"When the beds are buuurniing, let the moth****** buurn..:"

I woke from my weird dream into stinging pain in my ankle. I looked down and a small rat stared back at me. A girly scream escaped me as I tried to kick the rat away from me. It dodged my foot and stopped a meter away from my lying body, blood still coloring it's mouth. It kept looking at me with an unsatisfied gaze.

I hastily got up on my feet, keeping my eyes on the small rodent. Comparing to when I was teleported here, my surroundings were now dimly lit by weak, eerie glow of orange and white streaks on the walls.

The rat seemed impatient and suddenly lunged towards me. I dodged to the left by sidestepping and readied my right leg. With a decent soccer kick, the rat winced and smashed into the opposing wall. It dropped to the ground, and after couple seconds stopped squirming.

I sighed in relief and looked around me. I was in a small cave, smaller than the formation room. There was 3 tunnels leading to different directions and nothing special on any of them. Luckily the rat wasn't in a pack. We met rats every so often in the sites we were working on, so I was not too scared of the animal itself. Just the thought that it was already feasting me and that it might not had been alone, were the things which agitated me.

"Well then, this start wasn't too bad." I mused. Comparing to huge mutated tigers, one rat is enough to make you praise the god!

"I have no idea what is going around here, so I better keep quiet instead of yelling. Since there's nobody around, we were definitely teleported into different locations. Quite the pain, but then again there's many more distractions for the dwellers of these tunnels."

Even surprising myself, I didn't feel in any way hesitant or scared. I felt a smile creeping to my face, as excitement kept bubbling inside me.

"This is it! The adventure into the unknown! Everyone in here is in about the same situation as I am, with only their wits to keep them alive. Since I have little to no information about anything here, there's so much for me to discover!"

"But first things first, let's check out what I can dig up."

I turned my attention to the rat again. I walked towards the wall I punted the rat into, and reached the small broken corpse. For what I could see, it was just a normal rat, the kind you'd find in the real world. I tapped it couple times with my leather sandals, but the animal had long passed. I frowned, as I was waiting for some kind of reaction from it.

"How does the loot system work anyway?"

Would I need to skin it to receive loot? Or does it disappear? I had no idea.

Since there wasn't anything to start from, I sat down and started thinking.

"What do I know so far? I'm in dwarven tunnels. I'm supposed to find means of survival and progress from here. I have my clothes and my sandals. Tunnels are illuminated at least around here enough to move around. That's the basics."

"Then how about outside the game?"

"Status." I say out loud. Resulting... Nothing.

"Skills."

"Character."

I tried various words related to gaming, with not much luck. I managed to check the time, and bring out a yes/no -confirmation for logging out. It had only been an hour since character creation, so my blackouts had been quite fast. Or modified. Who knows, the game has control over many things after all. I listened my surroundings to see if anything, or anyone heard my ranting. Minute of silence and I thought I'm still good.

"I think I'm forgetting something. What did the old guy talk about? History...mm...dominance...our bodies! So we have mana in our bodies, how does it work?"

Mana, and essentially magic. That's something that one definitely wont have any experience on. Closest to it was my short tumbling as a spirit.

"Well, might as well try."

I closed my eyes and tried to "will" my body again. Instead of moving this time, I managed to grasp something inside me. Weak and almost unnoticeable stream of.. mana I guess? The stream was moving gradually around my body. But like when trying to hold my body as a soul, if I lost my focus, I would also lose my hold over the stream.

After I had the mental image of the stream, I "willed" the stream to move into my hands. After that was done, I opened my eyes and gasped hurriedly.

"Whaaat, this is so cool!" I exclaimed in awe.

My hand now held a slight bluish glow. I moved my hands around, opened and closed them. Nothing seemed different. Then I tried punching a wall. I cringed as it felt just like punching a rock wall usually would.

"Damn, I have to remember to not make such stupid experiments in the future."

I stood up and walked to the corpse of the rat. While maintaining the stream in my hands, I tried touching it. The glow moved from my hand into the rat, and the corpse started glowing. After only a second, from the body suddenly popped few grain sized blue spheres, which moved towards my hand. Before I was able to react, the spheres absorbed themselves into my hand, and I could sense a minuscule strengthening in the stream inside me.

"I guess that's the exp system? I wonder if the mana I get from the mobs is used for spells? Also since you have to activate the corpse, It's possible to kill steal. Have to keep eye on untouched corpses and try to leech them empty."

As I was in my thoughts, suddenly the corpse started melding into the floor. As I noticed, I tried to grab it, but it was quickly gone.

"So if you don't possess any mana, your body gets absorbed? What a weird system. Or is it just specific for this area? Maybe this is a starter dungeon or alike. Anyhow, I'm done here. Time to move on!"

I felt good that I finally had some leads on how the game works. Start is a start, even if the road is long.

"So I have 3 tunnels. I guess I could just use the maze method to go on with this. Let's pick right."

The surefire way to get out of maze by keeping your hand on the same side of the wall all the time. Well, forgetting the hand, but I would turn right on every crossroad. Honestly it probably doesn't matter, but I'd like to have at least some kind of system on this, in case that I will be here for awhile.

I finally got up and stretched a bit. Sitting on a cold, rocky floor really doesn't feel too comfy. After that I started walking into the right tunnel, keeping my steps light and ears open.

______________________________________________________

I looked behind after a little while and it seems the light's were more bright in the small cave, than in the tunnels. Have to keep that in mind when being in open areas like that.

After some 10 minutes of walking along the snaking tunnel, I could see another cave opening up ahead. I crouched, and started sneaking closer. The closer I got, the more adrenaline I felt in my body.

As I reached to the opening of the cave, I could hear some scrittling from the cave. Carefully I leaned on the wall and took a quick peek to the cave.

Luckily my entrance was on one of the darker corners, so I could safely take a look. There was 8 small rats eating a corpse of a person. From the blood trails I could assume that the fight had been over quickly, as all of them were close to the corpses location. From my corner, I saw 3 other tunnels. Two close to the on left side, and one on the right side. I once more verified the amount of rats, and turned back to my tunnel. I crouched while leaning to the wall, and started to think.

"Even though those are just small rats, that's also 3 tunnels... Hmm. There might be a chance that this person didn't come here alone, although small. We did enter to the circle one by one after all. But taking on even 8 of those at once could leave me too wounded to survive for much longer. I have to assume that I wont meet anyone else, heal or get help in extended amount of time. The wound I got before is healing slowly, but it still hurts. And diseases? Better play it safe."

I scratched my head while furrowing my brows. Then I tried to move my hands along the ground. I found some small stones and gravel. Nothing good enough to use as a weapon, but enough to create a distraction.

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

"This has to make do."

My plan is to throw couple of the bigger rocks, about size of marble, into the tunnel on right. I hope that would at least split their numbers. Then I would grind gravel against the rock floor where I am at with my foot, and lure few of them here.

Going back towards the cave, I once again crept towards the opening. Holding the stones in my right hand, I took a look once more and everything was like before. I brought my hand on the side of my head and took a careful aim. I launched the stones in my hand, and i let out small breath of relief as I saw them heading towards the right direction.

The rocks fled into the darkness and made loud noise, banging around the walls and floor. The sound of munching stopped, as all rats turned to look towards the tunnel. 5 of them started scuttling into the darkness. Fist pump!

"Alright, 3 of them shouldn't be too hard." I thought while waiting. After 10 seconds I start grinding gravel with my foot. The sound is not really loud, but in the silence of the underground it easily carries to the last 3 rats. They once again lift their heads, this time towards my tunnel. I quickly retreat further from the entrance, to the relative darkness.

I tried to make myself as unnoticeable as I can. Pushing myself against the wall, I kept my gaze towards the cave. Seconds pass, and I could only hear my own breathing. Finally after couple long moments, the rats finally come into the sight. They stopped to smell the air. They were still bloodied from ravaging the body, but somehow their eyes were dead. Until they smelled me.

Their eyes turned from white to black, and they started moving towards me. Even though they couldn't see me yet, they had general idea where I was. The time of hiding was over.

Taking the initiative, I dashed towards them, trying to get the element of surprise. It worked to an extent, as I got free kick on the foremost rat. The 2 behind it jumped backwards, and revealed their teeth. I faked going for the left one with a step, instead pivoting right after and delivering heel kick to the right one. It was already trying to close in on me, so it wasn't able to dodge mid air.

With the momentum I did a full circle, but the last rat was faster. As I stopped it already had sank its sharp teeth into my injured leg. I grimaced and grabbed the animal by it's neck. It tried to wriggle, but I used both of my hands to keep it on place. I closed my eyes and started to will mana to my hands.

My hands started glowing again, and I willed it to the rat. It doubled the effort of wriggling, but after a short while it died like it's fellows. While it was dying, instead of blue spheres, red ones appeared instead. After the rat died, I absorbed the spheres. I was confused for a bit as I didn't notice any changes. Then I felt an itch on my wound, and I crouched to take a look on it.

It didn't look nice, but at least no arteries or tendons were damaged. Just a muscle wound, which didn't bleed too much. But as I was watching, the bleeding stopped, and the muscle repaired itself.

"Holy....Well that at least solves the recovering problem. At least, if I can find weak enough prey to leech from. I'll name blue as mana, and red as life. Simplicity never killed anyone, right? But did I become a vampire of a kind...? "

I quickly drain mana from other two rats. The one I drained life from didn't yield anything else. After watching the corpses get absorbed into the floor, I went for a lookout again.

Last 5 of the rats had returned to the corpse, not minding the missing mouths. I was feeling quite good for being able to take the first 3 without much problem, so I decided to try and take them all at once.

I came out from the tunnel, and dashed to the corpse. Couple of the rats were facing towards me and squeaked, but too late. I already got a good kick on one which was on top of the chest. I didn't stop, and brought the same leg on top of the next rat, crushing it under my sandal. Other 3 were now jumping on me, but I instantly turned tail (no pun intended) and ran back to my tunnel.

I stopped on the entrance and turned around. I could hear them coming, and I once again readied my trusty right leg. First rat just blindly ran straight into my foot, and turned into a splatter on the wall. Second one ran under my lifted leg, and once again hit the same spot where the other 2 had earlier bitten.

This time it had a bit of momentum, and getting bit to the open wound threw me out of balance. I had to stop myself from falling by clutching the wall. The rat just tried to bite the same spot deeper, giving me the opportunity to once again grab it. Then the last one came in too, and jumped on me.

Since I was already in a bad position and holding its comrade, I couldn't take a kick on it. Instead, I released my second hand from the wall and fell backwards. While falling I used the now free hand to grab the last rat. I managed to get it from the midsection. But since I couldn't use both hands to hold them, they were able to keep scratching my hands with their sharp nails.

I punched wall with my both hands couple times, getting some extra crushing power. The rats broke something and stopped moving, as I broke my knuckles. Before they left this plane, I willed the familiar stream into my hands. Little more squeaking, few red spheres, and my hands were good as new again. Unfortunately my leg wound was still bleeding slightly. The rat had time to spend on it this time, making it deep enough for my leech not to heal it fully.

"Well, I did not really get much from this. Should reconsider taking a different route next time. The body is probably fresh too, so there's nothing for me on it."

I proceeded to drain the remains of the rats, and took a look on the player corpse. As I expected, he didn't have anything of value, what I didn't already have. The clothes were already torn by the rats, and I didn't really need extra sandals to carry around. It would also arouse suspicion if I walked around with other players stuff when meeting other people.

Then a different thought came into my head. While using my will, I put my hands on the dead player. This time nothing happened for a good while, and I started counting to 10 to give up. At 6, finally purple spheres came out, and the body suddenly started losing its color. After all of it was gone, the body turned into ashes, and the spheres started moving towards me. This time they were size of a small berry.

After I absorbed mana from the dead player, I felt somehow refreshed. Also the strength of my mana stream grew little bit more than from leeching rats.

"I hope not many players found this out yet, would give pk'ers reason to get you even if you have nothing." I grimly thought.

Well all in all, my first fight went quite without a hitch, so I was quite glad. Some mistakes here and there, but at least I know a little more what I can do. In the rush, I daydreamed taking on dragons and other mythical creatures! Too bad for me, from the pile of ash, that used to be a noob, a small rat dashed towards the closer left tunnel.

I didn't notice as I was still gloating my victory and planning my next step. Until I heard a squeak from the same tunnel.

"Ha, you're not so hungry to take on me!" I yelled as I got ready for the next round. I had been surprised, but I was still thinking about my future glory too much to worry about problems today.

A small dog sized rat came out from the tunnel. And another. And another. There was now three rabid looking, dog sized rats moving towards me. They stopped as they all entered the cave, with the small rat standing on top of the head of the foremost rat.

"Fuck me sideways." I dryly thought as I turned towards the tunnel I came from, and ran.

*************

Hello again! Our op MC besting the beasts in the dungeon.. not.  Well action is action anyway. I changed the writing style a bit. Before i tried to make some kind of rolling style, as the narrative was in present tense too. But somehow using the past tense just feels more natural. Dunno! I blame the tequila.

Enjoy!