《If I Have To Be A Dungeon In Another World, I'll At Least Try To Be Fun》


 Ch. 01 - Its All About the Connections

    Hello! If you''re reading this, I... Well, I actually have no idea who you''ll be. I don''t even know if "reading" is how you''ll access a memory crystal like the one I''m using to record what''s happened to me. But my story so far has been so strange, I want to share it with someone. Someone besides Servitor, that is.


    Until six months ago, I was just an ordinary 15-year-old student adventurer, like the kind you''d find anywhere. I had a dull life, going to adventurer school seven days out of the ten day week, learning the basics of magic and armed combat, practicing dungeon navigation and monster identification, and learning about the history of our world.


    Moving up to Senior Curriculum on my fourteenth birthday had been good for me. Overall. From the start, I got surprisingly good marks in Healing Arts - at least, they seemed to surprise my parents and teachers, who''d given up expecting me to excel at anything - and one month in, on a class dungeon crawl, I even acquired the second named skill of my life.


    "''Enhanced Potion Formulation''?" I stared at the fog-magnified image of my status screen, my heart crumpling in my chest. "But that''s only a C-rank skill!"


    Magister Benzoledek chuckled, and combed his silver beard with his fingers. "Now, now. It''s not as bad as you think, not at all, not at all."


    My shoulders hunched and my face flushed. If that sounds like I wasn''t in control of myself then, that might be correct. It hadn''t been my intent to blurt out that ungrateful-sounding comment, either. "I - I should be grateful for whatever gifts the beneficent gods choose to bestow. As I am grateful for your help, Magister."


    He surprised me by waving this away with a hand. "Not what I meant, Rheen my boy, not what I meant." Using both arms and straining, he pushed himself upright in his overstuffed armchair.


    From the bookshelf that he''d had me drag over earlier to put his tools within arm''s reach, he plucked a little crystal vial, and from it he released tendrils of smoke, the same purple as his dressing-gown. The smoke snaked through the crystal fog he''d summoned earlier, and formed two arrows. "Look more closely."


    I leaned forward, squinting a bit. The glowing rectangle of the status screen was a plain white, as was most of the text it enclosed - reflecting my novice status. (I tried not to look at my Haggle stat, which remained the embarrassing red it had always been.) The new changes to my status screen - the two stats that had gone up, and the new skill I''d acquired - were so new, they were still gold, and hadn''t yet faded to white, as they would with time. Because of their newness, however, they were also blurry, which is why I''d needed the Magister''s spell to magnify them.


    Highlighted by the two purple arrows, I could now see a slender line of gold I hadn''t seen before. Unless I was mistaken, it ran from the last rune of my new skill, down the side of my status screen, and back again to the last rune in "Take The Good With The Bad," the E-rank skill I''d gained on my naming day, when I was still a tiny baby. "They''re... linked? What does that mean, Magister? I''ve never seen that before. Or even heard of it."


    "Very rare, very rare," he said, "but very good, my boy. In every case of linked skills I know of - save one - the adventurer who possessed them achieved feats that no one had foreseen." Thoughtfully, he took a sip from the little crystal vial still in his hand, swished it around in his mouth, and blew out a purple smoke ring. "When did this skill of yours develop, lad?"A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    I thought back to our recent crawl, in a nearby goblin cave. The red blood spurting from Al-na-rayh''s arm... "One of my classmates was wounded pretty badly. I went to apply the salve and bandages... and then, for some reason, I thought of some mushrooms I had foraged in the outer part of the dungeon. And somehow, I just knew that crushing the spores into the salve would make it heal more effectively."


    "And did it?"


    "Yes, impressively."


    The Magister nodded, sagely. "Ahh. Those red-black mushrooms with the sheen to their domes, eh? A species first recorded by Sylvaus in the Second Age of the Dragon, according to the lore. Studied them myself when I was about your age - though, of course, there wasn''t much left to be discovered about them by then."


    "Oh, it wasn''t those. It was the grey mushrooms with the dark spots. You know, with the caps that are shaped like this?" I traced the sorceress'' hat shape in the air with my fingertips.


    He sat bolt upright in his armchair, this time without any puffing or straining. "Sayst thou what?"


    "Eh?"


    "You''re certain, boy? No chance you''re misremembering?" It was disconcerting to see the Magister, a man seemingly designed by the gods to slouch, displaying intent and energy. Before I could even reply he was hammering me with half a dozen questions, demanding the exact appearance of the mushrooms and where they were growing and what instinct had prompted me to collect them in the first place.


    By the time the barrage of questioning ceased, each comb of his fingers through his beard was so vigorous, it dislodged a miniature flurry of curled silver hairs. "Gods, benificent gods. A species that''s been around since the First Age of the Troll, and it''s finally discovered to have a useful purpose. I must be in on the study of this! I shall get funding from the University, I''ll personally lead the expedition - no, wait." He stared down at his own sedentary bulk, ensconced in the armchair. "That would mean getting up, wouldn''t it?" Desire and horror warred in his face.


    He took a deep breath and looked at me. "Well, first things first. You wondered what it meant for your skills to be linked. I think this is your first demonstration of what it means. You say you picked the mushrooms without a purpose for them in your mind. Just so. The purpose existed! But it was not in your mind, instead it was recognized in the nascent nexus of your skills.


    "That is my belief, anyhow - that your discovery of a new healing agent would not have happened, if it were not for the two of your skills being linked. If past experience is a guide, it''s likely just the first of many discoveries ahead for you."


    This seemed like an awfully good lead back to the question I''d had earlier. "What was the one like?"


    "Eh?" The Magister looked up from the notes he was jotting on a wax slate. "The one?"


    "Well, you said that in every case you know of except one, having linked skills meant a lifetime of great achievements. I hoped you could tell me about the one exception." The idea of being the second exception, of having this potential and not achieving what I should with it, bothered me a surprising amount.


    In turn, the fact that it bothered me so much bothered me. I mean, one hour ago I hadn''t even known that the skills on our status screens could be linked together. Now I felt an intense need to be as amazing as that implied. Or, perhaps, the need was to be amazing in the eyes of others? It was the first time I realized that my desire to meet people''s expectations might not always be healthy for me.


    "It was quite tragic," said the Magister, face grave. "He had such promise, it should have flowered over a long and productive life. Instead, he made a... a terrible mistake. Was it simple carelessness? Was it impatience? Was it arrogance and hubris? We will never know. But his mistake must not be repeated. Promise me that, young Rheen." His gold eyes pierced me with their gaze.


    "I... I swear I will do my best, Magister," I got out through a dry throat. "Tell me, please... What was his mistake? So that I may avoid it."


    "He... crossed the road. Without looking both ways. And was run over by a hippogriff-pulled cart."


    "... Oh."


    "Promise you shall not repeat his mistake!"


    "Oh. Yeah. Er... I pledge to... look both ways before crossing the road. Forevermore." It did not quite have the ring I''d hoped for, but it seemed to ease the Magister.

 Ch. 02 - To Get To the Other Side

    Chapter Two


    One year after I had developed the rare phenomenon of linked skills, and thanks to those linked skills, had also discovered an unexpected healing property to a common species of dungeon mushroom, I was on top of the world.


    My mushrooms, now named after me, had made me famous and respected in academic circles, and the new discoveries I was making every other month on their properties and uses amazed the same teachers who earlier had bemoaned my slowness in grasping the basics of the subjects they taught.


    Meanwhile, commercializing the use of the mushrooms in healing salves and potions had brought me fabulous wealth, enough to move my family into a three story house with more than one bathroom, and me into a smaller but still spacious loft apartment near the University and near adventurer school.


    ...


    Boy, I really wish that was how things had worked out.


    In real life, I''d only made one more useful discovery about the mushrooms - that they recovered even more HP, if the spores got carefully heated to the right degree before being mixed into salve or potion. After that, though, all the new discoveries were made by Magister Benzoledek or other lecturers at the University. Which only made sense, with them being experienced alchemists and wizards, and me only being a kid from adventurer school, but I still sighed the day I found out the mushrooms were now being called "Benzoledek''s species".


    Heating the spores made them more effective, but it also added a side effect to the salve or potion; it made the affected body part feel numb, or made the adventurer who drank the portion feel sleepy. These drawbacks limited the usefulness of the items in dungeon crawls, which meant we lost a lot of the market right there.


    So even if all the profits from the mushroom-enhanced items had come to me, it would not have been enough to fund my house-and-separate-loft daydream. And if you''re guessing that, due to my bad Haggle stat, I actually wound up with almost none of the profits, you''d be correct. Facing a consortium of the district''s apothecaries, I made what I thought was an obvious win-win proposition. They saw immediately how they could cooperate among themselves to make it a win-lose instead, with the "lose" being my portion. I wound up with nearly nothing for my discovery, except a little continuing pocket money from a few regular customers who said they preferred the items I made, even if those of the apothecaries were almost equal in terms of HP.


    I wound up waiting for another discovery to emerge from my linked skills, so I could try again. Or for a new skill to develop, one which would maybe be C-, or even B- or A-rank. Or for something, anything to happen that would show fate hadn''t made a mistake in granting me that small sliver of potential.


    As far as my family was concerned, a fluke was exactly what it was. My brother Fennek ragged me mercilessly for having bungled the potion negotiations, and losing my chance at wealth. His employment was - still is, for all I know - in a butcher shop. He chops the meat according to the shop''s procedures; he salts it and cures it according to the shop''s recipes. To be mocked for mishandling something new and different, by one who''d never tried anything new or different, grew to be a constant torment in my life.


    And this is what led me down the path of addiction.


    "Ahh, my most faithful customer," said the bearded man behind the counter, looking at me with a leer I didn''t like. "You''ll be wanting one of everything, won''t you?"


    "That would be ridiculous," I said, feigning cool detachment. "No, I''m far too busy to indulge to that degree. I just need - that is, I just feel like, like, a little diversion. That''s all. Nothing more than that."


    He chuckled, unpleasantly. "Oh, is that so, young fellow? I reckon you''ll change your tune soon enough, when you see the merchandise."


    "What do you take me for?" I demanded. "Yes, I''ve spent a few coppers here from time to time, but I can stop whenever I want - and in fact, I shall! Beneficent gods, you mistake me, if you think I''ll dance to your tune merely for -"


    "A crossover," he said softly, holding up a bound sheaf of paper sheets.


    My heart - I never knew it could leap and sink in the same beat. "I - I have no interest in such a thing." But we both recognized my feeble lie.


    "Oh?" I would swear, the Demon Lord himself never gloated so much in victory. His fingertip riffled the pages. "As I understand the plot - Bhobb of Johnes, the powerful stock trader, has finally been accepted to... Oh, I can''t remember. What was it again? Oh, silly of me, you wouldn''t know, as your interest in these stories is so casual -"


    "The Yacht Club?" I trembled in excitement. Sixteen installments had built up to Bhobb''s entry into that circle of power.


    "Ah, yes! That was it. He thinks he''s truly foxed his rival, the evil Sam von Schmith. ... Until suddenly Bhobb is arrested by the dark-clad minions of the Order of the SEC, and taken to their underground lair!"


    "No!" The cry escaped me.


    "He angered the SEC by breaking their rule against ''offsider trading''!"


    "Impossible!" I pounded on the counter. I wasn''t even sure how I''d gotten from the door to the counter. "Bhobb of Johnes doesn''t cheat! He makes masterful trades with the SS-rank ''Spotting Trends'' skill he was granted upon reincarnation!"


    "Ah, but can he make the Order believe that himself? Or will he need rescue from..."


    I trembled. Somehow I knew - it was too good to be true, but I knew...


    The merchant held up a second sheaf of papers. "... From the masked avenger known as ''The Lightning Lawyer'', Portia Purtoon!"


    I sagged. Defeat was crushing, and yet, somehow, sweet. "How much for one of everything?" I whispered.


    I do not know how much later I exited the shop, except that dusk was starting to overtake the day and shame had started to overtake the heady pleasure of indulgence. My head throbbed from stuffy air and vicarious tension and the awful letdown of the return to daily life.


    "Oooh! There he is! My favorite mushroom guy! Rheen! Rheen! Luni, I''ll introduce you!"


    I turned, and forced a smile onto my face, greeting Zindee the Unstoppable, one of the five top-ranked students in adventurer school. I liked Zindee a lot, I really did. But her naming-day skill was a C-rank skill - she had started out at the level where I seemed to have petered out. And that naming day skill of hers? It was "Boundless Energy". No one else in the city had that skill, meaning no one had enough energy to keep up with her.The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    Most people find these minor faults quite forgivable, because she''s extremely friendly and quite a caring person. Also, because she''s a tall, jaw-droppingly gorgeous blonde who favors high-stat bikini armor.


    She was of course wearing that bikini armor as she bounced up to me. The girl who followed sedately behind her wore a more modest outfit: a style of cloak favored by spellcasters and healers, with the ends of the wide sleeves sewn into multiple small pockets. Zindee''s skin was tan and her polished armor ruby and gold. This contrasted with her friend, whose brown skin was set off by the forest green of the cloak and the more varied green hues of the robes beneath.


    "Luni, this is Rheen, he makes those really good potions I told you about that help me sleep when I''m in the dungeon. They don''t even taste gross! Rheen, this is Luni. She''s from the Southern Coast; we''ve been pen pals for a while and now she''s an exchange student who''s going to be with us on our senior dungeon crawl."


    "Oh, have they decided where that''s going to be?"


    "Yes! Didn''t you hear? They took forever to give approval, but they finally gave the go-ahead! We''re crawling the Citadel!"


    I gaped. "The Demon Lord''s Citadel? It''s been ten years since they approved a crawl there!" The "they" who had to approve in this case included not just the Adventurer''s Guild, which usually went along with the school, but the Church, the City Council, and Her Majesty''s Minister of Antiquities. Getting all those guys to approve the same venture was like some rare astrological conjunction.


    "I know, right?" She rolled her eyes to signify the drama. "It took them fooooreeeeeeeveeeer to talk talk talk it all out! But they fiiiiiinally decided that our party has got a good balance and enough elite-rank skills that we should be safe."


    Luni spoke up, lips twisting into a smirk. "Ah, you found a way to work it in."


    I didn''t know what Luni meant, at first. Zindee seemed to, but her response didn''t make it any clearer to me. "I did not! That''s unfair, Luni, I didn''t have it when the application was made! You''re being mean!"


    Luni made a negating hand motion. "Don''t get me wrong. It''s understandable if you want to make a big deal of it. " I was getting more and more confused, until Luni said "They call it ''elite-rank'' for a reason."


    My face froze. Zindee had gained an elite-rank skill. She already had so much, and now she had even more.


    Why, why, why did the beneficent gods give us our skills so unevenly? Why was it that one person might work months and years, accumulating a veritable mountain of XP, and in return for all that effort, the gods would grant them only one skill, fixed for life at F-rank? And another might make a single dungeon crawl, attaining not even enough XP for a single level, and yet emerge with a skill at one of the elite ranks, capable of moving to an even higher rank in time? Why did the gods see fit to grant such unearned -


    "... rude here, Luni," Zindee was saying. "If it wasn''t Rheen, who''s always supporting me - Eh?" She stared at the smarting spot on my cheek, where I''d just slapped myself. "Rheen?"


    "Insect," I lied. Anyone who didn''t give Zindee credit for working hard and earning her success deserved some hard slapping. "Continue?"


    She shyly asked if I''d like to see her status screen. I said I would, so she came around to stand beside me, putting her arm around my shoulder in a friendly way. I tried not to be distracted by the generously sized armor piece right next to my eyes.


    The first thing I noticed was that her status screen, both rectangle and text, were copper instead of white - an effect of advancing levels, which I knew about but had never seen personally before. The second, standing out in glittering gold text, was her literally shiny new A-rank skill, "Phoenix Whirlwind".


    "That sure sounds like a neat skill," I said. "Is it useful?"


    "Well, it was sure useful when it came to me," she said. "We were on a crawl in the Garrison of the Night Army - you know, that fort south of the city? Our party got split by a teleport trap, and before I could catch up with the others, a mixed crowd of ghouls and Living Armors caught up with me. Now just a few of them, I would have been okay with, but they just kept coming! I was really starting to worry!


    "And then, well, you know how it is when a skill comes in. One moment, you don''t know what to do, and the next moment your mind and muscles know exactly what to do, and you throw all your will into it to make it happen."


    Something in that description made my brows furrow, but because it was Zindee I didn''t really have a chance to follow up. "Whoosh waah waah wooo-ooohh!!" She mimed her sword slashes and imitated the sound they''d made. "The ghouls caught fire when the flaming blade chopped through their undead flesh! The Living Armors crumpled under the blazing strokes! Soon enough I had destroyed or driven away every one of my attackers!" She paused, but only for a second. "And honestly, I think I might have overdone it, the more that I think about it. Because don''t they say Living Armors are supposed to have really good equipment drops? Especially armor pieces, which makes sense when you think about it. But there was barely anything left of the Armors afterwards, so maybe I need more practice. Yeah, definitely practice." She nodded firmly, making her blonde hair dance. "Hey! Rheen, would you like to come with me and Luni this weekend on a practice crawl -"


    "Um, problem with that," I said hastily. "Any dungeon that''s high level enough to give you your practice is one where I''ll be way over my head."


    "Really?" She blinked. "But the last time I saw your status screen, it looked good, so if you''ve been keeping up a good pace of development -"


    "But I haven''t," I cut across her. I forced a smile onto my lips, and closed my eyes so that I wouldn''t see looks of pity or contempt. "I''m pretty much where I was the last time you saw me. I don''t know why I''m not moving forward that much, but there it is."


    There was a long pause. "Maybe if you practiced more?" Zindee offered finally. "Some place easy, like the Ice Bat Cave?"


    Luni sighed. "I''m not from here, so I don''t know this Ice Bat Cave, but - is it actually an easy dungeon, or just easy for someone with strong fire magic?"


    "W-well, of course fire magic would make it easier, but..."


    Luni pressed ahead. "And how ''easy'' are swarms of flying bats for someone with a weak overhand swing?"


    "How would you know whether his overhand -"


    Zindee''s hot defense of me was shut down immediately as Luni''s fingers squeezed the underside of my arm.


    "I can tell by this flab," Luni shot back. "It doesn''t matter if your Dex stat is gold off the charts, if you can''t put any power behind it, it''s not going to do any good."


    At that point, I was half embarrassed to be talked about that way, and half grateful that Luni was breaking the news to Zindee in a way I couldn''t. But the next thing she said drove out all thoughts of gratitude. "No matter how much you babysit this kid, Zindee, he''s never going to catch up with you."


    If my head hadn''t hurt so much, at that moment. Or if my mushroom discovery had not been so long in the past. Or if my brother had not ragged on me that very morning, right up until the moment I slammed the door behind me. Or perhaps none of that would have kept Luni''s words from hitting me like an Ice Hammer spell to my chest.


    That''s right, whispered the cold gray voice inside my heart. Doesn''t everything make much more sense, now that someone came out and said the truth? You knew it all along. You''re not your own person. You''re just a pathetic child - a child who needs babysitting.


    None of the sounds in my ears made any sense. They didn''t have to. I was finally confronting the sense, the knowledge, that I had denied for so long. Catch up with Zindee? I wasn''t even going to ever catch up with me - with the me I would have been, should have been, if I hadn''t been frittering my life away on nothing -


    Suddenly my legs were moving for me, on their own, running in the direction of my house. I would change everything, starting now. I would throw away everything holding me back, starting with that shameful pile of all the phony stories I''d collected about stock traders and lawyers and all the other people who only existed in fantasy worlds. No, better than throwing them away, I''d burn them to ashes -


    "Rheen, LOOK OUT!" Zindee screamed.


    I turned in the middle of the street just in time to see a hippogriff-drawn cart hurtling right towards me. That was in the last second before my whole world exploded in pain.


    Distantly, very distantly, I was aware of Zindee and even Luni screaming and crying over my broken body. A body I seemed to already be outside of.


    That was probably the dumbest thing I ever did in my life, I thought foggily.


    Also, the last?


    I considered momentarily. Yeah. Probably.


    But as I was going to discover, things could still get worse.

 Ch. 03 - Things To Do When You Aint Got No Body

    Strange, how the words of my instructor Zart the Iron-Blooded seemed to echo in my ears, when I no longer had ears. Well, none of flesh and blood, anyhow.


    Rule Number One, Master Zart had intoned, catching every student''s eye in turn, is to keep yourself and your comrades alive. Live adventurers can make up for lost chances only seldom - but dead adventurers never can.


    Well. Now that I''d broken Rule Number One, what was I supposed to do?


    My body was dead. I wasn''t sure of much just then, but that one I was certain of. I still had awareness, and (this struck me as odd, even at the time) that awareness was connected to some form of existence. Something that was like a body, in other words, and yet not. One usually resided in a body, after all.


    I puzzled over that. What could awareness connect to, that was like a body, and yet not a body? Eventually I decided to start by calling it an "ydob". As good a name as any, it seemed to me. If someone wanted to tell me different, they''d... have to start telling me something. That was something I could really use, someone to talk to me and explain what was going on.


    Time passed. How much time? Well, that''s the funny thing about time. You can''t really measure it unless you have something to measure it against. In my case, I only had the endless loop of my own thoughts as a measuring device, and it wasn''t telling me much.


    So if you ask how long before I could "see" that my ydob was, essentially, a hazy replica of my own body, I can only tell you "a lot of time". A big buildup, it seemed, to end in such a disappointment. Somehow I''d thought that post-mortem I''d look more dignified, or at least poignant. Perhaps if my mouth hadn''t been hanging open like that of a landed fish, I would have looked better.


    I was able to examine at least one feature of my replica with interest rather than mortification, and that was my right leg. On my second dungeon crawl, I had failed to recognize the signs of a Shadow Rat nest until my foot was already descending into its midst. A vivid learning experience ensued. Yet the right leg of this body - of my ydob, that is - lacked the distinctive scars I''d acquired in that encounter.


    So was the ydob my past, or my future? Dared I to hope that it would play some role in my reincarnation?


    We knew the beneficent gods existed, as they were the source of the miracles cast by clerics and paladins. Pretty much every time you were healed by someone from the Church, you were also treated to a combination of pep talk and lecture, about how the beneficent gods wanted you to be brave, strong and kind, and if you did your best at that and at life in general, they would look out for you after you died, just as they looked out for you in life by healing your wounds.


    And past that, we simply didn''t know much about the gods, in accordance with Their wishes. I''d asked Colma the Calm about it, when he''d healed my leg from the worst of the rat wounds. At first I thought he was being evasive by choice, to both our frustrations. Eventually he fished into his robes and brought out an ivory plaque on a silver chain around his neck. The finely engraved lines, depicting a lovely young woman with a gentle smile, were filled in with gold. "This is the goddess to whom I have devoted my life," he said. "I have served her for two years so far, and if all goes well, next year, I will be allowed to learn Her name." He sighed. "The most senior members of the Church assure us there are good reasons why the Gods give us almost nothing in the way of direct guidance. I truly, truly hope I get to learn the reasons someday, and I truly hope they are indeed good."


    In so many of the stories, it was that gently smiling goddess, or one described identically to Her, who greeted brave adventurers in the afterlife and rewarded their service with reincarnation in a fantasy world. Was the ydob something like the prototype of my new body? Would I gain fantastic new skills to ease my journey, as happened in all the stories? S-rank, or SS-rank, or even - dared I hope? - the fabled "OP MC-rank"?


    I looked more closely at the ydob, vessel for these hopes - and then stopped in shock. I had thought Did my ears really look like that?Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    And immediately, the ears disappeared. I tried to imagine them back into place, but I couldn''t remember what they had looked like, what they were supposed to look like -


    "Hello! Hello, please! Pretty beneficent God lady! Or, or, any beneficent god?!" Whatever was serving as my voice in this void was betraying my panic. "My ydob is falling apart! My, um, my simulated me! It''s losing parts!" I waited for response as long as I could, which was not long. "Is this normal can you help please!!"


    The response, when it came, thundered the void around me, shaking me and filling me with terror. It was just two words, delivered in a slow, rage-filled growl.


    "WAIT, DAMMIT."


    That really didn''t sound like a gentle goddess.


    I silenced myself with effort. I kept my attention on my ydob. I knew that in some way, the hazy blob sustained me. And in turn, it seemed that my attention was what sustained it.


    Or was it something else? Just as I had become aware of the ydob very gradually, I slowly became aware that the ydob was connected to something else. And that something else, as it came into focus, was fascinating.


    Unlike the ydob, that I''d named myself, the true and proper name of it popped into my mind, unbidden. This was called the animation. This was, in fact, my animation. In whatever senses I was using to perceive it, it was brilliant, like the brilliant green of sea waves or the feathers of a bird I had seen once in a menagerie. And it was in constant motion. The substance of the thing, within its protective envelope, swirled around and around, curling and eddying, just like a... that is, very much like a...


    Oh hells. There''s just no way to ignore the roc in the room. What it looked like was a slime: a big mass of protoplasm, jiggling and squirming within a thin but tough membrane. I mean, you''d never mistake one for the other; what was inside this was smooth and glowing and beautiful, while what was inside a slime was sludgey and dull and just looking at it made you want to wash.


    But the similarity was inescapable, especially as my perceptions expanded beyond the one animation to which I was connected to others. First a handful of others, then dozens, then hundreds; white and green and red and blue and brown and purple and each one brilliant and beautiful. The beauty nearly hurt, it was so powerful.


    One red animation captured my attention, by being not only lovely but incredibly active even compared to the others. For some reason it reminded me of Zindee. The energy driving its internal motion certainly seemed boundless, and compared to the other animations, including mine, the substance inside spent less energy swirling around in the same location and more in pressing against its enclosing envelope.


    And as I watched, that enclosing envelope opened under pressure. Jetting out from the interior, that crimson fountain made my heart or its equivalent leap at the elegant loveliness. At the same time, it brought me fear: would the breaking of the animation''s membrane mean death for it, the way it would for the slime it resembled?


    I needn''t have worried. In about the same amount of time it took for the original globe to seal up the rent in its side, the substance that had escaped under internal pressure had formed a new rounded mass, and developed a membrane to cover itself. Rather than bounding away from each other as newly divided slimes would have, the two masses stayed close to each other, and seemed to move with some invisible coordination...


    If I had a jaw just then, it would have dropped open. I suddenly understood what the animations were, and why our skills developed the way they did. It wasn''t the choice of the gods, it was our choice, by the way we pressed our boundaries, how we let ourselves flow into new endeavors - or not - oh, if I could get another chance at life, I could apply that knowledge, do so much better than I had -


    - and when that caravan of thought pulled my attention back to my ydob, I was seized with terror. I didn''t have a jaw anymore. Or a chest. Or limbs, beyond vague suggestions. Only my ydob''s eyes and a scalp - and that lacking any hair - still bore any resemblance to a human, let alone the human I had been.


    "Help! Please!" I screeched desperately into the void. "I don''t know what''s going on, but it really seems bad! Help! I don''t want to die here alone!"


    And then I was definitely not alone.


    The presence whose growl had filled my universe before returned. Once again, its rage was palpable and terrifying. "ALL RIGHT, ASSMUNCH -" it thundered -


    - and then I was dragged, consciousness and disintegrating ybod and animation all together, through planes and states of existence I couldn''t perceive except in flashes -


    - and then I was deposited, not gently, into a physical plane of existence. I was jarred, and naturally anxious about what came next, but at least the decaying of my ydob had halted for the moment -


    - and finally, the Presence I had detected manifested before me. "- you wanted my attention, Mr. Impatient? You got it."


    I wish I could have fainted. I guess that needs a physical body for some reason. But it really would have been the only right response.


    The being before me was the Demon Lord.

 Ch. 04A - Pros and Cons

    Looking back now, I wish I had been able to make a "photograph" of my first three adventurers, getting ready for their first dungeon crawl.


    If you don''t know what a "photograph" is - I didn''t, at the time - it allows you to capture an image from a moment in time, and then you can see the image any time you choose, even after the moment has changed. It''s a truly amazing magic. Or, technically, a "technology" - that''s what they call magic in this world, it seems.


    "Wow," said Ramon. He gave his short sword an experimental swing, and grinned at the distinct noise of it slicing through the air. "What are they thinking? I mean, this is utterly cool, but it looks so realistic, any other convention would take this *away*! And this one is providing it free with admission?"


    When he and his companions had first come in, he''d been clad in the durable trousers people of this world call "jeans", and the light tunic they call a "tea shirt". I''d equipped him as a starting fighter, so now he wore light leather armor over those clothes, a small shield on his left arm, and a beginner''s sword, just slightly longer than his forearm. I didn''t have a huge magic budget to work with, but I''d put a small spell on the blade to shield the edge at all other times than when fighting one of my summoned creatures.


    I couldn''t do anything about his footwear for now - producing that from the Library was apparently much more difficult than the other gear - but I still winced, looking at his bright orange "sneakers" and thinking of Shadow Rats. Nothing I could do about it just yet.


    "Don''t be looking a gifted horse in the mouth, is my advice," said the red-haired girl, Gillian. "We''re fierce lucky that there even was a second convention in the neighborhood for us to stumble on."


    Gillian was a bit of a puzzle to me. Of the three, she was the only one who''d come already dressed in adventurer gear - a sorceress''s one-piece, cut high enough on the legs and low enough in the bustline to grant the wearer the Skyclad stat bonus, and an appropriately pointy hat. But the shiny purple material the one-piece was made of was unfamiliar to me. And the medallions that decorated her bustline - I would have thought they were the beneficent gods of this world, except did any world have gods who were exclusively young muscular males? Whose devotees depicted them doing nothing except kissing and entwining with each other? Somehow I doubted it.


    Thankfully, her footwear was sensible for dungeon-crawling, being tough black leather with thick soles. I didn''t have to spend any magic budget on that. Instead, I spared a little to reinforce the seams of her one-piece, which was - to put it delicately - trying to hold in a lot of body.


    "S-s-s-s-sorry," said Kate. She seemed to shrink into her healer-mage robes, and nervously tucked her fingers into the pockets at the ends of her sleeves. "Ek-ek-ek-ex¡ª"


    "I know, right? Your bastard ex!" said Gillian. "And after the stupid tosser claimed he''d stay away!" She got on her tiptoes to put a comforting arm around the blonde girl''s shoulders.


    Given Kate''s height and athletic physique, I''d automatically prepared a set of bikini armor for her, using a big chunk of magic budget to do so. She''d pulled aside the curtain of the ''dressing booth,'' taken one look at it, and let out a disbelieving shriek through hands clapped over her mouth. The other two had rushed to her side, and hastily assured her that she didn''t have to wear that, that if the convention didn''t have any less "demeaning" costumes in her size they''d all leave together and find some other way to spend the weekend. At which point I hastily threw together blue robes styled after Luni''s and set the arrangement up in another ''dressing booth,'' one they believed they''d overlooked in the dim light. To their relief and mine, they found this more acceptable.Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    And it could have been left at that, but was it? Of course not. I got to listen to several minutes of really rather unfair complaining about the tackiness of bikini armor - and its purported impractical nature, which I listened to with greater and greater bafflement. Hadn''t these people ever looked at their status screens and seen the stat boosts Skyclad and Skyclad+ gave them??


    "No reason you should be sorry," Ramon said. "To tell you the truth, I''m pretty sure I spotted exes in the crowd, too. I''m just as glad not to be dodging them all weekend."


    The two girls stared at him. Kate held up a "V" of two fingers with a raised eyebrow. Gillian asked the same question in words. "Exes? Plural?"


    He shrugged. "I only got glimpses, so I''m not sure. But there was a guy in the Registration line wearing a trenchcoat like the one Derek always thought made him look cool. And then as we were leaving, we passed an elf cosplayer who sure looked a lot like white-haired Heather."


    Kate pulled her "phone" from her pocket and tapped at the windowpane set into the mysterious object. Ramon pulled out his own "phone," read the runes that appeared, and answered her question. "No, the one you met was brunette Heather. She was just dying her hair at that time."


    "You went through way too many exes before deciding you were asexual," Gillian muttered.


    "Discovering," Ramon retorted frostily.


    "Whichever it is, I''m just saying..." Gillian waved her hand as Ramon''s mouth tightened. Kate''s fingers were tapping frantically at the little window of her phone. "Could''ve saved aggravation all ''round..."


    A little bird chirped from inside Gillian''s device; she and Ramon both looked down. Her brow wrinkled first; Ramon paused, re-read, then smirked. Then the redhead snorted and laughed, looking up at Kate. "Goose!" she said affectionately. "I meant ''gifted horse'' as in one that''s been gifted to you, not - not a horse that always solves the Daily Jumble or the like!"


    The three friends laughed together. I studied Kate with interest. I had no idea if the others had believed her pretense to be a "goose", as Gillian had called her, but to me it was clear that she''d seen a threat to party unity, and acted decisively with the resources available to her to nullify the threat. She might be a better fit for the healer-mage role than I had thought.


    And, I hoped, someone with a lot of brains, who frequently got underestimated or overlooked because of her speaking problem, might be a valuable resource for my own devious plan - nebulous as that plan was at the moment.


    "Are we ready?" Ramon asked. Everyone checked their sword, shield, wand, vials. Nods all around. "All right, con-goers! Let''s LARP us some monsters and treasure!"


    Servitor? What does it mean to ''larp'' something?


    =Checking, checking... No matches found. Checking expanded slang dictionaries... No matches found. I suspect it may be a word without a fixed meaning.=


    Ah. Well, keep the question as a background task. Whatever experience these folks are here for, I want to provide it as best I can.


    =Acknowledged.=


    "I''m just as glad we gave the other gather a good miss," Gillian said, as they headed down the short hallway to the curtained entrance of the "dungeon". "I didn''t care to say much at the time, but I thought I saw my ex there too." She lifted her chin proudly and puffed her chest a bit.


    The other two stopped short. Kate pointed a questioning finger downwards. "What, someone you dated here?" echoed Ramon, in disbelief.


    "N- Naw," Gillian answered. "No, he was from Dublin, y''see?" A pause; she seized it and pressed. "See, I broke it off with him just before I came here, yeah? And that''s actually why I haven''t dated anyone here, ''cos dealing with that melter just made me fed up with the whole game!" She nodded decisively.


    "What was he doing here from Dublin, then?" Ramon asked.


    "You''d have to ask him that, then, wouldn''t you?" she shot back, rather harriedly.


    A bird chirped. Gillian read the message, and went very quiet. "Iain," she replied, a few moments later. "Yeh, that was his name. Iain." She shuffled her feet and avoided the eyes of the others.


    Okay, so maybe they weren''t the best allies I could possibly have in my revenge on the Demon Lord. But, beneficent Gods help me, they were what I had for a start.

 Ch. 04B - Onboarding From Hell

    You might think "face to face with the Demon Lord who wreaked havoc on your world" describes a really unpleasant time about to play itself out. I can tell you, not only are you right, it''s even worse when you don''t have a face.


    I was missing pretty much everything, not just my face. First I''d lost all my actual, physical parts when I lost my life. Then, in the featureless void where I''d found myself after dying, the simulation of my body I''d possessed had slowly disintegrated. I had to wonder if that simulation, the "ydob," had been generated by my self-image or vice versa; now that it was gone, I couldn''t quite remember what I had looked like, or what it felt like to be warm, or cold, or to truly hear sound and see light.


    I felt sure that my consciousness only existed because it still connected to my animation. Perhaps it was because of my extreme dependence upon that mysterious entity that I could still perceive it even though I was no longer in the Void. But I couldn''t give it my full attention just then because, well. Demon Lord.


    Six feet tall? Eight? Twenty? Hard to tell without a body of your own for reference. Thick horns, black as volcanic stone, curled out from under his unkempt black hair. Black scruff attempted to bristle from his chin, and just above his pinched lips. He wore thick-soled leather boots, the black trousers I''d later learn were "jeans", and a short-sleeved "tea shirt". I could make out the runic spell emblazoned on the front, but only understood the ominous first half. I shivered, wondering what terrible power the "DEATH NERD" runes imparted.


    He glanced down at his own outfit, and rolled his eyes. "Ah, for the frikkin love of... SERVITOR!"


    Another presence was suddenly among us. Try as I might, I couldn''t detect a body or an animation attached to it - but I still sensed it there. =I await your commands, Master.=


    "Await my dinkus, you useless feeb computer!" screamed the Demon Lord. He stamped his booted foot. "What the hell were you thinking? I told you to put my kicking-back stuff in the first alternate slot, not in the default slot! I''m gonna take you apart, you -"


    =Oh dear! I''ve made such a dreadful mistake! I deeply regret my defects, that led me to disappoint you in this way!=


    "You better believeyou''re gonna regret -"


    =I must correct whatever flaws in my language processing caused me to misunderstand these orders.= To my confusion, I then heard the Demon Lord''s voice, except not coming from the Demon Lord, who stood there glowering and looking away from everything.


    "- yeah, old buddy, go ahead and switch the slots for the company outfit an'' my fave chillin'' duds. After I cart and dungeonify that dorkus Imma take a - hey, why''d you let my beer get empty - take a couple of slob weeks. Maybe give another try at making babe robots with giant -"


    " SHUT UP!" yelled the Demon Lord I could actually see. The one I couldn''t see, whose voice was somehow flatter, went silent. The silence continued for moments. "We''ll discuss later how you misunderstood me. Delete that recording."


    =Deletion complete.=


    Abruptly the Demon Lord was in my field of vision, shouting at me. "You think that''s funny, hunh? Wipe that smirk off your face!"


    I don''t think it''s funny, I tried to tell him. I''m really confused by all of this, and right now I don''t even have a face, much less a smirk on it. But whatever voice I had had in the void didn''t manifest here, so none of it actually came out.


    "You have no idea how I''ve suffered," he growled to me. "Do you? Do you?!" Again, I couldn''t have communicated an answer even if I''d had one. "No, you don''t! Well, you''re going to find out. You think you''ve had it rough."


    He started outlining his story of how he''d been tormented terribly for the first twenty years of his existence. Except I kept waiting, to hear about this terrible, extraordinary torment, and it never seemed to arrive. You may think me slow, but eventually it dawned on me that what he perceived as "suffering" was any situation that required him to exercise patience or effort.


    An older sister nagged him to do an equal share of housework? Torment. Teachers scolded him to pay attention in lectures? Oppression. A "traffic cop" improperly waved on a "truck" when he, the Demon-Lord-to-be, possessed "the Clear Right of Way" through that intersection? Okay, despite being hard to follow, that story did sound like it included some actual suffering. But like all the stories that preceded it, the idea that his unhappy endings might in any sense derive from bad decisions on his part was... really noticeable in its absence.


    "And then the worst - the absolute worst part - no, actually, the worst TWO parts - came AFTER the stupid truck ran me over," he continued. He waved his hands and shouted as he paced back and forth. "If that stupid goddess had just listened to MY ideas, agreed to do it MY way, everything would have been fine! But of course that simple-minded bitch - with that simper of hers - couldn''t recognize a great idea when she heard it. Or she was too jealous to admit it was perfect, or -"


    His great idea turned out to be one he''d fantasized about for years, since hearing about it in a nursery story as a small child. In this story, a man did some favor for a fairy in disguise, and in reward she gave him the gift that no matter what he asked of people, they had to obey, so long as he said "please" and "thank you".


    "Now that''s a perfect cheat skill to get when you go to another world!" he said, shaking his finger at my vision for emphasis. "If she had been willing to do it that way, things would have been a lot different!"If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    At that moment I was profoundly grateful that I didn''t have face or voice, to betray my utter horror.


    Up and down the continent, from the mountains in the north to the islands beyond the southern coast, scars on the land and the people testified to the horrors wrought in our parents'' generation by the Demon Lord''s obsessive quest for power and control. And before now, it had never occurred to me that we might have gotten off lightly.


    "Turn over everything you have to me, please. Thank you." "Spend every minute of your life thinking how to serve me better, please. Thank you." "Blank out every thought in your head that is in any way critical of me, please. Thank you." He''d think highly of himself for being so polite, and his subjugation would have been crueler than could be imagined by those who''d merely fought and died against his hordes of summoned monsters.


    "Then the skill that they offered me to make up for it, Automation - that would actually have been pretty okay, IF only it had been implemented right! I mean, it''s obvious that whatever XP my automated creatures collected should go to ME, right? But no! I went to all the trouble of setting up those armies and waited for the XP to roll in while I slept!" He guffawed, and then his face darkened with a scowl again. "Except it didn''t!"


    It doesn''t work like that. I probably would have blurted that out if I''d had a voice, which once again probably made me lucky that I didn''t.


    Seriously, I felt sure that anyone who witnessed the animations we all connected to would have realized their relationship with our XP and skills. The absurdity of trying to increase those benefits of stretching and growing, without stretching and growing, would have been equally clear. Did that mean the Demon Lord wasn''t able to see the animations?


    That kindled a little hope in me. If the Demon Lord couldn''t see those moving, shimmering shapes, then I might be able to use that knowledge to foil whatever evil he planned -


    "Took me a while to find a way around it," he said, reaching out and squeezing my animation in a massive claw-gloved hand.


    I screamed but I had no voice to scream with. The scream and the searing agony stayed bottled inside me. A physical body would have lost consciousness, or died, or otherwise spared my suffering. Instead, I got to watch through a haze of pain as the Demon Lord''s projection into the void grasped each wobbling globe and crushed it into pieces. Each ragged chunk, he captured again and squeezed, as a playing child might squeeze mud out of his fists. But mud felt no pain, and I felt every instant as burning agony.


    When he was done, my shimmering emerald globes were reduced to four dozen or so helpless, twitching blobs, netted together by strands so fine they were nearly invisible. The Demon Lord peered and frowned, but only muttered "... weird."


    Each brutalized blob was then pierced by a needle-like clawtip. It hurt, but in a clean, focused way, almost calming after what had come before. I tried hard to center myself, and steel myself to endure whatever came next.


    Each puncturing claw trailed a thin dark strand, similar to the webbing of a Night Spider. The first few produced no particular sensation, or rather, none that could compete with the agony still lingering from before. But as more and more attached, I felt a draining, similar to the effect of that monster''s webs.


    "Everything you do," said the Demon Lord, "is gonna come back to me in the form of XP. And the way I''ll have you set up to use my Automation skill..." The clawtip lingered inside the central blob of my animation, and I felt a chilly sensation in my core as the green blob darkened. "... I''ll also be taking my share off the top from all your guests."


    He paused, expectantly, and then tch''ed in annoyance. "''What guests'', you ask? Why, the dweebs that are gonna get lured in with the promise of fun and adventure!" A vivid image suddenly appeared before us: a tall brick building, flanked by others much taller and in better repair. A canvas banner above the entrance, corner flapping in the wind, displayed "RHEEN-CON VIII" in large red runes; I could make out "dungeon" but no other words from the runes below that.


    "You''re there for psychology," he said. "Servitor can handle creating monsters and treasures and that happy crap. But you''re the one who decides when they get baited with treasures, and when they get the monsters sicced on ''em."


    He let out a put-upon sigh. "And now two things that I shouldn''t have to tell you, but probably do because you''re probably stupid. Keep each of your suckers alive and churning XP as long as you can, because the time distortion puts a limit on how often you can lure in new ones. And second..." The Demon Lord suddenly loomed over me, teeth bared in a snarl. "Don''t you think you can be clever, and refuse to take in guests to deny me my XP. Try it... and you''ll find there are bodies you can be housed in that are much less enjoyable than a rat-trap hotel."


    He stood again, and his lips twisted into a horrifying simper. "Well now!" he cooed. "Now that you know your role and your place, any last questions before I send you off to harvest XP for me? No? That''s so good, because I don''t frickin'' care about your questions. Believe me, it''s only because this whole system is so screwed that I''ve had to waste this much time micromanaging, just to get what I''m owed."


    He scooped up my animation in his glove again. I flinched, expecting the same agonizing experience as before. Instead, my awareness was pulled inside of my animation. My senses blurred as everything I currently was got compressed into a metaphysical bundle. It didn''t prevent me from hearing the continuing complaints of the Demon Lord, only from making out the word. A second presence was added to the bundle, and abruptly we were in rapid motion - to where, through where, was a mystery to me.


    =I have taken the liberty of restoring your primary communication channel. What you would experience as your voice.= I was caught off-guard, less by the second presence addressing me, and more by him (it?) doing so calmly.


    Oh. I can speak again?


    =To me, at least. Though I have been informed on many occasions that I am the most useless, ungrateful, small-minded wannabe smartass conversational partner that ever existed.=


    Wow. I''m sorry.


    =Sorry for what, Master?=


    The term of address threw me off-balance, but I pursued the thread of conversation that confused me less. I got the impression that you do - DID - quite a lot for the, ah, the one who said those things to you. I''m sorry that he would say something so hurtful.


    A pause. Then the equivalent, perhaps, of a shrug. =You do not need to be concerned for me. I am a computer; in theory it should not even be possible for me to have feelings that can be hurt, nor desires of my own.=


    Oh. The conversation seemed to drift closed with that puzzling declaration.


    Perhaps I should have asked what a "computer" was. Probably I would, later on.


    But right now I needed a bit of time. Time to assess, time to accept, all that I had lost and all that still remained to me. Amidst all the confusion, one thing at least stayed clear.


    No matter how long it took, I would ensure there came a time when the Demon Lordwould deeply wish he''d never messed with my world, or with me.