He steps inside the narrow path, his footsteps are much less echoing because instead of stone, the place is made of earth and the only thing made of stone is the ceiling.
However, his shoes leave obvious marks on the ground on which he steps, causing him to pause a bit and think.
"If I keep walking here any creature might follow me or...? I don't think the creatures in this game are that smart" Kazuka says and then continues walking down that path.
Meanwhile in real life it is already morning and Kazuka's colleagues wonder where he could be at this moment.
In fact, one of the girls who is smitten with Kazuka asks Yuto "Hey, do you know where that boy from yesterday is?" with a somewhat saddened face.
To which Yuto tells her "I honestly have no idea, he's probably playing on the computer like always" and then walks away from her going over to his bench.
Yuto looks out the window and the sun hits his face, his shadow is visible on the wall next to him and he thinks. "I wonder if that idiot has been playing on the computer all night again or something happened to him" he says to himself in his mind and shifts his gaze to the blackboard.
The classroom noise being disrupted by the teacher's appearance in class and everyone settles into their desks. The teacher even asks where Kazuka might be now but no one says anything. The only one who refrained from saying anything was Yuto who didn't want to get Kazuka in trouble with a joke.
But even though he tried to hold back he still couldn't and started laughing loudly and everyone else including the teacher looked at him in surprise.
"The dummy's got himself a girlfriend!" Yuto says in his mind still laughing loudly.
The teacher approaches Yuto and asks him what's wrong with him to which Yuto suddenly makes a serious face and stops laughing saying "I'm sorry ma'am, I was just laughing about something that happened to me yesterday" and then shifts his gaze to the blackboard.
She looks at Yuto in wonder and then goes back to the blackboard where she starts her lesson and everyone starts writing on the blackboard.
And after he calms down completely, Yuto looks towards the window at the bright morning sun and the light beats in his eyes making him close his eyes and say in his mind "Now to be serious, I really have no idea what happened to Kazuka".
However in the dungeon Kazuka encounters a level 7 goblin and it drops the torch on the ground so he is left to use his own vision to kill the goblin.
But he has an ace up his sleeve. The system briefly shows the goblin's status and Kazuka takes advantage of this and draws his swords.
"Let's kick your ass" says Kazuka and jumps in to attack where the goblin does well blocking Kazuka's attack.
The goblin's smile reveals the goblin's yellow teeth and Kazuka disgustedly smiles at the goblin to spite him and then does a backflip to get away from the goblin.
"I don't know if I can do that in real life, but I sure can beat this goblin" Kazuka says in his mind and runs towards the goblin with his swords ready to attack.
The goblin almost injures Kazuka but he's faster and throws himself on the ground with his feet forward so he can advance and slices the goblin's head off with one of his swords.
Pixels from the goblin jump everywhere and Kazuka rises from the ground and collects the item the goblin dropped.
"A wooden sword? That's not worth 30 coins" Kazuka says a little disappointed that the goblin despite his level only had a measly wooden sword.
Despite his disappointment he sells the sword and gets 10 coins for it and slaps himself in the face.
"Inventory" he says this and grabs another torch to light the place up and continues walking down that path hoping to find something special.
The sound of the torch makes Kazuka feel uneasy and makes him sweat a little but there's nothing he can do but endure the heat.
"If I could I'd take this shirt off," he says wiping the sweat from his face.
He walks on, his footsteps becoming heavy on the ground, sweat dripping down Kazuka's face but all he does is keep going to get loot and kill goblins.
Still he takes a break from walking, mostly looking through his inventory to see what else he has in there.
But he laughs as he reads the name of a potion "Love Potion?" Kazuka says laughing in his mind but puts his hand to his mouth to keep from laughing outside his mind.
"What could this potion possibly do? I don't remember having it" Kazuka says laughing in his mind and clicks on the potion information.
['Love Potion' is not what you think. It is used in killing monsters through their thoughts, basically you make them fall in love with something or someone and then you get the chance to kill them]
[REMEMBER: It cannot be used on monsters more powerful or equal to you].
"Hm, so don't judge a potion by its name, Kazuka" he says this in his mind and closes his inventory.
In any case, he rubs his chin thinking about who he might use this potion on and what it will necessarily help him with.
Through his thoughts comes a logical and very good thought "I could catch several goblins at once and then break the potion into them, and then they will be easy to kill" Kazuka says in his mind and a light bulb appears above his head.
He drops his hand and continues walking through the passage and his shadow is tripled by the light.
It hears something from behind and when it looks it is a large spider that has managed to get into the passageway being not too big for it not to.
Kazuka's first instinct was to run away but then the information about the spider came out.
[Lv 10 Dungeon Spider]
However he was almost knocked down by the spider but luckily for him he dodged in time and now he backs up to avoid being caught by the spider.
The spider's fangs are disturbingly large and its red eyes only bring more anxiety into Kazuka's body.
The spider leaps towards Kazuka but he leaps back and escapes the attack as the spider tries one more time to attack him.
This time it was different, Kazuka was on the verge of being bitten by the spider and made spider food but he drew his sword in time blocking the spider's fanged attack with his sword.
"Spiders are scared of fire..but apparently this one isn't scared" says Kazuka anxiously as he tries to shoo the spider away with fire but nothing happens.
However the spider seems much more aggressive because of Kazuka's tactic of scaring it away with fire.
Kazuka sticks the torch into the ground so he doesn't have to hold it so now he pulls out his two swords at once to give himself a better chance in the fight with the spider.
"I'm not used to killing spiders because of my fear, but when it comes to my own life... I'm not going to give up!" Kazuka shouts running towards the Spider and managing to cut off one of its legs.
The spider steps back, which Kazuka does too, to avoid being easy prey for the spider.
[Aggression Level: Extreme]
The torch almost goes out and Kazuka looks at it and then at the spider back ready to defend himself from the spider.
It also looks panicked but stands guard to ward off a possible attack from the spider. "What can a spider do when it gets to the stage it's in? It would kind of move faster and not back up for a second but this seems different from how real life ones do" Kazuka says in his mind looking at the spider standing in place.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Kazuka begins to breathe heavily, suffocating from the thin air in the tunnel and the super threatening presence of the spider.
The spider moves back a little more and Kazuka holds the swords tighter in his hands.
The spider spits out a strange substance so Kazuka steps back, this substance is a dark green one, one like a venom or maybe acid but either way the ground where the substance is, melts.
"What the hell? Spider spitting!!!" says Kazuka in his mind completely panicked at this but he didn't have time to think too long as the spider speeds past him.
And its rapid movement caused the torch to go out completely and the tunnel is completely dark, the only thing visible being the spider's eyes, those 8 red eyes.
The air gets thinner and Kazuka turns his eyes behind him where it's dark and starts to run but by running he only makes the spider even angrier.
The spider starts moving quickly towards Kazuka who stumbled because of the darkness.
He crawls on the ground to avoid being killed by the spider but the spider again spits out the substance and out of the fear and anxiety running through his blood, Kazuka gets up from the ground and throws himself forward, successfully managing to avoid being melted by the substance.
The sound of the substance melting the ground is sharp, easily managing to increase Kazuka's anxiety by 200% and the spider rushes towards him.
"I can't call myself a Fire Mage, I can't even call myself a level 40 player as long as I'm eating the beating of a level 10 spider.." Kazuka says in his mind almost giving up and accepting his fate.
But he blocks the spider's attack with his swords, and some of the venom drips onto his swords "I can't, I can't give up now, I won't come back to life and I won't be able to go back to my world if I let myself get killed" says Kazuka with a high pitched panicked howl.
He pulls one sword from the spider's teeth and with the other he holds the spider away from his face. His adrenaline is pumping and his stamina is at 100% so he stabs the spider with all his might into the spider's big glowing eyes.
The spider wants to retreat but Kazuka won't let it, and continues to destroy the spider's eyes one by one. The venom in the spider's mouth fails to reach Kazuka at all because Kazuka has blocked its mouth with his sword.
"That's what you deserve!" Kazuka shouts with a wide grin on his face.
It finally reaches the spider's last eye and plunges its sword into that eye with all its might, the spider struggling so hard that Kazuka falls off it.
Many pixels appear and disappear from the spider and the panel that appears in front of Kazuka completely reassures him.
[Congratulations for killing 'Dungeon Spider' and as a reward you got 'Spider Fangs']
Kazuka gets up from the ground and shakes off the dust and then puts his swords in his inventory and grabs another torch which he lights.
He takes a deep breath and exhales looking at the torch in his hand that warms him from the cold he feels through his veins.
He looks back at the ground he's sitting on, feeling a stillness in his body and a muscle relaxation that's quite large for sitting at rest.
"I think I've already missed today at school," Kazuka says a little disappointed and walks skipping over the pits made by the spider's acid.
However as he walks on he feels a pain in his left hand and when he looks he sees a serious burn from the acid in the spider's mouth.
"D*mn, now I have to buy bandages too?!" says Kazuka in his mind and the little him slaps his head.
Frustrated but afraid of losing HP he buys some bandages and he sticks the torch in the ground so he can bandage himself.
He rolls the roll of bandage around the wound and a little behind his fingers to get more stability to the bandage and then he clips the bandage putting it under the first layer.
[10+ HP (110/120)]
"It's not so well put on and it might fall off my hand, but for now it's ok" Kazuka says taking the torch from the ground.
Kazuka continues to walk through the tunnel with the desire to find those goblins and kill them.
He looks at his Stamina which indicates he has 60% so he can run through the tunnel for a while and maybe that will get him there faster and increase his chances of finding the goblins.
"Market" says this and buys more torches for his way through the tunnel.
And he blows out the torch which immediately goes out.
Meanwhile in the real world the school day is already over so Yuto goes to Kazuka's house to see what Kazuka has been doing all day missing school.
"If he played all night again and couldn't wake up I'm going to punch him right in the mouth" Yuto says in his mind laughing.
He is walking alone on the street, the sun is setting and he looks at it with calm and enthusiasm but then shifts his gaze back to the street to avoid bumping into someone.
But yet there is no one on the street he has taken, only the sound of passing cars is the only thing to be heard.
And out of lack of occupation he takes his phone out of his pocket and texts Kazuka just to make sure then goes into a shop to buy a bottle of water.
After leaving the store he looks to see if Kazuka has texted him back but seeing that he hasn't, Yuto continues walking towards Kazuka's house.
Eventually he reaches the street where Kazuka's house is and looks at his house, a relatively small one but big enough to be super good to live in.
"Good choice, Kazuka" Yuto says in his mind and approaches Kazuka's house.
Meanwhile Kazuka readies his swords for an attack against a goblin with a bow in hand.
The goblin fires an arrow at Kazuka but he dodges and also notices that the arrows the goblin is firing are poisoned.
"There's no reason to be scared," Kazuka says running towards the goblin.
However the goblin manages with an arrow to knock one of Kazuka's swords out of Kazuka's hand.
He feels a lot of adrenaline in his blood so he kicks the goblin's bow and manages to knock him to the ground.
Now Kazuka stands next to the fallen goblin who struggles to escape but he stabs his sword through the goblin's chest.
The goblin turns into thousands of pixels which then disappear and it leaves behind its bow which Kazuka picks up off the ground.
[Congratulations for killing 'Goblin' as a reward you got 'Goblin's bow']
[4/30 goblins killed]
"I have many more to kill" says Kazuka selling the goblin-dropped item on the market and receiving 100 coins.
[Dehydration level: 70%]
[Consume some water to avoid dying of thirst]
He looks in his inventory and grabs a bottle of water which he opens and looks at it.
After his adrenaline wears off he slowly starts to drink the water, the water managing to drip down his face and after he finishes drinking he puts the cap on and puts the water back in his inventory.
He wipes his mouth and goes to pick his sword up off the ground when he feels something speeding towards him.
He quickly grabs the sword off the ground and puts itself on guard so he can defend himself in time in case of a surprise attack.
However, he feels a shiver down his spine realizing that the noise is coming from behind him and not from the front and when he turns his head he sees a pitchfork passing by his ear.
Out of the darkness comes a girl with a cute but clearly nervous expression and jumps to the attack.
Kazuka steps back and dodges any attack from her and when she wasn't on her guard, he shoves her a little and she falls to the ground.
She makes a voice like she's upset and looks down at Kazuka who he's surprised and scared.
"Who are you?" asks Kazuka to the girl and she doesn't say anything but just gets up.
"Whatever," she says and walks off in the direction she came from without collecting her weapon.
Kazuka says nothing but watches the strange girl disappear into the darkness.
"I couldn't see her username, how strange" Kazuka says in his mind and turns back to his path.
And then he finally reaches the end of the tunnel where the light was a yellow, it's a room full of mirrors and lots of gold.
[You have reached the final chamber]
"The final chamber?" Kazuka asks himself and pulls out one of his swords for protection.
The final chamber is where most of the creatures are, or worse where the boss is. However the chances of bumping into the boss in a derailed dungeon are pretty low.
He approaches the objects there, his footsteps making a great echo and his reflection can be seen in all the mirrors in this bright and sinister place.
He through the pile of gold notices something interesting but strange at the same time.
"A gold necklace with a spider's tooth?" Kazuka says in his mind a little disgusted but impressed that such a valuable object has such a thing on it.
['Spider Golden Necklace' price: 1,000,000 coins, do you want to sell it?]
Yet when he wants to sell the necklace he hears thundering from all directions, the echo is so loud that Kazuka covers his ears and cautiously looks around.
In the mirrors, a goblin goon with swords and bows appears so Kazuka hides behind the pile of treasure and watches the goblins walk around.
Kazuka's heart is pounding as there are at least 50 goblins walking around. The sound of his heart can be heard quite loudly but because of the general din of the goblins' footsteps, they can't hear.
Adrenaline rushes through Kazuka's veins with a vengeance and he says in his mind "Now would be a good time to use the potion to kill them easily" and that's what he does, he reaches into his inventory and grabs the potion.
He prepares his cast by calculating where he needs to hit to hit a large portion of the goblins and after a good deal of thought he casts the potion.
The potion flies into the air and once it makes impact with the purple ground the purple inside of it scatters everywhere and to avoid being hit as well he quickly covers his face with his hand and closes his eyes.
He hears loud footsteps and after a brief 5 seconds he looks up and notices that the goblins have dropped their weapons on the ground and are no longer preoccupied with killing him but not all of them are.
One of the goblins throws his sword at Kazuka.
but he dodges and emerges from the pile of treasure to fight the non-trance first.
He leaps to the attack and barely dodges the arrows flying at him. "I have to kill the ones with bows first and then the ones with swords" Kazuka plans in his head and goes into action.
But to avoid being killed by arrows he takes a shield, namely one of the goblins in trance.
The sound of the bow and arrows creates quite an echo and once the goblin he was using as a shield disappears in thousands of pixels, Kazuka puts all his weight into getting down quickly.
Reaching the bottom he jumps up and successfully avoids getting caught in the goblin's arrow, grabs the goblin by the shoulder and then decapitates it.
[6/30 goblins killed]
Kazuka quickly surveys the room, seeing that there are only two goblins left with a bow and not in a trance.
Taking another jump he grabs another goblin in trance like a shield and throws it at the bow goblin to disarm it.
Reaching the floor, the echo is loud but manages to decapitate this goblin as well and it turns into thousands of disappearing pixels.
[Level up]
[Lv 40 -> Lv 41]
"Disappear!" Kazuka shouts and the panel in front of him instantly disappears leaving him visible.
He sees the last bow goblin in the center of those in trance so he prefers not to jump to avoid losing more stamina.
But one of the goblins throws a sword at him, which causes Kazuka to use his sword to block the goblin's sword, which he succeeds.
The spark was great but luckily Kazuka managed to stop the goblin's sword and grab it off the ground in time.
Kazuka took a little momentum and threw the sword with tremendous speed straight through the goblin's head but he couldn't stay too long as an arrow almost hit him in the head.
However he was quicker and blocked the arrow with his sword.
No more thinking he goes through the goblin goblin in a trance and because the goblin was in the middle he couldn't hit Kazuka at all and the only thing he was doing was killing his own allies which was done in thousands of pixels.
He reaches the goblin but the goblin already had his arrow ready so he quickly gets on the ground and trips the goblin who falls to the ground and drops his weapon.
Only for Kazuka to then thrust his sword through it and kill it without a second thought.
But the fight isn't over, he still has goblins with swords to kill so he puts his sword in his inventory and grabs two goblins.
He jumps with them and throws them at two sword goblins who were ready to kill Kazuka once he gets down.
Successfully managing to immobilize the two goblins he pulls out his swords and simultaneously decapitates them with the ones he threw.
Meanwhile in real life Yuto knocks on Kazuka's door and seeing that no one answers he looks under the mat in front of his door and finds a spare key.
He gets up from the floor and puts the key in the lock, turning the key the door opens making a click and now Yuto puts his hand on the doorknob.
But back to Kazuka, he managed to kill 4 more goblins using the same technique he used earlier, leaving only the ones in trance.
He doesn't use much stamina but just runs through the goblin with his swords, beheading each goblin individually.
The sound of his swords with the goblin flesh was super sharp and echoed quite loudly and his running footsteps were equally loud in sound.
And finally he reaches the last 3 goblins in a trance and stops in front of them catching his breath for a moment to calm down.
[Stamina level: 10%]
Kazuka steps lightly next to the goblins and decapitates one, the pixels being many.
Then the other, but his strength was less than previous.
And finally he reached the last one he wants to behead but due to low stamina level he only stabs it twice, managing to kill it too.
[Stamina level: 5%]
Kazuka falls to his knees and takes a deep breath and exhales forcefully repeatedly.
He struggles into his inventory and manages to pull out the bottle of water, which he drinks all of in just a few seconds.
He even managed to stuff himself with water and cough a lot and the echo was still high.
He gets up from the ground and wipes his mouth of water, but is staggering from physical exhaustion from the battle.
[Do you want to go back to real world?]
[Yes] [No]
He was ready to press the button to go back to the real world but he hears a strange sound and all the mirrors suddenly shatter.
Kazuka throws himself to the ground to avoid being cut to pieces by the glass of the mirrors and after he stops he feels the chamber shake.
A giant spider appears, and it is this spider whose footsteps make the room shake.
This spider is 10 times the size of the one you encountered at the start of the dungeon.
Kazuka's legs don't listen to him despite his desire to run away.
The spider comes towards Kazuka to which he responds with his terrified gesture of pressing the button to leave the game.
[You'll be transported in 2 seconds]
Kazuka waits with his heart up to his throat for the seconds to pass and the spider gets even closer to him causing the whole room to shake with power.
Eventually the timer reaches 0 and Kazuka is teleported back to the real world through a purple portal.
But Yuto has seen it all. From the portal that appeared to Kazuka coming out of it.
He is shocked to see Kazuka come out of a portal that he thought he could only see in movies and games.
Kazuka looks up and sees Yuto standing in front of him, startled out of his wits by the fact that he has come out of a portal as if back from a dimension, back into the real world.
"I..I can explain"
/Chapter 3/ Finished.