What do you think dawn looks like?

I stare up, looking up at the reverse pit above myself. I suppose you could call it a hole, but… it’s not. Okay? It’s a pit. In the ceiling. A reverse pit. Don’t always split hairs so much, guy, you’re just making yourself annoyed and nobody is impressed.

Floor fifty-seven, the reverse pit.

Light streams out through the hole above us, lush grass and trees coat the surface, hanging upside down as I stand on the ceiling, painted to look like the sky.

  The weird thing about going through the dungeon after everything is already dead is how abstract everything is. It makes a lot more sense when the trash-mobs and the sub-bosses are all still alive. They’re the glue that holds it all together, you know? Now it’s just… abstract.

What’s that? Do we want to talk about what just happened? No. No, not really. Let’s not.

I think it’s bright.

  Dawn that is. Maybe it’s really warm. I like to imagine it like that. That when the night ends and you sit on the edge of the world, watching the sun rise in the distance, that it’s… warm. I like to imagine that the rays of the sun, the real sun, are warm. Warm in a sense that I can’t really describe. As if the heat warms you both on your skin and beneath it at the same time. It’s penetrating, radiating.

I bet dawn is warm.

  Walking over the fake sky, I look up to the reverse pit far above my head, wondering how it is exactly that I’m meant to get up there? I suppose I’m not. I suppose the dungeon is a one-way ticket in a sense. You go down the dungeon. Nobody ever goes up. Not really. Think about it.

Who would go up the dungeon?

  The trash-mobs? No. They’re here, as much part of the dungeon as the rocks and the dirt. The sub-bosses? Nope, same deal. The dungeon-master? I shake my head. The dungeon-master is the most important part of a functional dungeon. They can never leave. But usually a dungeon-master doesn’t want to. The rare mobs? Nope, they like the dungeon life as well.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

The hero-party?

They want to go down to the very bottom.

Nobody ever really leaves the dungeon. It’s a one way trip.

  I look down at the ‘cloud’ I am standing on. It’s literally a splotch of white-paint, smeared over the rock by an enthusiastic, child-like hand trying to paint a day-sky. I tilt my head, looking at the crude art-work that I recognize and I can practically see the excited dungeon-master crawling on their hands and knees, painting the entire floor by themselves in excitement for the future that is to come. Like an excited child. With glowing eyes.

  I tilt my skull the other way, looking at the streaks of the bristles of a brush in the paint. I can see the energy in the movements, the excitement, I can see the strong feelings that the dungeon-master emitted while making this floor. They put everything into it. I can imagine their wide, buzzing, joyful eyes filled with wonder as they created. Look. Look, do you see that? I run my fingers along a particularly long series of minuscule grooves in the ancient paint. A long smear, where I can perfectly envision the small hand holding the paintbrush, swiping it over the rock in one incredible, quick movement full of life and love and…

Conviction.

Getting up, I walk further, not really sure where it is that I’m going.

  Just like I want to escape the dungeon, just like I have such strong feelings about climbing, rising, clawing. Just like that, the dungeon-master has those same feelings for this place. They made it themselves, they carved the dungeon from the rock of the world itself and just as I now dig towards the surface, they dug away from it. Frantic. Desperate. Overjoyed.

  I think that’s why the dungeon-master really hates me. Because I stand for the opposite of everything that once shone in their eyes. That glimmer, that sparkle, that twinkle of the light of their soul - extinguished. Because of my very presence. I wonder what it is. Is this ‘home’? Is that what the dungeon is for the dungeon-master? That thing that I seek on the surface? That place. Those… nebulous people in my mind’s eye? Is this already that for the dungeon-master, or was it at least? Before it became…

Foul.

  I keep walking. There’s no way for me to reach the upside entrance to the floor that is above myself. So I’ll just have to find the next best thing. The secret staircase. The emergency exit. Sorry I ruined your home, dungeon-master. I’m not sure what I did to start all of this, but I didn’t mean to extinguish your dreams.

“I- I’m just an old dummy!”

Yeah.

  On the bright side, perhaps to the dungeon-master’s relief, I have to die now anyways. I can’t escape in this body. I don’t want to anymore. It’s ruined. It’s ruined. How could I go up to the surface? How can I escape the dungeon and end the time-loop, if I know that one person isn’t going to come back to see the new day with me? The priestess is dead and I can’t accept that. But if I die, then she’ll respawn again. She’ll come back again and then I’ll at least have a clean conscience, if nothing else.

This was supposed to be the run. The big one. The final one. But I can’t have it be that anymore. I can’t accept it. I won’t.

My eyes turn inward, to look at the slime who is bubbling around inside of my armor.

She ruined it. She ruined it.

And I won’t forgive her for it.

  Looking back to the sky I stand upon, I gaze down at a large cloud, shaped vaguely like the symbol of a heart. Leaning down, I run my fingers along the grooves in the paint, until I find a spot where there is a simple thing. A simple set of movements that distinguish this spot from the rest. It’s all the same white paint, but the lines that streak through it are different, each of them caused by a different movement of the dungeon-master’s arm swinging their paintbrush so long ago. But here, in the rock, is a small depiction of a smiling face.

I press my fingers into its eyes and pull.

The fake rock moves to the side, and beneath it is a small, dark passage that I leap down into.