The things that happen to me... First, I wake up in another body and world. Then, as if it were nothing, I rescue a seed of darkness that puts me in an impossible difficulty level to coerce me into signing a contract that will turn me evil. And today, without going any further, the stalker who has been pursuing me for weeks has just decided to take the first step.

"Darius." I repeat angrily as I hold his arm.

I mean, with my strength stat, I'm not holding anything if he doesn't let me; but it doesn't matter, the pressure and my authoritative tone of voice are enough to make him stop.

"Look how brutish you are. It's Ronan. He's a pest, but harmless."

"Oh my god," Lily mutters as she approaches to look.

She kneels down and checks the emaciated brunet's pulse. Now that I notice... emaciated, what you'd call emaciated, he no longer is. Very thin, yes, but he no longer gives as much of the creeps as before when it seemed his bones would escape his body.

"He has a pulse, he's just unconscious," the princess clarifies with relief.

I think she was imagining the worst. I'm not surprised. The redhead here certainly doesn't lack muscle to kill a weak student with a blow to the head.

"But he attacked me, I was just defending myself," Darius protests, baffled to see our attention on his assailant.

"You're a brute," I cut him off. "Next time, be more careful. And I highly doubt Ronan could have done anything to you."

"My head hurts..." he mumbles defensively.

"Well, I can't imagine how he'll feel when he wakes up. Lily," I turn to her, "can you heal him?"

"I already used the health potion I brought. I'm sorry. This dungeon, which at the beginning was super simple, there were only some small harmless octopuses in the water and some little spiders on the wall, suddenly got complicated. To get here, we had to kill a couple of huge spiders, crazy. They even had the nest in this room. If I hadn't taken the potion, I would have died. I also used up the mana one I brought. Crazy."

What is she telling me? I try to keep my expression impassive and not show how strange it all seems to me. Is she lying to me, or were those octopuses that attacked me previously of a size similar to the ones my mother sometimes made for me to eat on Earth?

"Do we return him to the professor with the stone?" Darius asks.

"Yes, that would be best. Bianca, since you seem to know him, can you look for it?"

Ah, I should look for it because I know him. The only thing I know about this boy is his obsession with me. I open my mouth to refuse but think better of it: let's hurry.

"I'll go."

I crouch down and check the pockets of his jacket. The stone isn't there. Luckily, before I have to muster up the courage to look in his shirt pocket, Ronan stirs and opens his eyes. Upon seeing me, his brown irises and the white of his sclera seem to widen as his pupils dilate. Oh, crap... I try to move away, but he seems to smell my intentions and rushes to hold me with one of his no longer so skeletal and pale hands.

"My lady, are you alright?"

My lady? I give a sharp tug and step back, standing up.

"You must be in shock. I'm Bianca."

"And your wounds? He..." he sees Darius and starts whispering something.

"Stop," I crouch down and cover his mouth.

It's a damn spell. And being black magic, surely nothing good.

Ronan extends his right hand and places it on mine. His eyes look at me with more of that adoration that makes me nervous.

I let go and back away a couple of steps.

"Darius is not an enemy. Don't attack him. And don't touch me! Don't take liberties with me."

"But my lady, it was you who touched my mouth."

I can't deal with this, I can't.

Darius is looking at us somewhat angrily, and the princess is doing her best not to burst out laughing. Something is heard, a distant sound, but I don't pay much attention to it.

"Ronan, you have to use your return stone. You're hurt."

I can't see his stats, and there's no health bar here, but he has to be missing HP, yes or yes, because his face is bleeding, and his nose looks broken. Apart from the blow he took to the head when he fell on his back on the floor from the punch.

"I shall not leave you now that I have finally found you, my lady. "

"Stop treating me formally."

"My lady deserves no other treatment."

"Guys, guys, stop, we have company," Lily interrupts us.

Darius immediately unsheathes his sword. I turn around while reaching for the hilt of mine.

From one of the three corridors leading into this room, the sound of footsteps can be heard.

"Hello?" I ask as I position myself next to Darius, in front of the princess and the fallen one.

Or I try to, because the cocky macho man extends his arm to keep me a couple of steps behind him.

The puppy starts barking excitedly in my pocket.

I manage to discern what is approaching, what those figures are. In the dozens of meters separating us, they seem human.

Zombie, level 4.

Well, either something strange has happened here, or the professors have gone too far.

"Well done, my lady," I hear Ronan say, and a soft sound of fabric rubbing against stone, as if he were getting up.

I don't turn around. I don't want to think about what he might be referring to either. Zombie movies and series come to my mind, and I come up with a strategy that in builder-type games was very simple to apply. I spend two mana points and raise a wall of compacted earth right where the corridor opens into the room.

Yes, these two months I've been studying earth magic. No other element, because I'm supposed to have only one affinity. In addition to improving my earth control, I learned earth wall and stone bullets. The first spell costs two mana and the second one. Since the lick restored three points to me, I have one left. I plan to save it to summon the wolf if it's a matter of life and death; but I hope it won't be necessary. It's something I don't want to reveal to witnesses.

"What are you doing?" Darius rebukes me without turning around.

By the time I finish casting the spell, the zombies are about ten meters away from us.

"Taking precautions. We're going to try to decapitate them from behind the wall."

The truth is that my spell turned out perfect: a solid wall of hardened earth more than two palms thick and chest-high to the zombies, more or less. On our side, waist-high. This is possible because the earth I used, I took from the zombies' corridor side. They have a small downward ramp that ends at the wall. It's the function of the basic earth control spell, to help you learn to manipulate it. By practicing and improving, I've been able to learn earth wall. The ideal thing now would be to have a spear to aim at the eye sockets while they try in vain to keep advancing; since that's not the case, swords will have to do.

In the game, I didn't encounter any zombies, but from how slowly they're approaching, I don't think they'll be able to jump the wall; that's assuming they have the intelligence for it, which I doubt.

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Darius is caught off guard for a few moments, not quite sure what I mean. I snort and position myself at his side. This time he doesn't push me away. When the first of the dozen creatures bumps its chest against the wall, before it can stick its arms out to grab me, I've already leaped forward, getting closer to the barrier, and slashed its neck. Okay, without channeling an element into my sword, I didn't cut it off. In fact, I think my steel got stuck in its vertebrae. Darius rushes to react and deals a blow to the other side of its neck, finishing the severing and freeing my sword.

"Good thinking," he says.

It doesn't sound like a compliment, but somehow, coming from the guy who was angry because I'm a level above him, it makes me smile as if it were.

Three more zombies reach the wall. Darius is already attacking. He's stronger than me, and it shows: with a single slash, he reaps a head. I hurry to help him. More zombies are coming, pressing against the one that hasn't fallen yet. Their hands protrude over the wall but are easy to dodge. The redhead and I (well, mostly the redhead) finish off the creatures. The last ones have climbed on the bodies of their companions and tried to get to the other side, but without success. There were only twelve, thank goodness.

"Uh..." Darius begins to say and suddenly falls silent.

His face lights up.

"I feel stronger. I think I've leveled up."

He feels? He thinks? I ponder. Oh, right, NPCs can't allocate their stats, it happens automatically.

"Congrats."

I have notifications of defeating three zombies on my own and sharing a kill with Darius; none for having leveled up. The remaining eight kills are exclusive to the warrior.

"Bianca, I was wrong about you. I didn't understand how you could have improved so quickly, but now I see it's thanks to your combat tactics. I wouldn't have thought of something like this." He pats me on the back energetically.

It hurts. As I said, this guy is a brute. And did he really not think of something so typical in any zombie movie? I should have invited him to a party, so I would have gotten XP for all the ones he killed too.

"I'm glad. I don't hear any more footsteps. Shall we investigate?" I ask and turn to the others.

"This is getting very dangerous. Maybe we should go back," Lily comments hesitantly.

The girl has a sheathed sword at her waist. She didn't help us. I think I remember from the otome that she liked hand-to-hand combat, not magic. I didn't get to play with her as the protagonist, but from interacting with the dialogues, she was the typical overprotected and pampered princess.

"I'm not leaving without the jar," Darius affirms.

"I'm not going to abandon my lady," Ronan says, who has been watching during the fight.

If what he says about supporting me is true, he was possibly ready to cast some spell if necessary.

"I wasn't going to steal your creatures, my lady," he seems to read my mind. "It's obvious you planned everything great."

I confirm: Ronan didn't attack so as not to kill-steal from me. What's with him and me?

I stare at him. This boy is very strange. In the end, I'm going to have to talk to him about what he might have seen on the day of the entrance exam. Also, why do I think that by "planned" he's referring to something more than the wall? It's not like I was the one who caused the commotion that attracted the zombies...

I shake my head.

"Let's go."

I lean on my arms to climb over the wall and jump to the other side. Since it comes up to my waist, crossing it is simple. Getting down is also easy, as the creatures' corpses act as a ladder. A bit sinister, and I don't like at all the feeling and sound of my boot sinking into the rotten flesh, but well... a ladder after all. I also observe the stone slabs on the floor, displaced by my spell. Many, I imagine, are under the corpses, and others I see on the earthen ramp. The cement or substance they used to join them is broken into small blocks of different sizes. I crouch down and pick one up. It's about three centimeters thick. They must have applied it to the floor before placing the slabs.

"Do you know who makes the dungeons?" I ask the princess, imagining she's the one who can best answer me.

"Dungeons are created, everyone knows that," she replies, puzzled.

Yes, I read that in the library, but this one seems like someone built it.

"Yes, but these slabs look like someone put them there."

"Bianca, have you really been studying for the entrance exam? There were precisely questions about dungeons and their creatures."

"Well... I hit my head and have memory gaps," I tell her the same thing I told my supposed fiancé. "If I got one of the worst grades..."

The princess looks at me with pity.

"Oh, poor thing. Don't worry, I'm sure you'll recover. Look, dungeons are magical. No one knows very well how it works, but they generate, and when they're ready, a mouth opens to the surface for us to enter. Although this one belongs to the academy. That means the professors have control over the room where the monsters spawn. That's why I didn't expect us to encounter a spider nest without supervision."

"Okay. Now I really want to investigate. Besides going to look for the jar, I refuse to fail."

"Well said."

Darius agrees. This guy... he treats me like we're buddies now.

The princess and the dark magic user cross to the other side, and we walk in silence. The puppy, who has been barking during the fight, has calmed down. None of them said anything about the barking. Better. I don't feel like explaining what I'm doing with such a supposedly small and helpless pet in a dungeon.

After a while, we start hearing growls similar to the ones the zombies were making before. We arrive at the first door I see in the entire dungeon. It's wooden and open. The growls are coming from inside, along with the sound of blows. Darius gestures for us to wait and peeks in.

"There's another open room behind this one. There are four zombies there pounding on a wooden cabinet," he whispers to us. "I'd burn them, but I used up my mana on the spiders."

I get it, they're tough, level 4. They shouldn't be in this dungeon. I think I can handle one without using the shadow wolf.

"Can you take three?" I ask him.

I don't even bother counting on Lily. Surely she's out of mana to support us at a distance, and I don't see her capable of coming to slash at the zombies.

"No, maybe two."

"Hmm..." I think for a few seconds. "Ronan?"

His face lights up when I ask him. He's got to stop doing that.

"My lady, allow me to place a curse upon them. I shall reduce their attack speed and diminish their strength, enabling you to vanquish them with ease."

Can he really do that? An area curse isn't exactly beginner's dark magic.

"Thank you, that's perfect."

I watch as Ronan smiles and begins murmuring some words. His spell has a longer casting time than mine. After more than ten seconds, he extends his hand through the door gap, and I don't see anything. But something must have come out of his fingers because the zombies stop hitting the cabinet and turn in unison towards us. I squint to read their labels.

Zombie, level 4. Exhausted.

I think Darius does the same as me because in the midst of a delighted battle cry, he rushes at them. Okay. I follow him, not wanting him to get all the experience. Ronan has a dagger but doesn't join. Following his twisted logic, although he's going to get experience for participating in the kill, this way he avoids accidentally taking the largest amount, which is given to the one who deals the finishing blow. Thanks to his curse, finishing off the creatures is simple. Once all four have bid farewell to their undead life, we hear a male voice coming from inside the cabinet.

"Who's out there?"

"Academy students," Darius answers.

"Have you finished off the zombies?" The voice sounds incredulous.

"Yes."

The door swings open. It's a cabinet full of jars, in which one of the combat professor's assistants has made room by sitting on the bottom shelf. As he comes out, I see he's not in good shape: his clothes are torn and stained with blood from scratches and bites.

"That curse that hit me... is it yours?"

"Ronan's," I say and point to him.

The assistant moves a bit slowly and approaches him.

"Thank you," he says as he shakes his hand. "If not for your powerful dark magic, I don't think I would have held out against the reinforcements."

"What's going on here?" Lily intervenes.

I also look around. There are a bunch of empty cages. Some open by their mechanism and others have clearly been broken, with the iron bars deformed and leaving room for their occupants to escape.

"Honestly? I don't know," the assistant tells us. "Everything was going well. The first groups of students were arriving, I would leave a jar in the room ahead and a zombie. A level 1 zombie, not level 4. They would defeat it, take their reward, and leave with the return stone. Simple and orderly. But suddenly, the zombies in the cages started getting agitated, hitting the bars, trying to bend them. At that moment, I was holding a zombie by the neck to take it to the room and let it wait there for the next students. It began to struggle. I could see its muscles becoming bulkier and even saw it grow, get taller. I had to kill it. I came back to this room and saw that the creatures were managing to bend the bars, moreover, that several were making a hole through which they could soon pass. I had left my return stone in my backpack on my desk. I couldn't reach it, two of the creatures escaped and attacked me. They were much stronger than they should be. More zombies started coming out of their cages. I forgot about going for the stone and locked myself in the jar cabinet. That's all I know."

We fall into absolute silence, absorbing what he just told us. Well, not everyone: Ronan, upon hearing it, murmurs an approving sound and nods his head as if he knew something I didn't and everything fit together for him.

Then a group approaches running. It's the two professors, followed by a couple more assistants. They enter and stop short, looking at us strangely.

"Alex, did you manage to stop them? The twelve outside too?"

"No. It was them." He points to us. "That student with the broken nose is a portent of curses."

Then the seed of evil pokes its head out of the pocket of my backpack and starts barking happily.

Lily looks at me as if wanting to say something. The professor is quicker.

"Bianca L'Crom, what are you doing bringing your pet to a dungeon exam?"

Okay, I'm drawing a blank. I don't know what to answer.

The professor mutters something that I don't think are exactly praises for me and then tells all of us students to go outside, that the healers have already come from the infirmary. I imagine the boy we sent back unconscious must not be the only one to have returned injured.

"You will wait outside until I return. I want to hear your version of the events."

Luckily, in front of my classmates, I haven't done anything out of the ordinary, like using channeling magic. Before leaving, I approach the cabinet and grab three jars. I give one to Darius and another to Ronan.

"That's not necessary, Bianca," the professor says patiently.

I shrug.

"Just in case."