Linosa’s delver’s guild was a deceptively large building, its front face only vaguely indicative of how far back it stretched. Eleanor and Berin lead Alex through the main courtyard door and into a large reception hall. There, the same crowd of reborn from earlier were waiting for them.

It was almost funny, actually. They’d clearly all been lounging around, pretending not to care, all the while remaining in the hall so they could spot the mysterious visitor as he entered.

“This is Alex,” Eleanor announced to those assembled in the room, who’d largely ceased conversing when the small party had entered. “He’s our newest provisional member, and you’re all to treat him appropriately. We’ve determined that while the gods did play a part in his arrival, he has even less of an idea about how it happened than we do. So… don’t pester him.”

There were mixed groans and expressions of interest at the mention of the gods, who Alex had by now intuited were the beings he’d seen when his soul was freshly forged. It came as a relief that most of the assembled crowd seemed to have accepted the words of their leader at face value.

It seems random fuckery from these gods is more common than I thought.

“Worringly,” Eleanor continued, “Alex here is totally untrained. Through a quirk of his arrival, he has no knowledge of how the summons or the depths work. This means he's totally unprepared for what’s going to happen at the end of the week. It’s our job as a branch of the Royal Delver's Guild to ensure he survives his first trip.”

The guildmistress was beginning to grow on Alex. Sure, she gave off impatient schoolteacher vibes, but an interest in his survival went pretty far in terms of likeable qualities. And it was more than could be said for the only other powerful aura-weilder in the town. He only seemed to care about ‘his’ precious town… I wonder if they know what democracy is around here. Huh. Given their mayor's disposition, I suspect not.

“Those of you who aren’t busy preparing group defences or other assets for the delve will need to train him. I want volunteers, rewardable with guild credit.”

“How much credit?” A woman near the back piped up, the same one whose teal-grey aura had touched his robe earlier that morning.

“Depends how good a job you do. If he survives… let’s say one hundred maximum per mentor, up to three of you. If he makes it to the fifth-floor treasure room and unlocks a class before we get back, I’ll double that.”

Alex had no clue how much ‘credit’ one hundred was worth in real terms, but the level of antipathy around the room suggested it was a middling amount. A couple of the reborn were regarding him thoughtfully, though.

“What’re his scores?” asked one. A couple others around the room groaned, nodded or raised their eyebrows at the question.

Alex, at this point, was more than confused. Clearly, there was some sort of dangerous event coming up. The problem was… “Hey, could someone tell me what this summons is?”

His question was met with silence, punctuated only by a slight cough. A couple of guilders at the back were clearly trying not to laugh.

Behind him, Berin cleared his throat. “Um, guildmistress? I can show him around if you need someone.”

Eleanor seemed relieved.

Then from across the room, a short woman with fiery red hair and an aura the colour of dark steel spoke up. She’d been among the more curious-looking guilders. “Yeah, alright. I’ll do it.”

Eleanor nodded and looked around. “Any other takers… no? All right then, Berin and Isabelle it is.” She glanced at Isabelle, then Berin. “And as a reward, you can have one-hundred and fifty each, double-able as before.” She turned back to address the room. "A shame that none of the rest of you were invested enough in helping our newest member. Remember, the guild thrives when we all thrive."

I mean, you could have just offered a higher reward for helping me. Alex kept the thought to himself. It wouldn’t do to push on the generosity he was already being shown.

“Alright, give him the tour. He’ll need information, combat training, a loan of some basic gear; the usual. We’ll set up a credit account for him and he can pay us back if he survives.” She paused on that note, considering. “Don’t give him anything too nice – you two can have a budget of three hundred more credits to outfit him.” Then she turned to Alex. “If you didn’t catch that, these two are in charge of you now. Like Edrick has, I'm making an investment in you. Welcome to the delver’s guild of Misceteria, Alex. Don't die or let us down.”

With that, she walked away, snapping at one nearby reborn to follow her.

Berin gave Alex an encouraging smile as Isabelle walked over. The healer seemed a bit more relaxed now that the environment was less stressful, and he had a soothing voice. “Don’t worry about the guildmistress, I know she can seem harsh sometimes. And… uhhh… don’t worry about the mayor either. He can be a lot to deal with, but he’s actually pretty good at running the town, and he does care deep down.” He held out his hand. “I never did properly introduce myself, by the way. I’m Berin. I run the healing clinic just outside of town.”

“Isabelle,” the short woman chimed in, proffering her own hand as she walked over. Alex shook them both. “And don’t you worry, Eleanor’s a sweetie. She hasn’t zapped anyone to death in years.”

“Those were bandits, and they attacked her first,” Berin grumbled under his breath.

“Like I said – years!” Isabelle certainly seemed an energetic type. “Alright, let’s do this tour.”

“Wait wait wait,” Alex interrupted, asking a question which had been fermenting since he'd arrived. “Who’s actually in charge here? Elea—the guildmistress or the mayor?”

“An excellent question!” the short woman replied, grinning. She offered no further information.

Berin chuckled, then exhaled. “The mayor's in charge of the town, including the mortal population. Jenassa, who you met, is his chief advisor and handles most of the logistical work and day-to-day management, as much as Edrick likes to complain about paperwork. But the mayor does mediate disputes, keeps the area safe from threats, and is the recognised owner of the town’s obelisk. Eleanor, like many of the guilders here, is only in Linosa on posting. The council have her scheduled to act as guildmistress here for five years, after which she’ll probably have earned enough credit to buy into a high-level party and have them carry her further through the depths. For her, this is pretty much a sabbatical. The high council of the Delver's Guild is in charge of the reborn population of Misceteria, and Eleanor is their representative in this town.”

The pair led him through a doorway to the side of the hall and into a corridor while Isabelle pointed out some living quarters, a bathroom (it seemed they had invented basic plumbing in this world, which was a relief), and a mess hall. Alex could smell something cooking and realised he was famished. On request, the pair led him inside and he poured a mug of water from a barrel, downing it in one gulp. Then, he poured another.

"Thirsty, huh?" remarked Isabelle.

Alex ignored her as he sipped on his second cupful. “So… Edrick is in charge of the town, Eleanor manages the guild?”

“Yep.”

“But don’t the guilders live in the town? Berin, you said you had a clinic.”

“The mayor is nominally in charge of the clinic’s land, but when it comes to reborn stuff, the guild takes priority. Otherwise, you’d have all sorts of issues with reborn challenging each other for mayordom or trying to extort one another. Rogue reborn are too much for one mayor to handle.”

“As opposed to reborn with rogue classes, who are stunningly charismatic, attractive, and helpful,” added Isabelle. Berin snorted.

“So are all reborn affiliated with the guild?”

“Almost all of them. It makes sense. The guild trains you, sells good equipment, and buys the stuff you can collect in the depths. Non-guild reborn tend to die off pretty quickly, and the guild doesn’t like it very much when they succeed. They control pretty much the entire market in monster parts, and they’re pretty ruthless with sole traders. Not to mention reborn criminals or foreign reborn.”

Isabelle chucked. “I used to dream of going solo before my rebirth was approved. Thought I would take the initial training here then leave. A lot of us did. But trust me, you’ll realise that it’s actually worth sticking around. Even if the stupid ‘credit’ system is a little slow and enriches those at the top, it’s still faster than working alone.”

Economies of scale, Alex thought to himself.

The tour continued, the three of them emerging into an open courtyard. The whole building felt Roman in design, with columns ringing the rectangular, open area that sat in the centre of the building. A collection of target dummies and archery mats dotted the area, and one or two of the guilders from the hall had come back out here to abuse them. Alex noted the man with the glowing bow, which seemed to apply a small purple aura charge to every arrow it shot.

Alex was immediately distracted from the bowman when one woman across the courtyard extended her hand and a jet of flame shot out, engulfing the dummy in front of her in a violent yellow conflagaration. He realised a glyph had been inscribed on the dummy’s chest, and the flame seemed to wrap around it without doing too much damage.

Berin and Isabelle turned to face him, and he realised he’d stopped walking to admire the display. “Um, when do I learn to do that?”

Berin grinned at him. “You’ve never seen a fire skill before? You really must be from another world!”

“Eh?” Isabelle seemed intrigued by the remark.

“Oh – Alex here comes from another world, apparently. The gods warped him here because space was weak there or something. I didn’t quite follow, the boss was speaking pretty fast. Anyway, apparently his people are a bit backwards, and don’t even have access to skills.” The healer was smiling, clearly intending to gently tease Alex. It was still pretty patronising.

Alex only grinned back at him. Backwards? Oh boy. And I thought it was a miracle that these neanderthals even had a working toilet. The irony.

Berin seemed a little confused by the response, and fell back to answering the original question. “Anyway, yes, as for when you'll learn skills, most people pick up their first on the fifth floor. Generally, that skill defines your first class. Some people find extra skills elsewhere, even on the zeroth floor, but those are pretty rare. Most just rely on the guaranteed advancement rooms found every five floors. Of course, the guards are usually boss rank.”

I cannot believe that they actually call them bosses. I get the RPG theme, but this is too ridiculous. It seems like a quirk of this glyphic language they speak… it’s choosing the words that fit my existing understandings.

Instead of voicing any of that, Alex asked a more useful question. “Floor? What’s a floor? You keep mentioning them.”

“A floor of the unending depths. There are one hundred of them.”

Isabelle perked up, adding to Berin’s response. “The first few gods, well, not counting Ludionel, called them the unending depths because they hadn’t actually realised that they ended yet. In typical godly fashion, they chose not to admit that they were wrong by changing the name after ascending, so it still shows up like that in the quests they give out. I think they just like the sound of it, to be honest. Ludionel must not mind, either. I'm surprised The Architect hasn't blocked it. He's always a bit of a pedant in the stories.”

Berin saw the clear confusion written on Alex’s face. “Let’s just finish the tour and find him a room, Isabelle. I think he has a few more questions.”

About an hour later, Isabelle had dropped him off in a clean, empty room with a basic wooden bedframe, a straw mattress, and a table. A single window sat in the wall, with wooden slats for shutters. It looked onto a fairly empty street around the back of the guild building.

Berin had been called away mid-tour to deal with an accident in the training yard, so Isabelle had charitabily endured Alex's unending stream of questions alone. Her class was [Rogue], he’d learned. She’d made it to level fifteen, and her highest stat was DEX. It was rude to ask details, but apparently most reborn would be happy to share an outline of their more flattering achievements in the right context. Alex, curious, had asked her what a typical set of level zero stats looked like.

“Oh, the average out of the zeroth floor is about ten or eleven per stat, give or take three or so in stronger and weaker stats. Strength is probably the most common dominant stat around here. But there are fancier schools closer to the capital with limited spots. Their graduates tend to average higher, but that’s probably just because they only admit promising students in the first place."

After hearing that, Alex had decided to keep his scores to himself, simply saying that he scored best in INT and WIS while working to keep a smile off his face. It sounded like he'd done fairly well by local standards. He did still wish his END had come out higher, though. Damn cardio.

Fortunately, a bad score wasn’t irredeemable. Isabelle had looked a bit glum when he'd asked, apparently intuiting that he'd scored poorly across the board. He let her. She'd explained that there were artefacts which could alter stats, although they were rare. It seemed that just like on Earth, a privileged education wasn’t an insurmountable advantage... just a huge one.

Let’s be real, though. These people don’t know how gravity works. I can hardly get off on calling their education system ‘privileged’.

Alex looked over the bundle of equipment Isabelle had left him with, all obtained from a small quartermaster’s office on the far side of the open training courtyard. He’d obviously never worn armour, or even real leather, before, and he’d been too embarrassed to ask Isabelle how to put it on. Like many reborn, she was kind of attractive, and he hadn’t trusted himself not to get embarrassed if she’d ended up helping him.

Stuck in an alien world with a death-dungeon, but too scared of popping a semi-chub in this robe to learn how to put my armour on. Yeah, nice one, champ.

Instead, Alex found himself sitting on his straw mattress, reflecting more on what he’d learned from his incesscant questions.

There were two suns, and he’d gathered that one must orbit the other, not that Berin or Isabelle had even known what an orbit was. This planet, he theorised, must orbit both, but primarily the first, larger sun. When the small sun was behind the big one (a solar-solar eclipse?), that was called the winter solstice. It was cold, and days were short. When the small sun was in front of the big one, it was hot, and the days were equally short – that was the summer solstice. The suns had names, apparently, but he'd forgotten them.

Both the spring solstice and the upcoming autumn solstice occurred when the second sun was furthest away from the first relative to this planet, and both consequently resulted in days being longer than usual. In a strange convenience, days were twenty-five hours long. But that was all boring astrophysics. He was here to slay monsters and throw fireballs, not nerd around.

And to think that I’d been looking forward to never studying physics again.

Much more pertinently to him, on every solstice reborn would be pulled into a realm known as the unending depths. The depths weren’t strictly below them, but rather some sort of dimension that ran parallel to this one. Reborn would gather every solstice so that they would all be summoned to roughly the same area on the other side.

Alex got up to close the room’s door before slipping his robe off and picking underwear, pants, and a tunic out of his pile of new stuff. It was a pretty standard ‘medieval peasant’ outfit – earthy brown cloth pants, a light green tunic, scratchy underwear. But it was the first 'gear upgrade' of his new RPG lifestyle, and probably the only one he'd get for free. Unfortunately, he didn't find himself enjoying it.

No wonder the robe didn’t come with underwear. This is scratchy as fuck.

...I wonder if they have silk in this world. Probably hidden on floor fifty, somewhere between the toothpaste and the competent mayors.

There was also more to why the reborn gathered every solstice than strength in numbers. The obelisks that could be found in major settlements throughout the word acted like pins joining the fabric of the two realms. Three days after the solstice summons, the obelisks would ‘unlock’, becoming temporarily usable as portals back to the surface. Apparently, they manifested as massive structures in the depths, piercing tens of floors like enormous, upside-down needles.

Alex flung his robe over the bed but paused when he heard a clink and saw something drop out of it.

Eh? What was that?

Looking around, he caught a glint of green on the floor. He paused, bending to pick up what appeared to be a small gem. It was about half the size of a fingernail and cut to sparkle. He stood there, naked, inspecting it.

Huh? Had this been inside the robe somewhere? He hadn't felt it.

Alex glanced around the small room. It couldn’t have come from anywhere else. He knew that for sure – his upgraded eyes would have noticed if it had. Some subtle questions earlier had established that his aura-sight was indeed special, although Berin at least had heard of classes with similar abilities and saw the auras of people when he healed them. The emerald between Alex's index finger and thumb had no aura even when he squinted at it, which he took to mean that it was enchantment-free.

After wracking his brain for a few minutes, Alex finally thought back to what the gods had said when they’d taken his Earth-clothes, phone, wallet, and house key and given him the robe. That there would be ‘compensation’. He supposed this was it.

He wondered how much an emerald was worth, and how that compared to the value of his missing iPhone. One of the gods had been holding a set of scales – maybe that was her department? He hadn't had time to ask about them all. Berin hadn’t mentioned any gems on the first twenty floors either, but he’d also never been below floor twenty-three. Had Eleanor been wearing jewelled rings? He’d have to check next time he saw her.

Well, Alex was cheered up by the prospect that the emerald might at least be able to buy him some better, less scratchy gear. Since his stupid medieval pants didn't come with pockets, he decided to wedge the gem underneath a splinter in the underside of his wooden bedframe. He wanted to scope things out here before he went and bought anything, or flashed any wealth around. He had some idea what he was in for at the end of the week, but there was more to learn and he had two days.

Well, worst case I end up dead, just like my entire family and all my friends. But we’ll give this thing a go and try have some fun. I already survived the stupid challenge, anyway.

While he knew that this was the kind of reckless outlook that got people in dangerous situations killed, Alex couldn’t bring himself to care. He’d been through too much lately, and he needed to have some fun and distract himself. Learning to throw fireballs wouldn’t bring his loved ones back, but it would let him throw fireballs.

Which is pretty fucking cool and a lot better than guidance counselling. Alex had always loved reading about magic, and if there was anything that was going to distract him from his past, magic was a good bet. Isabelle had even said that INT and WIS were the best two stats for mana users, confirming something he'd expected already. The more he'd heard about what was possible, the keener he became to start progressing.

He was in luck in that regard. The delve, as it was sometimes called, was only two days away and every floor of the depths was apparently packed with monsters and magical treasures. At the rarer end, this included glyphs to learn skills like the fire-spray they’d walked past earlier, or Berin’s [Lesser Restoration]. In spite of the fact that everyone around him seemed afraid and tired, Alex couldn't wait.

I guess that's one perk of having no-one you care about any more.

Or no one that cares about you.

It was strangely liberating, for such a depressing-sounding thought. Alex hadn't been mentally unwell before the flare or anything, but as it turned out, simultaneously losing everything you loved was a bit of a downer. Weirdly, he missed his gaming PC.

Ah, well. Nothing to be done about it. Plus, I've got training to do or I'm at risk of joining everyone else I know.

Having donned all of the regular clothes in his pile by now, Alex picked up the wooden club he’d been given and tossed it in his hand, almost dropping it accidentally. It was basically a glorified stick, thicker at the top (the 'hitting end', Isabelle had called it) than the bottom ('the holding end'). Unfortunately, it had been the best weapon affordable on the allocated budget.

He’d been told that the depths catered rewards to one’s performance and preferences as they traversed the floors, and he had absolutely no interest in reward choices based on clubbing things. Stats also apparently played a role in which skills were offered, but it was apparently touch and go.

Fireballs. No clubs. I want fireballs.

“Don’t I get like, a sword or something?” he’d asked Isabelle.

The chirpy rogue, who herself appeared to own a dagger, had actually laughed at him. “Do we look like we’re made of metal around here? Kill and harvest the claws off forty ironclaw hounds, then maybe you'll have enough.”

“Trust me,” she’d added, more seriously this time, “if you’re interested in staying alive, armour is a much better investment.”

After dropping him off at his room, she’d said that she would come fetch him in an hour for ‘training’, giving him a bit of time to rest and recoup. She hadn’t explained what training might entail but had certainly implied that he’d need the rest. And the armour.

So Alex laboriously began strapping on the leather armour, bracers, and greaves which he’d been given. There was also an incredibly ugly and uncomfortable leather coif, but he took that off almost immediately. He detested hat-hair. All up, the process took Alex a full ten minutes, and when he was done, he slumped onto his straw mattress. It was just as uncomfortable as he’d expected.

Godammit. I should have put the armour on after lying down, not before.

...I miss my dirt pile.

He lay there restlessly thinking for what felt like forever. At long last, he heard a knocking on his door.

It seemed like it was finally time for some action.