For the first time in my life, I didn’t wake up from a nightmare. I slept through the night, my exhausted body greedily drinking up the rest I gave it. When I did finally wake, it was already late morning. I had slept for almost ten hours. I carefully felt my ribs, finding only a few sore spots remained from the beating I had taken the day before.

  I felt hungry, which told me my nanobots had worked hard all night. I ate a large portion of the dried fish I had bought, then refilled my canteen in the courtyard and drank my fill.

  Once my stomach was settled, I relaxed, just sitting in the courtyard and enjoying feeling rested and recovered. The silence of the city around me was becoming comforting. It allowed me to hear further, telling me that I was safe when I didn’t hear anything nearby. I closed my eyes, sitting next to the cistern in the middle of the courtyard, feeling the sun gently warm my skin. I felt grateful to be alive and grateful to have a body. Sitting still and just existing wasn’t something I had been capable of doing before. I was always running a million different tasks, hundreds of thoughts a second spinning through my head, my perspective split through numerous cameras, audio pickups, or digital streams.

  Now . . . I just sat. I breathed in and out. I felt the aches in my body fading more and more as I relaxed. My mind also felt better as I took the time to stop and center myself for once since coming to this world.

  The momentary peace couldn’t last forever, my mind eventually thinking of my various goals and bringing me back to the present. I stood, shaking my body out with a sigh. I couldn’t afford to stop now. I still had a lot to do, but taking some time for myself felt good.

  I decided, since my ribs were still slightly sore, to take it easy for today. I would go explore the two locations Nikephoros had mentioned that might have bosses above ground and would avoid another dungeon for now. My nanobots had replenished my bullets overnight while they worked on healing me at the same time, so I loaded up my belongings and headed out into the city.

  I moved quietly, as usual, and kept an eye out for any priests that might have come investigating the destruction from yesterday. The forum that Nikephoros had mentioned was close to Perama, the bridge city, so I made my way there first. I didn’t see anyone as I traveled, and I avoided the smaller monsters that roamed the city, deeming them not worth the time and bullets any longer. It was amazing how fast I had outgrown the smaller monsters, which had almost killed me several times when I first arrived here.

  The forum was about what I had expected. It was a large open plaza surrounded by what used to be shops and merchants’ homes. The wreckage of carts, stalls, and other debris littered the entire forum, making it look more like a junkyard than a plaza.

  Scurrying through the wreckage were a number of dire rats. Not wanting to draw their interest, I entered a nearby house and found a window that looked out over the plaza. Once there, I saw that a large number of dire rats had infested the area. I could also see a number of sub-bosses, and after watching for several minutes, I spotted the telltale golden glow of a boss near the center of the plaza.

  I considered the best way to approach the problem. I didn’t want to attract too much attention because I could easily get swarmed by the hundred or more rats infesting the place. I could just sit up here and lay down Explosive Bullets across the entire square, but the sound of so many explosions was sure to attract unwanted attention. After thinking it over, I decided caution was the best approach.

  I drew my firearm and aimed at the nearest sub-boss I could find. It was busy rooting through some trash nearby, even though I was pretty sure the entire area had been scavenged thoroughly already by the numerous rats. I took aim and shot the glowing blue sub-boss from the window, ducking down as soon as I fired.

  I waited a moment and then peeked my head above the windowsill, checking to see what had happened. My shot had hit the dire rat, killing it instantly. A few of the nearby rats had scurried over to investigate, but after a moment of finding nothing dangerous nearby, they soon lost interest and went back to whatever they had been doing.

  I picked off several more sub-bosses that were in range before moving to another building around the plaza, where I continued to pick off the more valuable sub-bosses.

  I couldn’t find a vantage point close enough to the golden boss to get a good shot at it, so I had to be a bit more daring than I had originally hoped. I scouted around the outskirts of the plaza until I came across the largest concentration of normal rats I could find. When the rats were as closely packed together as possible, I grabbed a Confusion Grenade from my bandolier and tossed it into the middle of the rats. The grenade did not disappoint. It replicated itself and collided with a number of rats, instantly turning them against their brethren. I noticed that several of the grenades had hit two or more rats, spreading the confusion even further. The rats that had been hit went mad, screeching and attacking anything that moved nearby. The non-confused rats reacted to the attacks with violence of their own and didn’t seem to know who was friend or foe, which caused even more confusion.

  The sound of fighting got louder and louder as more rats were drawn into the mess of quarreling rats, the new rats unsure of what was happening. When they came to investigate, they ended up being attacked as well and were driven into a maddened rage like the rest of the rats. I tossed another Confusion Grenade into the mess, just to spread even more chaos and confusion.

  Once the pile of rats was sufficiently distracted, I ran out of hiding and moved around the outer perimeter of the plaza, avoiding getting too close to the frenzied battle. I saw the golden boss perched on an old, mostly intact food cart as it watched the lesser rats brutally kill each other across the plaza. I hastily hid behind a pile of junk and ran, crouching down, to get closer to the boss. I stopped when I was close enough to guarantee I could hit the boss and fired one Penetration Bullet as it stood on its hind legs, staring in confusion at its minions killing themselves. My first bullet flew true, spinning the rat around and throwing it from the cart to land on the cobblestones of the plaza. I stood to get a better angle and fired at the boss again. My bullet caught the rat as it was trying to right its body, sending it rolling across the plaza. Blood sprayed from its body with every rotation.

  I watched, waiting to see if the boss tried to move once more. When a moment passed and the only movement near the boss was a growing pile of blood leaking across the cobblestones, I stood and approached. As I walked toward its body, a gold core began to form above its body, so I knew I had killed it. I grabbed the core and put it in my pouch, reloaded my revolver, and ducked back down behind some more refuse to conceal myself better.

  I made my way around the outside of the plaza again, keeping as many obstacles as possible between myself and the rats that were still fighting. I ran to the sub-bosses I had killed and grabbed the blue orbs that had formed above their bodies before returning to safety in a nearby building.

  By the time I was done gathering the blue orbs, the mass of rats was starting to calm down. Either the confusion had worn off or most of the rats were dead or dying. I didn’t care to check. I found a back door in the building I was hiding in and left through it, leaving whatever rats had managed to survive none the wiser about what had happened to them or their once-glorious rat leader.

  When I was a few streets away, the notifications began to roll in. I was pleasantly surprised to learn I had received experience for the rats killed by the confusion effect; I received over a hundred experience for the boss, sub-bosses, and the lesser rats combined. That brought my total, after the last dungeon, up to 2951.

  The next place on my list was the Hippodrome, which was close to the priests’ enclave. When I got near, I entered one of the taller buildings to scout the location and saw a number of priests in the streets around the Hippodrome. I decided it wasn’t worth the risk to approach any closer. The Hippodrome itself was impressive, a large open field ringed by stone seats in the middle of the city. It was the size of a football field, if not larger, and seemed especially big compared to the busy, closely packed city that surrounded it. From the top level of the building I was in, I had a pretty good view inside the Hippodrome and couldn’t see any monsters. Given its location close to the priests, I guessed they must have killed the monsters inside some time ago and kept it clear these days or hunted the monsters inside for experience. Either way, the Hippodrome was a bust.

  I watched the priests’ enclave for a while before leaving. They did not have thick walls to protect themselves like the other enclaves did. Instead, I could see a shimmering shield that enveloped their enclave, warping and distorting the air around the enclave as if I was looking through a haze of heat at the priests below. From what I could gather from watching the area, the temples inside seemed immaculate and well-maintained. The courtyards around them were full of flourishing, ripe gardens, and a number of large trees rose above even the massive temples.

  The enclave was packed with people, almost as many as I had seen on the streets of Sycae. Priests worked on the grounds of the various temples, were chatting in groups, or were attending lectures on the grounds as if they were ancient philosophers uncovering the secrets of the universe. For all I knew, maybe they were.

  I couldn’t see what was making the shield that protected the enclave, but I was very curious to find out more about it and see if I could use something like that to keep myself safe here in the city. Maybe it was some kind of advanced enchantment that I could learn. I didn’t see anyone actively maintaining a spell over the area, so I didn’t think it was a class skill, unless the priests were doing that in the temples where I couldn’t see them, which was entirely possible.

  Either way, there was nothing here for me. I exited the building and left the area swiftly. By the time I was back in my villa, the sky was hinting that night would come soon, so I just settled into my room and waited for the sun to set.

  With my rewards from the dungeons and the bosses I had killed in the city itself, I could actually afford to buy the Archer class right now. I had eight gold orbs and fifty-five blue orbs, and each gold orb was worth twenty blue orbs, bringing me to the equivalent of 215 blue orbs. I still had to wait for Momma Lena to craft the book for me, so even though I could afford it now, it would be weeks before I could buy it. I considered trying to find a class crafter in another enclave but figured they would probably be just as expensive and higher risk to contact, so it was better to just wait. Regardless, I had greater plans than just getting a single class, and I still hadn’t seen what I could buy in Sycae, the merchant enclave. I needed to gather as much wealth as I could.

  Plus, if I was being honest with myself, I was enjoying the dungeons. They were strange, dangerous, and challenging, but they were reminiscent of some of the happiest times playing games in my prior life with Michael. They were also a sign of how different this world was from the ordinary world I had come from. They were truly magical and strange, an entire world contained inside a single portal, with branching narratives and multiple paths to achieve the goal of completing the dungeon. And the rewards were top-notch, giving me more experience and wealth than a month of hunting on the surface.

  I spent the night resting once again, making sure my body was in perfect condition for the next day. When the sun rose, I left early and began a search of the area around my villa to find any nearby dungeons that I could explore. If I completed some of the dungeons near where I was sleeping, it might also make it safer to stay here, reducing the number of monsters that spawned nearby when night fell.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  The first dungeon I found wasn’t actually in a basement but instead had formed in a crack that split the side of a building and its cellar. The entire crack was filled with the absolute darkness I was starting to recognize as the entrance to a dungeon. It was just down the street from the villa I was staying in.

  When I squeezed into the crack, I found myself standing in perfect darkness. I wondered if I had been wrong about the crack being a dungeon for a moment, but I heard a faint scratching against stone somewhere around me, which told me I wasn’t back in the city any longer. I listened more and noticed the sound of dripping water nearby. I also heard a faint whistle as the air blew past me, as if I was in a tunnel now.

  I crouched, reaching down with my hands to feel the area around me. The ground beneath me was rough and unworked. Pebbles and other small stones were everywhere, and the floor was uneven, as if naturally formed. Not hearing anything in my immediate area, I decided to risk making a little light. I reached into the pouch where I had secured the Light orb I had made the other day.

  I didn’t unveil it completely, just unwrapping enough to cast the faintest of light around me. That was enough for me to see where I was, and I confirmed that I was indeed underground, standing in a cave of some kind. Stalagmites and stalactites were all around me. Moisture dripped down them and formed small puddles that plinked and plopped with every drop, echoing around the small cave. In front of me was a rough path through the middle of the cave, leading downward at a slight angle.

  I raised my Light orb above my head and scanned the roof of the cave, freezing as the light illuminated the ceiling enough for me to see what was waiting above me. The entire ceiling was full of large black bats. They were unusually large, the size of a fully grown dog at least. They were asleep, hanging upside down and seemingly unaware of my presence so far.

  I swallowed as I started trying to count them, but I quickly gave up. There were thousands in sight, and that was just a small part of the cave I stood in. If the entire cave had a similar number, it would amount to . . . hundreds of thousands, at least. If not more.

  I was lucky my light hadn’t disturbed them. I considered putting it away, but without it, even my genetically modified eyes couldn’t see in the absolute darkness. If I stumbled or fell, I was sure to wake the bats above me. I slowly lowered my arm, keeping the Light orb unveiled but covered as it had been.

  I looked around me, trying to figure out the best way forward. Even with Explosive Bullets and my new Multi-Bullet, the chance that I could kill so many bats was pretty slim. There were just too many and they would swarm me once they saw me as a threat, getting too close for me to effectively use my bullets or grenades.

  I crouched carefully, playing my light over the ground. The path forward was uneven, covered in the pebbles and loose stones I had felt when I explored the ground around me with my hands. It would be dangerous ground to cover, a single stumble enough to doom me. I would have to be extremely careful.

  I stood and took a cautious step forward, making sure my foot was absolutely secure before putting any weight on it. I very carefully brushed my foot back and forth, clearing the pebbles from under my feet so they wouldn’t make a sound when I stepped. Once I felt sure it was safe, I shifted my weight forward, taking a single step.

  One of the benefits of being born as an artificial intelligence was that I had spent the majority of my life performing mundane, repetitive tasks. It was fair to say that my patience was inhuman in the truest sense of the word. While I was in the body of a human, part of me was still not quite human.

  Whereas most humans faced with this situation would likely tire or become impatient, leading to a deadly mistake, I slowly took one step after another, never shifting my weight until I was absolutely sure I wouldn’t make a sound. I never rushed. I never placed a foot wrong. I never lost focus or grew too tired to pay attention. Slowly, painstakingly slowly, I made my way deeper down the tunnel.

  Time was hard to judge as I moved. I stopped to rest my legs every so often. I would sit very slowly in a clear area of the tunnel, barely relaxing my body but giving my legs a chance to refresh themselves. I didn’t dare unstrap my backpack to take a drink of water in case it made too much noise, so I sat there until I felt like my legs were ready to move again.

  Hours passed before I reached a large cavern where a larger sub-boss hung from the ceiling, surrounded by hundreds of other bats. I ignored the sub-boss, proceeding carefully through the cavern and down the tunnel on the far side.

  My rests became longer and my body started to tire, but I refused to let the exhaustion cloud my mind. Every step was just as important as the last. A single sound in here would get me killed, and I refused to die in such horrible circumstances.

  I passed through another sub-boss’s room, ignoring it just like I had ignored the first. The tunnel began to slope downward more steeply, making my footing even more precarious, but not once did I let myself place an unsure step.

  Finally, after untold hours in the dark, I entered the largest cavern I had been in so far. Across the room, I saw a dimly glowing white light. The dungeon core. I looked at the ceiling and saw an enormous bat hanging fifty feet above the ground. Hundreds of smaller bats, many of them sub-bosses themselves, rested around the boss. I stared at the boss, my mind telling me there was something especially odd about it. A moment later, my breath caught in my throat as I realized the boss wasn’t glowing golden. It was glowing purple.

  Purple, the color that a monster even more powerful than the golden bosses glowed, something that hadn’t been seen in years in Nova Roma.

  The rewards for killing such a boss had to be astronomical. I didn’t even know what a purple core would sell for, but I was sure it would be enough to make me rich. I felt an insane impulse to try to kill the boss, my vision flicking between the purple glow of the boss and the soft white light of the dungeon core that would let me escape.

  I tried to imagine how I would fight the boss. I would open with five Explosive Bullets, followed immediately by some Confusion Grenades to keep the other bats distracted while I reloaded. I would switch to Penetration Bullets, hoping to take down the purple boss, while I tossed grenades at the other bats. Then it would just be a matter of who died first, me or them.

  The problem with the plan was that I had no idea if my weapons could even hurt the purple boss. I knew already that the golden bosses were tougher to kill than the blue sub-bosses. A blue sub-boss could be killed with a single bullet, while the golden ones took five to ten bullets, if not more. So if a golden boss was ten times more powerful than a blue boss, assuming the worst-case scenario, then was a purple boss ten times more powerful than a golden boss? Would it take me a hundred bullets to kill the purple boss? Or would my bullets literally do nothing, the hide of the beast too strong?

  Shaking my head, I tamped down the part of me that wanted to take the risk anyway. There were just too many unknowns. With a last, regretful look upward at the purple boss, I walked over and grabbed the white dungeon core.

  Congratulations, you have completed this dungeon. You have earned the following rewards: Skill Stone: Stealth, 500 experience.

  The room around me disappeared, and I found myself standing just inside the crack in the foundations of the house near my villa. I let out a relieved sigh. That was too close. I could have easily died in that dungeon if I had been even slightly less careful. How was a normal person supposed to complete a dungeon like that? Maybe if they had a team of skilled people working together, they could fight their way through the cave, but it would be a war of attrition, and they would have to fight for every step they took.

  Even with my enhanced body, I felt exhausted. I began to walk back to my villa, examining the skill stone I had received from the dungeon. It was about the size of my hand and made of marble. Carved on it was a nondescript person crouching down as if hiding from someone.

  I might not have maximized my rewards from the dungeon, but I had received my first skill stone. I was happy enough with the victory, even though a part of me had wished to try my luck with the final boss. I had still received a skill stone, clearly given to me for the way I managed to defeat the dungeon. I didn’t even think of selling the skill, since such a skill was very useful for me. I just had to figure out how to absorb it so I could start using it to help me survive in the city.

  As I thought about how to absorb it, I felt a pull from the stone as if an invisible cord was stretched between the stone and my chest, tugging at me. I moved the stone closer to me, and it began to glow with a faint white light. I continued to move the skill stone closer and closer until it touched my chest. As soon as it did, the stone disappeared.

  I felt the skill absorb into me and enter my body with a slight chill. My mind raced, absorbing information like I was back on my Earth and downloading knowledge, except this time, it wasn’t just hypothetical. It was like I had always known how to move stealthily, how to hide in the shadows around me, how to mask my scent and cover my trail as I traveled.

  I knew what the skill would do for me as well. It wasn’t just moving silently; it was like a more powerful version of my cloak. Whenever I activated the skill, people would be less-inclined to notice me. I would blend into my surroundings better. My steps would be quieter, my scent muted. It wasn’t actual invisibility, but it was definitely supernatural.

  I had gained both knowledge of how to move more stealthily and a supernatural enhancement to those skills. And I just knew, on an instinctive level, how to activate the skill now. I just had to think about activating Stealth and the skill would turn on instantly.

  Exhausted, I returned to my villa and rested for the rest of the day. I was too tired to risk another dungeon and I still didn’t dare risk going out at night, so I had to wait until tomorrow to try another one.

  My search for dungeons continued the next day. I found another one in the garden of a nearby home. What once might have been a burrow for an animal had been widened and turned into a tunnel leading under the garden. Halfway down the burrow, it turned unnaturally dark, indicating the presence of another dungeon.

  I crawled into the burrow and found myself standing amidst a beautiful forest. The sounds of birds, something completely missing from the dead city, enveloped me. The sun broke through gaps in the trees, illuminating the beauty around me, and a fresh breeze blew over me, bringing the intoxicating smells of spring to my nose.

  I stared in admiration at the gorgeous forest when suddenly one of the trees in front of me moved in a way that seemed unnatural, twisting against the wind instead of blowing with the breeze. I froze, staring at the tree, trying to figure out what exactly had caught my eye. It looked like a completely normal tree now. Had I imagined that it moved oddly?

  I ran through my knowledge of fantastical creatures from my world and found one that might be a match for what was in front of me. I took out my Penetration Bullets and switched over to my Explosive Bullets, uncaring if the bullets ended up being overkill.

  Rather than wait to be ambushed when I tried to pass through the forest, I fired an Explosive Shot at the tree that had caught my eye. The bullet flew true, striking the tree in the middle of its trunk, and then exploded. In a split second, flames blanketed the tree, spreading rapidly to its boughs, where its leaves immediately caught on fire. An inhuman scream rang out, the sound like a massive log being twisted slowly. It cracked and squealed until it shattered into a thousand pieces. The sound was so eerie it sent chills down my spine. The roots of the tree began to pull themselves out of the ground as it tried to escape the flames, but there was no way it was escaping the fire now.

  I watched as the tree tried and failed to save itself, burning rapidly until it keeled over. It crashed into the other trees nearby, causing a small forest fire. It screamed the entire time, only going silent when it finally fell over. I would have felt worse for the creature if I wasn’t sure it had been planning to attack me the moment I got too close, and the fact that its screams were something from a horror story clued me in that the creature was probably not very friendly.

  The rest of the dungeon was just as easy. The tree creatures were no match for my Explosive Bullets. Even the sub-bosses and boss that I encountered at the end of the dungeon were so flammable the dungeon was practically a walk in the park. A single Explosive Bullet was enough to kill anything that moved, even the boss. The sounds of their horrific screams haunted me as I gratefully grabbed the dungeon core and escaped as fast as I could.

  I was rewarded with a gold orb, eleven blue orbs, and one thousand experience. No perk, skill, or item, but that was fine. It was still a small fortune, and the experience was as great as usual. And all it cost me was a moderate number of Explosive Bullets and a new sound that I was sure was going to form the basis of my next nightmare.