RavensDagger

  Bing Bong! gratutions, your amon Bun css has reached level 2!Health + 5Resilience +5You have gained: One Css PointYou have unlocked: One Css Skill Slot

  “A skill slot?” I wondered aloud even as a rush of giddiness washed through me. It was like a faint tingling, first in my skin, then my muscles and the insides of my chest, as if someone had pced me in a microwave on high for a few seds, but without the exploding.

  I grinned. I was level two!

  Normally, that would have been a time of celebration and dang and such, but I was right o a giant evil hole in the ground and it kind of felt uo make lots of noise while so close to the scary pit.

  Instead, I looked around, took in the bright sunlight streaming down on the sight of the battlefield where I had fought the wraith and soaked in the sun.

  The hole didn’t drop straight down, not for more than a meter and a half or so. The passage went on into the dark as some sort of tuhat I couldn’t see the end of. I was going to need a dder or else getting out of there would be plicated.

  Fortunately, I had seen oo the gardening shed of one of the houses I’d explored. Unfortunately it was all the way across town.

  There weren’t any other options, so I took a leisurely stroll across town, found the dder where it had bee, tested the rungs a few times to make sure they could hold my weight, then dragged it all the way back.

  The moment my foot touched the ground within the hole a prompt appeared before me.

  You are Entering the Wondernd DungeonDungeon Level 2-4Your entire party has ehe DungeonSeal Dungeon until exit?

  “That sounds like an awful idea,” I said.

  Dungeo UnsealedAny Person Enter Dungeon Instany Person Exit Dungeon Instance

  Quest Updated!The Hole Down UnderAn evil root has plunged into the world.You have ehe Wondernd Dungeon. Explore it. Find the root. Destroy it.

  I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding and ted myself lucky. It felt as if I had dodged a bullet there. Still, level two to four monsters would probably be really tricky to fight. But maybe I didn’t o fight them?

  Dropping my backpack, I searched within until I found the silvery dlestick I had looted and a fresh dle. Then I lost a minute or two with the firestarter until the dle lit up with a spark. I repced the firestarter and stood back up, the dle holder held before me so that the mirror shield it had illumihe path ahead.

  The passage was like a borehole, the walls smooth dirt except where the occasional root poked through and the ground tilted down at a slight angle. I tread carefully, always watg where I set my feet in case of traps or pitfalls or anything of the sort. I had read enough about dungeons to know that being careful was the best way to survive them.

  The path curved a little, then opened up te-ish room with a wooden door at one end and a monster in the middle. A torch high up on the wall he door lit everything up with a warm, e glow.

  I froze, taking in the form of a dog-sized rabbit standing on its haunches, milky-white eyes staring at a pocket watch that it, he, held out before him in a big fluffy paw. The rabbit wasn’t normal, not just on at of its size and the fact that it was wearing a tattered waistcoat. Its fur was missing in pces and its teeth were showing where the flesh around its mouth was rotted off.

  I fired off a quisight as I stood still and wondered what to do.

  A zombie time rabbit, level 2.

  I realized that I might be in something of a pickle. Still, I was Broccoli Bund Broccoli Bunch was nothing if not polite. “Ah, hello,” I said.

  The rabbit’s head looked up. Its white eyes locked onto me. The timepiece clicked.

  Then the rabbit reappeared in the air right before me, both legs already kig out into my chest.

  I stumbled back, breath whooshing out of me in gasp as I fell onto my backpad id down to stare at the dirt ceiling for a moment. “Ouch,” I said as soon as I had air in my lungs.

  The timepiece clicked. The rabbit appeared above me.

  I swept an arm out, hitting the zombie rabbit just hard enough to shove it off to the side and avoid ahumping. Then there was a mad scramble as I slid my arms out of the loops of my backpad rolled off to the side. I didn’t have any ons except my ing magid the rabbit could teleport.

  It wasn’t looking too good. “Mister rabbit, please stop!” I said.

  The rabbit turs white eyes towards me, then pressed otoo the timepiece again.

  This time I rolled out of the way before it even appeared to kick me again. “Okay, okay, Broc, it’s a time travelling zombie bunny rabbit,” I said as I shuffled around the room, stantly moving as I kept an eye on the rabbit. “It’s an evil time travelling zombie bunny rabbit. K-killing it is okay.”

  The rabbit’s head snapped around to face me, turning way more than its neck should have allowed.

  The pocket watch clicked. My hand shot out and ed around its furry chest a moment after it appeared before me.

  It was heavy, heavy enough that I ended up bag up and bumping into the wall, but I mao hang on to it long enough to use my one spell.

  A wave of ing magic tore through the rabbit, its white eyes went glossy and a faint ghostly form shifted out of the body.

  “Oh, thank goodness,” I said as I let it drop and moved away. That had taken more than a third of my mana, more than a ghost did. But still, it was over. I waited for the ‘ding’ and the experience points to e in.

  The timepiece clicked.

  Spinning around, I found the rabbit ba the middle of the room, its head turowards me with its white eyes set in a gre. “Oh no.”

  The rabbit bounced across the floor in a straight path for me. I tried to move away, but the room was far too small, so I did the only thing I could think of. I jumped over the rabbit.

  Ding! For doing a Special A in lih your Css, you have unlocked the skill: Jumping!

  “Not now!” I told the infobox.

  The rabbit was slow to turn around, which was just what I needed. My hand locked around the timepied tore it out of its grip to send it flying against the wall where it burst apart. Then came another wave of ing magic.

  Ding! gratutions, you have stuffed a ‘Undead White Rabbit Time Mage’ Level 2!

  I shuffled away from the body of the rabbit as it started to dissolve into motes of whitish light that left nothing behind, eves of its timepiece fading away. “I’m sorry,” I said before using a bit of mana to off my hands. A k sounded and a key appeared on the ground where the rabbit had been.

  Mana 19/105

  That wasn’t very good. I hoped that Dungeon monsters didn’t respawn, then I felt bad for calling the rabbit a monster. Sure, it was a time travelling zombie rabbit, but I was the one invading its house. I bet that it used to be a very nice rabbit before it went all zombie and mean.

  Maybe that’s what the quest was about: Destroy the root of evil in this dungeon and allow it to bee a less evil pce? It made a sort of sense.

  I stared down at my hands, my perfectly hands, made that way thanks to some magid not any effort of my own. Hands that I felt should have been at least a little dirty.

  I wasn’t some crusader, or the person who got to decide what was right and wrong. I had been asked, by something, to e rid the world of something evil, and that’s what I was trying to do, but I didn’t want to promise my morality to do it.

  My hands ched into fists. “So I won’t,” I decided. I had made friends with all sorts of people already. And maybe I could make even more in this dungeon. Maybe it was an evil pd I couldn’t. I didn’t know yet, but I would learn and I would ask the people I met to be friends first before I ever raised a fist against them.

  I nodded. “Right!” My choice was... not made, because that had been my path already, but reaffirmed.

  JumpingRank F - 00%The ability to jump. As this skill rises in level your ability to jump will improve!

  A g my new skill didn’t reveal all that much. It wasn’t... well, it wasn’t Fireball. Jumping could be useful... maybe? Fetting to high pces?

  “My skills are really me,” I whined.

  Still, it was a skill, and at rank F it wasn’t that handy. I skipped over to the door, then looked at the experience ge. It had gone up a full pert. Maybe I could grind it here before moving on, then. I had another skill that was nearly at the level too.

  The door to the area had a rge lo it. It didn’t take a genius to see that it was the key that had dropped from the rabbit. o the door was a little table with a potion bottle and a cake on it. The cake had ‘EAT ME’ written on it in big letters, the bottle had a small tag with ‘DRINK THIS’ scribbled on it. I fired off two quisights.

  “Is that... is that an Ali Wondernd reference?” I asked aloud. “Insight.”

  A poisoned cake

  A poisoned shrinking potion

  I eyed the cake and the potion, then carefully took the potion and brought it bay backpack to tuck it away. There was a ce it would e in handy ter. Then I checked my notifications.

  gratutions! Through repeated as your Insight skill has improved and is now eligible for rank up!Rank D is a free rank!

  That was an easy choiake.

  InsightRank D - 00%The Ability to know something. The knowledge you gain is further increased.

  I stretched, jumped on the spot a few times, then looked to the door as I slid my backpack ba. I didn’t know how ready I was to face off the rest of the dungeon, but I wouldn’t learn that until I tried. I got my makeshift fil ready, just in case I ran into more zombies hosts, then unlocked the door to step out into the rest of the dungeon.

  My breath caught.

  The passageway tinued for a few feet, then opened up onto a railless baly overlooking a rge hole. It was maybe ten or twenty meters wide, with an opeop that revealed the bright green sky above. There were other ptforms at different levels, with huge, bulbous mushrooms growing in a spiraling ring all around the sides of the shaft. It seemed as if the level I was on was the highest one around.

  It retty, with glowing moss along the walls, little trees stig out here and there with huge caterpilrs on them and pretty pink clouds floating above. Pretty, surreal, and nothing like the world I had left wheered the dungeon.

  “Whoa,” I said as I moved to the edge of the ledge and looked down. Every quarter turn of the shaft had a hole drilled into the wall, some with eborate arches, others quite pin. All the way down to the bottom where a field of grass was waiting and a rge vine-covered archway. It would have looked idyllic if the pervasive sense of wrong wasn’t s whenever I looked at the tunnel behind that arch.

  That had to be my objective then.

  And the only way to reach it was to jump from mushroom to mushroom. Maybe Jumping wasn’t a waste of skill after all.