Michael blinked. “I solved it? What do you mean?”

“The quest is done. I guess the ritual is turning me into a monster,” Dante muttered, a bit listless. “At least I have a map now.”

“Are you serious?” Michael said, sitting up and turning to face Dante. “Why would the ritual be helping the egg? It should already be able to hatch by itself?”

Dante finished off his drink, deeply sighing when he did. “You’re asking me, but who am I supposed to ask? Maybe the ritual traps the egg inside me so I can’t take it out, or maybe it supports the egg so that it will ‘hatch’ regardless.”

“You seem to be taking this better than I thought you would?”

“We’re missing something. The detail of your answer was enough to finish the quest, but it doesn’t fully explain the situation. I don’t believe that the system is sacrificing me. The egg was a gift, and Laurelai said that it wouldn’t harm me.”

“Well, if the system gifts you a sword, and you kill yourself with it, that circumvents the rule. What if the egg is the gift, but it or someone else did something to interfere with the process? We need to approach this carefully, or something might go horrendously wrong.”

Dante’s eyes widened. He was going to die from the ritual, or at least Laurelai claimed he should have. Based on her behaviour, he refused to believe that she was lying. But that didn’t mean she did the right thing. The ritual might have saved him before he died, but by interfering with the process, she might have disrupted the ritual itself.

Dante shook his head and stood up from the couch. “Let's test out this map. There’s no point sitting around, wallowing in sorrow. I’ll just have to wait to see what happens later. Besides, you never know what’s going to happen. Only the first ring on the egg has lit up, so maybe it will separate us when it does.”

Michael stood up as well, following Dante out the front door. “Wait, we aren’t drinking? I was kind of hoping to get drunk tonight?”

“I’m going to go insane if I don’t distract myself. Come, I’ll share the map with you. I can give five people independent access, but that’s the limit.”

“How the hell do you know that? Didn’t you get the map two minutes ago?”

“The user manual was downloaded in my brain, if you could call it that. I was a bit shocked at first, but this thing spans across universes, so it’s not that crazy.”

***

Dante sat up with a groan, his head throbbing as he tried to recall the events of last night. They had left Dante’s house to test out the map, then when they finished twenty minutes later, they… went to the park? The memories were hazy at best, only faint snippets of their local park appearing in his mind.

Swinging his legs off the side of the bed, Dante immediately noticed that he was naked. He was confused for a second since he usually slept with clothes on in the winter and just underwear in the summer, but when he saw the empty cans of alcohol on the floor, he became faintly worried that he had stripped down and embarrassed himself in public.

Dante sat on the edge of his bed while he oriented himself. He was tired and hungover, just sitting there with his face in his hands when an alarm began to ring. It wasn’t from his menu since he could hear it echoing in his room, and he confirmed it wasn’t his phone since he could see it on his bedside table.

Then he felt something stir under the sheets behind him, and it wasn’t his tail. Glancing over his shoulder, he watched as something wriggled around beneath the white doona, his heart in his throat. Had the egg separated from him? He wanted to check, but it was too difficult to focus when he was so hungover and still half-asleep.

Dante became confused when the creature under the blankets stretched its limbs, letting out a surprisingly cute moan. It didn’t sound like a noise an animal could make, but that of a human woman. Then the creature slowly sat up as the sheets slid down its head, revealing just that.

A pale woman leaned against the backboard of his bed, her dyed black hair keeping most of her modesty since it went down to her thighs. She was half-asleep as she grabbed her phone and hit snooze, but when she turned to face him, her black lips quirked up into a gentle smile, shocking him greatly.

“Good morning, my dark prince,” She purred, leaning forward on her hands as she crawled over to him. “How did you sleep last night?”

Dante had to bite his tongue to stop himself from visibly cringing, even going so far as to close his eyes for a second so that his expression wouldn’t change.

“I slept alright,” Dante said, wondering if she expected him to call her his ‘princess’ or something. “I’m a bit hungover, but I’ll live. How about you?”

“A little bit hungover, but I’ll be fine as well.” She smiled, leaning up against his back.

Dante felt like he was walking through a minefield. He had no idea what her name was, worried he would say the wrong thing since she called him her ‘dark prince’, and nervous since she was not only naked but gorgeous as well.

“So, I’ve been wondering,” Dante said, his eyes locked on his tail as it slid over her skin, wrapping around her thigh. “Aren’t you a bit freaked out by the… you know?”

“Oh, it’s not that big,” She said, wrapping her arms around his neck as she leaned over his shoulder, looking at his crotch. “Bigger than I’ve seen in real life, but I’ve seen bigger online before.”

Dante had no idea what to say, but thankfully for him, she began to giggle playfully. “Just kidding. I have no idea what’s going on with the tail, but I dig the vibe. Pale skin, tall, curly black hair, scales darker than the abyss, and-.”

Her hands moved down, her right feeling up his bicep and her left snaking down to his stomach.

“Muscles like a statue.”

Dante felt shocked for a moment, but he became confused once again when half of the word registered. He didn’t have pale skin. He had inherited a more caramel tone from his Italian side, and that was usually quite obvious. But with a beautiful woman pressed against him, he ignored the minor details for now.

“Well,” Dante said, feeling a mixture of emotions at having a random person simultaneously grope and compliment him, “it seems like my tail likes you too.”

“It seems like it does like me, and quite a bit too,” She giggled in his ear, making him straighten his back.

The end of his tail – the part that wasn’t wrapped around the goth girl’s thighs and torso – wagged happily behind him, almost like a dog would. But when he glanced at the girl as she smirked, he realised she was looking down over his shoulder.

“Listen, I have to go have lunch with a friend soon, but I have a bit of time. I might be able to squeeze you in.” She winked, and Dante’s heart fluttered.

***

Half an hour later, Dante waved the girl off as she hopped into a taxi. She had just showered, changing into a pair of black jeans, black boots, and a frilly blouse in black. He had no idea if she had been wearing them the night before or if they were spares in her bag, but he didn’t feel the need to ask.

Hell, he still didn’t know her name.

Walking back inside, Dante searched around the house for Michael. It took him twenty minutes to look through all the rooms and even the bushes outside, but when he gave up and made himself some toast, he texted Michael to ask if he was home. Then something vibrated under the sink.

Opening the door, he found Michael fast asleep on a mound of cleaning supplies they kept under the sink. He shook his shoulder a couple of times before eventually dragging him out and splashing some water on his face.

“Ah!” Michael shouted, sitting up immediately and wiping his face with his shirt. “What the hell was that for?”

Dante wiped his hands on a tea towel. “What did you want me to do? You were sleeping under the sink?”

“Uh,” Michael muttered sarcastically, putting his hand under his chin, “maybe pick me up and take me to bed?”

“Have you looked at yourself?”

Michael looked down, mild shock appearing on his face. His knees and arms were all scraped up, and his white shirt was smeared in tomato sauce. Guessing by the several half-eaten kebabs left on the countertop and the thirty or so empty tomato sauce packets, Dante ventured that his guess was correct.

“Oh, true. If you took me to a bed, I’d stain the-. Wait, the world’s fucking ending. Why are you trying to save the sheets from getting dirty, you dick?”

“First of all, you were under the sink. Secondly, you’re covered in red sauce. I have no idea if you are bleeding anywhere. Lastly, and most importantly, the aura density in the air should slowly be increasing as we speak. For all we know, super viruses and mutant bacteria might become a thing, and if I left you to sleep in until this afternoon with cuts and bruises all up your arms and legs, then you might actually die.”

“What? The magic and stuff also works for microbes? Are you fucking serious?”

Dante nodded, grabbing his hand and pulling him to his feet. “I only learned a bit about it, but aura does have a slight effect on microbes just as it does on everything else. It shouldn’t be that big of a deal, but I have no idea if a ‘slight’ boost means mutant bacteria that can cast spells or slightly more contagious and deadly.”

“You know what, better safe than sorry. Thanks for waking me up. How did you-. What the fuck is that?”

Michael’s eyes widened as he looked over Dante’s shoulder at the kitchen bench, making Dante smirk.

“You think I’m that gullible?”

Michael didn’t even say anything, instead opting to turn Dante’s head towards the benchtop. A rat, the size of a house cat, was leaning over a half-eaten kebab. It devoured the lamb wrap in hundreds of tiny bites, making the thing disappear in seconds.

Dante just stared at it, eyes wide at its size. Then the smell hit him. It was like rotting eggs mixed with raw sewage. Even his eyes were watering, its matted fur dripping greyish brown water onto his countertop.

Michael gagged, causing the rat to jump at the noise. Its wet fur stood on end, and the smell somehow became worse. The thing hissed, its beady eyes darting between the two of them. They didn’t approach.

The tiny creature jumped off the benchtop and quickly ripped a hole in the screen, shocking Dante. He looked up at his map and saw a red dot run around the side of his house.

[Plague Rat – Lvl 4]

“Check the map,” Dante said, nudging Michael.

He looked off into the distance, then his eyes widened. “We have to go after it.”

Dante nodded, running out of his front door with Michael close behind. In their testing, they had found several creatures. Pigeons, lorikeets, and magpies were the most common since they lived in the suburbs, but since they walked past many houses, a lot of random pests were also picked up.

Of the hundreds of creatures they came across, no one was marked with a red dot. If Earth logic persisted, that meant the rat was a threat or an enemy. But since that couldn’t really be proven yet, the most important detail would then be its level. None of the creatures they had come across had levels, all of them simply being labelled as [Magpie] or [Mouse].

Running down the street for a few hundred metres, Dante and Michael eventually reached a bridge. Instead of running across it, the rat slid down the rocky retaining wall beside the bridge and disappeared under it. With the red marker gone, Michael sat down on the sidewalk, panting.

They had run as quickly as they could for around two or three kilometres. Michael was gulping down breaths, his face red. Anyone would be exhausted by something like that: anyone but Dante.

“How the hell,” Michael said, gasping for air, “are you still standing?”

Dante’s chest was rising and falling, and his legs felt a little weak, but that was it. “I think it’s the egg. Remember how I said it nourishes me a little bit?”

“A little? You went from kind-of-fit to a rising athlete in a few weeks.”

“I was doing a lot of cardio in those few weeks. Running all day until my legs were numb helped.”

Michael chose to stay silent as he swallowed down more air.

Once they were ready, the two of them made their way around the side of someone’s house and jumped down onto the sand. There didn’t seem to be any rats there at a glance, and even when they approached, there was nothing. There was an inclined retaining wall under the bridge made of rocks, but there were no gaps since they were filled with concrete.

Dante looked around the rock wall only to find nothing. He glanced at Michael and saw that he was looking around the sand for paw prints. After finding no holes or obvious points of entry, they began to feel around the rocks until Michael’s hand went straight through one around the middle of the wall.

“Woah, what the hell? Is that an illusion?”

Michael waved his hand through the rock again, causing it to disappear completely. Now there really was a hole in the wall, roughly the size of ahead.

[Congratulations! You have found The Den of the Plague Rat.]

[Den-class monster dungeons are the lowest rank of dungeons found in the multiverse. They are small, filled with weak enemies, and provide no danger besides the relatively weak creatures that dwell within. By clearing out a monster Den, you can gain rewards and titles along with levels and loot from killing the monsters within!]

[Would you like to enter The Den of the Plague Rat?]

[Yes/No?]

Dante glanced at Michael, his heart sinking when he saw the gleam in his friend’s eyes.

“Should we go?” He asked.

“N-No, uh…” Dante muttered, averting his gaze. “We should go back and patch you up.”

“It’s not that bad. Only minor cuts.” Michael stretched out his arms to look before bending over to see his legs.

“You’re still scraped up, and it was called a plague rat, remember?” Dante said, talking faster than he wanted to. “Also, you don’t have a weapon and I’m still hungover. I might not even be able to use my soul force, and do you really want to run into a den of plague rats, punching and kicking them with your bare hands?”

“That’s true. Besides, I got a notification that I’d like you to explain.”

Before he could ask, Michael shared his screen.

[Congratulations! For being the first in the world to find a monster Den, you have gained the title: Dungeon Pioneer!]

[Dungeon Pioneer: First in the world to locate a monster Den. +5% all stats.]