If Silas saw another test question he might just do something drastic, or try to in any case, given he was stuck in a virtual space.

So, to avoid taking another test, he decided to do something drastic.

"Eve, let me out. Time for me to earn some combat Skills."

Dressed in combat fatigues, she popped up beside his desk. "We're not visiting 'Baby's First Dungeon,' Silas. The monsters here are going on quite the rampage. I might be able to keep you alive while one of those giant squirrels tries to digest you, but even I don't know the answer to the question: Is it still you if I regrow your head and restore your memories from backup, or just a copy?"

Silas had to agree, that was a question he'd rather not learn the answer to firsthand.

"Between Ainsley's mutterings and my own observations, I feel confident in saying your Mana Magnet Skill is drawing the creatures in from as far as the aura reaches, possibly further if they can sense the ambient mana you're gathering in here."

Before he could make his case, she continued, "However, I do agree you need out, and soon. Holding you in virtual reality for an extended period of time is certain to prove detrimental to your mental health."

With a wave of her hand she displayed a number of maps behind herself, mazes all. "While confirming you can gain Skills here, I've been working on a training program for you. Consider it a First Person Rogue-like Dungeon Crawler. No stat gains, but you'll be able to use the full limits of your current body. Any questions?"

"Yeah? Why don't you just Matrix me up some sword kung fu, like the language patch?"

Suddenly back in her teacher's cardigan and skirt, Eve materialized a heavy wooden ruler in one hand and slapped it into her open palm a few times.

"Silas," she said sharply. "Why did you get nerfed last time?"

He thought about it. "Ah. Right. You, represented as a Skill, can't just give me Skills. Shouldn't. You did that linguistic patch, though?"

Eve shrugged. "Maybe they were being understanding, you not being local and all. Or maybe it's because I didn't go crazy with it. Maybe they weren't paying attention.

"Whatever the case, there's no reason to push our luck when I can provide you with perfectly adequate training, allowing you to earn what you need on your own, inside what some might consider an advanced meditation technique. I consider the odds of this method of training triggering any nerfs low enough to be worth the risk."

Silas wanted to ask more, but he blinked and found himself staring at the familiar bars of his old jail cell. As he turned to inspect the rest of the empty space, a brown streak heading his way from the corner of the cell caught his eye.

A rat—a rat-sized rat—charged at his feet.

With a high pitched yelp, he kicked the rat with his bare foot, sending it hard into the wall.

Where were his shoes? His clothes?? "Dangit Eve! Why am I naked?"

She didn't answer.

He tried to open his Status, but neither it nor the Help screen he tried next appeared.

The rat flopped itself back over and limped his way.

With a grimace, Silas ended the thing with a splattering heel stomp.

Just as he started scraping the mess from his heel the corpse vanished, leaving behind a single lockpick. Yet his heel remained sticky.

"Seriously?" he asked Eve. "I wanted to learn how to fight, not pick locks."

Again, no response from Eve.

"Fine, fine. I suppose this is somewhat traditional."

Taking the pick, he went over to the lock and slipped his hand through the bars, placing the pick into the keyhole, only having the vaguest of notions on how to pick an actual lock.

A screen appeared, detailing the lock's internal structure.

It didn't really help him understand how to unlock the door, though he knew the pins were important.

Two squeaks from behind caught his attention. Spinning, he found two rats, a black one and a white one.

Cursing Eve while fighting a grin, he ran towards the black rat, it being slightly closer to him. He stomped down, likely bruising his heel, missing the nimble rat.

A pinch at his left ankle told him the white one arrived. Planting his right foot on the ground he swept his left forward, catching the black rat from underneath and launching it upwards with his toes.

He slammed his foot back down, hitting the white rat's back hips.

The squealing was terrible.

And the smell.

He couldn't look, focusing on the more mobile black rat as it scurried his way again. He landed a solid kick on it this time, nailing it with the inside flat of his foot like he would a kickball. Only, the rat didn't bounce much when it slammed into the wall, immediately turning into a lockpick which tumbled to the ground.

The other one, though, wasn't quite dead and had a lot to say on the matter.

Silas was glad he never managed a permanent solution to understand rats, though these were hardly the same as his cheese buddies. He kept that in mind as he stomped down, crunching the injured creature's skull under his heel.

Now he had three lockpicks to somehow pick a lock. They all looked the same—thin, wavy tips on a short metal handle.

The first pick remained in the lock, just barely, so he tried shoving it all the way in, forcing those little pins he could see out of the way. He ran it back and forth, watching the pins bounce. Most stuck in place, so he focused on the ones which didn't, trying to relate what he felt with what he could see on the helpful screen.

Before he could get too into it, he turned and waited for the next batch of rats. Would it be three or four?

Four rats appeared. White, black, brown, and a lighter reddish brown this time.

The reddish one spawned nearly on top of his feet. He took a bit more time to aim his kick, giving him enough power to send the rat careening into a wall.

The white one came next. It got kicked too.

Black and brown came at him side by side, and in a sudden bout of inspiration he jumped up with both feet, aiming his hop such that he slammed his heels down on their little rat bodies, bursting them like balloons filled with blood and guts.

And bones. Ouch.

From what he could feel, barely, it seemed the nanites dampened his pain levels, thank Eve.

He lifted his right foot while gingerly standing on the edge of his left.

Before he could pick out any bone fragments, the parts which stuck out fell away, the bone inside his body dissolving, getting broken into their constituent parts by his nanite buddies.

Picking up his left foot, he was able to just brush away the bone left sticking to his perfectly whole skin.

Nifty.

He hurried to the door, knowing this would end with him dying to a flood of rats if he couldn't get the door open soon. Some of the pins had fallen again, but over half remained stuck. He pushed on the fallen ones using the pick, and when that didn't work he again tried plunging the pick in and out fast.

This mostly did the trick aside from a single pin, which he was able to hold up with his pick long enough for the pick to easily rotate the chamber and open the lock.

He swung the door open to a chorus of squeaking rats. He slammed the door shut, hoping it would help, but the bars did nothing to stop the four rats he previously killed, along with their four new friends with orange, lime green, pink, and sky blue colored fur.

The bone shards had reminded Silas—between the nanites and his high Vitality and Endurance, the rats weren't really much of a threat to him. He could probably have just ignored the rats to focus on picking the lock.

So he stood his ground, kicking and stomping, wincing as a bone fragment lodged itself between two of his toes, but not stopping his slaughter. Like in a game, these rats didn't know when to run away from a superior foe. Same in the dungeon, he supposed.

He took a moment to rest after kicking the final pink rat so hard it burst against his foot.

This time, instead of lockpicks, the rats provided a wooden club, pants, a tunic, drawstring shorts probably intended as boxers, leather sandals, a sling, plus two rocks.

After getting dressed Silas returned to his cell to gather the lockpicks. He waited, curious if the next batch would also provide useful drop items, but no more rats appeared.

Fair enough.

He thought about taking the path taken by the headmaster, but the best stuff is always deeper in the dungeon, so instead he turned left.

The other cells remained empty, no skeletons with useful supplies still on their person hanging around, just asking to be looted.

At an intersection he turned a corner, because when in doubt you always turn right, nearly walking into a skeleton heading his way.

"Way to subvert my expectations, Eve," he commended as he looked over his new opponent.

The monster, a close enough copy of World of Fantasy's summoned skeletons for Silas to have minor copyright concerns, lunged forward, its jaw wide, ready to clamp down on some savory flesh of the living.

Silas had other plans, smacking it with his handy club.

He hit it in the left arm, knocking the limb off entirely.

On his backswing he aimed for the skull but whiffed as the thing dived low, latching onto his outer thigh.

He punched at the head and knocked it loose, off himself, disconnecting it from its spine. With a kick to make his high school coaches proud, Silas kicked the skull far off down the intersection hallway, in the opposite direction from the one he chose.

It landed against something which grunted and sniffed the air.

Silas squeezed his club and readied himself.

A small chubby goblin, for the short creature could only be a goblin with its green skin, ugly face, and pointed ears, stepped into the torchlight of the intersection. Wearing nothing but a loincloth, it held a chipped dagger in its left hand.

Silas chose unchecked aggression, charging as soon as he saw the thing, club raised to bash it in the head as soon as he was able.

The goblin scrambled back, dropping its knife and running away down the tunnel.

It was a race, then, for Silas knew fleeing mobs eventually returned, typically with friends.

A string caught his ankle, tripping him. The hands he outstretched to slow his fall punched through the fake ground as he tumbled down into the pit trap.

The spikes actually worked to his benefit. Getting impaled in six places slowed his fall a great deal.

He could feel the pressure of the wounds, but not the pain. Nanites blocked those receptors.

Three in the torso, both legs, and his left arm were all impaled.

He wasn't bleeding, but he was stuck, sliding downward inch by inch as gravity did its thing, ripping his wounds wider and wider.

Maybe he could—his vision floated away from his pierced body, hovering above the pit trap where he watched six goblins with daggers carefully climb down into the pit and hack his body to pieces for easy transport.

A bleeding "YOU HAVE DIED!" appeared before everything faded to black.

He appeared back in his jail cell, this time dressed in a tunic and pants, both full of holes. Club in hand, he spun and splatted the cell's single rat.

Maybe this time he'd try to last a bit longer, see how many rats he could kill at once. Then he'd go kill that skeleton again, making sure to avoid alerting the goblins.

Traps sucked. He'd try it again after seeing where the path branching right led.

He grinned after the second round of rats died. This time one dropped a dagger and the other a shield.

He picked up both, strapping the shield to his left forearm, the flat of the dagger's blade pinned between the two, for easy access.

He waited for the four rats to appear, his right foot already back for the kickoff, wondering how many waves he should attempt. Or should he just keep at it until they swarmed him to death?

Without pain or fear of a final death, fighting like this was actually rather fun, as long as he didn't stop to overthink his current circumstances.

Thankfully the next batch of rats arrived just in time to distract him from his burgeoning existential crisis well before it risked sending him into a spiraling panic.