Levi woke with a start, his stomach crying out for attention. It wasn’t anything new; he hadn’t been able to get a full night’s sleep for at least a week. Every time he managed to fall asleep he woke up to shooting pains radiating from his shrunken stomach. He needed food. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold out for.

Without at watch or a clear day and night cycle, Levi had no clue how long he had been trapped in the dungeon, waiting for his hip to heal enough to explore. He estimated it had to be close to a month now, his Constitution being what it was. He had to start moving soon though. He didn’t think hip was fully healed, but it was easy to choose between permanently damaging his hip and starving to death, and it wasn’t particularly close.

Levi carefully felt around his hip, focusing on how much pain it caused him. The pain had been getting less and less, but he thought that also might be a side effect of a higher Constitution, not necessarily that his hip was getting better. It was improved though, and he could move his leg without any pain. The real test would be trying to stand, and he was putting that off as long as he could to give himself as much time as possible to heal. It would be pointless to try and search for food only to get caught up in a trap he couldn’t avoid with a bum leg.

But time was running out. The hunger pains were making it feel like his stomach was catching fire and burning him up, he thought to himself mockingly. Now his subconscious was even making bad puns. It was time to get out of here.

He took one last look at his status before getting ready to try and stand.

[Name: Levi Curchman

Level: 4

Titles: System Inductee, Inheritor

Stats:

Strength: 1 Constitution: 9 Dexterity: 1 Agility: 1

Willpower: 13 Insight: 4 Attunement: 1 Charisma: 1

Concentration: 7 Luck: 3

Skills: Concentrated Will, Survival, Improved Awareness]

His time spent concentrating had paid off. Improved Awareness was up to level seventeen, Survival was twenty-five, and Concentrated Will was a whopping thirty-one. The level of the skills had also pushed him to level four, allowing him to up his Constitution to its current level.

His stats weren’t very balanced, but without anyone to compare it to, Levi had no clue how he measured up. His skills seemed more than adequate for his level, both based on level and usefulness. He could only hope it was enough to survive the dungeon.

Activating Concentrated Will, Levi focused on his body, feeling each individual part. He avoided his stomach. He just had to pretend it didn’t exist or the pain would overwhelm him. He had long lost the ability to even think about food as a coping mechanism. He pictured himself as one of those plants that absorbed nutrients from the air. Yes sir, no food needed here, only air.

Ever so slowly, he started to stand. He winced every time he moved his hip, expecting a burst of pain. Levi moved from horizontal, to partly horizontal, to partly vertical, until he finally reached full standing position. It took him a little while to remember what standing was like. He had been lying down for so long that he almost fell over, catching himself on his bad leg.

He froze, expecting his hip to somehow spontaneously combust. It didn’t. In fact, it didn’t even so much as twinge, feeling exactly like his other hip, just a little bit sorer. Still in disbelief, Levi tried out a few steps, gingerly putting more and more pressure on his right side until he was sure. His gamble had paid off.

“Fuck yes!”

Levi knew exactly how that baby in that one meme felt as he clenched his fist in victory. His right hip didn’t feel quite as strong as his left one, but it was recovered enough for light activity. He could finally get out of here. But before he got out of the dungeon as a whole, Levi gleefully moved away from his previous location, almost running over to the waterfall where he entered the cavern. He had some business to take care of.

When he was back on Earth preparing for his outdoor experiences, Levi couldn’t remember any of the guides he had read online stressing enough how useful toilet paper was. There were many things he missed about modern society, but as he was forced to lay there, not moving his hip, he knew which aspect he missed the most.

A short time later Levi finished cleaning himself and his clothes off in the rushing water. He would have sold his soul for some soap, but just being able to be relatively clean was enough for the moment. He was profoundly grateful the System didn’t have a sanity gauge after his recent experience.

Now that he was cleaned off, Levi had two choices: whether to continue past the waterfall or go back the way he came. The lake was big enough that he couldn’t see much in either direction, so he elected to avoid backtracking, opting to move along the ledge past the waterfall.

At this point it was almost second nature to combine both Concentrated Will and Improved Awareness. Just because nothing had bothered him during his time healing up didn’t mean there weren’t fifty traps a scant few meters away. Levi had been fooled by the dungeon too many time to trust it. The lake was huge though, and it would have taken an absurd number of traps to cover its circumference, which might have explained why he passed the first few hours of his trip unmolested.

This was both good and bad. Good for rather obvious reasons, and bad because Levi needed food. He was holding on thanks to his Constitution, but he had no clue how that actually worked. It could be some sort of invisible meter where as soon as he ran out of stamina he dropped dead. There were just too many unknowns.

Levi continued his trek along the water’s edge, picturing Unown in his mind’s eye. Sure, they might not be as tasty as slowpoke tail, but they tended to travel in packs, didn’t they? That would mean there was more of them for him to eat.

“C’mon Levi, focus. Stop picturing eating imaginary creatures. Focus on the dungeon.”

It was hard to keep his half delusional mind on track. His stomach just. Wouldn’t. Shut. Up.

Around half an hour later Levi froze, Improved Awareness finally picking up something ahead of him other than the regular ledge. Careful of any traps, he inched ahead, his mind on full alert, imagining the horrific things the dungeon had in store for him.

There weren’t any. When he finally reached the point of interest it turned out to be some of those shelf-like mushrooms he had seen in the previous cavern. He hadn’t been starving then though, and he eagerly inspected them, trying to get a feel with his Survival skill if eating them would kill him or not.

Levi tried to combine Concentrated Will with both Improved Awareness and Survival. It was a struggle. He could use two skills at once fairly easily now, but three was still a challenge. He could manage it for a short period of time though, and, based on that, his skills weren’t telling him the mushrooms would kill him. He didn’t think they were truly edible, exactly, but at this point he didn’t care. He dug right in.

After stuffing the first few into his mouth he tried to restrain himself. Eating too much food at once after staving wasn’t healthy, and considering the mushrooms didn’t seem that edible anyway, he decided to just eat enough to tide him over for the next day or two. He needed to find real food eventually. Maybe some juicy bats or rats. Those should be common in dungeons.

Once he had some substance in his stomach Levi was able to calm down. Hunger was a truly powerful force. Despite his high Willpower he hadn’t been able to think of anything other than food, no matter how hard to he tried not to. With a calmer mindset he took a better look at the mushrooms. They looked about the same as the previous ones he had seen, shelf-like protrusions climbing up the wall. Unlike the others though, these ones didn’t start from a puddle of water. After some inspection to figure out why the mushrooms were growing here as opposed to anywhere else, he noticed the wall was slick, likely from some sort of water source farther up the wall out of sight.

Levi was about to move on with his exploration when he paused, taking a second to think things over. Why exactly were the mushrooms growing here, but nowhere else? It could have been coincidence, but Levi didn’t think it was. Now that he was going over things in his head, the dungeon was surprisingly deliberate. Nothing was left to happenstance. It all felt like some elaborate design of a higher power. There was less variance in this dungeon than those in most video games. And if everything was here for a reason, then there might be something more to these mushrooms.

Stepping back, Levi tried to get a better look at the wall, trying to see where the mushrooms ended and where the water came from. It was hard to see in the lowlight, and his angle didn’t help either. His vision not working, he instead tried to use Improved Awareness. The skill combined with his sight yielded better results, his gaze drawn to previously invisible contours in the rockface.

The mushrooms went up a good two meters above his head. They ended at what appeared to be a fissure in the otherwise smooth wall, that slowly widened as it went further up. Levi thought he could actually fit himself into the top part. The fissure was likely the source of the water, allowing the mushrooms to grow.

His curiosity sated, he was about to move on when he paused once again, a sixth sense telling him to stop. He couldn’t say what exactly it was, but there was just something about the whole thing that felt off. Levi was annoyed with himself. His stomach still needed real food, so why was he stuck on some crack in the wall? With pure force of will Levi calmed himself down. If he thought there might be more here he needed to sit down and think it over, which is exactly what he did.

Levi sat down in a traditional meditation pose, legs crossed, and palms face up. He closed his eyes and sat there for a moment, clearing his mind of any extraneous thoughts.

He had a feeling there was more here, why was that? Step by step Levi went over the all the differences between this area and the rest of the dungeon. First, the mushrooms. He had seen them before, but they weren’t common. It appeared they needed water to grow, which the dungeon was strangely devoid of, despite the massive lake he was sitting next to. All the water was partitioned off neatly in large bodies, the rest of the dungeon conspicuously dry.

That brought him to the second point: the water. He had walked for what must have been hours along the lake. It had been exactly the same everywhere else, only a smooth wall, a small ledge, and the large lake that never seemed to spill its banks. Here was the first anomaly, unless you counted the waterfall he had entered by.

The third thing that was different about this section was the fissure. It was where the water was coming out of, which didn’t seem too important as he could drink the lake water, and then above that it widened to a bigger crack that he thought he could fit into…

That was it!

Levi stood up excitedly, looking up at the fissure above him. It was obvious in hindsight. A series of shelf-like mushrooms leading up to a crack in the wall that was big enough for him to climb inside. If that didn’t scream ‘location of a hidden treasure chest’ he didn’t know what did. He had to get up there and find out what was inside.