【SUMMON】: Welcome back, Aikawa Kanami.
The white text floated in a patch of darkness not unlike a lake at night. That darkness, however, swallowed the message before I could finish reading it. I felt nothing as I watched it unfold, remaining in a daze. It hadn’t been enough to rouse my senses.
No, it wasn’t anything I saw that jolted me back to consciousness. It was that smell. That nigh painful smell invading my nostrils even as I was assailed by an uncomfortable sensation of sludge inching up my throat.
Spurred by those intolerable irritants, my eyes snapped wide open and were promptly assaulted by the sight of a black wall inlaid with blurry smears of white. It didn’t take much looking around to realize that “wall” was in fact the ceiling.
I picked myself up and took in my surroundings. I had been lying on the floor of a stone corridor. There was no way light could penetrate this place; I had the dimly glowing stone walls to thank for being able to glean what information I could.
Installed in a nook of the corridor was a small sort of altar, though it took me a fair bit of careful observation to recognize it as such, given it was close to crumbling from all the wear and tear of age. On top of the moss-ridden altar lay what remained of two candles, and there was what looked like an animal’s pelt offered up next to them. The pelt had an old-timey arrow stuck through it.
The words dribbled out from inside my throat as though somebody were smoking them out of me. “Wha... What is this? I don’t understand... It’s so creepy...”
My heart started racing, nearly bursting inside my chest. It was just as I’d squeaked out—I was dumbfounded. I had no grasp of my situation whatsoever.
Wait, I thought to myself, didn’t I go to sleep in my bed at home as usual?
Yet there was no warm bed to be seen here—no loud mechanical alarm clock, no sunlight bleeding through the curtains, no light bulbs to illuminate anything. Before me was only the dirty, cold stone floor, the freaky dim lighting provided by the stone, and the horrid nose-scrunching stench. Nothing was familiar, and nothing was pleasant.
I groaned, putting a hand to my mouth as I waited for the urge to vomit to subside, but a distant roar prevented me from taking a moment for myself.
“GRAAAAHHHH!!!”
Something told me this was not the bellow of a rational creature. Its doleful bloodlust nearly made me jump out of my skin.
“Is... Is that howling? Wait, hold on! You’ve gotta be kidding me!”
I hadn’t the foggiest what was happening. I couldn’t even comprehend the words spilling out of my own mouth. Bewildered and off-balance, I ran in the direction opposite the growling and howling, rushing down the corridor, its stone path glowing softly, eerily, creepily. No matter how many twists and turns it took me down, the scenery stayed the same, and as panicked and fretful as that made me, still I ran.
Soon, my ears were met with a disgusting splat, and I found I had stepped on something hard to the touch. I looked under my sneaker and saw a bug the size of a fist crushed and chittering in its death throes. I yelped at the grisly scene. I wasn’t particularly scared of bugs, but in the concrete jungle I grew up in, I had never encountered an insect of such massive proportions. The revulsion was visceral.
The dying bug screeched; it almost sounded like it was crying for help. I stood there, horrified, but then I looked up, my eyes landing on the next turn in the path, from behind which a man-sized insect was peeking out. Its gargantuan frame beggared all common sense. Its shrill chittering was cacophonous, its angular bug appendages in constant motion. At a glance, it resembled a stag beetle, yet its twin hornlike protuberances chipped away at my sanity.
At this point, I was a mess of exclamation points and question marks. I couldn’t even make a peep, assuming it would provoke the monster and spell my end. So I turned on my heels and ran in the other direction. I ran and ran, never looking behind me. I didn’t choose what path to take; I just let my instincts take the reins—pulling away from that monster was my sole driving force.
I sprinted until my stamina gave out, and I started slowing down. I tried to catch my breath, and that restored a modicum of composure.
“Wraaahh!” The incensed beast’s roar echoed. It sounded closer this time. Idiotically, I had run right back to the place I had first come from. The blood drained from my face, and I froze. But thanks to my drawing closer to the beast’s howls, I could pick up other noises as well—specifically, the sound of people talking.
I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but as if guided by an invisible light, I began walking in the direction of their voices. The slow-moving gears in my head craved the company of others. The company of my fellow human beings. I was also drawing closer to the cries of the monster in the process, but at least I could start to discern what the voices were shouting.
“Back away from it!” a man cried to his nearby comrades. “Back away, and buy time!”
They were right out of a fairy tale. For one, their attire was far from normal. One wielded a wooden bow and wore leather armor of the kind you’d never see outside of a museum. Another was waving around a plain-looking greatsword with all his might. And a third was shooting fire from her entirely nonmechanical wooden wand. None hailed from any reality I recognized.
What’s more, they were jockeying around an enormous wolf over three meters tall in the middle of the corridor. I wasn’t brave enough to jump into the fray. All I could do was stand still a distance away and watch.
The man who had the air of a leader pointed at the warrior brandishing the greatsword. “If we can buy enough time, it’ll all work out! Stand firm!”
The swordsman held his greatsword aloft and attempted to strike the wolf, which reacted by tackling him with unnerving speed, sending him hurtling toward the other end of the corridor like a rubber ball. The beast next laid its eyes on the woman holding the wand. The others formed ranks to protect her.
“Regroup! Strike where it leaves itself open!”
On those orders, they backed away from the wolf, leaving me the closest human to it on the battlefield. This presented both a good opportunity and a clear and present danger. I was frightened and confused. If I’d been able to calmly analyze my situation, I could have simply hidden somewhere. But all I could do was stand there in a stupor. Then, my eyes met those of the leader guy, who was wielding a rapier.
“Wha... Who are you?!” he barked, surprise written all over his face.
I snapped to my senses and immediately pleaded, “I, err, I got lost. P-Please, help me!”
My legs were slowly taking me over to him. My words were halting, but even so, I had faith he would understand.
“Help you? Are you insane?” His words were a knife of ice that gutted that faith.
“Huh?”
The man hadn’t even said no. His open contempt told me he viewed my plea as outrageous and out of the question. Of course, if I’d had my wits about me, I would’ve realized these people barely had their own situation in order. They weren’t in a position to spare me any mind, nor were they that type to begin with. I should’ve accounted for their equipment and weaponry, the ferocious monster, and the fact that their predicament was dangerous as hell.
I didn’t, however, possess that level of clarity at the moment. And that’s what decided the outcome.
“This is the Dungeon. Not to mention we’re outside the Admin Area. Weren’t you prepared for this going in, ya dumb kid?”