Max was in a hurry. He had finally gotten enough money saved up where he felt comfortable enough to spend some on a new Nintendo Switch and buy a bunch of games. He was planning on buying them and spending the rest of the afternoon playing the new Fire Emblem game. He had heard that it was good, and was planning on going through all four routes, to get the full experience.
Max had just pulled up to the Gamestop. Finally, he'd be able to buy something after weeks of holding out for it! And then when he opened the door to the store, he was seriously confused when there weren't any games.
What he should have done was take a step back before the door swung shut behind him. But what was before him stunned him into trapping himself in another world. Or at least, that's what he figured later.
When he entered what he thought to be the famous game store, he had somehow entered a portal that brought him right to a long tunnel, with the occasional flaming sconce lining the rocky surface.
Where was he? He had just been about to go and buy some video games, right? This didn't look like a Gamestop...
With a loud thump, the door closed behind him, and he was startled out of his reverie. He looked behind him and saw the remains of a rickety wooden door, propped up against a wall. Max opened the door, half expecting to see the outside world. Maybe the Gamestop employees were pranking people and had renovated or something?
He panicked when all he saw on the other side of the door was just dirt. Great! He was stuck here, wherever here was. It was like magic, oh wait, magic didn't exist… He had to be dreaming right? That means that he had nothing to fear!
He smacked himself, and felt pain. Ok, not a dream. First thing that he had to figure out was where the hell he was. Clearly at the dead end of some sort of tunnel system, maybe a mine? He didn't see any pickaxes or machinery, so he wasn't positive about that last bit.
Max didn't exactly see anything, just by peering into the darkness, so he lifted one of the flaming torches out of a sconce on the wall and held it high and made his way down the tunnel. Within a couple hundred feet, it branched off the right and left. He wasn't quite positive which way to go, but chose the right direction on instinct. His instincts had always shown him the right way to go before, so he followed the path as it wound about.
The young man was about to give up on this direction and turn around, when he heard sounds coming from ahead. Thinking that it was someone, he called out, "Hello? Is anybody there?"
He should have been more cautious. From within the darkness appeared two large, blue, unblinking eyes. That didn't look like something that was safe.
"Uh, sorry to disturb you, I'll just, go now."
A rush of cold filled the tunnels, and chittering could be heard from the thing in front of him. The flame on the torch he was carrying flickered, almost dying completely, and Max started shivering. From the darkness came a long, undulating tentacle, roughly the width of a tree, and he turned and ran.
Down the hall from which he came, he passed by the starting hall on the now left, knowing that it led to a dead end. He could hear clicks of something following him, close behind.
What on earth was that? Where was he? Where could he hide?
He came out into a room that looked almost like a study, not seeing anything dangerous here, before his eyes settled on two doors, one looked like a closet, of sorts, and the other looked like it led further into the gloom. He weighed his options before hiding in the closet, dropping his torch to the stone ground in the process.
He opened the door, and hid among what must have been clothes, older than centuries. There were also what appeared to be sewing supplies here, but he didn't have time to think, before he heard the beast stop outside, in the room.
Max had left the closet door open a crack, and upon seeing the monster, he couldn't breath. The thing looked like a large bug, roughly the size of a rhino. Six hazer sharp mandibles hung from its mouth, and they whirred, clearly hungry for something. Icy puffs of air came from its mouth, and Max understood why the air had chilled so much. Two long tentacles hung from its backside, searching around the room for him. It walked on four long-spider like legs, and he was sure that the beast was faster than he.
With a start, he saw beady blue eyes swiping around the room for him, and he stilled, unwilling to let the beast see him. It turned its eyes towards the closet door, and made to move towards him when the door on the other side of the room opened, and another monster entered the room.
Max didn't know how he could get even more horrified, but this thing was just even more wrong than the first beast. It looked like it could be a human, but gross, cancerous growths hung out of the creature's head, making it look a little like the winter lanterns from Bloodborne… but without the tentacle things and huge eyeballs. The creature had large bloody claws, and large spines rose when it saw the other monster, and with a sickening gurgle from its toothy mouth, it lunged for the larger beast.
The two monstrous beings tore at one another; clearly this was the second beasts territory and the first one had encroached, causing the fight. It was bloody, and Maxwell watched with growing horror and fascination as the second monster ripped the tentacles off of the bug like creature's back, before going for the legs.
The second monster wasn't to be trifled with either, as it blasted the humanoid monster with its ice breath, effectively freezing it to the spot. It maneuvered itself so that it was above the second creature, and lowered it's cutting incisors onto the monster's bulging head. A screech could be heard from the second beast, and suddenly it's arms broke from the ice that had encased them, and they lashed upwards, cutting out the bug's eyes.
Blue and purple blood fell to the ground as the two monsters tore each other to pieces, before all that was left was the main body of the humanoid beast. It had lost both of it's arms in the process, but it had clearly done something, as the insectile monster had caught on fire, and burnt to a crisp.
Max watched as the beast looked around the room, before a smaller pair of hands reached out from under the robes it was wearing, and picked up one of it's clawed arms and held it to it's raw stump, and was astounded when the flesh started to connect between the two pieces.
He didn't know what he was doing until he had already done it. All Max knew was that he could not allow this beast to heal itself, especially not after it had taken down that monstrosity. He pulled his hidden hunting knife from it's spot on his belt, and with a cry, he thrust it into the monsters back, before taking it out and striking at it, again and again until it was still.
To be sure that the thing wouldn't just heal itself, Max cut off it's head, for good measure, before looking around the room. He needed something that would burn. The torch that he had dropped to the floor had long since gone out. He saw a fireplace in the room, already having some wood in it, and set up a fire that would make his old scoutmaster proud.
He was shaking as he pulled a zippo lighter out of his pocket and started the fire, stoking it until it was a roaring fire, and slowly fed it the body parts of the humanoid monster.
Just where was he that monsters that he couldn't even imagine roamed? This whole situation made him think of a dungeon crawl video game, the likes of Binding of Isaac or something bigger like Dungeons and Dragons.
He shook his head. There was now way that this was all real, right? But the blood and carnage that sat in the room near him was definitely real, and Max felt like throwing up. But he held it in, and sat in the room in silence. He wasn't stupid enough to think that the danger had passed. Where two monsters existed, more were surely to follow, especially if the territory was suddenly cleared up by the absence of two dangerous beasts. The man knew that he had gotten lucky with the two beasts fighting each other, but if he wanted to survive he needed a plan of action.
Not just that, but the scout in him made him calm himself. The first thing that you do in an unknown environment is to find a water and food source. Water was pivotal, without it he would die in about three days. You can go a week or so without food if you really need to, but it was just as necessary.
Next thing that Max needed after that was some form of defense. A shelter of sorts that could protect him from the beasts in the dungeon.
He looked around the room, and aside from the monster bits, it was every bit as untouched as it was when he first entered. It had a bookshelf on one side, lined with scrolls and a book or two. On the other side, a bed lay, clearly the sleeping place of the beast he was now feeding to the flames. Max was suddenly hit with exhaustion. Maybe he could rest for a bit before looking for a water source.
He made up his mind and pushed the bookshelf in front of the opening he had come from, and pulled the bed in front of the door to the rest of the tunnel system. He didn't want to get attacked from either side while sleeping, and figured that he'd get jostled if something tried to open the door, or he'd wake if something collapsed the bookshelf to get at him.
He dropped in the bed, and felt himself drift off to sleep.
When Maxwell awoke, he knew that he was hungry. There was a tell-tale gurgle coming from his stomach, and he knew that he needed to find a food source. He looked around the room once more, this time taking in a desk and some writing utensils, as well as seeing the closet once more.
"Well, where there are monsters, surely there's some sort of treasure, right? Maybe i can find something that will help me protect myself."
He searched the closet, and all he found were cloaks and robes of varying colors and sizes. Maybe some sort of wizard had once lived here? Max couldn't find anything overtly useful in the closet, and sighed, before looking at the bookshelf. Maybe there was a map or something that could help him figure out where he was.
He brought a pile of scrolls to the desk, and unfurled them one at a time. There were quite a lot of diagrams, as well as a list of plants and some that looked familiar, but the scratchy cursive gave Max pause, he was never good at reading cursive, and it looked like he was out of luck, even if it did seem to be written in english.
Near the end of the scrolls, he finally found something of note, which looked like a map. He looked it over, and pinpointed a location that looked similar to where he thought he was based on the tunnels that he had walked through already. Where he had encountered the insect like monster with tentacles, the map was labelled with something called a Idex. Max could only imagine that that was the name of the creature, or what it's species was called. There were other names on the map, which the man tried to memorize, even with the cursive.
Leonir- Gileff- A drawing of something that looked like an elephant- Hydra (Oh shit)- Ants (Don't see how those are scary, unless they're big ants)- Kappa- Grophori- and finally the simple word: Demons. While Max wasn't sure of some of the names, others seemed to be relatively dangerous, especially from what he had heard of mythology. If these demons are actual demons, then he definitely didn't want to encounter them, not at all.
Max committed the locations of the monsters and where they were located to memory as much as possible. He then searched for any other landmarks, especially some sort of water source. He had an estimated two and a half days before he died of thirst.
Luckily, there were two places that might be clean water sources. One was an underground lake, notated with the word Hydra near it. Max wasn't sure if he wanted to get near a hydra just to get water regularly, but he might have to. How did the ancient greek heroes kill hydras again? All Max knew was that when you cut their heads off that more grew back to replace it. Not exactly something that he wanted to tangle with, especially since he thought that the beasts might be venomous.
The other water source was a fountain, that looked like it was in close proximity to the thing called Leonir. The fountain seemed to be closer too, so Max was sure that it would be safer to get to regardless, and if he needed to run, he could always come back here.
A thought struck him. This was a dungeon, right? That meant that there had to be traps of some sort. Maybe if he could find them and use them to kill the monsters, he'd be able to come out unscathed.
Not to mention that might allow him to get food from the beasts.
Max wasn't happy with the idea of eating monsters, but what choice did he have? There also seemed to be a garden of sorts, which the elephant drawing lived in. Maybe he'd be able to find some fruits or something there.
The next thing that Max did was lay out what he had on him. His knife, which was a bowie knife, was 12 inches in length. He had a zippo, which he had owned for a bit, but it should last for a bit if he used it conservatively. In his pocket he had his cell phone, which upon checking it saw that he had 73% battery life, as well as no signal. It stood to reason that wherever he was, he couldn't call for help.
Lastly, he had his car keys, which were useless, his wallet, which probably didn't have anything in it that he could use, and his clothes. Most of these things he couldn't objectively use, unless he needed to use his clothes to make a bandage or something, although…
He looked at the dusty old cloaks in the closet. Maybe he could use one of those instead of a shirt in an emergency.
He didn't have a hard plan or anything, really just a work in progress, but at least he had some sort of idea. It was time to take on the dungeon.