They didn't belong in this hostile reality, and it wanted them dead.

  The sky was the black of spilled ink with phosphorescent clouds providing directionless illumination that cast no shadows. Rising all around them was a mocking echo of this world's version of Cold Bay. Mountains festooned with the corpses of rotting forests were decorated with the pustules of crumbling buildings. Empty window frames and doorways gaped like hollow eyes and open mouths. What at first looked like water proved to be a squirming, writhing, wormy mass that churned and broiled, stirring whatever liquid lay below into a foamy froth of filth. It only made the pristine clubhouse of the CHYC look even more out of place with its neat white sides, navy trim, and warm light glowing from its windows.

  You just had to walk across a path made of decaying timbers that shone wetly with some sort of slimy film to get there.

  Brom stood with his hands on his hips, trying to tune out the sounds of puking teenagers behind him. Reminded him of high school, honestly, good times. Right, down to business. "Okay, first things first, we-"

  "Need an explanation! What's with the triple digits, Unc?" Rudy's voice rasped, the kid wiping the back of his mouth and stepping away from the pile that had previously been the contents of his stomach.

  "Okay, let's get this straight, do not call me Unc. It just sounds wrong." Mostly because he wasn't most of these kids' uncle, and he didn't want to get into a situation where someone mistook him for being responsible for them. Like it was going to be an actual issue in the future if someone thought he could make decisions about their lives when they had living families and relatives. Unthinkable in the world they'd come from, a situation he could easily see in this wobbly new one they were currently living in.

  Rudy scratched at his head for a moment and then shrugged. "Uh... Mister J?"

  "Do I look like the Joker to you? Call me Brom or... I guess Mister B? Uncle B to you, TJ." He quickly tossed the suggestions out before one of them suggested calling him 'BJ'. No thanks. He wanted no part of that. "As for the triple digits, TJ, fill them in, you know the story. I'm going to read the dungeon quest."

  He wasn't trying to be rude or standoffish, Brom was just bad with kids. It wasn't as pronounced with teenagers since they were largely their own people by this point, but the younger the age, the worse it became. Nobody should be entrusting Brom with the supervision of or responsibility for anyone under the age of seven, period. Not unless they were comfortable with things burning to the ground and suburban war crimes happening. TJ was the notable exception because TJ had found his own way of co-existing. Mostly by making Brom care about him. Now Brom treated his nephew like Brom treated his cats, as something to be cherished and cared for for emotional reward.

  It was easier for Brom to just focus on the task at hand, and thankfully, the Dungeon was good at grabbing his focus and attention.

  [Event Dungeon: Into the Maw!]

  [The followers of Yacht Sothoth have begun the ritual to bring their lord into our world, gifting him the blood of sailors and the bodies of beloved vessels to nourish his weakened form. You must confront the cult in their lair and disrupt their plans before the ley lines are irrevocably twisted and the rusty body of the sea deity begins to repair himself!]

  [Quest Stage One: Enter the CHYC Clubhouse. 0/1]

  "Yacht Sothoth... oh, I get it." He sighed deeply and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Punny System. Real punny. Alright, kids, role call. I'm a Legendary Barbarian, I'm a tank with good resistances to debuffs and hostile spells. I'm weak to non-spell-based magic and mental effects. My skill is all about physical attacks." He quickly checked his Class Menu.

  - Heavy Attack (Legendary)

  After every third attack, you may deliver a Heavy Attack laden with destructive force. This attack becomes stronger each time it is used without the attack chain being interrupted on a target.

  - (Unassigned)

  [Note: You cannot assign skills in a dungeon!]

  Fuck. He must have earned his second active skill when he hit level five. He'd stared at his damn class menu several times since then, but, admittedly, he'd been distracted shortly after almost every single time. Ah, well, what the kids didn't know wouldn't hurt them. He doubted that it would be too much of an issue.

  Rudy's jaw dropped. "A legendary class... that's pog."

  Brom raised an eyebrow. "Pog means something way different to m-"

  TJ cut in quickly to spare them all the trip down memory lane. "Okay, so I'm an Epic Archer. I'm obviously physically ranged, and I'm able to fire multiple arrows. I have a skill that allows me to narrow in on precise targets and land highly accurate shots." TJ did something, a quiver materializing on his back and a bow in his hands. He gave his friends an encouraging look.

  "Uh, sure. I'm a Rare Rogue. I'm more of a support than a combatant. I will know automatically if I'm within five feet of a trap, and for the first minute after I enter a room, I know where any and all hidden loot is!" Rudy beamed, pointing both his thumbs at himself in pride. "Oh, and sometimes trap triggers too."

  Maxine sniffed, her speech pattern making everything she said sound like a question. "Yeah, I'm a Rare Mage? I can like, shoot fire, and I'm good with fire spells? I'm gonna be in the back because I'm bad up front?"

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Alex rubbed a hand through his gold hair, shifting his weight from foot to foot. "Oh, jeeze, it seems like we're a really ranged party. But at least we're balanced. I'm a Healer! My passive is an aura that slowly heals people and cures negative status ailments over time, you just have to be within ten feet of me. My active skill is a pretty sweet heal that I can cast up to a good range away. It eats a lot of mana, though, so I can't do it very many times."

  A balanced party, what were the odds? Idly, Brom wondered if TJ had already known what his friends' classes were or if this really was just some crazy random happenstance that the System had absolutely no part in. Yeah, and he was also sure that any flying pigs they encountered in the future would be harmless. It was also notable that the last kid, Alex, had only said his class and not what rank he had in the class. It could be that he was just normal, just basic. Nothing could be guessed from his health, which was on par with Rudy's, above Maxine but behind TJ, right about where Brom would guess a 'Support' class should be.

  "Okay, well, lucky us, I suppose. I've looked over the dungeon quest, it seems like we just have to disrupt the ritual. No clues as to how. Could be a puzzle we have to solve, items we have to acquire, or, and this is my personal favorite, faces we need to punch. On that note, have any of you kids been hunting?"

  He got three sets of blank stares back.

  "Okay then. I've had this conversation with TJ, now I will with you. We're probably going to have to kill things. It's not like a video game. The blood is real. The bodies are real. The organs in the bodies are also real. It's not just the sight and sound anymore, the other three senses are involved. Smell is the big one, some things just reek. You might get blood and ichor splashed on you, and pray it doesn't get in your mouth if that happens. Also, things might look... human. If you were hunters, you might have at least killed an animal before, that wouldn't exactly prepare you, but it would be easier for you to take shots at the less-than-human mobs. Nothing is going to prepare you for actual people-looking enemies. We don't know what the cultists will look like. They might be squid-faced, many-armed, weird fucks in fleshy robes. They might just look like Jim from the Harbormaster office."

  Brom's bitter grey gaze locked on each set of teenage eyes in turn. "I'll do what I can, but I need all of you to be ready. It might come down to you needing to take a life. Don't freeze. If you freeze, someone might get hurt or worse. We don't want to be the first people to figure out what happens when Players die, okay?"

  If there was a better way to prepare untrained teenagers to do what needed to be done, Brom didn't know it. He didn't have a career as a drill sergeant or military recruiter after all. He'd never been to the police academy. He was just a man who had had to become far too intimate with death over the course of the past forty-eight hours, and now, these kids might have to as well. He could see in their grey faces that they weren't quite up to the mental task yet. They were nodding, forcing themselves to look like they were ready, but all the while, deep inside each of them was thinking, 'surely not'.

  Time was running out.

  Brom went first, putting his foot onto the slick, slimy surface that covered the sagging planks. An alarming creak shot out, and the whole thing seemed to vibrate, rippling through the wormy waves like someone had struck a dinner gong. Something struck one of the pilings, hard, and Brom's footing quickly became unstable. He shifted his hips, trying to recover his balance, moving one foot very carefully. The other promptly slipped in the slime, and he pitched his weight forward, quickly bringing that other foot downward. It propelled him ahead, hands flying out to either side and knifing straight through the two massive lamprey heads that had risen from the depths to the left and right of him.

  There was a nasty, thickly squelching noise. The lampreys were unable to arrest their ascent. They were like giant pistons, unable to retract again until they reached the apex of their movement. Thus, Brom's fists were pushed through their flesh, wrists separating them like a sharp knife cutting through the casing of a sausage. With his head bowed to keep the raining goo out of his face, he rested on one foot and one knee as those colossal bodies crashed back into the waves to be fed on by their lesser peers in a roiling frenzy motion.

  Four pairs of teenage eyes went saucer-wide, watching the putrid jelly rain down as the first mobs of the dungeon were dispatched neatly.

  +5 XP

  +5 XP

  Slowly, Brom got to his feet, pushing his hands through his gore-soaked hair and flattening it like it was his normal pomade. He flicked the excess from his fingers and glanced back over his shoulder, taking in the open-mouthed expressions of shock. "So, as I was saying earlier, don't freeze. Now, watch your step. I don't know if these guys spawn every time you slip or if the rest will be distracted by those two. Single file, mind the slime."

  He took another hesitant step, using his foot to swipe at the sagging boards, trying to scrape a little bit of it away and hopefully give the kids behind him a little traction. He wasn't sure if it helped at all but, one by one, they followed him. Like a line of mountain goats taking teeny tiny steps, testing each before committing, as if one false move would see them sliding to their doom. Which it probably would, all things considered. But they all made it across that initial section, making it down onto the lower part of the pier.

  They were only inches away from that filthy harbor surface, the planks below them heaving with the force of the wormy bodies squirming under them.

  "Just take it slow and steady, guys. We're almost to the next part." Now if only he were as calm as he sounded.