The stone creature had armor and it could have crushed him anytime it wanted.

  The menacing construct lingered on the verge of the shadows. The man gripped the weapons in his hands more tightly, his knuckles whitening. He could see just how clearly weapons constructed of wood and stone would make little or no impact on the thickly built being.

  It glided forward. It had no legs, the thick torso tapered down, the segments narrowing to a roughly cone-like shape. There was a faint whirring hum as it levitated forward, not quite touching the ground.

  It was odd in this moment of obvious peril to notice, but nonetheless the man did notice that the construct, like him and the kobold, bore a band on its arm. It seemed incongruous that he, the man of flesh, had a stone bracer, and that this, the man of stone, had a clay bracer.

  The man braced himself. He was still certain he was dreaming, but this still felt like a scary moment.

  Then it spoke.

  “Dude! That. Was. Awesome. You’re fricking awesome, dude!”

  Each time it spoke, the light of the eyes pulsed a little brighter. The man took a larger step back, blinking in total confusion. The voice was incredibly deep, gravelly and loud.

  The man paused, still holding his weapons tightly, still ready for anything.

  “Come on, bruh, put that down, I’m on your side! Thought you were cooked for sure! Ha, you looked like you were gonna cry there for a mo, but you stepped up! And how! Nailed that sucker!”

  The man stammered slightly, “You’re… not going to attack me?”

  The dots of its eyes went wide with surprise, multiplying in size, “Attack you? Attack the big dog? No freaking way! That’s not my function! You’re the man!”

  The man relaxed slightly. He didn’t entirely lower his weapons, but some of the tension melted from him.

  He glanced upward, then back at the construct, “Sorry, he’s right, I’m not sure what to do?”

  “Who’s right, bruh?”

  “Um… the voice… the guy who’s talking the whole fucking time…”

  One of the eye circles narrowed to a slit as the other rose on the black panel slightly, creating an expression of total skepticism. “Bruh, if you’re hearing voices, now is the time to tell me. I take mental illness super freaking seriously. No judgment here, bruh.”

  “You… really can’t hear anything?”

  The construct rotated its head segment back and forth.

  “Uh… nevermind. So, what are you? You look like a stone robot.”

  “Hell yeah, I like the sound of that! Stone robot. Sounds good to me. Let’s call me that. I’ll be Stone Robot and you can be confused meat man!”

  The man peered at the construct’s chest, where an engraving was just visible in the light of the lantern. L.I.T.A.

  “It says there that your name is Lita…” the man said, arching a brow. The name was completely incongruous.

  The eyes of the construct flared in alarm. “Bruh… No, listen, people make this mistake all the time. My name’s Stone Robot.”

  “What’s with L.I.T.A. then?”

  “That’s just… Why’s it gotta be right there… My function, bruh, Lethal Instruction and Tutorial Automaton. Get it, L-I-T-A. Freaking sucks. I don’t want to talk about that. What’s your name?”

  The man frowned at the question and paused. Speaking slowly, hesitantly, he uttered… “Ah… I feel like… my name’s Cutter… but that’s not right…”

  “SEE? Names is hard, man. Plus you got that bash on your head, can’t be helping.”

  Cutter lifted a hand, still clenching a weapon, and touched the back of his closed fingers to his head. Blood wasn’t flowing anymore but it was still wet and tacky.

  “I don’t know… this was here when I woke up… Look, it doesn’t matter. You’re a tutorial robot? That’s pretty cool. I think I fucking need one.”

  “Whoah! Easy with the F-bombs there, champ. But yeah, I’m the tutorial bot, here to hold your hand and mold you from feisty, confused, and capable to the biggest of the big dawgs! Think about it, Cutter and Stone Robot, carving their way through the first dungeon, kicking ass and getting stronger!”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “Stone Robot’s a bit of a mouthful.”

  “Whuuutt? Aw, no, bruh.”

  “Lita’s easier and faster.”

  “Dude! No!”

  “Look, I’m not being mean, but it’s my dream and I’m not saying Stone Robot every time I need your attention. What do you mean, first dungeon?”

  Lita turned its head to the side, eying him in new apprehension. It mumbled, “Thought you were cool… First Dungeon’s the name I got in my noggin for it. I guess, ’cause it’s like your first dungeon.”

  “A part of a tutorial?”

  “Hell if I know.”

  “But… you’re the tutorial, aren’t you supposed to know?”

  The construct raised its stone arms in a gesture of defeat, “Bruh, I don’t know. I’ve just always been here. You’re like the first one. You were meant to come in the front door, by the way, not just like be here all of a sudden.”

  Cutter said, “I guess a dream has to start somewhere…”

  Still the wound on his head bothered him.

  Cutter said, “So there’s a door? I can get out that way?”

  “Uh-uh, bruh. That’s the way in, no way to open it from this side. Only way out is through, and that’s gonna be freaking awesome.”

  Cutter rubbed the bridge of his nose with the back of one hand. “Of course. It’s a dungeon. A tutorial dungeon. Okay, do you know the way?”

  “Heck yeah! Only, hang on, aren’t you going to take that sigil off the kobold? I mean, if you don’t want it then I kinda want it. Not sayin’ I want it, mean it’s your kill, but you got sockets empty, you don’t want to just leave it there.”

  “Sigil…” Cutter glanced to the kobold corpse and realized he’d missed it. The bracer was gone and, floating just above the floor near its wrist, was another of the little marbles.

  “Okay, so this is like part of the level up system or something?”

  Lita’s eye went wide. “Bruh! You don’t know about sigils? Wow, that’s messed up. Okay, take a knee, I’m gonna drop some knowledge on you!”

  There was no measuring time in the darkness of the dungeon. The dim light of the lanterns remained constant, only a narrow, creeping fatigue served to inform Cutter that the clock ticked on.

  Eventually, as Lita continued explaining the mechanics of sigils, bracers, levels, Cutter had at some point found himself sitting on the dusty floor with his back against one of the walls.

  “Alright, class! Questions?”

  Cutter continued to toss the sigil he’d collected from the dead kobold in one palm. “Yeah. So, everyone had five slots?”

  “That’s right!”

  “So I can only have five sigils?”

  “Correct!”

  “Am I locked in? If I fill all the slots, can I change one out if I find a better one later?”

  Lita’s light eyes performed a rolling motion. “Of course you can. Dude, that would majorly suck if you had to pick and stick forever.”

  Cutter nodded, catching the kobold’s sigil and turning it in his hand to look at the symbol. “Okay, but then how much does it matter what sigils I put in? I could have like a bag, no better, a bandolier of sigils, and just load up however I like whenever I like! No?”

  The glowing eyes performed a rolling motion.

  “Not exactly. You can swap as much as you want, but once you pop a sigil out of a slot, the slot can’t be filled again until after midnight.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “You’re saying this to animated segments of stone that move by floating and never die.”

  Cutter sighed, “No, like, an oddly specific rule. Why midnight?”

  “Heck if I know. What it boils down to is, if you want to keep some spare sigils around, you can’t just swap them whenever you feel like it. You can pop a couple out and tuck them away before you tuck in for the night, and in the morning you’ll have free spots to put whatever you want in. You could, if you wanted, keep a spot free all day.”

  Cutter eyed the sigil he held suspiciously. It bore the symbol of an eye and a half moon. Like his Fighter and Strength sigils, it was Ash.

  “So this is Dark-sight? Night vision essentially? I’ve only got two free spots, how likely am I to regret filling one of those slots now before I even start killing other monsters? Will I get better ones?”

  Lita raised his stone shoulders in an attempt at a shrug. “Like… maybe? Probably not. When someone or something dies they drop one sigil, at random, from their set. I’m not sure if I should be telling you this, but this place is basically kobolds and a boss. And, I don’t know if you noticed this, but we’re freaking underground. So dark sight might be something you’d, you know, use to save your life?”

  “Whoa, slow down there, a boss? And what do you mean not sure if you’re supposed to tell me this?”

  “Bruh, I don’t want to get all paranoid on you, but I was totally made to be a tutorial. I’m not exactly a scientist, but I’m pretty sure that if I was made, somebody made me. They didn’t call me Tell-Initiates-Literally-Anything… huh… T.I.L.A. Shoot, that sounds like a girl’s name too. Maybe it’s hard to make it not make a girl’s name… anyway, how do I know what I’m supposed to say and not say? And, dude, I hella don’t want to get in trouble with my makers.”

  “So you don’t even know what your job… no, stop, don’t mind that. What did you say about a boss?”

  “Oh, yeah, Kobold Chief guarding the final door…OH NO! See what I did? Dang, I did it again!”

  Cutter said, “Okay… don’t know how much I like the sound of that. Will the boss have a better sigil? Better loot?”

  “Heck yeah, dude. Be nice if he had a sweet sword. You’ve got a cinder sword sigil so you’d totally kick butt with a sword. And yeah, he’ll almost definitely for sure drop a better sigil.”

  “So, if I put Dark-sight or whatever in, I’ll have a slot free to add that sigil too?”

  “Yuh.”

  “And, I can change at midnight… hey, what time is it anyway?”

  “Dude, I’m Lethal Instruction and Tutorial Automaton, not Chronological Announcement Time Telling You… Dang… That’s C.A.T.T.Y…”

  Cutter rose to his feet, dusting himself off, then bending to collect his weapons. “A sheath or a belt or something would sure go a long way.”

  “When you sell your booty you can get all the belts and scabbards you want!”

  Cutter slotted the sigil into his bracer and immediately everything changed. All but the deepest shadows near him vanished, revealing their contents in grey half-tones. He blinked, grinning widely. He could see for a few dozen yards down the corridor before the range of his new ability was depleted. He supposed that would extend if he leveled the sigil higher.

  “Okay, let’s kick some kobold ass! Man, I didn’t know I could dream so complicatedly.”