new definition I had. It wasn't anything crazy or special, but it was a change, which meant this was real.
“Holy shit.”
My eyes moved back to the current screen in my vision and the description of luck. A dungeon. Was that what the tunnel had led to, a dungeon?
A sudden image of the book and sheet of paper came to mind, and the scribbles had looked similar to the language I was now able to read. I grabbed the fallen slice of pizza and shoved it into my mouth as I bolted back towards the apparent dungeon entrance.
All it took to dismiss the screens was a thought, and a quick test showed that I could bring them back up at any time.
I smiled when it took less time to open the hatch and after unlocking the chain on the second door, I made it to the final room with the large door. The book sat next to the lock and paper, but no white orb. I suspected that it had given me this system I now had.
The book which had been illegible was now clear to me and I began to read a random page.
‘I'm not sure if they are aware of the surface as they always come close when they give chase but never pass the door, at least, the larger ones don't. The rats are a nuisance but I'm worried that if enough of the little green ones get together then they could mob me, and let themselves loose on the town.’
My heart rate increased as I read more and more. It was a journal of my granduncle's delves into what he hadn't known was a dungeon, an honest-to-god dungeon from a game. I turned back to the first page and began reading. Hours must have passed as I read his description of goblin-like creatures and his first meeting with them which had almost led to him losing an eye when they’d tried to fake him out. He’d used firearms to fight his way fairly deep and more often than not, his kills would vanish and drop random items and loot. I frowned when I got to the last page which had been his thoughts on a roaring noise he’d been hearing as of late, and his desire to let others know about the labyrinth as he called it.
I sat there for a long time, my mind planning out tons of possibilities and asking questions, some of which I could answer after a bit of thought, but a lot was left unanswered. Had he been given a system as well, or was it just me since I’d dripped blood onto the orb? Was this how he had passed? I’d been told it was from a heart attack, but considering his health, and this new discovery, I was less inclined to believe that, especially since I hadn't been allowed to see the body, which in and of itself was odd.
One thing was certain though, I was heading into this dungeon one way or another, but not as I was now. In the journal, he’d written about building a space for all his findings and weapons. The new and larger shed in the backyard.
For a few seconds, I considered phoning the cops, but only for a few seconds. If I did that then the government would be all over this place and all over me if they found out what I could do. No, I would keep this a secret.
I made my way out of the dungeon entrance as I now thought of it and towards the shed. Night had fallen and the air was a pleasant chill. I tapped on my phone's flashlight and made my way to the shed.
I needed to get prepared and figure out this game-like system I now had access to. I hadn't really known what I would do when I got to this town. For the most part, I’d just wanted peace, but now I was realizing, I wanted purpose, true purpose, and some goal all to myself and not pushed on me by my parents or supposed peers.
One thing was for certain, my life was about to get real interesting.