WingedWolf

Welcome to my world! I hope you enjoy this story as much as I do writing it!

He woke up by the beach, lying on his back. He opened his eyes slowly, reveling in the sensation. The calm wind was refreshing, the temperature comfortable, the sky just bright enough and the sound of waves splashing on the coast was music to the ears… But hold on, what am I doing here?

Planting his elbows in the sand and slightly raising his upper body was enough to see he was wearing nothing but a plain white t-shirt, black shorts, and a pair of old, trusty sneakers. Weird... Who am I?

With growing confusion, the man tried to recall things about himself but found himself completely unable to. All of his memories seemed to be missing. An incredibly disorienting feeling if he ever knew one, though not as disorienting as he would expect. But wait, if I have no memories, how do I know things?

So he stayed there, lying on the soft sand and thinking about the things he knew. Turns out, he knew a lot of things, except he had no recollection of how or why he knew them. He knew what sand was and even how it would feel if a strong wind whipped his body with it, but he couldn’t remember ever seeing sand again. In short, he knew many things, just nothing about himself. But in fact, he felt surprisingly fine with having no memories, to the point where he decided to simply accept the issue as is.

Amnesia... Guess I’ll just have to figure it out, he mused. Without standing up, he looked at himself. A tanned, well-proportioned body was all the man could see without a mirror. He felt comfortable in it, which was good. He patted his body, finding it, well… like his body. Hey, this part is better than I thought...

Which left him with one problem; he didn’t have the slightest idea of what was going on. Perfect, I hope I like surprises.

So he did the only sensible thing he could think of, he stood up to take a look around. And just as he did, he only managed to get a glimpse of the blue sea and a forest a few tens of meters away before the sand below him collapsed. Which was very unhelpful for someone who would prefer to not fall with it, but at least it led him to his very first discovery about himself. No, he did not like surprises.

Letting out an involuntary yell, he fell into the hole in the sand and landed about a second later. Very painfully. Due to his surprise, he hadn’t managed to rotate himself and fell on his back, which led him to his second discovery about himself. His bones were more fragile than he had hoped.

Your journey has begun! Please choose your new name:

You have entered the Hidden Dungeon “Crab King’s Lair”. Recommended level: 15. Proceed with caution.

Congratulations! For dropping to critical health by your very first action, you get the Title ‘Born to Die’.

Born to Die: +2 CON

Take your time. You can always die later.

Before he even had time to consider the blue lights that had suddenly appeared before his eyes, a block of hard sand landed on his face, breaking his nose too. At least he'd managed to close his eyes in time.

Laying on the hard ground, he was unable to open his eyes due to the sand. Feeling numb all over his body, he tried to turn sideways to slide the sand off his face, but an unbearable pain coming from his back forced him to stop. He tried to bring his right hand towards his face but the mere effort caused him to sweat. So he lay there, sand all over his face. Luckily, it wasn’t in his mouth, which allowed him to breathe.

And as he accepted the situation, darkness encroached upon the edges of his vision. Fuck, was his last thought before he fainted.

You have thought of the name ‘Phac’, are you sure about your selection?

???

For the second time in a day, he woke up unaware of his surroundings. Feeling dizzy and something itchy on his face, he raised an arm to wipe it away before raising his body. Then he stood perfectly still as the memory of what had occured, his very first memory in fact, came back to him. Without moving, in fear of the pain, he slowly checked his situation. Very very slowly, like the laziest snail in existence, he tried to move his fingers, then his arms, then his body. Everything felt fine. Was that a dream?

But he was at the bottom of a round hole, roughly 2 meters in diameter, solid rock walls surrounding him while equally solid rock functioned as the ground. Running his fingers over the ground, it felt hard, bumpy and wickedly cold. The damp, wet smell of the underground filled his nose, while his eyes were still trying to acclimate to the moonlight of the dark, starry sky above, shining through the hole's opening, illuminating most of it but leaving the contents of a few dark spots to one's imagination. Moonlight? How long was I out? It was at this point that he noticed a blinking exclamation mark at the bottom-left of his vision. What’s that?

No sooner did he have the thought than the exclamation mark expanded, and now a blue screen with black letters hovered in the center of his vision.

Your journey has begun! Please choose your new name:

You have thought of the name ‘Phac’, are you sure about your selection?

Please confirm your selection of the name ‘Phac’.

Due to inactivity, confirmation is registered. Welcome, Phac!

You have entered the Hidden Dungeon “Crab King’s Lair”. Recommended level: 15. Proceed with caution.

Congratulations! For dropping to critical health by your very first action, you get the Title ‘Born to Die’.

Born to Die: +2 CON

Take your time. You can always die later.

Congratulations! For dropping to critical health twice but not dying in your first minute, you get the Title ‘(Un)lucky’.

(Un)lucky: +2 Luck

You are so going to need this.

What?…

Is this a hallucination of some sort? It looks like a video game to me. And is the hallucination making fun of me?

“Fuck you too, you blue bastard”, said Phac, and the screen disappeared, revealing his normal field of vision.

What was that? Now really confused, Phac decided to sit down and put his thoughts in order.

First of all, he woke up on a beach. Okay, that seemed fine, even though he had no idea where he was or why he was there. What was not fine was that sand seemed to have a tendency for falling here, wherever here was. This sounded awfully inconvenient, as Phac imagined that any self-respectable patch of sand would have the dignity to stay solid under people’s feet. Except for quicksand, he thought, before deciding that quicksand was sneaky anyway and so didn’t count. Plus, even quicksand didn't just collapse under people’s feet, throwing them in a hole.

Thinking up to this point, Phac looked up and tried to calculate the height. Must be around 3-4 meters… Surprising that he only got away with the fall, but he wasn’t one to complain. Besides, it was the least compensation he could get for waking up on top of someone’s faulty sand.

After waking up, the next thing he remembered was falling and being in pain. Then something hard fell on his face too and, when he tried to remove it, he was pretty sure that at least a few bones must have broken. Then I remember waking up, so I probably fainted, but how did my bones un-break in the meanwhile? Was I mistaken?

Seeing no alternative, he accepted that explanation and moved on to the weirdest thing; the blue screens. If Phac could accept being mistaken about his broken bones, he had no explanation for those screens and their questionable sense of humor.

It did seem like a video game, it even said something about a dungeon… Are there menus here or something?

As soon as he had the thought, another blue screen appeared in his vision causing him to fall back.

Name: Phac

Race: Human

Level: 1

HP: 26/26

MP: -

STA: 6/6

Titles: Born to Die, (Un)lucky

STR: 11

DEX: 11

CON: 13

INT: 12

WIS: 12

CHA: 12

LCK: 8

Huh… thought Phac as he lay on the ground yet again, looking up at the screen. Okay, so it’s really like a video game. Am I in a video game? I thought I would know.

While he wasn’t aware of why, he was familiar with the terms used in the blue screen, as he was with the concept of a video game.

HP represented his Health Points, getting that to 0 was bad. MP was what, magic points? Did that imply the existence of magic? An interesting thought, Phac shelved it for later. STA must be stamina, titles were something like an achievement and the rest were his stats: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. Surprisingly similar to the world’s oldest role-playing game, but he’d roll with it. There was Luck there as well, a welcome addition.

Hold on, does this mean I was at 6 LCK before the title!? Then was 10 the average? Phac had no idea about himself except for his name, but if 10 was the average as he assumed then he was a bit above average in everything besides Luck, especially Constitution. Nice, go me! Oh, but I did get 2 points in that from the title.

But then the most important part of the screen registered in his mind.

Hold on, did this thing just name me Phac? Is it because that’s what I thought before fainting? Come on, this is just unfair… Fuck YOU, you blue asshole. Or rather, Phac you, Phac shouted in his brain, finding solace in the adamant belief that ‘Phac’ was different from ‘Fuck’, even though it sounded the same. Definitely.

But didn’t it say that I fell to critical health twice? That must mean something like 1-2 hp... I was injured twice, once by the fall and once by the falling hard sand, but the interval was too short… Did I manage to regenerate HP quickly or something? Phac pondered the issue. Well, if the first title came right after the fall, then maybe the extra CON gave me some extra HP which were depleted by the sand right afterward.

That made sense, but Phac shivered at the thought of how close he had come to death. Twice. I hope this doesn’t become a habit… Or maybe that’s how my bones healed, I regenerated HP while unconscious. Does it work that way? Is there some hidden stat for regeneration, maybe?

Phac felt familiar with the context so, for lack of better ideas, he decided to accept that he was in a video game world or something, which brought him to the first screen. If he remembered correctly, a dungeon was a place crawling with monsters where play- Hold on, are there monsters here too? Hope not. At least it said unique dungeon, maybe in the sense that it does not have monsters?

He thought, only for his hopes to be thoroughly crushed in the next second.

Hidden Dungeon: A dungeon that hides from the world along with its monster denizens, found by the lucky or unlucky instead of the brave. Usually contains greater rewards than a normal Dungeon of its level, though Hidden Dungeons can occur naturally too. Proceed with caution.

Perfect. And what was that about a recommended level? It said 15, but I am level 1. Surely it didn’t mean that… Phac looked around, sweeping his eyes over the cold rocks, hoping to find something, anything. Squinting his eyes, he did spot the opening of a dark tunnel on one of the walls but, even though it was more than wide enough, it was a bit too short for him to walk upright; he would have to duck. Right, crab dungeon… But how big would a crab have to be, to be over 2 meters in width…

He gave climbing the walls a try, then another, then another. There were a few dents and outcroppings on it, but way too small to be used for climbing, at least by him. He barely managed to get his feet off the ground on the third try but fell to his butt right after. There's no way I can climb this…

He looked up, patches of hard sand hanging off the top of the hole four meters above him.

Probably a pitfall trap, with hardened sand covering the hole. And when something heavy enough walks over it, it falls as I did. While lying down my weight was spread, but when I stood up the concentrated weight became too much for the solid sand to handle… he guessed, trying to distract himself from the obvious issue that he was trapped somewhere with the possibility of giant, Phac-ivorous crabs hanging around.

Well, only one thing to do then. Maybe the crabs will be friendly if I walk sideways... he thought as he reluctantly entered the dark tunnel, making a valiant yet only partially successful attempt to not piss himself. The journey of Phac, the future great warrior, had just begun.

WingedWolf

My humble greek brain cannot comprehend the intricacies of English pronunciation, so 'Phac' is pronounced as 'fuck'.