Stealthily Lil’dude went down the steps into the dungeon, he was on the lookout for traps, and anything else to cause problems. The descent took a lot longer than either of them would have thought before the steps gave way to an ornate doorway to the first dungeon floor when they crossed the threshold, they both had a mental popup show.

“Well, cool I think,” Lil’dude said as he cleared the notice.

“I guess it’s time to be prepared, I really hope it’s not all guns and ammo in here,” Rebecca said.

“No, not yet I need more people to fight in here before I can start adding all my planned Spaghetti Western elements.”  A young girl’s voice was heard from behind the pair of adventurers.

Rebecca and Lil’dude looked to see a ghostly teenaged girl floating in the air, she was dressed like a comic book cowgirl with a Denim Overalls Dress, boots, and cowboy hat. Her hands were doing finger bangs.

“I don’t have enough points yet to have more than this one floor, and I can’t even manifest a real body yet. But wait, I’ll have the biggest bestest cowboy shoot 'em up ever one day.”

“Um, hello, are you a ghost?” Lil’dude asked the ghost girl who looked to be his age.

“No, I’m the spirit of the dungeon core.” She said winking at the cat boy teen. “Also you’re kind of cute… ah so that’s how it is, I’m a ghostly girl for a week and now I like boys. Who knew picking Living Dungeon core meant I had to be a girl.”

“Must be a story to this,” Rebecca said.

“Yeah, sadly I was in a bad place when I was living, never really had a chance, the message I got was, go full random or pick a dungeon core, and work off your debt and have fun. I picked fun. It seems, to get a Dungeon Core as a new life option you have to earn a lot of dark karma due to situations out of your control, and against your will.” She said.

Rebecca then looked around the floor of the dungeon, it looked much like the grasslands outside. the dungeon floor looks like an outside area with large open fields surrounded by a few hills and forests. There was even a sky and a sun visible.  Off in the distance, she saw buffalo and coyote running around.

“Toto, we’re in Kansas now?” Rebecca joked.

“Oh, yeah, funny I get that reference.” The ghost responded, “But I’m not going to help you, nor hinder you, as I get points no matter what you do, but I’m a bit bored as only a few town guardsmen have entered the dungeon, and they just looked around checking what was available. To think they were most interested in those pretty flowers” she pointed to an area where Echinacea plants were growing and had bloomed their lovely flowers.

“It’s a useful medicinal plant, as it helps relieves cold symptoms. Alchemists can use it to make weak cure disease potions. So, it’s kind of worth the effort to gather.” Rebecca said, starting to feel a bit like a nerd. As she was tempted to say too much info.

“Oh,” the dungeon girl said, “They came with the floor plan, I wanted to make deadwood, but I couldn’t afford a mountain valley yet. So, I settled with the ‘plains state’ rolling hills. That option also gives buffalo, which are actually a tough fight so be careful.”

Carefully Lil’dude stealthily moved towards the flower beds of echinacea, when he found a trap hidden in the deep grasses, it was a tripwire made of the grasses and stiffer plants. He motioned for Rebecca to hold, while he traced the trap and found it connected to a cowbell. He cut the grasses and looked at the ghost girl. “Why a bell?”

“It’s a cheap trap, and the bell attracts the blink dogs.”

Rebecca and Lil’dude looked off in the distance to the coyotes or what they thought was coyote when they noticed one of them did the classic blink move as it pounced a ground squirrel.

“Oh, yeah, so we don’t want to trip those bells, we can deal with one, but a full pack would be doom,” Rebecca said.

Little dude thought carefully, then removed the cowbell. “Mom, I have an idea, if we need to sneak past them, I’ll toss the bell far away.”

“Good, Idea, however, carefully stuff some grass against the bits inside so it doesn’t ring until it’s thrown.” She replied.

Lil’dude carefully stuffed the cowbell with grass and then wrapped it in cloth and placed it carefully in his pack.

The pair of adventurers then made it to the large patch of Echinacea to collect the plants and roots.

“So, do they regrow automatically, or do they work like real plants?” Rebecca asked.

“Ah, they respawn after about 30 minutes to an hour.” The Dungeon Girl said, then paused with a crossed frustrated face, “I’m not helping, please ignore me.” She stuck her tongue out in a very tsundere way.

After gathering up most of the plants they had about a hundred time the number of roots they needed it had taken them several hours to do this, plus they noticed that the “monsters” seem to path in very small areas, never venturing outside of what seemed to be an invisible box.

“I think we should get a bit of XP while we are here, I doubt we’ll get enough for a level, but we should try and kill a buffalo, the meat and skin is highly useful, and with our skills, I think we have a chance,” Rebecca said carefully looking out for a lone Buffalo.

After stalking the lone Bull Buffalo, Rebecca and Lil’dude planned out their strategy starting with Lil’Dude doing a backstab.

Carefully Lil’dude approached in stealth (Nat 20, 27 vs 10) to the hindquarters of the large furry boy cow, his luck continued with his backstab attack (Nat 20, 25to hit, 12damage) the Buffalo cried out in pain and started to turn to face and attack but Lil’dude had moved behind Rebecca prior to his movement. The Bull Rushed Rebecca who was ready sword and shield in hand. (Charge attack 15+6=21to hit, 3d6+4=11points of damage) Rebecca was staggered by the hit (1/12hp), Lil’dude then rushed to the Bulls flank in a massive sprint (Feline agility, special movement) and hit him as hard as he could with his daggers (13to hit, 7 damage) as he started to make a go with his off-hand, the buffalo dropped like a stone, defeated.

Carefully Rebecca stored the body in her storage space, having a spell version of a bag of holding was going to be invaluable for the collection of monster bodies and collecting their worth.

They headed out of the Dungeon, while the Dungeon Girl told them “Ya’all come back ya hear!” as they left. Rebecca needed to heal up and told Lil’dude that they should take a long rest before turning the quest in and selling the bull’s body.

After 4 hours of meditation, and doing the mental exercises that Elves usually do when their parties tend to get a full 8 hours of rest, she got up and cleaned and repaired her gear. The night was quiet and peaceful, the moon…and blue moon were out, and Rebecca reviewed the best way to have dealt with the buffalo and reviewed how she could have handled it better.  

Scientists

The admin looked over his list of souls he was giving a personal touch to, and realized he needed one specific group placed properly. He did a quick search of the souls under this category, ‘good! got most of them still.’ He mused.

Slowly his screen showed a large group of people gathering in the grey space waiting for placement.

“Hello there, I’m sure many of you have questions, and I would love to listen to them all and answer them, but sadly due to the allotted time for the transfers, I just do not have the time to field questions, so I have all of you on mute, as in you can not talk or ask questions. You are a collection of the greatest minds of the last seventeen hundred years of Human History on the small world called the Earth, well Earth number 14653289 λ, so basically how to say this, your reality was a simulation, all realities are actually also simulations, and well it’s my job to oversee a few trillion of these realities. Yours sadly had to be taken offline. Due to reasons of stupidity both in religions and me and my kind for underestimating the stupidity of humans. Not to say your kind didn’t have greatness as a potential, you did, and still do. So, all your souls are going to a new reality on a game server, sorry about that as it affects most of your professions greatly. Due to the physics engine being based purely on Magical Potential Energy or more commonly called Mana, which means matter isn’t made of Electrons, Neutrons, and Protons, Light isn’t made of Photons, and things like Gravity and quantum mechanics operate in a wholly different way.” The admin lectured, then mumbled, “well besides still being able to be entangled across servers, a bug, that we have yet to fix, well without ruining quantum physics in non-magical realities.”

He started his lecture up, “So now all matter is made up of mana, and its elemental connection, i.e. Earth, Wind, Fire, Air, Light, Darkness, etc., theirs about 18 different mana elements.”

“So, all of you are the greatest scientific minds, so I’m placing you as the Headmasters of all the many Magical schools across all the worlds I am placing the once human race. Only about 10% of you will remain something you would call human, the rest of you will be one of the many humanoid Fantasy Races and a couple of non-humanoid fantasy races. You will be given a basic level of proficiency in magic and a basic understanding of how magic works. The specializations that you had will be translated into magical specializations. As I have not given you all the answers, and like everyone else being reborn, you will find yourself in the equivalent of a 20-year-old body, unless you are under that age, and will be reborn equal to your age as applied to your new race. So have fun with your new lives, genders, and bodies, and go out and find how Gravity works, discover what a star is made of now,” he gave a small nerd laugh, “actually here’s a freebie, they are just lights in the sky, and suns are just large lights which planets revolve around based on simple code that states mechanically what circle the world travels on.”