When his senses unscrambled from his journey through the portal, Nick found himself standing on an island of light surrounded by darkness.
Other than the ground beneath his boots, all that he could see was a prompt from the System floating in front of his eyes, the first direct message that he’d received since the tutorial had begun. That realization prodded at the memory of his orientation. The terror and chaos that had ensued before.
It wasn’t enough to cause his missing memories to rise to the surface, although they were floating just below the threshold of awareness. Nick shook his head to clear his mind of distractions. He shut out the pain of his burns and turned his attention to parsing the meaning of the words.
Welcome, contestant, to your first dungeon.
This dungeon has been curated to teach you the basics of dungeon crawling.
All challenges have been scaled to the minimum recommended level of [5].
You will encounter a series of escalating threats as you progress deeper into the dungeon.
If any challenge seems insurmountable, you should abandon the crawl and retreat through the portal behind you.
Tutorial Dungeon Information
Location: The Sewers of Kastilla.
Deep below the capital, they unearthed a sealed chest.
Instead of treasure, they found death inside, releasing a Tier 3, calamity-class entity known as the Crimson Blight from its long confinement. An intelligent, parasitic fungus that feeds upon all known forms of magical energy.
After a battle that reshaped the surface, the core controlling the blight and its network of infected creatures was destroyed, erasing the Kastillan civilization along with half the life on the planet. But lingering traces of the blight’s influence remain hidden in dark places.
Within these sewers, four natives dwell beneath the ruins of their capital, foraging from the garbage of their lost civilization. Prolonged exposure to the parasite has mutated its hosts. These changes have preserved their bodies but destroyed their minds, trapping the Kastillans in a state of waking death. They will attack any creature not infected by the same strain of the blight without hesitation.
Objective: Free all four natives (three workers and their foreman) from their eternal bondage. An exit portal will be generated in the final room of the dungeon.
Rewards: Will be allocated based on performance at the time of completion.
Warning: The entrance portal will remain locked for the next twenty-four hours.
Dungeon Modifiers: For the tutorial dungeon only, negative statuses will be displayed the first time that you acquire them, and additional information will be provided.
Additional information
Without a controlling core, the parasitic plague is not transmissible through exposure to its hosts. It is not possible for your species to become infected at this time.
The time limit for this dungeon is seventy-two hours, after which you will be forcibly removed and all prizes will be forfeited. Time spent in the dungeon will count toward your tutorial survival goal. Be advised that there may be unforeseen consequences of a prolonged stay.
The dungeon cannot be reentered. You will be completely healed on dungeon completion. Leaving the dungeon through its entrance will yield no rewards, and you will not be healed, although you will be allowed to keep any items that you find along the way.
Nick focused on the meaning of the words while waiting for the cascade of pain and adrenaline surging throughout his body to subside. Then he began taking inventory of his injuries.
His arms were as red as lobsters and covered in superficial blisters. Nothing that looked like it would result in lasting damage, although his skin felt like it was on fire. His legs and back had been scalded, but the damage wasn’t as bad as where the boiling rain had struck bare flesh. Fortunately, his eyes had been protected by his hat, and his feet were still in pristine condition, thanks to the waterproofing and heat resistance of his boots.
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If he had been caught in the storm for even a minute longer, it would have been so much worse. He wasn’t ready to process the fact that he had nearly been killed by both the lurk and a searstorm within the span of ten minutes, so Nick distracted himself by analyzing his situation instead.
I’m stuck in here for at least a day, but I can’t stay longer than three. Meanwhile, the tutorial’s second phase will begin in a little less than forty-eight hours. I’m not sure if it will solve or create a problem if I’m in here when the phase progresses—perhaps a bit of both.
As far as surviving the dungeon goes, I’m way under level. That means most of the creatures in here will be able to slaughter me in a direct confrontation. But I can’t afford to waste this opportunity either. Although I’m weak, that doesn’t mean that I can’t progress. If I can’t defeat the dungeon’s inhabitants by going head-to-head, I will have to rely on my wits instead.
Although Nick had left a life of games behind him, he could still make use of some of the habits and reflexes he had gained from his years of sitting in front of a monitor. With that thought, a checklist popped into his head, helping him to decide what he needed to do in what order.
My first goal is to find out if the area around the entrance is safe. Then I can expand my search and map out the surrounding terrain. My top priority is to avoid drawing attention to myself while maintaining a clear line of retreat.
Once the first day has passed, I can either keep going or leave right away, but I won’t be trapped anymore. After the portal reopens, my risk of being cornered will go down as long as I don’t get caught by surprise. If I do manage to get stuck somewhere, I can hole up and hide until the dungeon ejects me after the third day.
If I’m lucky, I will find a System display down here somewhere. Even if I don’t, I should still be able to level, train my attributes, and raise my skills. But I won’t be able to spend my free attribute points and KP. If I can reach Level 3 early on, it will improve my odds, although I wish I hadn’t been forced in here earlier than I had planned.
The minimum recommended level for the dungeon is five, but the System said that threats will escalate the deeper I delve. Hopefully, the challenges near the entrance will be closer to my level.
As Nick pondered his situation, he began to calm down, especially when the pain of his wounds started to ebb. Thankfully, this dungeon was set up to be a tutorial. The dangers he would face should be relatively easy to understand. The System said this dungeon was intended to be a learning experience. There should be an underlying logic to its layout and the progression of the threats introduced.
He had explored thousands of dungeons across the games he had played. While he wouldn’t rely on those experiences here, they could still help him mitigate his risks and maximize his gains.
The tricky part was that he was still Level 2, far below the recommended level of the dungeon. While the entrance was peaceful enough for now, whatever he encountered was certain to be a deadly threat. Despite the danger, Nick had reason to believe that he could make it out in one piece, perhaps even complete the dungeon and secure a high-tier reward if he could level and gear up along the way.
No matter how he decided to proceed, he was stuck in here for the time being. He couldn’t afford to squander the opportunity, and he couldn’t leave with the storm raging outside, regardless of his other considerations. In short, this was a bad situation, but one infinitely better than what he’d left behind him on the isle.
No matter what threats were waiting within the depths of the dungeon, it couldn’t be any worse than the lurk’s ambush and the burning rain that Nick had decided to call a searstorm. I’ll just scout the periphery and see what I find. If it seems too risky, I can camp out in this room and leave through the portal after the timer expires.
While he continued mulling over his options, he began inventorying his tools and supplies. He was surprised to discover that he still held his crude spear in one hand. He hadn’t even realized that he was carrying it while he was fleeing for his life. This spear is more of a deterrent than a proper weapon, but I can use it to prod and manipulate objects from a distance.
Moving on, I have half a day’s worth of food and about a day and a half’s worth of water, including the coconut on my belt. I won’t need to worry about starving before the lockdown of the entrance portal lifts. I have all the tools in my belt, plus some sharp bits of shell and a handful of rocks in the pocket of my robe. If I’m careful about how I crack open the coconut, I might be able to use it as a backup canteen if I come across a source of fresh water.
After mapping out the region, my next objective is to find anything that I can use to expand my toolkit. Whatever I do, I must avoid walking into a trap or ambush. As this was Nick’s first time delving into an actual dungeon, he had no real idea what to expect. However, he felt certain that at least one convention would translate from his gaming experiences to his new, System-governed reality. You can’t call something a dungeon unless it contains monsters, puzzles, or traps. Usually, a hearty blend of all three.
He had no clue as to what form traps would take in a non-digital world, but he doubted that they would be nearly as easy to spot as their analogues in games. Clearly marked pressure plates, thick strings stretched across the bottom of doors, and poised pendulum blades just waiting to be triggered were all far too obvious. Instead, Nick tried to imagine what tricks he would use if he were trying to kill another person.
Traps will likely be placed around chokepoints, like the entrances of rooms, routes leading to valuable objects, and the like. They will be hardest to spot from the angle of approach, and the true triggers might be concealed behind easy-to-spot false mechanisms. There should be a simple way to avoid, disarm, or set them off remotely, at least while I’m in the tutorial dungeon. Finally, the goal of traps is to punish intruders, not to make the area a nightmare to traverse for its own residents.
With his crash course on trap logic out of the way, Nick tried to mine his lifetime of gaming for any other relevant information. The only other thing he could think of was to watch out for trapped chests and statues. He nodded to himself, then moved on to pondering biological dangers instead of mechanical ones.
I wonder if the monsters, beasts, or whatever they are called in here roam or have set territories. Probably the latter in a tutorial, but I will have to confirm their behavior firsthand. If there is a portal at the exit, it will be in the last room along with a powerful opponent or some other nasty surprise, likely the foreman mentioned in the quest’s description.
All right, that’s enough stalling, Nick. It’s time to find out what you’ve gotten yourself into this time.