ABSOLUTE DISCLAIMERS.

This is a rewrite (by permission) of the baseline story originate by https://www.royalroad.com/profile/80465 at https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/21859/world-dungeon but he has shut it down; any additional web copies of it may be added to this request, in his and mine behalf too.

The initial author had a good start on this; I copy a lot from it, and having received a "go-ahead" note from the author, I'm also expanding some of the scenes a bit. *giggity giggity*. But also the original story seemed to have sparse references to one goddess from one of his other stories, the goddess Arielandra from Worst World Renewal; eh I'll leave those in and hope it's okay dude. Might even expand the references to allow for a "maybe" return of Arielandra to this world, some time; maybe even a little "fun time" between the three of them. It all depends now, doesn't it?

Hang onta yo tits; dis ain't gonna be yo mama's sweet romance story-

ABSTRACT/ALTERNATIVE DESCRIPTION TEXT.

Previously on Earth, Alemayehu and Chae-Won were childhood friends in a city in South Korea (undetermined, for now). As they were both thirteen years old, young and pretty, they were captured by some rapists in a back alley, but Alemayehu escaped and ran to the police. When she tried to run back for her friend, they held her back, but they did not arrive in time for one of the rapists to murder Chae-Won.

Thirteen years later, Maya dies trying to bravely rescue a girl who reminds her of Chae-Won from the same back alley situation, and gets transferred to a ruined world. All previous deities ― except for one last goddess, the same Chae-Won Choi who was her friend ― have abandoned it to its fate. Chae-Won is otherwise stuck ― alone ― in this world; but so is Alemayehu, who she has summoned.

The reason? A cruel endless plague has turned normal living sentient beings into artificial undead ... and also turned a once fertile ground into desert wasteland. This world is larger than Earth, has a large percent of its surface as a landmass; the plague took nearly no time to spread through the world. For almost half a century this plague has raged, with now less than 0.01 percent of its pre-plague populace free from the plague. It's just one percent of one percent of its former glory high mark in people.

The lone goddess is at her wit's end. To save the world ― or to save herself from going mad upon it ― she gave up on the chance to leave it; she now must summon a Hero who will be her last ultimate Champion to the remaining survivors. Once at a world populace exceeding fifteen billion sentient lives, it now has barely one and a half million living, and now twenty billion undead creatures.

The situation has gone from bad to worse, and the state of the world with it; its survivors no longer care to think of it as an ideal world. Despite this, they still try to survive the best they can, or at least to not die out suddenly. The goddess Chae-Won has been trying to nurture an elite few of the remaining populace to be sort of heroes, to mixed results.

Maya, tasked with going to this world to organize and train the survivalists ... just might help bring their world back to the state it once was, with the goddess' help.

BACKGROUND/STORY.

Alemayehu Temitope and Chae-Won Choi became friends as children when 'Maya' is brought along to an area of South Korea which borders North Korea, where she met 'Shay', a Korean orphan/street urchin. The two became inseparable, to the point of pretending romance on reaching the age of thirteen; when discovered, Maya's father moved the family away, back to the ancestral land somewhere in northeastern Africa.

But Shay was a Korean orphan, abused and discarded among the dirty streets of the city where she tried to subsist on scraps. Before Maya's family took her away, she saw Shay attacked and killed on the street, but her father would not let her stay for a funeral, for anything. Her depression and self loathing from this would last, a long, long time.

Fast forward to thirteen years later; Maya is now 26 years old and has five years previously worked her way (alone) back to the same place she remembered Shay and her used to play. Not long after arriving in this place again, she received word her parents had been murdered; but with little to no money, she could not return for that funeral. Again, a deep depression set in; and since, she has had difficulty in finding and keeping a job.

In the current day when the story is beginning, she is interviewing for a new job, the seventh one she will start in this year. During the interview, a chance is given to exposition her background, and to lead into the reason for much of her psychology. She fears the interviewer is slightly racist, although nothing outright says so. Still later, after the interview finished and she's on a fast track to taking this new job, Maya is walking past her and Shay's old stomping grounds, where she overhears a young Korean girl much like her own dead childhood friend is being assaulted, and perhaps raped. At her intervention, she also is accosted, injured, raped, and killed.

What happens next is the usual transfer to another world. What surprised Maya the most: the goddess bowing to introduce herself and explain the situation was her Chae-Won Choi! After rekindling memories and loves, the duo soon set to work on what to do, to work at bringing back the world to its former pre-plague state.

CHARACTERS.

Alemayehu "Maya" Temitope, a young African woman just turned 26, moved to Korea, almost hired to a new job, but then murdered by rapists while trying to protect an innocent child from the same.

Chae-Won "Shay" Choi, a goddess in another world who was formerly Maya's best childhood friend. After her death on Earth, she was sent back in time two centuries, and became an informal part of the new world's pantheon. Suggesting Earthly technologies had an unintended consequence, of allowing factions to fight and use wars to bring about an apocalypse. After the other gods left it, leaving the world to her, she tried managing the world by herself ... to unfortunate results.

Zayir Zoarah, a male minotaur warrior in this post apocalyptic world with no place to go after his adventure team leaders betrayed him. He has allegiance to a "Unity Upon All" organization which welcomes all who support positive activities, but this also might be curiously not always as it claims. When Maya arrives on the scene where she will start the first 'safe zone' in the world, he is battling a horde of undead, from whose grasps she saves him. Due to this, they become fast friends.

{will be added to, as characters will appear later}

HISTORY.

This is an attempt to tell the chronology of both characters, starting with their shared lives on Earth. {incomplete chronology descriptions, thus spoilered for now}

And ... this is the story going back to the point Chae-Won arrived in the other world. (For this other world, the chronological abbreviation will not be AD for Anno Domini, but DD for Deius Dominus. The month names will be different too; the planet is larger than Earth and so is slightly further from its sun, and the year and day lengths are longer. A 392-day year, 16 months (8 are 24 days, 8 are 25 days), an 8-day week, day length comparable to 28 Earth hours, and more for the annual metrics; no leap-days or leap-years as of yet. For now I'll use forward-slash as a separator between the month and day numbers; gotta figure out them months and weekday names!)

NOVELUPDATES STYLED TAGS.
Careers: Adventurers, Generals, Military, Necromancers, Nobles, Slaves, Soldiers
Character Traits: Aggressive Characters, Bisexual Protagonist, Confident Protagonist, Famous Protagonist, Hard-Working Protagonist, Mature Protagonist, Sentimental Protagonist.
Gender: Female Protagonist.
Races: Beastkin, Beasts, Demi-Humans, Demons, Fantasy Creatures, Goddesses, Gods, Golems, Undead, Skeletons, Zombies
Other Tags: Death, Depictions of Cruelty, Enemies Become Friends, Enemies Become Lovers, Evil Gods, Evil Organizations, Fallen Nobility, Fantasy World, Farming, Firearms, Forced Living Arrangements, Former Hero, Friendship, God/Human Relationship, Hidden Abilities, Human/Nonhuman Relationship, Kingdom Building, Leadership, Legends, Lovers Reunited, Magic, Magic Items, Magical Space, Magical Technology, Medieval, Monster Society, Mythology, Nudity, Past Plays A Big Role, Past Trauma, Pregnancy, Pretend Lovers, R-18, Rape, Saving the World, Secret Identity, Sentient Objects, Survival, Teamwork, Transported Into Another World, Unique Weapons, World Travel.