Life happens, and you’ve just got to accept that.

It’s the phrase I tell myself all the time. I never asked to get spirited away from my own world. I never agreed to get bossed around by a large man with round, furry ears. And I certainly didn’t want to start my first two months in a large, underground cavern with running, fighting, getting beaten up and more running.

Of course, I never had a say in the decisions. I just had to accept the fact that they were what they were.

Train your stamina, they would say. It’s the most important thing even if it’s just to run away. I never thought that getting in shape would be the first thing you’d be forced to do when sent to another world, but I also wished to have some sort of cheat to get away with not doing anything.

The fact that I had no ability of any kind, and had a body that was a little bit between feeble and unhealthy, was a recipe for less decisions that were mine.

It was why sweat currently slicked my brow. My short hair was matted with it too, and my legs were doing their best impressions of a well-cooked noodle. Hot air passed through my burning lungs as I forced my gut to stop trembling in constant cramps.

Soft grass passed underfoot as I ran. Several times I nearly tripped as an unexpected stone was hidden by the long vegetation, but I simply tried to match where the person in front of me placed their feet. If they fell, then I’d carefully step around their body before finding someone else to emulate.

I’d never want to be last again after the first time it happened. Our gracious instructor was a slave driver in certain aspects, but, considering the situation, I’d say he had a bone to pick with everyone who was called a ‘Newbie’.

Not that I’d call him out on it, I was only looking forward to resting. Pretty much the only thought on my mind was about the short nap I’d take after this torture was done. I had lost count of the amount of times we circled the small town in the Room of Beginnings, but the fact that there was now a convenient path carved out in the tall, emerald grass that dotted the massive, cavernous room was pretty telling on how long it had been.

Eventually, I caught up with the front of the group. That’s not to say that I sped up or gained the ability to catch them, but just the fact that they stopped. Still it could have been worse as originally, they were all athletic enough to simply jog and I’d be hopeless to match their pace.

Still, that wasn’t going to make me admit that I needed to go through this training.

I slowed my pace to a crawl, finding a spot in the gathering of similarly tortured. I’d like to say that I joined silently, but between my gasps for breath and aching body, I was much more conspicuous than most.

The group fanned out as everyone slowly came in and circled around a large man. And when I say large, I meant this man was large enough to put bears to shame. Arms thick enough to pass for thighs and thighs big enough to dwarf the size of my head. He was the sort of barrel chested man they’d put on body building posters.

His clothes were odd by normal standards, too. Some sort of thin, white cloth hung desperately to this upper body as it covered his arms and stomach, but revealed coarse, black hairs that covered his chest and forearms. A green pair of pants stretched on his legs so much that I was sure he was wearing some sort of stretchy sportswear if it weren’t for the fact that those pants looked like the thick leather of some animal. Of course, we all wore something on a similar line of style ever since we arrived here.

I turned my gaze up to the man’s face, and quickly averted them as I found a pair of green orbs staring back at me. My once resting heart rate suddenly sped up. As I calmed myself, I couldn’t help but remember the time when I had gone for a hike in the woods with friends, but noticed a bear moving away from our group. It was a feeling that I had just crossed paths with a much more dangerous predator and only luck brought me through the encounter.

“Good work, Newbies! You all are starting to seem less like a bunch of crippled Featherkin and more like a batch of warriors!” The beast of a man grinned and the two, furry ears atop his head perked up. They were an appendage that I had never imagined on a man his size, but it was by far the least surprising thing I had seen here. “Now that you lot are getting up to stuff, I am sadly here to bring about the bad news: for one, this is the last day of your little training regime, and I don’t really care how weak or strong you got out of the whole thing. You all have been eating through a bit of our food reserves here in the Room of Beginnings… I swear, humans take so long to get to an average quality.”

I frowned as the last bit hadn’t needed to be said. Of course, he may have been mumbling, but the man certainly didn’t need to make it sound like we were the most disappointing thing to happen lately… actually, I don’t really want to know if that is true or not.

“...in the meantime, I’m going to put three or four of you each into a group and there’ll be a couple volunteers from the second floors to watch you lot get bloodied.” Our trainer’s savage grin at the word ‘bloodied’ helped no one, and I could see several people shiver at the implications of it.

He clapped, dragging everyone’s smile to the large incisors he offered in a smile. “You’ll have one last meal before you all are going out into the Dungeon, so let me offer you one last bit of advice: the Dungeon isn’t trying to kill you, you’re simply not strong enough to survive.”

With that the man turned and didn’t even pay a second glance as he left us all stunned in our exhausted silence. I saw a couple people laughing with their small clicks, excitedly commenting about their favorite video game that might come close to our situation. Others were judging their surroundings as if there were some monster about to leap out of the air to attack them. Oddly, no matter where I looked, I found no one scared about the whole thing; as if the fact that they were apparently going to get ‘bloodied’ was something to look forward to.

Personally, I found myself thinking everyone here was crazy in some way or another. It was a thought I kept with me as I followed the majority of the group back to the only town in the massive room.

As for the Room of Beginnings, it was something we had marveled at when we first arrived. A massive, spherical room full of grass so green that you would think it was magical in some way. We checked, too, but sadly it wasn’t. The walls themselves slopped up high enough that I was sure we were at least several miles underground else the ceiling wouldn’ve collapsed long ago. And from everything I heard, the Dungeon had existed before they started recording history. So yeah, the place was apparently older than the generations I can think of.

A network of vines with glowing buds extended down from the ceiling and walls, washing the place in a constant hue of blue light. I had been surprised and happy to note that they were caused by magic of some kind. Of course, it was partly because I had heard the information from a man with long ears and emerald hair; a stereotypical elf.

In the middle of the massive room was a town that had been a fairly recent addition. The Newbie’s Town, I had heard it called. A town made from wood and stone gathered from the first and second floors, slowly being built up around those that lived in it. Walking through it had always brought my attention to the amount of varied buildings that dotted the network of dirt and stone paved roads. Some looked like they were simply holes dug into the ground, and others were more like that of apartments back home.

There were always people moving around the town, too, their assortment of legs always moving as if they had something to do. A human I had seen before was dressed in some sort of heavy armor talking to a bulky, red humanoid whose forehead was covered in a plethora of spiky horns. In another place I found someone who wouldn’t look out of place in some dark cult that sacrificed babies idly walking with a man with pinions of white feathers extending from his back.

Honestly, as cool as the place was, I was more annoyed by their inability to manage their infrastructure.

I guessed it mainly was due to the variety of races that had taken the town as the rest place for those who hadn’t climbed or descended to the second floors, or it was for those who simply volunteered to train the next generation of those summoned into the Dungeon. Considering the fact that the ‘summoning’ happened fairly often, I felt that the trainers were rather righteous people.

Still, whether I respected them or not wasn’t the problem. I just accepted the fact that I had been summoned to another world, but the fact that I didn’t even want to be here was another problem entirely. A problem that I couldn’t even say aloud.

That fact only made itself clearer as I walked down one of the only stone cobbled roads of the chaotic architecture that was the Newbie’s Town. Several other Newbies were sitting around wooden tables near one of the canteens that offered cooked food in the town. They were all either excited or calm about this new experience.

Without drawing attention to myself, I quickly picked up my final free meal, thanking the cook for dealing with all of me for two whole months. There were other canteens for everyone to choose from, but most of them catered to different races, and I didn’t really trust some of their meals even if they were technically free with the addition of our training sessions.

Finally, I found a smaller table away from the Newbies. It was surrounded by more tables with humans in similar clothing, but their entire demeanor and presence was different compared to the Newbie’s exuberance. Here, there would still be people joking around, laughing or calmly eating. However, the way they carried themselves was similar to our trainer’s; beasts wearing the skin of normalcy. They were the veterans who had come before us.

“Glen, over here!” I smiled at the woman waving to me from her table. She returned it as her other tablemates greeted me with a silent nod.

“How was the Dungeon today, Sabrina?” I asked, setting down my food with them. “Any new finds?”

One of the men at the table grunted, grinning to himself. Sabrina smacked the man, smiling. “Maybe, but I dunno if you’ll know what it is even if I tell you. It’s super important to map the newest regions of the Dungeon, but it gets so annoying when new paths start appearing every time there is a group of Newbies that come in, you know?”

“It’s fine if I don’t know, I’ll figure it out later.”

“Later he says,” Sabrina laughed, tapping her forehead as if she was remembering something. “Let’s see, what did we used to call them? Right, we’re currently searching for one of the boss rooms; super important for people like us for going to the next floors. Finding one basically means we’re exempt from the draws to see who can use known ones.”

“You thought I wouldn’t understand that?” I smiled, not really putting heat in my accusation.

Sabrina winced anyway. “Well, not that… Just, you might not understand the importance of finding these rooms for humans like us.”

“And they are?”

“Not something you should know right now.” Sabrina grinned once again, and I felt better that she was so good at bouncing back to her cheery state no matter how insensitive I could be. “I’ll tell you what, promise me you’ll survive for two- no, three months and I’ll personally tell you why people are crazy about finding the boss rooms. Okay?”

Now, I wasn’t so confident anymore. “I’ll try.”

For a second, I thought Sabrina’s smile looked a little too fragile. “Please succeed then…” she whispered, and before I could say another thing, she stood up, motioning for the two silent men at the table. “Anyways, we better get going, too. I wouldn’t want to slack off while you Newbies are getting bloodied, yeah?”

“Yeah, good luck.” I sighed, waving to her while holding back my regret at not being able to continue talking.

“Glen! Don’t you dare slack off in your training, too!” I heard her yelling, and ignored her as I felt the surrounding gazes begin to lock onto me. It took all my willpower to not break out into a rosy blush.

Thankfully, her encouragement had petered out as she grew further away. Everyone else had gone back to their meals without a second thought, and I was left to train my thoughts on my own food as well as Sabrina’s parting words.

“Dungeon, show me my status.”

Race Human (lesser): A regular human with little redeeming physical qualities. Evolutionary paths are very limited in most cases.

Traits

Healthy Body (lesser): A healthy, human body with little to no advantages besides greater stamina, heat regulation and slight adaptive properties. It is slightly weaker than most of the same race. Strength and speed shall suffer as a result.

Weak Blood (greater): The standard for the human race. Wounds sometimes never heal, and a sufficient amount of energy and material is needed to repair most injuries.

Weak WIllpower (lesser): The Dungeon asks, “How have you been selected?”

Skills None Achievements None

Sighing, I looked over the status once again. The only thing that had changed had been my body, and even then, there hadn’t been much of an effect. It felt damning to know that there was little to nothing to write home about.

Well, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Everyone I knew hadn’t been able to gain a skill either, and achievements could be earned by going into the Dungeon. Though, the heart of the matter was that it didn’t matter if I was ready or not.

I looked over to one path that led out of the town. It was paved not with stone or grass, but the years of people walking to their inevitable deaths. Some would come back, but the only thing that would greet them would be the stamped down, dirt road that led back to the town.

And at the end of the path was a massive hole that extended from the floor of the Room of Beginnings. It was almost inviting in a terrifying sense. A sort of seduction that shouldn’t exist for something that had taken so many and left so little. I had seen it time and time again as I had picked my specific table to stare into the abyss that everyone had called the Dungeon.

It was a whim at first. A hope that I might be able to work up the courage to go into the Dungeon one day. Now, I was once again forced to accept the reality before me: I was powerless to do anything but listen.

“Welcome to the Dungeon… what a stupidly inappropriate phrase.” I whispered to myself, finding my eyes locked onto the black abyss at the end of the road.