Dustin had to leave his planning to a future date, as the room was filled with a sudden influx of paramedics and policemen. While Dustin looked injured on the surface, he was stable.

The paramedics raced around the room, handing out a tag to triage the group. Dustin could walk, and followed the group of students not in a critical condition, which was most of them. The police stood by, eager to investigate, but reserved enough to let the students receive medical attention first.

Dustin, Kantaro, Katie, and three students with nasty bites were separated and brought to an ambulance to leave first. Dustin did not fight the decision, knowing that they likely wouldn’t believe he was entirely unharmed. He still had burn wounds covering a fair portion of his body, and two bandages around his waist and shoulder. Abrasions covered his legs from tackling the cavern floor to avoid the giant spider, and he still had visible bite wounds in other places.

He laid back on the stretcher, watching them stick a needle into his arm and administer a bag of fluids. He accepted the offer for pain relief, acting the part of an injured patient. He would not say no to some morphine to dull his aching muscles. The female paramedic insisted on irrigating his burns as well, saline dripping of the skin and onto the stretcher.

The ride to hospital took about fifteen minutes, his attempt at napping interrupted by the barrage of questions. A policeman was sitting in front of the ambulance driving, listening in to the conversation at the same time. Dustin did not reveal anything incriminating, avoiding any mention of Grace or where he found her until the police came knocking for real.

The questions were geared to how he had acquired the injuries, if he was still in pain, and his medical history. By the time they arrived at hospital, he could see some of the others being unloaded.

They only had three ambulances on scene, so Kantaro and another student had traveled in one, with Katie and two students in another. Dustin was the sole patient in his ambulance, his injuries judged the most severe. The students ruined a quiet night for the hospital, blasting through triage to separate areas.

Dustin was left closest to the entrance, in one of three resuscitation bays. A team of doctors called in from their sleep dispersed to manage the rapid influx of patients, and the paramedics rushed back to transport more students.

They stripped what remained of his ruined gear and clothes. More saline was applied to his burns, and they carefully removed the bandages from his shoulder and waist. The bite marks on his side were still there, the venom already neutered.

His shoulder wound, where the spider’s leg had stabbed him, was still visible. The bandage helped to stem the blood loss, but did nothing to close the wound. The medical staff around him went to work, a flurry of movement he struggled to keep up with.

An x-ray scan revealed a broken rib and collar bone. The spider leg that stabbed him snapped the collarbone in half, and his rib broke during one of his floor dives.

The injuries were minimal in Dustin’s eyes, but his lack of healing magic meant he needed to let the doctors do their work.

With nothing else to do, Dustin closed his eyes and relaxed, feeling the stronger analgesics setting in. He dozed off after thirty minutes, ignoring the equipment latched onto him.

In his dream, he could see his party sitting around a campfire. They had tracked down a spot on Earth that had been ignored by the Torians, an area close to the polar caps that remained some modicum of its environment. While the rest of the world grew closer to that of the heap of molten rock the Torians called home, it retained a glimpse of home.

None of them needed a campfire to stay warm, their body temperatures well regulated with the expensive gear they wore, crafted from beasts of myth. It was a measure to keep them grounded, treating the experience like a camping trip. The party could not be called human anymore, so far removed from the daily life of someone before Dos that they were an unimaginable existence.

Dustin laid down on his shoddy sleeping bag, staring up at the stars. The trees around him were young, only just starting to regrow. The majority of Torians on earth had been killed, and from the fire and ash they spread, new life grew.

It would take decades for any noticeable difference, and centuries more for nature to fight back. Hope, for the future. Dustin could see someone sit down beside him, Cynthia.

She wore her tanking gear, interlocking plates of a metal that looked like silver, over a light blue chainmail. Despite its weight and rigidity, one could hear no noise emitted from it, and her flexibility was not hindered in the slightest.

The two of them conversed, the words not heard by Dustin, but ones he could remember. He floated away from Cynthia and his past self, not wanting to relive the moment, and instead inspected the rest of his party.

Tristen sat on a burnt log near the campfire, roasting a couple of marshmallows over the flames. Aiden and Julia sat by him. The former was a mage, specialising in Ice, while the latter was a flanker, adept at using her fists.

The three of them made smores, crushing the marshmallow with some chocolate between two graham crackers. On the opposite side of the campfire, Bai Lei, was heating a cup of hot chocolate with his hands, curled around the porcelain mug. Dustin looked on with fondness, remembering the battles he had shared with each member.

He and Aiden had gone ice-skating, running into a pack of stray demons and barely escaping with their lives. Julia had beaten up a Torian and brought it to Dustin to heal, claiming she wasn’t finished with it.

Bai Lei, on the verge of death, was healed by Dustin, and almost died when Bai Lei hugged him, close to snapping him in two.

A torrent of emotions ran through Dustin. Anger, fear, disappointment, and despair. He turned his ‘dream form’ to look up at the night sky, away from the party members he missed. Each star in the sky glowed bright enough to reach earth. Many of them would host planets, granting warmth and energy to the celestial bodies that orbited them.

Even fewer, would contain life. Many of the worlds Dustin traveled to could be orbiting the stars right now, trapped amongst a sea of black. How Dos accomplished what it did was unfathomable. The only explanation he could think of was a god-like being, or group of them.

Nobody knew how or why they created Dos, even the what was merely conjecture. The assumed purpose was to make pioneers stronger, but to what end? Was the extinction of entire races for the sake of entertainment, or necessity? There was no doubt that humanity was on its way to self-annihilation, by war or by nature, but Dos was a punishment too extreme to match the crime.

It all seemed pointless. To struggle so much for an end not in sight. It was difficult to hope for something better, with no conceivable path to follow. Humans liked to break down big problems into smaller parts, a fine strategy for managing difficult situations. Dustin knew the first few problems he needed to overcome, and forced himself to imagine that everything would be better after fighting through the muck.

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After slugging through the dungeons, the invasion of earth, and fighting in Ysoria, Dustin pretended that the journey would end in a fantasy land of peace and calm, not fall into the void of the unknown.

He awoke from his dream with a jolt, looking around his curtained off bay. He could hear the chatter of nurses a few metres down the bay from him, attending to another patient. His wounds were dressed with irrigated padding, and the hole in his shoulder had been disinfected and sutured.

The room was dark, lights turned off to allow patients to sleep. But Dustin felt awake, his nap lasted about two hours, and he couldn’t fall back asleep. Now was a good time as any to allocate the attribute points, give him time to adjust to the change.

He had ten points to play with, and a status screen trumping his previous start. To start off with, he dumped a point into Intelligence to bump it up to 20, a small sense of satisfaction filling him from the rounded number. Following the trend, two points into Wisdom raised it to 20 also, and two points into Charisma made a nice 15.

With 5 points left, he dumped all of them into his Constitution. If he wanted to be well enough to conquer dungeons, he needed to recover fast from broken bones. Early on, dungeons were a battle of attrition. Modern materials for weapons were sufficient in killing monsters, but a regular human body could not handle the abuse of fighting so much.

A higher constitution attribute would enable him to weather more abuse, strengthening his bones, hardening his skin, and providing a quicker recovery. While the ‘health’ bar of a pioneer existed, and rose with the constitution attribute, it was merely a reflection of the pioneer’s durability. By raising his constitution, he was therefore harder to kill, enabling his health to grow higher. When his health reached zero, it was a sign that all life had left his body, but if his health was one, it did not always mean he was almost dead.

Sometimes, it implied that a pioneer’s body could no longer self-recover, and would be unable to handle a massive amount of damage. It could mean that they were so worn out, depleted of stamina, that they were weak. Punching a wall would still be ineffective, so it was encouraged to treat anything with more than zero health, a threat, and to use suitable force as you would when they were at full.

Given, this was a generic ‘rule’ that applied to newer pioneers. A lesson to be learnt as time passed. Dustin would use whatever force he deemed necessary to finish off a target, based on a mix of instinct and knowledge. To always use overwhelming force on dying enemies to ensure their death would be a waste of resources.

The changes from five constitutions were minimal, but he would recover from the remaining injuries faster. Bones would mend, burnt skin would be replaced, and his wounds would close.

A hand appeared through the curtain, pushing it aside to allow a suited man through. He had wrinkles covering his face, deep crow’s feet under his eyes, and a receding hairline of grey. His nose was pointed, like the point of a compass, although Dustin doubted it always faced North.

His suit was clean, sleek and black, with a white undershirt, tucked into black pants. His shoes were polished, clapping the ground like a tap dancer as he walked. He screamed important, from top to bottom.

“Dustin, was it? I’m James, from somewhere important,” He smiled and stood at the end of the bed, “I’ve got a few questions I would like to ask you.”

Dustin sat up in the bed and gestured to the empty seat next to him. He had told the hospital to wait on calling his mother, to make sure she didn’t lose sleep. She would be angry at him in the morning, but he could deal with it.

James sat down on the chair and crossed his legs, right knee over the left. He placed both hands atop his knee, fingers interlaced.

“First off, I would like to ask that you confirm these details.”

James rattled off Dustin’s full name, home address, and contact number. Dustin nodded to each and kept up the ‘rattled’ act he put on. He wanted to give them the idea that he was just as traumatized from the experience as the other students.

“Now. Am I correct that you and four others entered the classroom at 10:55am yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent. And am I correct that five minutes later, at approximately 11:00am, you, and the class of students, were displaced from the classroom, and onto a hill bordering a forest?”

Dustin answered each of the questions James asked. They covered the events from Dustin’s mysterious displacement into the dungeon, until he and Ben disappeared.

“Thank you. Now, from what I understand. You and your friend, Ben, decided to head off and investigate the forest?”

From there the questioning grew intense. James wanted to know why Dustin decided to travel into the forest, what he thought Ben was thinking, and what he was looking for. Dustin kept to his guns, explaining that he wanted to hopefully find a road, civilization, or even running water, in the forest. If they were going to be stuck there for an extended time, they would need to find food and water.

He told them about the birthing pits, finding an alien mantis creature and ‘feeling’ like it wanted to die. James did not write anything down, and while Dustin could see he had a sharp mind despite his age, he knew that the conversation was being recorded. No matter how probing the question was, Dustin answered it like a traumatized student would, with a little added aggression at what he had seen.

He couldn’t be seen to be exactly like the other students, as he was the only one willing to fight at first. He blamed video games and novels as the reason for his ideas, that this was a ‘game-like dungeon’, and that there must be a boss inside that would let them escape.

James did not bring up anything about his time before the dungeon, even though he knew everything, and Dustin was not about to volunteer any information. When the agent left, with a nod and a stare, Dustin sunk back into the bed, still pretending like the conversation had been intimating.

Information was everywhere, from cameras on the wall, to a neighbours eavesdropping, and Dustin had practice in acting. Even if he was scared shitless when facing down a group of Torians, he continued to joke and laugh with his party, like a fearless leader would.

----------------------------------------

James left the student named Dustin’s room and stood outside the hospital with a cigarette, merging all the stories from each student to create a better image of what happened in his head. The Dos interface that popped up had created a nightmare for his whole department. A store that anyone could use, containing lethal weapons. A logistical, and political, nightmare.

Another agent in the exact same suit came out for a smoke as well, standing beside James without a word. Both of them had been talking to students for the past hour, gathering what information they could.

The students and teacher had disappeared for several hours, suddenly reappearing in the same spot they had left. Even alone it was an odd occurrence, but reports of missing people were flooding in around the globe.

It was obvious that this new Dos creation was connected with their disappearance somehow. The currency used in the store did not exist, and without a replenishable source, was useless in the long term. With what information they had before this event, it was like a grenade, great short term damage, some lasting consequences, but over quickly.

After speaking with Dustin, who confirmed his suspicions about earning Dos, he knew his headache was only going to grow. From completing this Beginner Dungeon, he had earned 750 Dos, enough to purchase an automatic sub machine gun, or a bolt-action rifle. By completing another one of these dungeons, the amount of potential damage doubled.

James stopped looking through the store after browsing the section for warheads. The department would be well aware of what could be purchased, and knowing personally was going to add to his mounting stress.

The agent next to James dropped his cigarette on the floor and stamped it out. The two of them nodded before he stepped back inside.

Taking one last puff, James dropped his cigarette in the bin, like a person should, then followed his fellow agent inside. There were six students left to question, and James followed up Dustin’s claims by visiting Ben.