Chương 25: Dungeon Diving Once More

I nod to nobody in particular.

"So," I say, gesturing vaguely, "that's definitely a dungeon, right?" The forest offers no response beyond the distant chirp of a bird I cannot see, hidden somewhere inside the aggressively overcommitted greenery. Rude. Still, I am confident in my assessment. After all, my infinite genius has deduced that a pitch-black hole in the ground can only be one of two things: A dungeon. Or a mystery pit leading to the darkest depths of this questionable reality I have found myself in.

Either way, the correct response is the same. Proceed with a complete lack of caution. And mild enthusiasm. Yes. The perfect plan. I approach the hole, which is situated in a suspiciously open clearing—because of course it is—and kneel at its edge, brushing my fingers against the black void like I'm checking whether it bites. A prompt answers me. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Dungeon Detected You have encountered an Instance Dungeon. Size: Small Recommended Level: 24 Would you like to enter?

Options: Yes / No ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ My tail gives a small flick, signaling an emotion somewhere between concern and existential dread." Small," I repeat. Not tiny. This time it is "small." I blink slowly. The kind of blink that implies judgment, disappointment, and a strongly worded review being drafted in my head. This might take a while. Naturally—I press Yes. Dungeon monster density is perfect for catching up in points, and I refuse to let the universe think it can intimidate me with adjectives.

The criminally overused transition animation plays again, and my vision is swallowed. My nose notices the change before my eyes do. The air is old. Stale. Thick with the unmistakable perfume of undead rot—like something died here, got bored of being dead, and decided to linger out of spite. By the time my vision clears, I've already decided I hate it. And then I see it. Stone corridors. Narrow passages. Intersections that immediately branch into more intersections. … Fuck.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ You have entered the Instance Dungeon: Buried Catacombs ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ My ears flatten with utmost annoyance. It's a maze. A fucking maze. The last dungeon I cleared was labeled tiny, and that still took hours of running. This one is small. And it's a maze. I look around, hoping—praying—to the stars for an exit, a shortcut, or a conveniently placed "skip to boss" button. Nothing. Just unforgiving stone walls, damp with age and regret. Unacceptable. One out of ten.

I narrow my eyes and look again, just in case my glare intimidates some underpaid intern, bored god, or cosmic middle manager into fixing this. It does not. Tragic. I exhale through my nose—just shy of a sigh—then unsheathe my sword and tap it lightly against the stone. The sound rings out, echoing through the corridors. I close my eyes, listening. The reverberations bounce back in layered delays, painting a rough mental map in my head—angles, distances, dead ends.

My ears twitch subtly as I track the echoes, refining the image with each fading note. The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. A few seconds pass. I open my eyes and nod in approval. That would've been nearly impossible before, but the annoyingly expressive additions on top of my head are very good at pinpointing sound. Especially with my Perception this high.

With the immediate area mapped out, I turn and start down one of the corridors—casually ignoring the most obvious dead ends. Because if I'm going to suffer through a maze— —I'm at least going to do it efficiently. The usual first encounter is—unsurprisingly—a lesser skeleton. The copy-paste key strikes again. Naturally, it dies rather quickly. As do its friends. And its extended family. And several skeletons that I am reasonably certain are only here because the dungeon needed to pad its population statistics.

I wander the maze in a slow, methodical pattern—stopping at intersections, tapping stone, listening, expanding my mental map—then doubling back. Many times over the next 3 hours. Every promising route eventually peters out into nothing but dead ends, collapsed corridors, or rooms whose sole purpose seems to be wasting my time. Annoying. Truly, the first-person maze experience is nothing but pain. There are no helpful overhead maps. No glowing minimap.

No stars to commentate, distract me, or argue about morally questionable pastry classifications. Just me. Alone. With my thoughts. Which is, frankly, a dangerous situation. My inner dialogue spirals wildly—planning hypothetical future conversations, rehearsing dramatic one-liners for fights that haven't happened yet, and devising increasingly unhinged long-term revenge scenarios against whoever decided mazes were good game design. Eventually, even that dries up.

There's only so much mental simulation one can do before boredom sets in—like the battery on my phone after six straight hours of doom-scrolling through videos I don't even like anymore, desperately hoping one of them sparks joy. It does not. I sigh. Deeply. At this point, I would genuinely welcome a monster that could at least make me feel something. My earnest desire goes unfulfilled. Skeleton #63 rounds the corner with the boundless confidence of a creature that has never once survived an encounter with me.

Its posture is aggressive. Its bones rattle menacingly. Its empty eye sockets glow with all the menace of a haunted coat rack. I don't even look at it. My blade flicks out on reflex, more habit than intent, and its head separates from its body with a dull clack, rolling across the stone like a badly thrown bowling ball. I step over the corpse without breaking stride and round the corner of Turn #187. Dead end. Of course it is. I stop. Stare at the wall. Let the disappointment settle fully into my soul.

Then I mark it with a neat little X in my head and turn around, already calculating the optimal route back. Right. That means back to Intersection #23. And if— if —the last remaining passage there is also a dead end, then I get the pleasure of hiking all the way back to Intersection #17, which I distinctly remember because that was the one where I seriously considered lying down and letting the skeletons win out of spite. As I trudge back down the corridor, my boots crunch against something brittle. I blink. Pause.

Then look down. … Huh. That's different. The bones beneath my feet aren't scattered the usual way. Not the standard "pile vaguely shaped like a humanoid who tripped and exploded" configuration. No, these are arranged with a little more intention. Slightly curved. Some stacked. A femur placed almost— almost —deliberately across a ribcage. I tilt my head. Interesting. I nod solemnly, acknowledging the moment.

"I hereby dub you: Bone Pile Asset #4." It feels important to document these things. For science. Bone Pile Asset #4 joins the growing collection of environmental storytelling elements I've catalogued over the last few hours, alongside its esteemed peers: Bone Piles Assets #1 through #3, Ominous Caskets #1 through #6, and, of course, Mysterious Blood Stain That Probably Has Four Pages of Lore Behind It #1 through #5. All repeating. Naturally. Is this a sign I'm getting closer to something meaningful? A boss room?

A narrative payoff? A reward for my suffering? … Probably not. More likely it's just another reused asset dropped in at random to maintain the illusion of progress. Why design new encounters when you can simply rotate the same object fifteen degrees and call it variety? Incredible. Skeleton #64 staggers into view a few seconds later, having apparently heard the faint crunch of my existential despair echoing down the hallway. It does not last long enough to earn a place in my memory. I continue walking.

The path eventually leads to Intersection #25. Skeleton #65 is waiting for me. Skeleton #65 is no longer waiting for me. I step past the collapsing pile of bones, already mentally filing it away under Solved Problems, and am about to continue onward—fully prepared to ignore yet another blue box— —when the notification physically yanks my attention back to it. I stop. Slowly tilt my head. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ You have slain Lesser Skeleton (Level 25 | Tier 1).

A slight experience bonus has been awarded for slaying a monster 1 level above you. You have gained 27 Tutorial Points. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ I blink. Once. Then again, slower. … The level went up. Finally. Finally. After hours of skeleton-based psychological warfare, copy-pasted corridors, and enough dead ends to qualify as emotional abuse, something— anything —has changed. Tangible progress. Observable escalation. Numbers that mean something. This can only mean one thing.

I straighten slightly, posture lifting as renewed purpose floods my soul. I'm getting closer. I have to be. There is no other explanation. None. Absolutely zero. The dungeon would never lie to me like that. Surely. With my enthusiasm fully restored and my patience temporarily repaired, I continue onward with fresh resolve— —but not before making another vow. A sacred one. I will not be entering another dungeon until I have killed every last monster on the surface. Every wolf. Every boar.

Every undead disappointment shuffling around pretending to be content. I refuse to endure this level of suffering again until it becomes mandatory for the continued pursuit of my endless crusade for Tutorial Points. This is a promise. To myself. And possibly a threat. … Definitely a threat. ✦⋆✦⋆✦ The skeleton encounter counter has officially entered triple digits. I stopped counting after Skeleton #102, because at that point it stopped being data and started being an insult.

The number of turns taken has surpassed three hundred. Intersections? We're currently on #32, not counting the fourteen others that have been erased from my mental map by virtue of being nothing but elaborate lies leading exclusively to dead ends. My patience meter? Has gone negative. According to the Tutorial clock, roughly six hours have passed since I willingly stepped into this calcium-infested labyrinth of immaculate emptiness. I reject this. Firmly.

In reality, I am fairly certain it has been at least fourteen and a half years. Possibly longer. That is what it feels like, and feelings are the most important metric of all. At least the outside world has some variety. Wolves hunt differently than boars. Plants try to murder you in creative ways. Even the undead occasionally spice things up by falling apart wrong.

These caverns, on the other hand, feel less like a poorly imitated ecosystem and more like an experimental method of population control via boredom-induced aneurysms. And—unfortunately—I have to admit— … it's working disturbingly well. … I stop walking. I stand there for a few seconds, sword dangling loosely at my side, staring down yet another corridor that looks exactly like the last three hundred. Then, I do exactly what any reasonable, well-adjusted person in my precise situation would do.

I find a relatively clean patch of stone—free of bones, bloodstains, and suspicious dampness—curl up into an exhausted ball of defeated Foxkin, and close my eyes. I will deal with this later. Skeletons don't seem to respawn in cleared areas, and even if they did, my ears would wake me instantly if one so much as thought about approaching. Therefore— —nap time. For the first time in a long, long while, I fall asleep away from the gaze of the stars.