Inching slowly down the hallway, I stopped at the corner and peeked around. It looked like it once again cut to the left after a couple meters. Giving a sigh, I shuffled forward, looking around the corner again before stepping through. “What, am I going to have to traverse a maze everytime I come in or go out?”

  A few meters beyond where I crouched, the hall widened and opened into a large space. I could faintly hear the sound of running water. Well, I thought to myself, that was a thing or two that I could tick off my to find list. Water was an essential for many things. Hopefully drinking it wouldn’t kill me. Happy thoughts, Ian, think happy thoughts.

  Trying to keep the thoughts of dying a painful death from drinking poisoned water out of my mind, I opened up the status screen and focused on the Minor Warding spell. It was one thing to have spells, and another to know how to use them. I couldn’t see anything in the description on how to cast it.

  I leaned back against the stone wall, going through the descriptions of my spells and skills, looking for anything that would tell me how to cast a spell. Everything was a little vague on information beyond a basic ‘it does this’ or ‘it helps with this’. You’d think with a couple of the skills and knowledge I had been granted, casting a spell on myself would be a little intuitive.

  Not even a second after thinking that, I felt a bit of pressure inside my head. It felt like it was just behind my eyes and reminded me a little of when I’d had a sinus infection. It wasn’t painful, just a slight build up of pressure and then a brief glow surrounded me and faded away. I flinched, not going to lie about that. Luckily no one had been around to see me land on my backside.

  With wide eyes, I opened my status sheet again, and looked for any changes. There were two. First, my mana had gone down by a point. Second, in the top right corner of the sheet, was a Rune for Warding.

  I sat there for more than a moment, a big grin slowly creeping over my face. I had just cast my first spell. I had just used magic. Magic was real and I could use it.

  My laughter echoed through the hall I was in. My life had ended in one world that I could barely remember, and started fresh in a new one. A new world that was so very much different than what I knew of my old one. A world with magic and dungeons… Wait, were there dragons out there too??

  Once my laughter ended, I still had a big grin on my face. I stood up, using the wall to brace myself. I looked ahead of me to the opening of the hall where the light was bright enough to keep me from seeing beyond. With a little more energy in my steps, I walked to the exit and stepped out to see what was outside.

  “Well, I have quests to do. Time to be about it, then.”

  The sight beyond was stunning, to say the least. There was grass growing tall with flowers that were in bloom. A number of trees stood dotting the area. The sound of rushing water was coming from beyond the trees in the distance. This could be any park back home.

  Yet there was a glaring difference from those idyllic places and here. Dozens of feet above, was a stone ceiling. That I could see, there was no opening, no hole somewhere letting light in. No sky, no sun or moon or stars. An entire ecology had grown inside a cave.

  I’d read of similar things in the old world. Down giant sinkholes entire worlds existed separate from the one above them. But that was the difference. Those places had at least one place that opened to the sky, allowing the light of the sun to provide for life. This did not, I couldn’t even tell where the light was coming from. Yet, the whole cavern was lit up like it was noon.

  It was when I saw a bit of movement in the grass that I remembered where I was. I was in a dungeon, and there were supposedly going to be monsters. I quickly ducked over to the edge of the entry, crouching down to make myself as little of a visible target as I could.

  Bounding out of the grass, was a rabbit… unicorn? It was a rabbit with a horn on its forehead. I had that itch in my head that I was starting to associate with a memory that I couldn’t quite grasp. Or was being held from me. Eitherway, I did feel like I should know this creature.

  It was about the tiny, I probably could have held it in the palm of my hand without too much overlap. Its ears were a little shorter than what I thought a true rabbit should have had, and it had bright white fur and red eyes. The biggest thing that told me this was no ordinary rabbit, was the horn. It was proportional to the tiny body, at least., I couldn’t see any details about it from here.

  The rabbit had stopped moving and was nibbling at the tips of the grass. I, of course, watched and smiled. I’d died, come to another world and the first living thing I see is this horned rabbit. Leaning against the wall of the cave hallway, I gave a sigh and a shake of my head. Which, of course, had been the wrong thing to do.

  Those ears that seemed too short popped up, then the head followed. While its ears turned this way and that, the tiny nose started twitching and the eyes darted about. I had frozen, pressed up against the wall of the tunnel, hoping that it hadn’t been me making it look around. Luck was not with me, I realized as the rabbits gaze locked onto my own.

  Just as that realization was sinking into my brain, the tip of the horn on its forehead started to glow. My eyes widened, and I had just enough time to start moving before a beam of light stretched from the horn to the wall I’d been standing in front of. The sound of the beam as it crossed the distance reminded me of the high pitched hum of power lines. The beam exploded on contact with the wall, sending shards of rock everywhere, including at me.

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  Crying out more in shock and surprise than pain, I lurched backwards away from the wall. Another beam came towards me and I managed to trip myself as I tried to dodge, landing my bare bottom on the ground. The beam grazed my left arm, which felt like I had touched a hot poker to it.

  This time I screamed in pain when I flinched away from the rabbits direction. My right hand clutched at my arm, my mind absently noting that there wasn’t any bleeding. I grit my teeth and raised my left hand out towards the tiny creature. Again, I felt the bit of pressure build up behind my eyes as I concentrated on the spell, Moonray.

  After less than a second it launched from my hand, a short burst of light speeding across at the rabbit and hitting it in the hind leg. The shot knocked the rabbit back slightly and it fell to the ground. The rabbit stumbled as it tried to stand, turning back towards the trees it had come from.

  I didn’t know what kind of dynamic existed between horned rabbits, but figured it’d be a bad idea to let it just get away and maybe come back with more. Tiny little rabbits with beams of light shooting from horns on their heads… this was going to be my new normal?

  I shook my head and forced myself to focus. Once again, my hand raised and there was the slight build up behind my eyes. My second Moonray hit the rabbit along its back, pressing it flat into the ground, where it didn’t get back up.

  I blinked, looking at it. I was breathing hard, my right hand clutching at the left arm which had taken a glancing blow from the rabbits second shot at me. I had taken some rock shrapnel from the first shot. With the adrenaline starting to fade, or the fact I could actually think about the wounds I’d taken, the pain of it all was hitting me nice and square.

  I looked at my arm, slowly moving my hand away from where the rabbit's beam had grazed me. The skin was a bright pinkish red color, and I could tell there was some blistering already starting. This wasn’t good. With no ‘modern’ medicines, there was a good probability of infections with secondary burns… I stopped that line of thought with a deep sigh and a shake of my head. I had forgotten something very important.

  Opening my status sheet, I saw that my health had dropped from my 16 point maximum, to 12 points. A graze from a creature's ability and rock shrapnel had taken more than I had expected, yet less than I had feared. And here I was supposed to survive an undetermined amount of time here, when that little had taken about a quarter of my health?

  The pressure behind my eyes when I cast a spell was becoming familiar. The Minor Healing brought my health back up to 16, which had the effect of leaving my arm feeling like I’d gotten a light knee scrape. It had the better benefit of not looking like it was going to blister.

  As I sighed in relief, a new window popped up that had me tilting my head and wishing for the hundredth time that there was someone that would answer my questions.

  {You have killed a Horned Rabbit and gained experience (5 exp)!

  Would you like to loot the corpse?}

  Dismissing that window, I glanced at the body of the horned rabbit. I still had a feeling that I should know this animal from somewhere. My fogged memories just weren’t placing it.

  I walked closer to the tiny corpse, glancing now and then at the grass to watch for others of its kind. “Yes?” I said, with a little bit of trepidation, as I got close. The body dissolved into a cloud of gas that dispersed quickly as I watched in awe.

  {You have looted Horned Rabbit Skin and Monster Core (E)!}

  I had loot! It was a little refreshing to see that I wasn’t going to have to figure out a way to skin anything using shards of rock. I didn’t think that would be very productive. I belatedly realized I had nowhere to put these two items, and that I had no idea what the Monster Core was, though I could guess that the (E) was a ranking. Fragments of memory were telling me that (E) was very, very low.

  What’s more, the beam of light from the rabbit and the Moonray spell that I had used were very similar. That really couldn’t be a coincidence. Again, my brain fog kept me from remembering full facts from the other world. All I got was a recollection of a legend about the moon and rabbits. The moon here, who was a goddess and my patron. Had I just killed one of her pets?

  Before I could look more closely at either that thought of the monster core, another horned rabbit bounded from behind a tree. I stood still out in the open and away from the safety of the tunnel, watching it for a long moment. It ignored me, hopping along to the grass for a meal. I started to turn towards it, to raise my hand and cast my spell, when another one hopped along behind.

  I only paused for a second, hoping that my inaction wouldn’t lead to being discovered again. The ray of energized moonlight shot from my hand and hit the first rabbit hard enough to bowl it over. It twitched, but didn’t stand up. The second rabbit’s eyes snapped to me and it opened its mouth and screamed.

  I wasn’t expecting that, so I was more than a little shocked. That lasted a few seconds until I heard the sounds of thumping from different directions. Soft sounds, like maybe a rabbit landing on the ground as it jumped. I didn’t have to wait long to find out. As the screaming rabbit stopped and aimed its horn directly at me, three more horned rabbits came into view.

  I now had four horned rabbits aiming their horns at me, while the first launched a beam. This time, I hadn’t been standing there like an idiot. I was dodging and raising my hand up as fast as I could to get my own shot off, and then it was a lot of chaos.

  On the northern edges of the islands that make up the Narmyr Empire is a mountain range known as Doramir’s Peaks. On the eastern edge of the ‘Ring Knuckle’ island, more commonly known as the Isle of Garenas, is a small and nameless village of adventurers. A small distance away from this small village, near the mountains of the Peaks is the entrance to a dungeon.

  Dungeons are labyrinthine structures filled with deadly traps, hordes of monsters, and piles of treasures. Or so the stories tell, often from the mouths of aged men and women with a knowing smile as the youngsters drink in the tales. Sure, there are traps and monsters. There’s even treasure. But getting through everything to get to the treasure, isn’t as easy as the common person would believe.

  There are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of dungeons dotting the landscape across the Tregasa. This one is quite young, barely a few years of existence. Which is why when the ground shook, the adventurers inside the dungeon were ejected rather forcefully, and the entrance began to change… the locals got worried. The Guildmaster, leader of the Adventurer’s Guild in the village, was called for while adventurer’s began setting up defenses for the worst event related to a dungeon: a dungeon break.