Kai’s pulse picked up as he stared at the messages floating in his vision, his little gremlin heart rapidly fluttering in his chest. This was just like one of those stupid litRPG novels or isekai light novels or anime where some idiot gets reborn in a new world and is given overpowered abilities and harems of ditsy followers who call him master like happy slaves, and readers are immersed in an empty, storyless narrative with nothing but progression and escapism and unrestrained wish fulfillment with stat boxes constantly appearing showing random numbers going up every time the protagonist sneezes or takes a dump or climbs a tree.
Sneezing while crapping in a tree +1, you have achieved godhood and can now cast nuclear bombs at your enemies with impunity. BOOM!
“Oh, Master, you’re so perfect! Let’s bind ten more girls to you with magical contracts.”
He gagged. So lame. He much preferred that one with the inn and the no killing goblins… Really good story. He had been a supporter on Patreon for years. Then he remembered he’d never be able to read that story again, and his heart took a nosedive into the ground and then proceeded to shred itself. A tear formed. “Dammit. I love that story!” Maybe they had magical internet here that could connect to the one back home. Or, heck, give it a couple of years, and Scamazon would probably reach even other dimensions or whatever.
The text in his vision faded. A new message appeared:
Please place the entrance to the Admin Area.
A glowing green outline of a door appeared on the blank stone wall in front of him. Wherever he moved his line of sight, the outline followed. He looked around the room, then decided to put it on the wall to the right of the entrance. He looked at the spot where he wanted the door.
“Uh, there.” The outline faded away, and the small room became dark again. No door was visible. Confused, he stepped closer, looking harder for the door. Yet there was no handle, no button to press, and he saw no hint of the outline from before. He placed a hand on the stone and gave it a push.
The wall soundlessly swung inward.
He grinned. “Secret door. Sweet!” He sauntered into the new room. Secret doors were da bomb.
The Admin Area was another small, square room made of reddish-brown stone blocks. Facing one wall was a console, like a wide podium or something from Star Trek. The base was rock, but the top gleamed with the telltale sheen of glass. There was nothing else in the small space.
Striding over to the console, Kai found himself looking way up at it. Whoever had created this had designed it for human-sized users. “Hey! Not cool! This is discrimination against short people!” He booted the console in the base.
The base slowly lowered until it was barely off the floor.
“That’s better.” Kai placed a clawed hand on the glass, his hooked nails clicking on the hard surface.
The console came to life like a computer waking from sleep. Messages appeared:
INITIALIZING. PLEASE WAIT.
CONFIGURING FOR USER…
Choosing Hearths
Selecting Stones
Shuffling Cards
Sabotaging Self Esteem
Hanging Cobwebs
Rewrapping Mummies
Sharpening Vampire Fangs
Shopping for Witch’s Brew Ingredients
Draining Blood From Victims
Lousing Zombies
Spraying Stench A21-b
Polishing Mana Crystals
Filling Up Loading Bar
As he read the messages going by, Kai was beset by a mix of emotions. On the one hand, this whole magical dungeon thing was pretty freakin’ cool. On the other hand, he was still grieving the loss of his old life and body. This fantasy world stuff seemed exciting. But knowing he probably had less than twenty years to live, depending on how old this new body was, had him kind of scared. The idea of growing this dungeon into something grand and amazing was incredibly daunting. Actually, it was overwhelming. A familiar feeling of negativity came over him.
Sweeping Up Charred Minion Dust
Installing New Timer Fuses
Gathering Otherworldly Spectators
Corralling Enraged Minotaurs
Oiling Up Racks and Whips
Wiping Off Tables
Mentally Scarring Trauma Victims
Positioning Heroes/Villains
Glaring at Innkeeper Regarding Ant Infestation
Shaving Cocker Spaniels
Tightening Hinges on Pit Traps
De-bodying Spikes in Pit Traps
Realistically, there was no way that Kai was ever going to grow this dungeon to a hundred floors, meet some gods, and have some wish granted. It would be nearly impossible. Only some try-hard, natural genius type could do that, and Kai was not that.
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So why even try in the first place? Why get excited and invest a bunch of time into this dungeon thing only to have his hopes dashed and have his failure prove what a loser he was? He should just give up, walk away, and go make the best of his life somewhere else.
Kai was not the brightest star in the sky. He’d never been the kind to excel at school; he’d never received an honor grade. He didn’t learn things quickly, not as fast as some people, which had been really frustrating at times.
Serving Poisoned Beverages
Choosing Room and Board
Unstraightening Crooks
Bribing Guards
Paying Undead Band to Perform Theme Music
Resetting Booby Traps
Resetting Cocky Traps
Resetting Rusty Axes for Beheading the Non-penitent
Re-casting Vile Curses and Hexes
Summoning Fresh Demons and Your Mom
But if there was one thing that many years and hundreds of TV shows, films, and books had taught him, it was that there was one really big difference between winners and the vast hordes of losers in life:
Winners didn’t give up.
That might be an easy lesson to be aware of on an intellectual level, but it was a whole other beast living it on an emotional and applicable level. Case in point: Kai was kind of a loser. He’d never achieved anything great. He’d never been the best at anything. He’d watched other people around him get higher marks, run faster, pick up hotter chicks, get better jobs, and so on and so on. When he hadn’t been able to perform as well as the best people in class or at work right away, he’d stared at them with some measure of resentment before defensively trying to shrug it off like it didn’t matter, then giving up on himself — and not trying again, not trying harder.
Ghosts Re-haunting
Cleaning Invisible Bridges
Creating Misleading Icons to Encourage Choosing Poorly
Brainstorming with the Sphinx for More Riddles
Raising Ceiling That Slowly Descends
Separating Walls That Slowly Close In
Re-stocking Creepy Crawlies
Breeding Poisonous Snakes
Breeding Sharks with Lasers on Their Heads
Beheading Practice
He’d coasted through life the same as most people, giving up in big ways and in small ones many times. He’d convinced himself that he was a loser, that he couldn’t do anything, that he couldn’t have more.
He’d told himself that he was never going to run as fast as that other guy in gym class, so why try? He didn’t want to fail and look lesser in everyone’s eyes. He was never going to look like some Hollywood movie star, so why bother dressing nicely or working out? Beautiful women were never going to look twice at him, so he’d spare himself the rejection and humiliation and just not ask anyone out. He was never going to get promoted because others were smarter, worked harder, and were more popular.
Why bother trying hard when it would all just be a waste of his time and effort and lead to soul-crushing disappointment and pain? He was a loser. He knew this. So many experiences had proven this.
But…what if he was wrong?
A piercing scream tore through the air, causing his heart to stop and a cold sweat to break out. He stared at the screen in panic and immediately figured out why, relaxing.
Terrified Distant Scream Trials
Casting Grotesque Monsters
Luring the Golden Child and The Chosen One
Hiding Lost Arks
Preparing Sankara Stones
Robbing Museums For Artifacts
Installing Anti-scrying Devices
Recruiting Cannibal Tribes
Setting Large Rolling Bolder
Starving Lions
Breeding Bigger Big-Hairy Spiders
Giant spiders? Kai shuddered.
Truthfully, he’d never known what he was really capable of because he’d never pushed his limits. He’d always given in to his innate sense of inferiority. But what if — this time — he didn’t give up on himself? The idea was scary as all hell but also exciting. Part of him wanted to have hope in himself. Dare he risk giving into it?
Here he was, somehow unexpectedly ripped from his normal life and thrust into a new one. It was kind of a fresh start. Actually, every single day was a fresh start, and we could choose to change the course of our lives at any time, but this felt like an even more poignant turning point, a crossroads like he hadn’t been to in a long time.
Licensing Merchandise to Greedy International Corporations
Studying the Science of Fear
Practicing Inducing Misery and Despair
Researching Darker Darkness
Fostering a Sense of Gloom and Foreboding
Designing New Ways to Get Them to Abandon All Hope for Ye Who Enter
Learning How to Strike Terror into the Heart
Loading Menus…Traps…Minions…Design Features…Weapons of Local Destruction…
Preparing Anti-rogue Security System
Feeding Slimes
Composing Eerie Noises
Kai sighed. He hated being a loser. He hated that he was always looking down on himself, probably more than anyone else looked down on him. He had a guilty suspicion that being a loser had less to do with what he was capable of and more with a negative perspective of himself, that thinking and feeling this way was his own fault, a result of giving into his own insecurities more than the world at large was trying to keep him down. It was a very hard truth to accept, but the longer he allowed the idea to sit in his mind instead of running away from it, the truer it felt.
He was sick of feeling bad about himself. He really didn’t want to feel like a loser anymore. Maybe it was time to try harder. Maybe, this time, he wouldn’t give up on himself.
He felt a rising sense of defiant anger, of rebellion. What did he have to lose? Some embarrassment if he failed? So what? If people laughed at him for falling on his ass, looked down on him, and mocked him, well then, screw those guys. Anyone who did that to another person was a jerk. Their opinion didn’t mean dust.
ANALYZING…
ANALYZING…
LOCKING FEATURES BEHIND LEVELLING REQUIREMENTS
He read that, and his enthusiasm dropped a little, though seeing the rule made sense. No OP start for him though. Sad. His life was not an isekai anime with broken skills. Of course, it wasn’t. Typical. He sighed. Then he shook off the bitterness because it wasn’t helping.
If Kai did fail and had to look in the mirror and come to terms with the fact that he wasn’t the next superstar or world record dungeon builder or whatever, then fine. So be it. At least he could be proud of himself for trying his best for once, for pushing his horizons, and that was more important. Not giving up on himself would make him tough. He liked that idea. The more he pondered it, the more he decided that tough was the kind of person he wanted to be. So, from now on, he was going to be the toughest he could possibly be.
He was now in possession of a magical dungeon. His very own. That was amazing. So what if the guy who’d sold it had said that it took hundreds of years to grow one all the way? Just because that was true for others, it didn’t mean it was necessarily also true for him, right?
An image of a dungeon appeared on screen. Actually, it was the room outside. Below it, a series of tips scrolled by:
If adventurers are easily conquering your dungeon and stealing all your treasure, try not to suck so much.
Dealing with higher-ranking adventurers? Try deploying even higher-ranked monsters. Duh.
Beware of pooing in the dungeon because it never goes away. Employ slimes to keep passages clean and smelling fresh. Consider installing ‘ancient’ toilets that magically still work.
Dungeons can be fun, but you can’t spend all your time there. Don’t forget to go outside and get some sun. And try to make real-life friends, too.
Mecha-gnomes cannot be trusted. AI is evil!
Kai couldn’t agree more with that last point. About the AI, anyway. He had no clue was a mecha-gnome was.
He took a deep breath. He decided: screw the odds. Kai was going to bust his ass and try to get this dungeon to level one hundred before he died. Then he was going to meet the gods, find the one who’d put him in this position and punch him in the face, then get that boon. He’d become human again. Get his life back. And this time, he’d live better. He’d get his hands on that god-tier hamburger and enjoy the crap out of it.
If he failed, so be it. He needed to learn to be ok with that. The destination wasn’t as important as the journey. He’d read that on a poster at the dentist’s office, and he believed it. Or he wanted to. He didn’t need to achieve everything. He just needed to prove to himself that he could be a fighter and that he had faith in himself. He could be proud of himself for that. Although, it was probably easier said than done.
The console screen froze. Kai tensed in alarm. A red box appeared over the screen image:
CHECKING…
ERROR
NONSTANDARD MODULE DETECTED
Kai’s stomach dropped. “No! Don’t tell me he sold me a broken dungeon core! I’ve just spent the last ten minutes agonizing over a bunch of introspection and stuff. It had better not have been for nothing!” Anxiously, he stared at the screen, willing the bad messages to go away.
NONSTANDARD MODULE IDENTIFIED
DETERMINING COMPATIBILITY
VERIFYING…
Kai gulped. Had his dungeon core been hacked or something?
VERIFYING…
AUTHENTICATION ACCEPTED
A yellow happy face appeared on the screen. It winked at Kai, then faded away.
Kai nervously stared at the place where the face had disappeared. “Ok… Weird.”
