Benny woke the following morning, still in the same position. His body remained stiff, locked in place like a corpse that hadn't gotten the message it was supposed to be dead.
Something new covered him now. Another pile of refuse, though he couldn't identify what it was in the darkness. The stench was overwhelming. Rot, decay, death. The smell permeated everything, thick enough to taste on his dry tongue.
Though he couldn't move much, his other senses were functioning. He had a clearer head now than when he'd first woken yesterday. The fog of confusion had lifted somewhat, though he still couldn't recall what had happened to him or how he'd ended up here, buried under garbage in what appeared to be some kind of disposal pit.
His hunger was gnawing at him, a constant presence in his gut. But with his enhanced body, whatever that meant, a little hunger wouldn't kill him immediately. His physiology was different somehow. Stronger. More resilient.
What he needed right now was water. Fluid. His throat felt like sandpaper. His tongue was swollen and sticky. Dehydration would kill him long before starvation did.
But where would he find water in a place like this?
The question formed in his mind almost randomly, a desperate thought cast into the void.
And a moment later, something answered.
A sudden chime rang inside his head. It was a clear sound, mechanical and precise, like a bell struck in a perfectly tuned room.
[DING! WOULD YOU LIKE TO USE LABYRINTH SYSTEM FUNCTION: MINI MAP? YES/NO]
The words appeared in his mind, not spoken but somehow transmitted directly into his consciousness. It was accompanied by a feeling of something foreign, something artificial pressing against his thoughts.
Benny panicked immediately. His dry voice cracked as he shouted into the darkness.
"Who?! Who's there?! Where are you? Can you help me, please?!"
His words echoed in the confined space, bouncing off stone walls and returning to him unanswered. There was no response. Only the lingering mechanical feeling of that voice, if it could even be called a voice. It didn't sound human at all. It was something otherworldly, something that operated on principles he didn't understand.
His awareness snapped back into focus as the panic subsided. He forced himself to calm down, to think rationally. That's when he noticed it.
Floating in front of him, visible somehow despite the darkness, was a text. Actual words, glowing faintly in the air like they'd been written in light.
He hadn't seen it at first because his eyes had been darting around frantically, searching for the source of the voice. He'd been in panic mode, not paying attention to what was directly in front of him.
Now he read the words carefully:
[WOULD YOU LIKE TO USE LABYRINTH SYSTEM FUNCTION: MINI MAP? YES/NO]
It was the same message he'd heard in his head. The same mechanical offering of assistance.
Benny wanted to slap himself to see if he was dreaming or hallucinating from dehydration. He knew there was magic in this world. He had vague memories of fire being conjured from nothing, of healing potions and enchanted weapons. But nothing like this. This seemed new. Different. More structured and clinical than the wild unpredictability of magic.
After several long moments of simply staring at the floating text, waiting to see if it would do anything on its own, Benny realized it was waiting for him. It wanted an answer. A decision.
He thought about it carefully. There was nothing left to lose. He was trapped, injured, dehydrated, and buried in a pile of rot. Whatever this "Mini Map" function was, it couldn't make his situation worse.
So he thought, clearly and deliberately: "Yes."
The words began to fade as he accepted the offer. Then the thing in front of him changed into something else entirely.
A layout appeared before his eyes. Geometric shapes and lines forming a diagram of some kind. He recognized what it was immediately, though he couldn't explain how he knew. The knowledge came from somewhere deep within him, some fragment of memory or instinct that remained intact.
This was a map. A representation of space and location.
After studying it for a moment, he noticed one place on the map was blinking with a steady rhythm. A marker of some kind. Looking at his immediate surroundings and comparing them to the shapes on the map, he began to understand the system.
The outlines showed what was around him. The shape of the room, the positions of walls and obstacles. Some areas were blacked out, unexplored or beyond his line of sight. But those he could see directly were being outlined here in perfect detail.
He was beginning to get the gist of it. At least, he thought he was. If he moved, would the map update? Would the blacked-out areas become visible as he explored them?
That was still theoretical, though. And theories didn't matter much when you were dying of thirst.
"Well, whatever. It's not like I can do much about any of this while I'm trapped under garbage."
But his thirst had reached a critical point. He could feel something inside him desperately searching for fluid, crying out for water with an urgency that bordered on primal. His sense of smell had sharpened to an almost painful degree, probably his body's attempt to locate moisture in any form.
It was now or never. He had to move.
Benny began forcing his body to respond, wincing through the pain that shot through every muscle and joint. First, he focused on his fingers. Move. Just move. They twitched, then curled slightly. Good. That meant they still functioned.
Next, his toes. He couldn't see them, but he could feel them responding to his commands. Wiggling inside his boots, confirming they were still attached and operational.
Next came his arms. He concentrated all his willpower on lifting his right arm, pulling it free from whatever was pinning it down. The effort was immense. Pain lanced through his shoulder, his elbow screaming in protest. But the arm moved. Slowly, agonizingly, it rose from the pile of refuse.
He used that arm to pry away the things covering him. Corpses, he realized with growing horror. Rat men corpses, mostly. And some other creature he didn't know. All in various stages of decomposition. He was buried in a mass grave, a disposal pit where the rat kingdom dumped its dead.
The realization should have been more disturbing, but he was too focused on survival to care. He pushed the bodies aside, creating space to move. The work was exhausting. He was sluggish, weak, out of breath after just a few minutes of effort. But he kept going, driven by the desperate need for water.
After clearing enough of the pile, he tried to raise his body to a sitting position. His core muscles refused to cooperate. Too weak. Too damaged. He couldn't sit up.
So he changed tactics. He rolled onto his side, then onto his stomach, managing to get his arms underneath him. From there, he pushed up into a crawling position. Hands and knees on the cold stone floor, surrounded by death, barely able to support his own weight.
But he was mobile. Barely, but it was something.
He began to move forward with no clear destination, guided only by instinct and the new mini-map that floated in his vision. The map updated as he crawled, revealing new sections of the dungeon as they came into view. The blacked-out areas gradually filled in with details, showing corridors and chambers he couldn't yet see directly.
His progress was pathetically slow. Every movement was agony. His arms trembled with the effort of supporting his weight. His knees scraped against stone, probably bleeding though he couldn't tell in the darkness.
But he kept moving. Forward. Always forward. Because stopping meant dying, and some deep part of him refused to accept that.
He'd already died once, though he couldn't remember it. Some instinct warned him that dying again would cost him more than he could afford to lose.
So he crawled through the darkness, following the map's guidance, searching for water with an intensity that bordered on madness.
He was back to zero. No weapons, no supplies, no allies, no clear memory of who he'd been or how he'd gotten here. Just a broken body, a mysterious map, and the stubborn refusal to die.
But he wasn't truly helpless. Not yet.
The mini-map showed something ahead. A symbol he didn't recognize, but his instincts told him it might be important. Water? Food? An exit?
He wouldn't know until he reached it.
So he kept crawling, one painful movement at a time, through the corpse-filled darkness of the rat kingdom's deepest dungeon.
The labyrinth had killed him once. It had stripped away his memories and left him buried among the dead.
But it had also given him something. A system. A tool. A function that might, just might, give him the edge he needed to survive.
He would use it. He would learn it. He would master every function and feature this "Labyrinth System" offered.
And then he would crawl out of this pit, find water, find food, find weapons, find answers.
And maybe, eventually, find out who the fuck he used to be.
But first, water. One goal at a time.
The blinking marker on the map grew closer with each painful crawl forward.
And in the darkness, Benny refused to stop moving.