As Jake slowly came to his eyes snapped open, the memory of the extreme pain came flashing back.
“HOLY FUCKING…….shit?”
Realizing that he didn’t feel anymore pain he stopped frantically patting down his body. He closed his eyes for a second taking a deep breath to calm himself down before attempting to figure out what was going on. After calming down a bit Jake laid there with his eyes closed trying to go over everything that happened.
There had been an earthquake, he remembered falling into some impossibly deep cavern, there was a realization that he was going to die, and then he’d felt unimaginable pain… Yeah, he had no idea what was going on. There was no pain at the moment, which weirded him out a little. It had been a long fall and he was severely injured.
Slowly he moved his body, working his way down from his head and down to his feet to check for pain or anything weird. Well there was something weird: he had no pain at all. Even the pain from his bad joints was gone. This would have made him happy about this if it wasn’t for the fact that he felt weak as if he hadn’t eaten in a very long time. Had he fainted in the cabin and dreamt all that?
Working up the courage Jake finally opened his eyes, and all he could see was one giant blur. Sitting up, he felt around for his glasses.
“Where the fuck did they go?” His voice came out as a dry croak. Jake tried to moisten his mouth and throat but not to much avail.
After a few seconds of searching he realized a couple of weird things. First and foremost was the fact that he was wearing his glasses and the other was that there were things at the edges of his vision. Taking off his glasses and he rubbed his eyes, thinking that might help with both issues. He put his glasses back on and opened his eyes again and had the same problem.
“Well shit.”
Taking off his glasses once more to clean them off, he stopped and realized that his vision was perfect without the glasses. Blinking a few times, he stared at the wall directly in front of him. He could see every detail on the wall crisply. It wasn’t much to look at, just a solid black wall that was smooth and had a slight sheen to it. There were no crevices or blocks, just one large smooth surface. This didn’t grab his attention, though. It was more the fact that he didn’t need glasses anymore.
“Okay, did I get bitten by a radioactive spider or what?”
Shaking his head he decided to put those thoughts to the side for now and looked down at himself. His legs looked fine other than the fact that his pants were torn up and stained with blood. His arms looked a little thinner than normal. Even the slight chub that had been around his waist was gone. Whatever happened was way more effective than the keto diet.
Shaking his head lightly Jake took a look around him before stopping. Directly behind him was a beach ball sized gem in the middle of the room. It was pinned between a stalactite and a stalagmite. The weirdest part was the fact that it had a glow to it that throbbed as if it had a heartbeat. Otherwise there was nothing else in the room. The room itself was a 30 meter(98 ft) square with the ceiling about 15 meters(49 ft) high. At the other side of the room there was a big stone door with carvings of monsters decorating the entire surface. All of his attention was focused on the weird round cut gem though.
“What in the holy hell is that thing?”
Jake slowly stood up and was about to walk towards the gem but stopped when the symbols floating at the edges of his vision caught his attention again. The sudden healing of his sight and body had made him forget about them. Some were flashing and some not. He saw a total of three symbols. At the top right corner were two symbols: the topmost one was just a blocked out XP, and the symbol below that looked like an underfed person. At the bottom right was the blinking icon. This was an exclamation mark.
“Is this a fucking video game,” exclaimed Jake.
Jake focused on the blinking icon first. A blue screen popped up in front of his face.
New Quest’s available:
Survival of the Fittest
Marriage of the Souls (Locked)
“Quests? And why is the second one locked? This had to be a dream right? A cool one, but still. But I had always thought you couldn’t read in dreams...”
He was getting excited at the thought that this could be real and that he could have a system. He had always loved those kinds of novels. Jake continued onto the second quest title, instead of debating on if this was all real or not, and nothing happened. Trying the first one this time, the blue screen changed to another one.
Survival of the Fittest
Congratulations on surviving the first wave of mana. This will have far reaching consequences. Prepare to fight for survival and try to thrive.
Difficulty - Hard
Success conditions - Survive for the next 6 months.
Optional - Thrive.
Variable rewards.
This quest can not be refused.
“Well shit. If this isn’t a dream then things are going to get harder.” he grumbled.
A small frown appeared on his face as he thought of Mare. He hoped that she was okay. There was nothing he could do for her right now. He had to survive to be able to get to her. Forcing down the worry, he carried on. He was unable to access whatever the second quest was.
“Soooo how do I close this? Ah I see.”
As soon as he thought of getting rid of the screen it disappeared along with the blinking icon. Focusing on the icon of the XP another screen popped up.
XP Blessing:
Good luck!
+ 50% XP Gain
Easier to obtain skills
Time Remaining: 2 weeks
Jake's eyes lit up a little as he started to get excited. The fact that there is xp meant that there had to be levels. Not only that but there were skills! Checking the other icon he figured out why he felt so weak.
Malnourished: Mild
Your body is starving. Why haven’t you eaten yet?
-Unable to heal naturally.
-All stats lowered by 1.
Duration: Until Well Fed
So there were quests, XP, skills, and debuffs. Yep this was definitely game-like. Jake was getting kind of excited. Wondering what else there was, he started trying to open other things starting with the character sheet.
“Sweet, first try!”
Character Sheet
Name: Jake Cain
Gender: Male
Age: 28
Race: Human
Level: 0
XP Needed: 200 (+10,000)
Current XP: 0
Health: 144
Mana: 50
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Mana Regen: .700 m/s
Combat Classes: N/A
Non-Combat Classes: N/A
Stats
Stat Points: 0
Physical
Strength: 6(-1)
Constitution: 6(-1)
Agility: 5(-1)
Mental
Intelligence: 7(-1)
Willpower: 9(-1)
Wisdom: 7(-1)
Other
Luck: 9
Titles
The First (locked)
Dungeon Explorer (locked)
The Soul Heir (locked)]
He had a general idea of what everything on the character sheet was but there were a couple things he was unsure about. Starting at the +10000 next to his xp needed, he focused on it hoping that there would be more info and luckily he got more info.
10,000 XP Deficit
Jake grumbled as he saw that.
“What the fuck. How the hell can I already have an xp deficit and 10,000 at that? Is there a log or something?”
Soon a system log popped up showing him what he was looking for. There wasn’t too much in it at the moment but a couple lines down showed why he was in a deficit already.
Not enough energy needed to heal injuries, Pulling energy from initial awakening.
10,000 xp needed to replenish and finish full awakening.
It seemed that his injuries had been so severe that it had to pull the energy away from his awakening. Though he had no clue what that exactly meant. Jake wasn’t too terribly worried about this as he would figure it out eventually. The main problem, though, was how he was going to get 10,200 xp to get to level one.
“This is going to be a bitch…” he mused.
Pulling up his sheet again he attempted to get more information on the stats. He had an idea what each was from his gaming experience but he also knew that things could vary and the best way to survive was to have as much information as he could. He failed. He couldn’t seem to get any other info about them.
“Well that sucks.”
Looking down the rest of the character sheet there didn’t seem to be anything else that he could get any extra information on. That was until he focused onto the locked tag itself.
Locked until fully awakened.
With a frown, he tried to see what other screens he could figure out. First he attempted the skills menu. Locked. Then classes, locked. Inventory didn't exist. Settings didn't exist. Quests was the only other one he had access to. He figured that the things locked were because he wasn’t fully awakened but the problem was the things that didn’t exist.
“I understand inventory not existing, but man how nice would it be to have that cheat skill… The bigger problem though is the settings. I mean not being able to adjust settings like the blinking or these annoyingly bright blue screens. If only I could change the transparency of th…… Well shit.”
As he was thinking about changing the transparency of the blue screen, it changed to become more transparent. Realizing that all he had to do to adjust the settings was to think, he started to adjust things. First was changing the transparency and size of the big blue screens. This allowed him to see around him so he could work through them without busting his face. The other things he changed was to set the buffs and debuffs to only show when he thought about them or when something new popped up. He was able to create a small health and mana bar in his bottom left corner that would appear when they changed or he was in combat. He figured that there was more but he couldn’t think of much else at the moment.
“Well that will have to do for now. Let's see what I have with me before I go and check out that….uhhh whatever it is.”
Taking account of everything he had didn’t take very long on the account that he didn’t have much.
1 pair of torn to shit jeans covered in blood.
1 white t-shirt, also covered in blood.
1 black hoodie, again bloody.
1 Pair of socks, surprisingly not bloody.
1 Pair of hiking boots.
1 4-inch hunting knife.
And some pocket lint.
Shaking his head lightly, he walked up to the large gem and looked closer.
“You know if I keep shaking my head like this I’m going to give myself whiplash.” Jake said with a smirk.
The gem was a dark purple color and as he got closer he noticed that it wasn't round but made up of thousands of flat cuts. It looked flawless, no misscut or blemishes. The slow pulsing of it was mesmerizing. He reached out and lightly touched it. At the last second he thought that it was probably a bad idea, but by then it was already too late. Everything turned black except for the gem in front of him. The gems pulsing slowly started to sync with his heart beat. While it was syncing with him he tried to pull away but found that he couldn’t move at all. He started to freak out but stopped once the pulse synced fully with his heart beat because a screen appeared above the gem.
[Dungeon Core:
You have found a dungeon core. Not many have the strength to accomplish this feat so congratulations. Your options:
You may choose to destroy the core fully. Choosing this you will receive xp based upon the level of the dungeon, may also affect titles. Warning: choosing this will cause the dungeon to start deteriorating until it is destroyed.
You can take the whole core out of the dungeon. Choosing this you will receive a smaller amount of XP than destroying the core if you are able to utilize the dungeon core for many applications including creating a new dungeon. May affect titles. Warning: dungeon will be destroyed as soon as you exit.
You can split the core allowing for a small seed to be left behind. Choosing this will get you a smaller amount of xp than taking the whole core. You will be able to utilize the core in many applications including creating a new dungeon. You will leave a small core seed behind and in return you will receive a chest of items. You will also be sent back to the first level of the dungeon. May also affect titles. Warning: dungeon will go into hibernation until it will reawaken as a level 1 dungeon, The core taken will be much weaker than taking the full core.
You may leave the core behind. You will receive a larger chest of items.
Please make your decision.]
“Dungeon core?.... One this is freaking awesome….Two how the fuck did I get to the core room? I guess that doesn’t really matter at the moment though.”
He reread everything carefully. Making sure to grasp as much as he could. This had to do with his survival after all. He crossed off leaving the core behind right off the bat because he needed xp badly. The items could really help but without the xp it wasn’t worth it at the moment. He then decided to cross off the first option of destroying the core. He had no clue how big this dungeon was and even if it wasn’t too big he had no idea what the way out was. Not only that he didn’t want to rush through the unknown when he was this weak currently. There was no way he would survive that. That left splitting the core or taking the whole thing.
Unfortunately there was nothing stating how much XP he would receive. He also had no idea what the core could be used for and so was unsure if the level difference would affect much. Even though he needed a lot of XP to awaken, he was pretty sure that just the awakening would be enough for him to survive the whole dungeon.
“Being able to be sent back to the first level is probably the biggest plus and best chance of me surviving. The chest of items is a bonus as well.” He mused.
Jake figured that the reason this option had more to it was that it was the dungeon’s attempt at staying alive. That begged the question, was it alive? And if they were how intelligent were they? Putting this philosophical question aside, he didn’t have much
“Split the core!”
His vision returned to normal and he was able to move again. The pulsing of the core started to speed up causing Jake to take a step back. When the core was pulsing so fast that it seemed to be just a steady glow, a beam of the purple light shot out and straight into his chest. He let out a not-so-manly yelp. Stumbling back a little he realised that there was no pain or anything. With a self deprecating smirk he spoke.
“I really need to stop doing that…”
The beam started to peter out before stopping. At that moment what sounded like a little bell went off in Jake's head and a blinking icon popped up in the corner of his vision. The sound startled him for a second but then he was distracted by what was happening in front of him. The core started to break free from the column spinning and floating in the air. The amazing thing was that it started to shrink until it was the size of a large marble. A tiny speck separated from the main core and settled down onto the stalagmite. The marble sized core then floated to Jake and just hovered in front of him. Reaching out he grabbed the core and stared at it.
“So that is how it works. I was worried about how I was going to carry around a beach ball sized gem. Haha.”
“Let's look at the notification first and see what all that is about.”
Opening up the first screen, Jake jumped up in excitement and did a little jiggy dance.
“Fuck yeah!”
You have received 10,500 XP. (7,000 + 3,500)
Because you have not awakened, these have been held.
Would you like to apply these to awakening?
After calming down he sat down to catch his breath. That outburst made him dizzy. Once Jake regained his focus he immediately applied the xp. A wave of energy flowed through his body refreshing him a little. When the XP was fully applied the rest of the notifications started to come through.
Congratulations you have leveled!
You are now level 1.
You have received 4 stat points.
You have received 1 skill point.
Congratulations you have received The First title!
Congratulations you have received the Dungeon Explorer title!
Congratulations your Dungeon Explorer title has evolved to Dungeon Adventurer!
Congratulations your Dungeon Adventure title has evolved to Dungeon Conqueror!
Congratulations you have received The Soul Heir title!
Congratulations you have met the prerequisites for the Marriage of the Souls Quest!
Congratulations you have received the random skill Analyze! Lucky!
Congratulations you have learned the Magical Research, Mana Manipulation, and Inspection Skill!
Congratulations your Inspection and Analyze skills have merged and evolved into Examine!
Someone must be looking out for you!