The preparations for our first dungeon dive were a study in absurdity. Three nobles, or at least two nobles and one glitched imposter, rummaging through the forgotten storerooms of a bankrupt estate for anything that resembled adventuring gear. It was like watching royalty trying to pack for a camping trip using only items found in a dumpster.
Elizabeth, with a permanent expression of aristocratic suffering etched onto her beautiful features, managed to procure a set of supple, dark leather armor from a dusty trunk. It was clearly her own, a relic from her training days at the Magic Academy. It fit her perfectly and made her look even more like a dangerous, battle-ready sorceress. She also produced a slender, elegant wand carved from what looked like pale, petrified wood.
My own equipment was less impressive. I found a moth-eaten leather jerkin that was stiff as a board and smelled faintly of mildew. It offered all the protective capability of wet cardboard. For a weapon, I chose a simple, short-bladed sword I found in a weapons rack. It was rusted in places, but the blade was still reasonably sharp. Holding it felt awkward, a foreign weight in my programmer's hands.
Luna, however, was a whirlwind of practical efficiency. Her elven heritage, it seemed, came with an innate understanding of woodcraft and survival. She unearthed a sturdy, well-made elven bow and a quiver of arrows from her own meager belongings. She moved with a quiet confidence, packing dried rations, waterskins, torches, and a coil of rope into sturdy canvas backpacks. She was in her element, her eyes shining with the thrill of a real adventure, a stark contrast to Elizabeth's barely concealed mortification.
We snuck out of the manor under the cover of pre-dawn darkness, three hooded figures on horseback, looking for all the world like common adventurers. The irony was so thick I could taste it. Two weeks ago, I was dying at a desk in another world. Now, I was a resurrected noble, riding alongside an ice-queen mage and a devoted elf-maid, on our way to go kill goblins for pocket money. My life had become a high-budget fantasy B-movie.
The journey to the Whispering Caves took the better part of the day. The rolling hills and lush forests of the Silverstein domain—or what was left of it—were beautiful. The air was clean and crisp, and for the first time, I could appreciate it without the underlying dread of it slowly killing me. My new, mana-forged body felt… right. The aches were gone, replaced by a steady thrum of energy.
Our party dynamic quickly fell into a predictable pattern. Elizabeth rode in stony, disapproving silence, her posture perfect, her gaze fixed on the horizon. She was the stoic expert, the high-level player forced to escort two newbies through the tutorial zone. Luna rode beside me, her initial awe having settled into a comfortable, happy chatter. She pointed out different types of birds, explained the medicinal properties of various herbs we passed, and generally acted as our cheerful, walking encyclopedia of the natural world.
I was the bridge between them. I would ask Elizabeth pointed questions about magic theory or local politics, which she would answer in clipped, precise sentences. Then I would turn and discuss the migratory patterns of the fluff-tailed squirrel with Luna. It was a strange, delicate balancing act.
ARIA, as always, was my silent co-pilot, her commentary a constant stream in my mind.
[Analysis of local flora complete,] she would note. [The 'Sun-Kissed Berry' Luna is currently consuming has a minor healing property, restoring approximately 0.5 HP. It also has a 15% chance of causing mild digestive distress. Her luck appears to be holding.]
[Observation: Elizabeth's heart rate increases by an average of 8% when you address her directly. Her cortisol levels suggest a state of high alert and annoyance. Conclusion: You irritate her on a fundamental, biological level. I find this amusing.]
We arrived at the Whispering Caves as the afternoon sun began to dip toward the horizon. The entrance was a dark, gaping maw in the side of a rocky hill, surrounded by gnarled, leafless trees. The name was apt; a low, moaning wind seemed to constantly emanate from the cave mouth, sounding like faint, sinister whispers. Several other small groups of adventurers were milling about near the entrance, a rough-looking bunch clad in mismatched armor, their faces hardened by experience.
We dismounted, tying our horses in a secluded grove, and pulled the hoods of our simple cloaks low over our faces. Anonymity was our best defense.
"Alright," Elizabeth said, her voice a low, commanding whisper as we gathered near the entrance. "Listen carefully, both of you. This is a Level 1 dungeon. The primary inhabitants are Rock Goblins and Cave Bats. Goblins are weak, cowardly creatures. They fight in packs and will flee if their leader is killed. They are susceptible to fire and ice. Their weakness is their predictable, straightforward attack pattern."
She turned her gaze to me. "Try to keep up. Do not get surrounded. And do not touch anything that glows."
"Bats are simple beasts," she continued. "They attack from above and are difficult to hit with melee weapons. Their weakness is their poor eyesight; they navigate by sound. A loud noise can disorient them."
She looked at Luna. "Your bow will be our best weapon against them. Stay behind us, keep the torch lit, and watch our flanks."
Luna nodded, her expression serious, her hand resting on her bow. She was no longer just a maid. She was a member of the party.
With a final, grim look at me, Elizabeth drew her wand and stepped into the darkness of the cave. I drew my rusty short sword, its weight still feeling wrong in my hand, and followed her. Luna came last, holding a lit torch high, its flickering light casting long, dancing shadows on the damp cave walls.
The air inside was cool and heavy with the smell of wet stone and something else… a faint, musky, unpleasant odor. The sound of dripping water and the constant, whispering wind were the only sounds.
We hadn't gone more than twenty meters when we saw them.
Huddled around a small, crackling fire were four small, green-skinned creatures. They had long, pointed noses, sharp, yellow teeth, and large, bat-like ears. They were clad in crude leather scraps and armed with rusty, jagged knives. Goblins.
[Hostiles detected,] ARIA announced calmly. [Species: Rock Goblin. Level: 2. Number: 4. Threat Level: Low. They have not yet detected your presence.]
Elizabeth moved with the fluid grace of a predator. She raised her wand, a soft, blue light gathering at its tip. "Watch and learn," she whispered.
She muttered a single, sharp word of power. "Glacies Spiculum." Ice Spike.
A shard of pure, solid ice, as long as my arm and sharp as a razor, materialized in the air in front of her. With a flick of her wrist, she sent it flying. It shot across the cavern with a silent, deadly speed and impaled one of the goblins directly in the chest, pinning it to the rock wall behind it. It didn't even have time to scream.
The other three goblins shrieked in alarm, scrambling for their weapons.
Elizabeth was already casting her next spell. A wave of biting frost radiated from her, covering the ground and slowing the goblins' movements.
This was my chance. I had to contribute. I couldn't just stand here and watch her do all the work.
My mana pool was full. 10/10.
I focused on the nearest goblin, a snarling creature charging at Elizabeth's flank. I recalled my practice sessions in my room. I pictured the goblin being thrown backward. I focused my intent, formed the command in my mind, and pushed it out with two points of my precious mana.
PUSH!
It was not elegant. There was no flash of light, no intricate magical circle. The air in front of me simply… distorted. A raw, invisible force slammed into the goblin's chest. It was like it had been hit by a ghost truck. The creature flew backward with a surprised squawk, its feet leaving the ground, and crashed into the far wall with a wet, crunching sound. It slid to the floor in a heap and didn't move.
[COMMAND: PUSH][MANA COST: 2][RESULT: Effective. Hostile neutralized.]
Elizabeth, who had been preparing another ice spike, paused and glanced at me, her eyebrow raised in surprise. She had felt the raw, unstructured burst of power.
The remaining two goblins, seeing their comrades fall so quickly, lost their nerve. They shrieked in terror and turned to flee deeper into the cave.
An arrow whistled past my head, a silent streak in the torchlight. It struck one of the fleeing goblins in the back of the knee. The creature tumbled to the ground, squealing in pain.
I turned to see Luna, her bow still raised, an expression of fierce concentration on her face. She had loosed the arrow without a word, a silent, efficient protector watching our backs.
The last goblin disappeared into the darkness.
"Let it go," Elizabeth said, lowering her wand. "It will warn the others. Better to face them prepared."
The first battle was over. It had been fast, brutal, and surprisingly successful.
"Your 'magic' is crude," Elizabeth commented, looking at the goblin I had splattered against the wall. "It's like using a club instead of a scalpel. But I cannot deny its effectiveness."
"I'm still in the tutorial phase," I replied with a grin, feeling a surge of adrenaline.
Luna ran up to us, her eyes shining. "My lord! That was amazing! You just... pushed him!"
"And your shot was perfect, Luna," I praised her. "You saved Lady Elizabeth from being flanked."
Luna blushed, her ears turning a delightful shade of pink. Elizabeth, for her part, just gave a noncommittal grunt, though I thought I saw a flicker of grudging approval in her eyes.
We harvested our first pieces of loot. Elizabeth used a small, sharp knife to expertly carve a dull, greyish stone from the chest of the goblin she had killed. A mana core. It was small, barely the size of my thumbnail, and felt cool to the touch.
"A low-grade goblin core," she explained. "Worth about five copper pieces. We'll need hundreds of these to make any real money."
It wasn't much, but it was ours. It was the first coin we had earned for our new enterprise.
The grind began in earnest. We moved deeper into the cave system, a well-oiled, if unconventional, adventuring party. Elizabeth was our vanguard, her ice magic a beautiful, deadly force that froze, impaled, and shattered our enemies. I took on the role of crowd control. My commands were simple, but my programmer's mind found creative ways to use them.
A group of goblins charged us down a narrow corridor. I waited until they were halfway through and then issued a command focused on the ground beneath their feet. LIFT. A slab of rock lurched upward, sending the goblins tumbling over each other in a confused, squealing pile, easy pickings for Elizabeth's ice spikes.
A swarm of Cave Bats descended from the ceiling. Elizabeth's spells were too slow to hit the fast-moving creatures. Luna's arrows picked off a few, but there were too many. I focused on the ceiling above them, on a cluster of loose stalactites. PULL. The rocks groaned and then fell, crashing down into the swarm, crushing several bats and scattering the rest in a disoriented panic.
I was learning. I was adapting. I wasn't fighting like a warrior; I was debugging a hostile environment. Every encounter was a problem, and my simple commands were the functions I used to solve it.
ARIA was invaluable. She was my real-time HUD, my tactical advisor.
[Warning: Three goblins in ambush position behind that rock formation.][Analysis: The leader of this pack is the one with the slightly larger, rustier helmet. Neutralizing him will trigger a morale failure in the others.][Mana levels at 3/10. Recommend conservation. The 'LIFT ROCK' command was inefficient. A simple 'PUSH' against the cave wall to create a disorienting echo would have achieved a similar result for half the mana cost.]
Her guidance was critical, helping me refine my "spellcasting," making me more efficient, more deadly.
After a few hours, we had cleared out a large section of the upper caves. Our bags were heavy with low-grade mana cores. We were tired, spattered with goblin blood and cave grime, but we were victorious. We found a small, defensible alcove to take a short rest.
Luna passed around the waterskins and dried meat. Elizabeth sat with her back against the rock wall, her eyes closed, silently regenerating her own, much larger, mana pool.
"You are a surprisingly competent monster," she said without opening her eyes.
"I'm a fast learner," I replied, taking a long drink of water.
"Your methods are chaotic and unpredictable," she continued. "You wield raw power with no finesse. It is the most brutish form of magic I have ever witnessed. And yet... it works. You see the battlefield in a way I do not. You do not see individual enemies. You see a system of interlocking parts. The terrain, the enemies, their positions... you manipulate the entire system."
It was the most insightful thing anyone had ever said about me. She understood.
"Where I see a goblin," she murmured, "you see a variable that can be acted upon by a function."
"Exactly," I said, a genuine smile on my face. For the first time, I felt a flicker of real connection with this cold, brilliant woman. We were two different kinds of geniuses, looking at the same problem from different angles.
It was during this moment of quiet camaraderie that something strange happened. I was examining one of the goblin cores we had collected. As I turned it over in my hand, it suddenly flickered with a strange, staticky blue light.
[Glitch Detected!] ARIA's alert was sudden and sharp. [Unstable loot drop generated due to host's influence on the local reality code!]
The goblin core in my hand dissolved into pixels and then reformed into something new. It was still a stone, but it was no longer a dull, lifeless grey. It was a swirling, chaotic vortex of black and electric blue, pulsing with a strange, unstable energy.
[Item Acquired: 'Glitched Mana Fragment.'][Description: A crystallized piece of chaotic, corrupted energy. It is a raw, unfiltered piece of the world's source code. Standard magical beings cannot process this. Consumption may have unpredictable and potentially catastrophic effects.][WARNING: DO NOT CONSUME. I AM SERIOUS. DO NOT PUT THAT IN YOUR BODY.]
My heart began to pound with a familiar, reckless excitement. This was it. A glitch. A real, tangible glitch in the system. ARIA's warning was stark, logical, and probably very good advice.
Which is why I immediately decided to ignore it.
"What is that?" Elizabeth asked, her eyes snapping open, drawn by the strange light.
"A surprise," I said, a wide, manic grin spreading across my face.
"Kazuki, no," she said, her voice sharp with alarm. She didn't know what it was, but she could feel the wrongness of the energy it was emitting.
"Kazuki, yes," I replied.
Before she could stop me, I popped the Glitched Mana Fragment into my mouth and swallowed it.
It did not taste good.
For a second, nothing happened. Then, my world exploded.
It was not pain. It was not pleasure. It was pure, unadulterated information overload. It felt like my soul was being plugged directly into the server of the universe. I saw code, endless streams of it, the logic that held reality together. I saw the life-cycle of a goblin, from its birth in the spawning pits to its death at the end of Elizabeth's ice spike. I saw the flow of mana through the earth, the history of the rocks around me, the secret dreams of the bats sleeping on the ceiling.
My mana pool, my tiny 10-point battery, overloaded.
[MP: 10/10... 20/10... 50/10... 100/10... ERROR! ERROR! MANA RESERVOIR INTEGRITY FAILING!]
Blue energy, the raw, chaotic static of my glitched power, erupted from my body, crackling in the air around me. My eyes glowed with a light so bright it forced Elizabeth and Luna to shield their own.
[SYSTEM CORRUPTION DETECTED! ATTEMPTING TO INTEGRATE FOREIGN DATA PACKET 'GOBLIN_CORE_GLITCHED.DAT'!][INTEGRATION FAILED! RECOMPILING... RECOMPILING...][NEW SKILL FORGED FROM CORRUPTED DATA!][Skill Unlocked: 'Goblin Whisperer (Passive).'][Description: Your glitched soul now contains a fragment of 'goblin-ness.' Goblins below Level 5 now perceive you as a potential alpha, a strange and terrifyingly powerful goblin leader. They will not attack you unless you initiate hostilities. They may even, on occasion, offer you shiny rocks.]
The surge of energy subsided as quickly as it had begun. I fell to my knees, gasping, my body trembling from the aftershocks.
"Kazuki!" Luna cried, rushing to my side.
"Stay back!" Elizabeth commanded, her wand raised, her face pale. She was looking at me not as an ally, but as an unstable bomb that had just threatened to detonate.
"I'm... okay," I managed to gasp, pushing myself to my feet. I felt drained, but also... different. A new, strange knowledge was settled in my mind. I understood the grunts and squeals of the goblins. I understood their cowardly, brutish culture. I understood their love of shiny, worthless things.
It was at that moment that we heard it.
It wasn't the squeal of a goblin or the screech of a bat. It was a deep, rumbling roar that echoed from deeper within the caves, a sound so powerful it shook the very stones around us. It was a sound of primal hunger and immense power.
Elizabeth went rigid, her face draining of all color. "No... that's not possible."
[Warning! High-level hostile entity detected approaching your position!] ARIA's alert was a frantic, screaming red in my vision.
[Species: Great Cave Troll.][Level: 45.][Titles: 'Dungeon Boss,' 'Eater of Adventurers.'][Analysis: This entity is not a standard inhabitant of this dungeon. Its presence here is a severe anomaly.][Conclusion: You are all going to die. For real this time.]
The ground began to tremble with the rhythm of heavy, approaching footsteps.
I looked at Elizabeth. Her face was a mask of cold, professional terror. She knew exactly what a Level 45 Cave Troll could do.
I looked at Luna. She was pale, her knuckles white where she gripped her bow, but she stood her ground, her eyes fixed on me, her faith unshaken.
And I looked at my own trembling hands, at the faint, blue static that still crackled around my fingertips.
We had come here to grind a newbie dungeon.
And we had just aggroed the raid boss.