Lucins

 And here is the start of the actual story, I wanted to mention that a lot of my inspiration comes primarily from other trans authors on here such as Missjuniper, Trashlyn, pynkbytes and QueitValerie. My other inspiration came from a couple of dungeon stories that I have read. 

Except my consciousness didn’t cut off after the five minutes that I was expecting, I just saw an expanse of empty blackness. After waiting for what I assumed was ten minutes for either something to happen or for my brain to finally shut off I called out ‘Hello, is anyone out there’ I was surprised by two things firstly my voice was normal again, as if my lungs had never been destroyed.

Secondly my call slowly echoed back to me as if I had shouted while in an awfully long tunnel. My shout didn’t sound like me, rather it sounded indistinct, as if 1000 different voices were combined into one and then projected out of my mouth. I waited for another five minutes before I decided to do something, first I tested to see if I could still feel stuff by touching my hands together.

I found I did have a physical form and that it could still feel stuff. It was too dark in here to see anything so the next thing I did was feel around and see what I was standing on, if I was actually standing on anything. To my surprise there actually was something below me, it felt as if someone had combined grass with a mattress the end result being an extremely comforting floor that I wanted to sleep on.

But I needed to figure out where I was first so I decided to walk in, what was hopefully, a straight line to try and find whatever wall my shout had echoed off of. Roughly an hour later I was still walking, it had only taken me 10 minutes to find the wall of what was almost definitely a tunnel so I decided to see if it led anywhere by walking with my left hand on it.

I had been doing this for the other 50 minutes when suddenly a soft but commanding voice called out from behind me ‘Ahh, you are quite the impatient one, aren’t you?’ I immediately turned around to try and see who had talked to me, however it was still too dark for me to see. ‘Sorry, I forget mortals need light to see.’ the voice said before suddenly the tunnel lit up with a blinding light.

After a few seconds of squinting, my eyes adjusted to the light level and I looked around, I was in what looked like an enormous stone tunnel about a kilometre across. The tunnel went to the horizon in both directions and had a strange blue moss covering the floor which looked just as soft as when I felt it an hour ago. After looking at my surroundings I turned to the voice to see the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.

She had long golden hair, a perfect face with a handful of freckles on each of her cheeks, slightly tanned skin that made it look like she spent a lot of time in the sun and deep purple eyes that looked like a nebula. She wore a toga that covered her modest chest but left quite a bit of her long, perfectly smooth legs out to the elements, overall it didn’t leave much to the imagination while still letting her keep some modesty.

‘What is this place? Who are you? I thought I died.’ I quickly stammered out after realising I had been staring for an indecent amount of time, I am sure that if I could see myself I would see a massive blush that went up to my ears. The beautiful woman in front of me laughed at my antics and said

‘I am glad that even after a millennium I can still fluster mortals so easily. It’s quite all right, my name is Shonu, I am the goddess of growth in the world I help govern, Nero. The easiest way to explain this place would be to say that it is a sort of bridge between universes, and yes, you did die which is why I am able to bring you here to give you an offer.’

After taking a few moments to wrap my head around everything Shonu just said I asked the most important question to me at the time ‘what is the offer?’

‘You will be allowed to reincarnate in a world of magic and fantasy, one that I know you will like a lot looking through your life up to now, in return you will have to help us train adventurers against the demon lord that will resurrect in about 10 years who will try and destroy the world.’ The beautiful goddess had said this in such a practiced and fluid way that I felt as if I was the thousandth person she had come to with this offer, which I probably was,

‘You will do this by becoming both dungeon master and dungeon to design floors for adventurers to train in. If the demon lord is defeated once again your job will be over and you will be allowed to do anything you wish. As the stories you read can be differ quite a lot on how they think dungeons work I will explain exactly how they work in Nero.’

Shonu paused for a second to make sure I was ready before continuing ‘The dungeons in Nero don’t kill anyone unless you specifically decide to, this won’t give you any power though so only do it when necessary, since that would be counterproductive. Instead anyone that falls will be respawned either where they died if at least one party-member still lives after an hour or, if everyone in the party dies, outside your portal with a temporary punishment.

‘While delvers inhabit your dungeon, even if they are just resting in a designated safe zone, you will gain power in proportion to their strength and how deep they are. Your core is extremely hard to break, however if it is ever broken you will die. That should be everything that is really important for you to know, anything else you want to know will either be put directly in your brain while you are transmigrated or can be found using the system.

‘Another thing your stories couldn’t agree on were how attributes worked,’ Shonu said still looking calm, reminding me of some of my old teachers as she easily explained everything I needed to know. ‘In Nero we use six attributes, three body and three mind. The first attribute is strength, this is the simplest attribute as it works how you think it does, as you increase it you will be able to both hit harder and carry more weight.

The next attribute is constitution, this attribute will increase your hit points while every ten points in it will increase your hit point regeneration by one point a minute. Increasing Constitution will also help you fight off statuses that effect the body, like poison, but not ones that effect the mind, like sleep, while also increasing your stamina. The third, and final body attribute, is dexterity, this attribute determines how easily you can move your body.

‘This will obviously make you faster and more flexible but it will also make you more likely to hit your target as your swings or shots will go where you want them to more easily. Now onto the three mind attributes, before I get into these three I should mention that neither intelligence nor wisdom make you smarter or wiser. Instead intelligence will make it easier to remember things such as spells, fighting styles or even languages.

This has the by-product of making you slightly faster as you need less time to access your memories. Next is wisdom, this improves you pattern recognition and intuition while also increasing your mana pool and how fast you regenerate mana, similar to constitution. The final attribute is Willpower, the higher this is the harder it is for your mind to be effected by stuff like mind control or psychic damage.’

It also increases how easily you can exert your will on the mana around you making your spells stronger.’ Shonu had finally finished explaining everything I needed to know and was patiently waiting for me to take it all in so that I could give her a proper answer to her offer. She had given me a lot of information all at once so I took a minute to process it all.

I had read a lot of isekai stories, some even where the MC was a dungeon or a dungeon master, so I had a base understanding of what was going on and Shonu’s explanation helped fill in the blanks where the stories varied. The only part I was struggling with was actually believing that this was happening thinking, and dreading, that this was just a hallucination of a dying brain.

After thinking for a bit I decided that either way it didn’t matter to me, if it was a hallucination then I wanted to experience as much as I could before it ended but if it was actually real then I couldn’t pass up on this chance, I just need some more information before I gave my answer. ‘It sounds like a good offer; I just have a bit more I need to know’ I said cautiously, not wanting to upset a literal goddess.

‘It’s always good to be cautious in these situations. Ask as many questions as you see fit and I will answer them to my full ability.’ Shonu replied immediately, probably expecting this to happen since she didn’t sound annoyed at all, instead she sounded as calm as she always was.

‘What happens to me if I decline the offer?’ – me

‘If you decline then your soul will be cleansed of this life’s influence, essentially killing you, before being put back into The Cycle.’ - Shonu

‘Why do you need people to become dungeon masters for you?’ – me

‘We have tried to use dungeons without a master, but they tend to be extremely volatile in outcome, some being far too hard so no one can even get through the first floor until they get to a level where it has too little of a reward to be worth the effort or being so easy that the system doesn’t give much reward for completing it. Then when we used dungeon masters we found that the ones we summoned from other dimensions tended to have out of the box ideas that pushed people to grow stronger at an accelerated rate.’ - Shonu

‘What will happen to the dungeon if I manage to leave?’ – me

‘Once you complete your job and are, voluntarily, detached from the dungeon the system will look after it. You can return whenever you wish to however the system will have probably expanded it and changed a few things.’ – Shonu

‘Why can’t you just kill the demon lord if they pose such a massive threat to your world?’ - me

‘We have more than enough power to destroy the demon lord permanently, which is the issue. The planet simply isn’t strong enough to host us for long enough so we would end up destroying the planet anyway, which would make it pointless.’ – Shonu

I thought for a bit longer but couldn’t think of anything else that I needed to know. Throughout my questioning Shonu never ran out of patience for me which I wasn’t used to. Now that all my questions had been answered I stopped and gave it one last thought to make sure that this is what I wanted to do, in the end I decided that it was worth the risk.

‘Ok I’ll take your offer, how will this work?’ I said still a bit apprehensive of the whole thing. Shonu immediately clapped her hands and smiled brilliantly, causing me to blush again.

‘That is great, I knew you were the right choice. Well first off you will need a few mmm… mental changes,’ she said a bit uncomfortable before quickly clarifying ‘Nothing too serious it’s just that we tend to find that going from a mortal like you to a dungeon and dungeon master tends to break people’s minds if they aren’t properly protected.

‘Once you arrive you will have to set up the new dungeon by choosing its theme, your three starting monsters and what punishments you want to give your failed delvers, next you will design your first floor. Finally you will have to make your avatar that you will inhabit and give yourself a name in this new world.’

At this my mood immediately brightened, I was already excited about the prospect of being able to live out my dream of exploring a new magical world but now I would also have a body and name that would match how I felt on the inside. Seeing this the goddess smiled and continued ‘Yes I thought you’d like that little bit of news. Once everything is done I will send a low-level party your way to test the floor out and to show you how it can be improved.

‘The next thing I need to explain is quests, every so often a mortal may get lost along their path or need a push to do something they need, or want, to do, seeing this the system, or in this case a deity, will give them a quest to act as that push. These quests will have both a reward and a punishment, this is so that they are motivated to do the quest while still taking it seriously and not just waiting forever to do it.

They never have to accept the quest, but the rewards will almost always outweigh the risk so it’s usually worth taking. I am now going to give you your first quest to design your first floor.’ At this I got another reminder of what was exactly happening to me as a typical blue screen popped up in front of me. 

After letting me read the screen Shonu started to clarify a few things ‘I said before that quests will have a failure condition and a punishment to go with it, however this is a low-level quest and I don’t want you to rush into making mistakes because of a time limit so it won’t have one. Once you finish this quest, and every time you finish a quest after that, I will give you another quest except these will almost always have a failure condition.

‘Each quest will get progressively harder; these are to speed up your growth and to make sure that you are kept on course. You can accept multiple quests at the same time and I will never give you a punishment that is debilitating so you don’t have to worry about taking my quests. I will visit you whenever you complete a quest to give you your new one, outside of that I will visit you every year to see how you are getting on.’ Hearing this I decided to accept the quest, as soon as the thought went across my mind the screen disappeared to be replaced with another screen.

Which also disappeared as soon as I finished reading the last word. Eager to get to the next topic Shonu clapped again, which seemed to be a habit of hers, and said ‘Right, I am going to go soon to let you get everything done that needs to be done, as your quest giver a message will be sent to me once your quest is done. After I receive the message I will finish whatever I am working on and then come visit you to see how it went and to give you your second quest before finding a suitable party and sending them your way.

‘The only thing I have left to tell you is if you ever need me just invoke my name and I will come as soon as I am free, if it is an emergency say my name three times in rapid succession and I will appear immediately.’ Finished with the conversation the Goddess gave me a hug and disappeared, a second later I felt the world around me turn black as I lost consciousness once again.