That night was one of great merriment and celebration as the harvesting season came to a close and soon the temperatures were to drop. A merchant had come by earlier in the day, buying some of the excess crop not taxed nor set aside to last us through the cold season. He had paid not only in coin, but booze, beer, ale, and even a bit of spirits to liven the town up. Meanwhile, the local hunters had brought back plentiful fowl for a feast while the few adventurers who called this place home had scavenged monster meat from the local dungeon for any brave enough to try it.

I was one of the men celebrating in the local tavern, where all of this food and drink had gathered, and was already drunk as can be. It was one of the few times of the year I had any cash to spend as I had helped with the harvesting. A pouchful of coins that was but a drop of water to the tab I had racked up over the years. Yet, I was stilled allowed mouthfuls of alcohol straight from the taps as the small dent I had put in my debts disappeared. Throughout the winter, I’d probably have to spend every sober moment cleaning and working for the inn. Thankfully, the times I was drunk far outnumbered sobriety.

“Hey old drunkard, how are you ever going to pay me back if you drink all the coin you bring? What’s your plan for when you get too old to help with chores, the plowing, and the harvests?” asked Tom, the owner of this fine establishment.

His family had owned it for multiple generations. Its history could be seen in the mishmash of chairs and tables, some old and some new. Most of the chairs and tables were wooden, elaborately or roughly carved, but a few were partially metal or stone. Tom, and Tom’s dad, also named Tom, and his dad, another Tom, and so on would pick up things the town was throwing away or the merchants were selling for cheap, resulting in such an assortment of furniture and also odd decorations like the skull of a monster above the bar.

I was seated upon one of the rough wooden chairs, which was more of a stool since it was a tree stump with the top smoothed a bit and most of the roots hacked off. The others drinking with me had much better chairs due to them being paying customers without a high tab and the fact that they contributed towards this feast. However, I was still at the long strip of the counter from which Tom poured drinks from behind and could watch him cook my dinner and fetch new kegs of drink.

“Don’t even bother Tom, he’s never once considered paying you back. He’ll be wiping these tables all winter. Not like he could ever afford land to pick up farming with his habits and he’s too old to learn a trade. Heck, if not for me bringing back meat from the dungeon, he wouldn’t even be able to eat properly for most of the year,” said Jerry, the narcissistic leader of the local dungeon hunting group. He attributed pretty much everything good happening in the village to him and his boys bringing back cheap meat for most people to eat and disliked people who didn’t do much.

“I’ll have you know, that I once explored dungeons before just like you and it wasn’t that big of a deal,” I said somewhat truthfully. In reality, I entered a dungeon once, got scared of the monster within, and left with soiled pants.

“You? In a dungeon? I bet you’d die in the very first room if you so much as tried,” he said while placing a silver coin on the counter. It was probably true, but saying it like that made me deeply angry. I wanted to disprove him. Not out of a sense to prove I wasn’t useless or a bum, but to make him wrong. If I had any money I’d put a coin down to match him then storm off.

“It’s bad luck to bet on people dying. I bet that he’ll get lost on the way or pass out on the path to the dungeon,” said Tom while placing a coin and matching Jerry’s bet. I couldn’t believe that not even Tom, after all these years of knowing me, didn’t believe me. Wait, it was because he knows me that well that he bet that way.

“Won’t even make it to the door,” said Jeff, the local blacksmith that made and repaired all the tools in the town. He wasn’t known for talking much and normally would only enter a conversation if someone called his name. Even he of all people got into this bet to shame me.

I stood up from my stool and then held out my hands to steady myself as blood rushed to my head and said, “I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again. Just watch me.”

“That’s the spirit. Quick, someone bet on him being successful. That way a proper bet is setup and we can all have some entertainment tonight,” said Jerry, shoving some of the other drunkards nearby.

Tom pulled out a glass bottle with some of the strong stuff in it and said, “If you truly go to the dungeon, whatever happens, this bottle’s yours courtesy of whoever wins the bet.”

The bottle was set before my face and even though it had a top on it, I smelled how strong the brew was. To my disappointment, it was only a quarter full, yet that was enough to get me absolutely wasted well beyond my current state if I was sober despite drinking half the night away already. Before Tom could stow it away back behind the counter, I snatched it and mumbled something about taking my reward in advance while stumbling to the front door of the tavern. Just the smell alone made me unable to speak and shriveled my tongue up in dryness.

As soon as I pushed the door open, the cold night winds buffeted me, threatening to push me right back inside and raising every hair on my body. I popped the cork on the bottle and shivered, not out of the cold or the cutting wind, but in anticipation of the taste. It met my cracked lips with a burning sensation and slipped inside. My dry mouth came to life as the drought was lifted. Tears came to my eyes as warmth filled my stomach and the smell burnt the tips of my nose hairs off.

With a stomach full of liquid courage, I ambled in the general direction of the dungeon. It was on the outskirts of town, down the river and partially in the woods. Built right into the side of a hill with a small sapling resting on top. Within ten or so years it’ll become a large tree with its roots covering up or going around the entrance to that place. It itself was a pitch dark hole, eaten out of the side of the hole as if someone took a massive bite out, and it led somewhere else. Not to the other side of the hill, not underground, not even down the other side of the world, just somewhere else.

I couldn’t remember even how I got there, following the path or just walking in a random direction and finding myself before it. There was no hesitation other than a pause to take another drink. Then, everything else was a blur. Everything went dark as if I left my consciousness outside while my body went to another world, fueled only by alcohol and a desire to prove myself.

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When I woke up, I was lying on the floor. No, not floor but ground. Dirt and dust caked my body while rock poked into my stomach and face. A raging headache and a violent heat assaulted my forehead, only somewhat dampened by the cold and unwelcoming ground. I was not inside any buildings yet neither was I outside.

As soon as I started to lift myself up, a wave of nausea hit me. The only thing that came up was bile, acid, and other foul burning fluids, tacking on a sore throat to the list of things plaguing me. Soon enough there was nothing left to throw up and after a few more dry heaves I was able to catch my breath. While wiping the rest of it off my mouth, I noticed a bowl of food and a glass bottle.

The bowl was weaved of straw, more of a basket than a bowl if not for its size and shape. Within it was all the necessities for a day’s meal. A loaf of hard bread, deshelled nuts, two carrots, and a small cheese wedge. If not to fill my stomach, it would at least give me something to throw up later. Before I could dig in, I wanted something to soothe my throat and quench my throat.

An opaque white bottle sat right next to the bowl of food. Anything that could quench my thirst was welcome, preferably water. As soon as I popped the stopper from the bottle, I smelled something with a bit more spirit, liquor. Much like the stuff I drank yesterday, it had a strong smell. It turned me away as I was still recovering from a hangover and wracking headache from yesterday. Eventually, I took a small sip and it burned everything on its way down, making me cough and almost vomit again as if I had anything to vomit left.

The burning sensation settled down to a somewhat nutty aftertaste and the lingering burn cleared my head somewhat, distracting me from the headache. Not just that, but it was also giving me a light buzz. Normally, it’d take around twenty mugs of beer to knock me out but a full mug of this was just as likely to blind me as it was to kick me into next week with how good one sip was.

With my throat in the best condition it’ll be in for hours and my stomach deciding not to try and spew out what I just drank, I started eating starting with the bread to fill my stomach and soak up some of the alcohol. While I emptied the bowl of food of its contents one by one, I looked around the place. It was some sort of cavern with two exits, one in front and one behind. As much as I wished this was a cave or someone’s basement, this was the dungeon.

Not only were my memories of the previous night starting to come back to me, but I also noticed something distinctively wrong. A torch hung on the wall but had nothing to keep it in place while no smoke came from it. In fact, it seemed like the fire was suspended above the torch instead of actually burning it. The wooden part of the torch wasn’t burnt or discolored by the licking of the flames.

This was the worst possible scenario. I was deep within the bowels of the earth itself or perhaps somewhere else and was surrounded by rooms filled with hostile environments and not-so-friendly monsters. At the very least, I was in a room without any monsters. In fact, it had food and drink while letting me sleep most of the alcohol and day away. If not for this, I’d surely be dead by now.

A safe room or rest area it’s called. In the past, I had heard adventurers talk about a place that appeared anywhere from ten to thirty rooms inside a dungeon that was just like that. It was incredibly lucky for me to come along one of these rooms but it presented the problem of how I was supposed to get out if I was that deep inside the dungeon.

After I finished eating the bowl of food and took another sip of alcohol, I noticed that my body felt slightly damp and gritty. My clothes stuck to my skin and felt disgusting. There was this reddish brown stain on my clothes that smelled horrid. Half a broken bottle fell off my lap when I got up to try and figure out what the stain was. It was the bottle of the alcohol I had drunk yesterday from Tom, with the bottom half missing and jagged. The way the glass broke left nasty edges that looked sharp and could easily draw blood.

Around these edges, there was this reddish brown stuff that dripped onto the ground, the same stuff staining my shirt. The drink from yesterday wasn’t a red wine and it smelled nothing of alcohol. Which meant it was blood, hopefully not mine. I didn’t feel like I was injured and would definitely notice if I had a new hole compliments of that piece of work. Many a bar goer had their lives claimed by such improvised weapons.

If it wasn’t my blood then it was the blood of a monster and I had somehow killed it using this bottle. I picked it up as I wasn’t going to walk through the dungeon empty-handed. Not that it’d be very good at fighting monsters as I’d have to get up close and personal to fight, risking injury. Just the thought alone made the hand holding the bottle shake.

The only good part about this nasty dried blood was that there was a trail of blood leading from one of the exits, presumably the path I took to get here. Or I had gone ahead, killed a monster and came back here. I had to assume it was the former and walked towards the path to the next room. It looked like a dark passage with a light at the end that seemed like it would take a few minutes to cross, but as soon as I touched the edge of the darkness, the light came to me and I was in the next room in an instant.

It was about three times larger than the rest area. Which meant it was large enough to fit maybe forty-five people standing side by side somewhat comfortably. Not that I’d ever want to be shoved into a room and cramped together with that many people. The space was large enough that I could swing around this broken bottle and even a much longer weapon like a spear without worrying about hitting the walls or ceiling while being able to run around freely, which I imagine is how I killed the monsters, running around like a chicken with its head cut off and shanking them when they showed a sign of weakness.

I found a bunch of blood and gore scattered across the room. The monsters there were dead and rotting to the point where they were unrecognizable. However, they looked almost human in the shape their skeletons and rotting flesh took. If not for all the fur surrounding the bodies, I would believe it if someone had told me that they were human corpses. Thankfully, there were no monsters in this room. Even though I had somehow killed these while drunk, I didn’t have the confidence to do so while sober.

To my horror, one of the bodies just sunk into the floor, blood, gore and all. That was the fate of everything that died in the dungeon. It would slowly rot and then be absorbed into the dungeon. Then, if I were to leave the dungeon and come back again, it’d be completely different as if even the room itself was wiped from existence. A fate I’d share if I couldn’t make it out of the dungeon.

There were two other bodies in the room. One monster was bad enough, but three would be a death sentence for me. By the time these bodies all disappear more monsters should start to appear, especially if I linger around. If I was lucky, it’d be this way all the way to the entrance.

The next room also had a total of three bodies within it. This time in somewhat better shape with some more flesh and grit on the bones. It was edible but I had no plans of eating or taking the meat. Not only was it visibly rotting before my eyes, but it was also attached to a humanoid creature. Just the thought that I may have eaten meat from a creature like this made me want to vomit as the local dungeon explorers would never describe the creatures the meat came from.

I couldn’t help but kneel by the side of one of the bodies and turn it over using the bottle. Anything to get a grasp on what exactly I might face in this dungeon or rather what I fought yesterday while drunk and hopefully won’t ever face again. As it turned over, all of the flesh and skin fell off, revealing a skeleton. It was distinctively human in the center, like the ribcage and spine, but everywhere branching out was just wrong.

There was a tail, the arm and leg bones were short yet the hands and feet were eerily long and ended in sharp claws, and the skull was that of a rodent’s. A ratman, mouseman, or rodentman was the only way I could describe it. No way could I fight something like this with its massive teeth and claws. It’d tear me to shreds. I wouldn’t even want to face a normal sized rat in a fight as it’d bite me and leave a nasty wound. Just what would things like these be capable of?

Leaving the bodies here to rot, I moved to the next room. Which only had two corpses in it much to my relief. They were far less decomposed and it was unlikely that it had been three with one sinking into the ground. In conclusion, I was heading in the right direction. The rooms were getting smaller, there were fewer monsters, and I was getting closer to the exit of the dungeon.

After that was four more rooms that were almost exactly the same. The only difference being is that the rooms got smaller and smaller, to the point it was about the same size as the rest area. Enough space to fit two to three beds and a stove to keep the place warm, a comfortable house or shack. It was anything but homely with the hard grey rock walls and bodies everywhere. Then again, since all the monsters were dead and I was on the way to the surface, I couldn’t help but be in a good mood and feel lucky.

In a way, I was lucky, but not the good kind. The next room had two bodies like the one before overlapping each other instead of spaced out like the previous rooms. The one on top was moving, not dead, but a freshly spawned monster to crush all my hopes. It tore the flesh from its fallen comrade and crushed its bones meticulously. Every crunch and slurping sound sent chills down my spine as I imagined it doing those very actions to me.

Why couldn’t I have woken up sooner? Why did I spend so much time loitering about in rooms, pushing around bodies to get a good look at the monsters, and relaxedly eat back in the rest area? Seeing how fast it was taking care of its fallen brethren, it must have came to this room within the past few minutes. A little bit earlier and I would have missed it; a few minutes later and only one body would be in this room.

Taking advantage of the fact it was distracted, I took a good long gulp of liquor to calm my nerves. Without that, I would probably drop the bottle shank with how much my hands were shaking. Once I calmed down a bit, I slipped the bottle into a pocket on the inside of my shirt. It was more of a rag than a shirt, but the pocket was sewn on later on in its use and was the only nice part about it. Even though I had already spent all my coin at Tom’s, I felt something already in the pocket but didn’t have the time to check what it was, forcing the bottle in and lifting up my makeshift weapon to fight.

The monster still hadn’t noticed me so I inched closer to it, hoping it wouldn’t notice me. Maybe I could attack and kill it before it even knew I was there? Or I could just sneak right by without it none the wiser? Or just maybe, from how scared I was, my breathing would get really rough to the point where the creature heard me and turned to face me. The rat stood up on two legs and let out an eerily high pitched squeak. Coming from a mouse, such a noise would just be an annoyance if not a bit cute. From this monstrosity, it was terrifying to the point I blanked out for a second.

When I came to, the damn thing picked up a rib bone from its meal and charged me, swinging the bone around like a club. The damn thing could even use weapons and was going to kill me if I didn’t stop it. More by instinct than choice, I lifted up the broken bottle in the air and swung downward to meet its charge. I was successful in hitting it and so was it, slamming the bone into my upper left arm and pushing me against the wall while I shattered the bottle even more on its head.

The blow to its head did nothing to stop it as it bit into my shoulder. I could feel its teeth grinding against my bones and tugging at my flesh. With what was left of the broken bottle, I began stabbing it in the stomach ferociously, digging away at flesh and twisting the handle to wrap its entrails around the bottle and my hands. Meanwhile, it retained a death grip on my shoulder while tearing at my chest with its claws.

I dropped the bottle and reached my hands into the rat’s wounds, pulling out anything and everything, chunks of gore and organs. Eventually, the foul beast let go of me and fell to the ground. There, I could see all the damage I did to it. The lower half of its body was attached to the top only by its spine plus a tiny slither of flesh and skin. All of its entrails and most of its organs, excluding one of its lungs, were on display scattered across the ground with blood absolutely everywhere.

Pain wracked my body as I could feel every spot bitten or scratched. Before I was wholly focused on killing the beast before it did me in and didn’t even have the luxury to feel pain. Now, it wanted to make up for lost time. Worst of all was all the rat blood getting on my wounds. Even though I won the fight in the end, I’d probably lose my limbs if not my life to the rot. At the very least, I had some alcohol to help send me off.

My right hand fumbled to get the top off the liquor as I couldn’t move the left side of my body and managed to bring it to my mouth. It tasted saltier than before but its strength was good for getting rid of some of the pain and the cold. Some of the blood probably slipped in it, mine or the rat’s I didn’t even care at this point. All this over a drunken bet? In my next life, I would surely never drink again.

As if to taunt my newfound resolve, the rat’s body at my feet started to gather together. All of the rat’s blood flowed from the floor to the center of the room, even the blood staining my body slipped away. Once the body and other fleshy parts gathered there, it all piled together and fused with the ground. This was different from the bodies being decomposed as it formed a bump in the middle of the room that soon split apart into a wooden chest almost large enough to reach my knees in height and around the same width as my shoulders before I lost a bit of it.

Treasure. Some random valuable decided to bless my dying days and appear in that chest. It could be something wildly expensive or trash. Honestly, I would prefer trash at this point as something really cool would be quite the joke with me dying and all. At the same time, it wasn’t like I could keel over and just pass away without knowing what was in it. My last regret is supposed to be drinking too much not a stupid chest.

With another sip of alcohol, I walked over to the chest and kneeled down before it as it hurt too much to lean over, and pushed it open. The lid was surprisingly light, making it easy for me to open with just one hand. I expected everything from a pile of cash, a legendary sword, to a pile of salt to rub on my shoulder. What I didn’t expect was a shield. Something that would have been useful if I had it before the fight and was completely useless to me now.

Rather than a shield, it was more of a buckler, being about the same size as my head and with a strap designed more to sit on my forearm or wrist than being held. From the back, it was brown and I could see wood grain and the individual planks of wood that were kept together by a metal border, making it seem more like a picture frame from the back. The front was a blueish silver in color, making it seem more metallic but that was obviously paint or only a thin layer. However, the most unique part about it was this strange symbol on it that shined as if a strong flame was behind it.

From one look, I couldn’t tell if it was trash trying to look fancy or a treasure made of common materials. Whatever it was, it was mine so I fumbled with it until I managed to put it on. The treasure chest then sank back into the ground with its contents gone. And just like that, the room was devoid of anything except me, a half-eaten corpse, and my own blood staining the wall and floor.

After a while, the pain started to go away, replaced by numbness and most annoyingly, itchiness. If I was stupid enough to actually itch, I’d be in a world of pain again. It got to the point where I couldn’t resist anymore and felt a slight itch in a spot where I wasn’t hurt, my forehead. It wasn’t until I had removed some caked on blood that I realized I was using my left arm to do this with. Before it was hanging loosely at my side and I couldn’t even feel it anymore, not to mention move it.

My left shoulder as well could move without pain and in my shock, I pulled my ragged shirt down to look at it. There I could see the whiteness of my bone before being swallowed up by flesh. A few minutes later and there was skin where the wound had been before. I took off my shirt completely and found the scratches on my sides had closed up as well. It was as if I was never injured at all.

I had never heard about this sort of thing happening in the dungeon before. As far as I knew, a treasure chest appearing did not heal people. Nor was I special in any way as I had experienced the long periods of time it took for even a small wound to close up. Which meant this was somehow the shield’s doing. I took back my previous thought about the shield being useless just for getting it after the battle. It was a godsend, lifesaving equipment that could both heal me and protect me from new wounds. A precious artifact I could probably sell for coins normally kept out of common hands.

A few minutes passed as I let the shield finish healing up my wounds if there were any left to heal then I put my shirt back on. As I did that, a rock fell from it. It was an orangish rock in stark contrast to the grey rock of the dungeon and wasn’t a color I saw very often. That was the object I had in my pocket when I tried putting the liquor away. As it might be something valuable, I put it back in the pocket along with the liquor after taking one last sip before I continued on. As only one monster was originally in this room, that meant I was only a few rooms from the exit if not already there.

There were actually two more rooms in the dungeon I had to go through, neither had any living monsters, just one more dead each that were less rotted. The one in the last room was so fresh looking that I walked around it a large margin in case it got up and attacked me. Well, as large as a margin as I could as the room could barely fit me and the body. I could only walk just outside an arm’s length around the body. There was a chance that I could harvest this body for meat but the very thought disgusted me and I never wanted to see a monster again.

As I touched the doorway in that last room, I felt a sense of weightlessness so intense that I almost fell over once it stopped. The sun bore down on me, feeling especially bright this time of day. It was around noon, the time I’d usually wake up after a good night of drinking and I was finally out of that forsaken dungeon. In comparison to the dungeon, it was nice and warm, but not too hot due to a slight breeze.

Normally at this time, if I were outside, I’d be swearing up a storm about the sun being too bright or the heat making me sweaty and uncomfortable. Instead, I felt a massive surge of relief and everything felt nice. Even the ground looked comfortable compared to the hard rock interior of the dungeon and I was tempted to lay down and just kiss the ground while brushing the grass against my face.

Instead, I walked over to the river as I was coated in so much blood that I felt absolutely disgusting. Normally, I’d only feel this way after missing a bath for a month rather than bathing weekly like usual. Thanks to the dungeon being downriver of town, I didn’t have to worry about leaving red trails in the water to freak people out or poison them with rat blood. Unfortunately, that treasure chest only removed the blood of the one rat I killed sober and not the dried stuff from last night’s jaunt.

I bathed with my clothes on as they needed a good cleaning to as well, making sure to take out the bottle of liquor and orange rock first so they wouldn’t be swept away. My bath was very thorough, only lacking in soap to make it perfect but that wasn’t a luxury I could afford. An hour long of scrubbing got the blood and dirt off, but left a bit of smell while the clothes stayed stained. However, the stain covered the clothes so extensively that I could just say they were always that color.

Now that I was clean in a sense, I’d have to figure out what to do next. I could try to figure out what this orangish rock was or I could try to find out how much the shield was worth. More importantly, I had to go back to Tom’s place to let them know I managed to make it back from the dungeon alive. There I might get some insight on the shield and rock as well from Tom or one of his customers.