Stepping through the portal was a strange experience, it felt like walking into an upright pool of water that wanted to suck you into its depths, but the sensation only lasted a moment. I was on the other side of the portal in under a second and I found myself in a large room. The room and the hallway leading out of it were made from dark stone bricks, and the light was coming from carefully placed sconces that contained some sort of magical light.

I looked around and saw that three of my fellow mannequins were dead, the three corpses laying on the ground bleeding from various wounds. Walking over to the bodies I squatted down to inspect the bodies. One looked like its head had been bashed in, another looked like it had been stabbed repeatedly by some sort of blade, and the other was partially burnt and had what looked like a bite taken out of its throat.

I winced a little after I inspected the bodies, but ultimately, I didn’t really feel anything for those that had died here. We were perfect strangers to each other after all, unable to even speak to one another and all looking the same outside of our clothing. Hearing something behind me I stood up and saw two more mannequins appear in the room where I did.

I nodded to the two, a fighter and a crafter oddly enough, and the two returned my nod. Glancing down at the bodies again it suddenly hit me that death was a near certainty in this place, and I would need every advantage I could get if I wanted to survive. My fire ball magic alone wasn’t nearly enough to guarantee my survival, I needed much more than that.

Stomping my foot loudly to pull the two mannequins attention from the room we were in and back to me I began the difficult task of using gestures to convey my intentions. In the past I had gone entire days without speaking a word, simply staying in my apartment and finding comfort in the quiet, and I had always been fairly introverted. That said, never before have I missed the ability to speak more than I have now. Pointing at them then at myself then clasping my hands together tightly before holding three fingers spread apart before deliberately moving them closer and holding them together as one seemed to get the point across to the other two, but it was way more involved than simply saying ‘Let’s group up’ would have been.

As the two nodded and came over to me I nodded back to them before leaning down and stripping the corpse with the bashed in head of its hide armor. The crafter seeing what I was doing squatted down and started helping me while the fighter turned to face the hallway and took up a loose stance.

I didn’t trust these two all that much, but I was banking on the fact that they were two of the more careful mannequins that had weighed their decisions more than that first group that went immediately picked their classes and skills before hurrying through the portal and thus were smart enough to know we had a better chance at survival as a group than as individuals. At least that was the case for right now, once I was more confident in my ability to survive on my own then I would head off on my own. I knew enough about human nature to know that people had the nasty tendency to be paranoid and jealous, this group would work together until something came along that gave us diverging goals. I figure I could count on these two until the group faced its first seriously dangerous encounter or, if this dungeon was like the ones in games and contained loot, until the group found the first super useful bit of loot from the dungeon.

As the crafter and I got the armor off a new mannequin appeared, this one, another fighter, looked around briefly before immediately coming over and joining our little group. I handed the crafter the pieces of armor I had, then pointed to him and the armor repeatedly to convey he should be the one to wear it. The crafter gave me the ok sign with his hand and then started to strap on the arm and shin guards.

Standing back up I looked at the new fighter who simply pounded his chest twice before giving me the peace sign. I wasn’t sure exactly what he meant by that, but I figured he was joining the group I had put together. The fighter who had been guarding us put a hand on my shoulder to draw my attention, and when I looked over at him, he held up three fingers and pointed to the spot we all appeared at. I realized he meant that there were three mannequins left and I nodded to him.

As the first fighter stared at me, he gestured to himself before repeatedly tracing a capital letter L on his chest. I quickly realized what he was doing and nodded, then I traced a capital H on my own chest. There was no point in giving an entire name, we didn’t really know each other and we couldn’t speak anyway, but it was good to have a designation to assign to members of our group outside of our respective classes. All the more so since there were already some overlapping classes in our group.

1. My handle online was Hexencraft and the name I used in most RPGs was Hex Umbra, it was closer to my own name than the name my parents had given me, at least in my eyes. If I was going to have a new start then Hex would be the name I choose for myself.

The other fighter snapped, pulling L and my attention to him before he traced a capital W on his chest. I nodded to him and so did L. The three of us turned towards the crafter who had just managed to fix the chest piece over his apron. He looked up at us and we went through our letters again before he nodded and traced some strange character before stopping and simply tracing a lower-case j on his chest.

There we were, two fighters, a crafter, and a mystic. Each one a nothing more than a letter and a class. Personally, that’s all I wanted, it would do me no good to get attached to these people. In all likelihood I would see one or more of them die before our group broke up. I might even need to toss one of them into the jaws of a monster to save my own skin, an action that would be much more difficult if I started getting attached to them.

Our group waited a while, waiting on the other three mannequins that was still in that dark void picking out a class, but after an hour of playing rock paper scissors and thumb war against each other it became clear to the group that those other three wouldn’t be coming out any time soon if at all.

That left us with the hallway. With L and W leading the way and me at the back we ventured beyond the safety of the room we appeared in.

The hallway turned out to be a branching maze. We kept to the left most path, only going in a different direction if we heard ominous noises coming from the left most path. The group came across a few more corpses of other mannequins, but the armor and clothing they had on was all pretty beat up. Still I was able to get a pair of shin guards from the lower half of a fighter corps and a right armguard from a severed and gnawed on arm we found some time later.

We could here chittering and loud scurrying at times as we walked through the maze, and once I could have sworn I saw a pink hairless tall tip vanish down one the turns ahead of us. I had played enough RPGs to know that all those things together meant rats, probably giant mutant rats too. On one hand that was good for me, rats didn’t usually tend to be resistant to fire, but on the other hand rats did tend to swarm. Four unarmed people weren’t going to stand up well against a swarm of giant rats, even if one of them could throw fireballs.

We wandered through the maze for close to three hours before we finally came across our first monster, and I was right about it being a rat. A very big rat. A rat that even the most hardened junkyard guard dog would think twice about going after.

I didn’t hesitate, as the rat turned towards us and put down the leg it was chewing on I launched a fireball right into its furry face. The panicked squeaking and screeching did nothing to stop me, in fact it only encouraged me to lob out my second fireball because if it was making all that noise then it was still alive.

The second fireball did the trick and the rat died as it flailed on the ground trying to put out its flaming fur. Once the rat had died I tried to cancel the flames that covered it like I could with a fireball, but I couldn’t get rid of them entirely only lessen their intensity until they burned out on their own.

Once the fire was mostly gone our crafter J rushed forward and touched the corpse. I watched in shock as the rat corpse fizzled into static, like the snow from an old school television set, and melted into a pair of ugly gloves. J looked down in surprise before shrugging and tossing the gloves to L who quickly put them on.

After I got over my initial surprise, I immediately realized that crafters must have had a skill that let them either craft a corpse into an item, or loot them like they were a mob from a game. Either way it was an incredibly useful skill, one that I’d bet would be almost a necessity in this dungeon. The trade off for that skill was pretty severe though, crafters didn’t have any offensive skills from what I’ve seen.

W clapped me on the shoulder and gave me a thumbs up, and I nodded at him in return, but in truth I was worried. I hadn’t leveled up after killing the rat, and I had no way to judge how close I was to getting to the next level. It also took two shots of my only spell to kill a single rat, and while I still felt like I had plenty in my tank for more fireballs and would recover what I lost soon enough, I also knew that my mana wouldn’t hold out if I needed to kill an entire swarm. Added on to that was the worry that these rats were probably the weakest enemy in this dungeon and they could clearly take out us mannequins as easily if not easier than we could them. I had no idea how many punches it would take from a fighter to kill one of those rats, but unless they got lucky hits I’d bet it would take more than two hits to beat them to death.

Our group continued wandering the maze as I thought about the many concerns our first fight brought to my mind.

A thought about how easily I was killing living things, even if they were giant rats, popped into my mind as I flambéed the second rat we encountered. I wondered if I was always this cold, this detached from the act of taking life. I wasn’t sure, I had some major sociopathic tendencies before in my life, and no normal healthy person could be so comfortable with going without contact as long as I often did on a regular basis. Still, I had never attacked a person or animal, and I’d certainly never killed anything other than the odd bug or spider before today. I couldn’t know for sure if I’d always been capable of this, or if this was new, but I guess it didn’t really matter. It was a useful trait for survival, so I would accept it and embrace this new facet of myself with open arms.

L, W, and I all touched the rat’s corpse, but nothing happened. No prompts to loot, no static effect, nothing. J was able to get another pair of ugly rough gloves when he touched it though, so W got matching gloves with L.

Time seemed to drag on as we walked through the maze, occasionally encountering a rat and killing it or a mannequin corpse and salvaging what we could from it. By the time we found a massive set of stone double doors I had a complete fighter armor set, L and W had managed to strap on extra guards for added protection, and we had discovered that giant rats are actually pretty fierce up close and it takes a lot of effort to put them down. W had been bleeding from a few wounds for a while, but his wounds had slowly closed up and disappeared over the course of about an hour.

As we stared up at the massive double doors that had been set in the walls of what appeared to be a random hallway in this maze, I had one thought. That was the boss room, and the path to the next floor of the dungeon was probably behind there too. None of us had leveled up yet and we had killed eight rats already. I didn’t have a good feeling about fighting the boss at level one, and after a quick gesturing conversation with the group it seemed that they all shared my feeling.

We hadn’t felt the need to eat, drink, or sleep since we woke up in the dark void as mannequins, and we didn’t have the equipment to relieve ourselves even if we felt such urges. Theoretically we could stay awake in the maze hunting rats forever until we were comfortable with going up against the boss. I felt a grim determined smile form on my featureless face, I could kill a rat in two shots of fireball and I could recover the energy lost from that in less than three minutes. I could grind on rats for days without rest in this tireless body, I could go for months even. it would get boring and repetitive after a while, but I could do it. I would do it.

In games I had always liked to tackle challenges when I was either under-leveled for them or the lowest level stipulated, it was part of the fun for me to overcome something I was not entirely ready for. That was in games though, this was real so that gaming mentality was cast aside without hesitation. I would grind until I was over-leveled for the challenges ahead of me, grind until I was confident there was no way I would lose, all because this was real and I wouldn’t be able to respawn if I got myself killed.

As L and W took the lead and we continued our wandering in the maze I firmed my resolve. I would not be stepping into that boss room until I was at least level five.

*

After the eleventh rat, the tenth that I had killed with fireballs, I leveled up.

|[Level Up]|

|Class: [Mystic: Lv2]|

|Skills: [Fire Ball: Lv1]|

|Stats: [Agility: 2] [Endurance: 3] [Luck: 1] [Mana: 6] [Magic Resistance: 2] [Mind: 2] [Piety: 1] [Strength: 1] [Unattributed: 5]|

|New Skills, 1 Available: [Mana Ward] [Drain Life] [Flame Stream]|

I stared at the screen that appeared in front of me once again and I had to hold back an urge to dance and cheer wildly. I could advance, all it took was enough dead rats. Even better it looked like I was getting a skill every level early on just like in a game. I was a little disappointed that the other elemental options seem to have vanished instead of being offered to me again, but that was overshadowed by my delight at seeing the drain life skill. If that worked like I thought then it would be a way for me to heal myself, if not others. That was something I needed desperately to ensure my survivability. Mana ward, which I’m assuming is some sort of shield, would be very useful, and flame stream seemed like it could make me a human flamethrower, but while both skills were good and had their advantages they couldn’t heal me.

With something like glee flowing through me I tapped the drain life skill and put my five new stat points in endurance, mind, and mana. As my character screen began fading away I took one last glance at it.

|Class: [Mystic: Lv2]|

|Skills: [Fire Ball: Lv1] [Drain Life: Lv1]|

|Stats: [Agility: 2] [Endurance: 4] [Luck: 1] [Mana: 9] [Magic Resistance: 2] [Mind: 3] [Piety: 1] [Strength: 1] [Unattributed: 0]|

I felt good, in my mind mana, mind, magic resistance, endurance, and agility were the only skills I really needed to worry about increasing. I’d increase my luck and strength to ten eventually, but those stats were much lower priority than the other five and piety didn’t matter at all. I was a mystic, basically a mage, so mind, mana, and magic resistance were probably the core stats of my class, and I needed agility to help me avoid hits and endurance for when I inevitably take them. Everything else was unnecessary, I was only increasing luck and strength at all because I felt it was important to have at least a little of both.

As my group congratulated me with pats on the back and applause, I waved them off and motioned that we should get back to grinding. It took me personally killing ten rats to get to level two, I wonder how many more I needed to kill to get to level three?