He awoke with a start. Upon opening his eyes, he found himself lying in the middle of what looked like an underground cavern. It smelled somewhat musty and earthy. While the air was damp and cold, it still was fresher than one might have expected from the cave air.

He sat up and glanced around. It was dark. The walls, floor, and ceiling of the cavern had something like mushrooms growing on them. They came in all shapes and sizes. The smallest was the size of his pinky while the biggest was about two feet in height.

The mushrooms were translucent, and from inside each of them radiated a bluish glow. Those mushrooms were the only source of light in that place. While most of the cavern was bathed in that light, there were pockets of darkness here and there.

As far as he could tell, there was nothing else in the cavern except for the mushrooms.

What the hell is going on here, he thought. Where am I?

He slowly got on his feet, still looking around in amazement. Since the cavern was dimly lit, it took a little while for his eyes to get accustomed to the semi-darkness. As his eyes were gradually getting adjusted to the dim light, he made out more details. The walls of the cavern were uneven, and rock outcroppings protruded from the floor. Except for that, there seemingly was nothing else of interest in the cavern.

How did I get here? he thought, still perplexed. Where am I? What is this place?

He realized he had no memories in his head whatsoever. No matter how hard he racked his brains, he just couldn’t remember anything about himself. Who was he? How had he gotten to this place? He simply couldn’t remember. His head was devoid of any memories. Even his own name evaded him.

He lowered his head to look at his body. He was dressed in a pair of jeans, a black T-shirt, and a dull green hooded jacket. On his left hand, he wore a leather watch. It was six o’clock. Morning or evening? He had no idea. It was impossible to tell from inside the cavern.

He then brought his hands closer to his face for a better look. His skin was very pale and seemed unhealthy in the bluish light coming from the mushrooms. He looked like a person who spent most of the time indoors. As far as he could tell, he was of average height and build. Maybe a bit overweight. He touched the tips of his fingers to his face. He didn’t have a beard. He then ran his hand through his hair. He had a short haircut.

His thoughts got back to the main question: why couldn’t he remember anything about himself? What had happened to his memory? He tried to recall anything about himself for some more time but came up with nothing.

He decided to check his pockets. In the inner pocket of his jacket, he found an old tattered wallet. He opened it. There was some money, a few credit cards, and a driver’s license. He pulled out the latter and brought it closer to his eyes. The name on it read Jack Nolan. He examined the photo. It was a picture of a young man, who was in his mid to late twenties. He was clean-shaven, and his hair was dark and cut short. His skin was pale, his eyes dark. Everything indicated that he was looking at the picture of himself. Yet he felt like he was looking at the face of a stranger, what with him having no memories at all. But if the driver’s license actually belonged to him—and there was no reason to believe otherwise—then his name was Jack.

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He took another look at what he assumed was his photo. He liked the face. The young man in the picture looked very serious, but his face was pleasant to look at. It was the face of a good person. You knew you could trust a person with such a face. If it was actually him in the photo, Jack was pleased. Such a face couldn’t belong to a bad person. At least he hoped so.

He slid the driver’s license back into the wallet and returned it to the inner pocket of his jacket. In one of the outer pockets, he discovered a cell phone. He even sighed a breath of relief. Only his joy didn’t last long. The phone was locked with a fingerprint scanner. He paused for a second and then pressed his thumb to the screen. The phone unlocked.

There were no bars at the upper edge of the display.

“Of course, there’s no phone service in this place,” Jack muttered to himself.

He then thought that maybe he’d get service when he got out of the cave. Providing he would be fortunate enough to find the exit.

Jack didn’t let depressing thoughts overcome him.

Just in case, he randomly selected a name from the contact list and tapped the call button. Nothing happened. There was no signal. He then tried to access the Web. He was pretty much sure that the result would be the same but wanted to make sure. He tapped on the icon of an internet browser. As he’d expected, the Google homepage failed to load.

Out of curiosity, he decided to more carefully examine his contact list before pocketing the cell. The list turned out to be surprisingly short. Almost all of the names on the list had the suffix -From Job.

“You don’t have a lot of friends, huh?” Jack muttered to himself.

Well, it didn’t mean anything by itself. It didn’t make him a bad person or anything like that. He might just have been introverted, that’s all. Besides, the person in the photo had a nice face. He refused to believe that a person with such a face could be bad.

He put the cell phone back into his jacket. In another pocket, he found a half-empty pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

“Are you a smoker, Jack?” he asked himself.

In the same pocket, he also found several keys including a fob key and a few crumpled shopping bills. He was about to check one of the shopping bills, but before he could bring it closer to his eyes so he could see the text in the semi-darkness of the cave, something strange happened.

Right before his eyes popped up a text message.

You have just received a bounty.

The message disappeared as soon as he read it.

“Huh?” Jack muttered. “What the heck is that? A bounty? What bounty?”

As soon as he thought that, a new piece of info appeared in front of him.

Objective Kill a monster residing in the cave you’re currently in. Reward 1,000 gold

Unlike the previous message, the bounty text didn’t go away when he read it.

What the hell is that? Jack thought.

He didn’t receive an answer to his question, but he heard something. He wished to be rid of the text blocking his vision, and to his relief, it immediately disappeared from his sight. He then wheeled around to face the direction he thought the strange sound had come from.

There was something in the darkness on the other side of the cavern.