I fucking hate everything. After I woke up from the post-kill nap, I was immediately assaulted by pain. Not caused by a monster, but by myself. Specifically my damn ovaries. I knew I was forgetting something.

My periods have always been terrible, at least for the year I’ve had them. I was planning to go to a doctor soon to see if I could get some pills or something, but that ain’t an option right now.

And you want to know what the cherry on top is?

Reproductive Stasis Ring

Requirements: Female

Will “freeze” the wearer's reproductive cycle in a stasis, preventing them from getting periods or pregnant. Sexual acts are not prevented by this. Cannot be equipped while on period or while pregnant.

It’s the fucking ring I got from the giant rat. I coulda just put this on last night and avoided this if I just looked at it, but my lazy ass didn’t bother. I just had to suck it up and get over it.

There were two other items that the rat dropped, while I’m talking about it. The bag was just filled with some copper coins, I threw them in with the rest. The other is a dagger.

Scrap Shank

A dagger made from discarded steel. It lacks proper craftsmanship, but its blade leaves nasty wounds.

No shit. The thing it just a sharpened chunk of metal with leather wrapped around the hilt so you don’t cut yourself. It’ll have to do, since my switchblade was fucked.

There’s not much I can do while my vagina tears itself apart, so I just did what I could. First was food and water. Water was fairly easy, at least I thought so at first, but…

Leptospirosis

An infection commonly found in rats, and spread through contaminated water. It can cause headaches, muscle pains, and fevers.

I THOUGHT THOSE DAMN LIVERS FILTERED IT! I learned my lesson after that, boil the water. Watching survival shows paid off.

I still needed food and more of that water, so I hunted in the caves close to me. I could usually find a few of the weird lizard things around. Also some crab creatures called “Mud Pinchers”. They dropped meat. Now usually be just fine with eating crab meat… if it didn’t come from something with “mud” in the name and lived in the sewers. I don’t exactly have the luxury of choice though.

I cooked it thuroughly… and got salmonella.

I AM SO SICK OF GETTING SICK!

FUCK IT! I’LL JUST BURN IT TO THE POINT WHERE BACTERIA COULDN’T POSSIBLY SURVIVE! IT TASTES LIKE SHIT, BUT IT’S FUCKING BETTER THAN THE ALTERNATIVE!

After that mental breakdown, I managed to find a better way to cook it that didn’t involve turning it into charcoal.

The last thing I did between surviving, bleeding (and reading some of that book I brought with me), was practice magic.

… yeah, that sounded just as stupid in my head.

I don’t even know where to start. My first guess was meditation, because, you know, it’s how they do it in movies. My personal skill says I should be inherently good at this shit, so hurry the fuck up!

I spent several days, at least I think they were days, I don’t exactly have a clock… or a sun. Whatever, I spent the next eternity practicing meditation until my body got it's shit together. Nothing happened. No visions or weird sensations. Nothing.

And now, I wake up in the middle of sleeping to this.

Congratulations! You have spent one week in The Dungeon! You are now able to gain a class! Classes are ranked based on difficulty to aquire.

YOU MEAN TO TELL ME THERE WAS A COOLDOWN?!

TELL ME IN THE TUTORIAL YOU SHITFUCK!

Whatever, at least it’s an option now. Let’s see what I can have.

Class Options:

Dweller (E)

You live in filth and squaller, surviving on whatever you can find. Your resourcefulness knows no bounds. Gain the Class Skill [Scavenger]. Gain a 2% boost to Agility. Diseases have less effect on you.

Scavenger

What appears to be junk has many uses. You can more easily spot salvageable material and chests are more likely to have useful items.

Not surprising for my situation, and it’s not even that bad, despite the name. I’m not really in need of salvage, but the boost to agility, disease resistance, and loot aren’t that bad.

Cook (E)

No one doesn’t appreciate a good meal. Gain the Class Skill [Good Taste]. Gain a 2% boost to Agility. The food you make is much tastier and spoils slower. Gain a skill slot.

Good Taste

You can instinctively tell what the perfect temperature to cook an ingredient is, as well as tell what other ingredients blend well with it.

… I boiled water and burnt crab, it’s not exactly an achievement. And despite how tempting better and more long-lasting food is, Dweller is still superior. Next.

Assassin (B)

You stalk your prey and hit them where they’re vulnerable. You are silence, you are death. Gain the Class Skill [Cloaking]. Gain a 10% boost to Agility and a 5% boost to Intelligence. Stealth skills level up faster. Stealth kills grant more EXP. Gain 2 skill slots.

Cloaking

Secrets are an assassin's stock and trade. You can disguise your status screen from those with inspection skills. Those with a high enough inspection skill relative to you can still break through this skill.

… dayum. That’s good. Definitely gives me a better chance at survival than Dweller. I still have one class to look at, but it’s gonna be hard to top this.

Survivor (A)

You don’t have a class, yet you’ve traveled to places not fit for life, and faced monsters that would kill a lesser person. Yet you survive. And you succeed. Gain 3 skill slots. Gain the Class Skill [Perserverance]. Gain a 100% boost to Vitality. Resistance skills level up faster.

Perseverance

You will bear your burdens, and be stronger for it. The lower your HP, the less damage you take.

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST THAT’S SOME GOOD SHIT!

Doubling my vitality?! That’s broken as fuck! The whole class seems based around being unkillable. And I am just fine with that.

But it does leave me with a dilemma. Should I go with Assassin or Survivor? The other two aren’t even worth considering at this point.

Killing efficiency, or survivability? It’s… harder than it should be. It’s not hard to see that my path is going down the Assassin route, with my stealth skill and preference for knives.

But this isn’t a game where min/maxing is the best way to go. There is a serious chance of death, which is a prospect I am not fond of. I’d rather survive the whole thing.

But will me taking Survivor over Assassin actually save me? Or will it tilt my skills into something I’m not prepared for and end up getting me killed?

I end up just laying down for an hour, just picking out the benefits and potential routes of these classes. I do end up making a decision in the end.

Survivor.

I’d rather live to regret it. I’m not far into my journey, so it’s not like I can’t just start learning different skills if needed. But there’s also the fact that I don’t really need to change my style. The class boosts certain aspects of my status, but it doesn’t make any paths hard set. Sure, I’d be a great tank, but I’d rather not take hits if I can avoid it. I just want to live through the ones I can avoid.

I can just be an assassin who has way more health than I have any right to. Plus I doubt my journey of diseases has come to an end. “Gotta catch ‘em all” is not a good goal for this occasion, but I might just end up doing it anyway.

So yeah, Survivor it is.

And after picking my class, I got to choose my subclass. For which I only had one option.

Giant Killer

You stand tall while facing those who stand taller. And when you meet their eyes, they look away in fear. You killed a foe over 10 stages stronger than you. When facing an enemy 3 or more stages above you, their skills and resistances will be somewhat weakened.

It’s a good option tho. Even if I didn’t really earn it. Although I’d argue that calling it “Luck” to be grabbed by a giant squid and dragged into hell sewers isn’t fair.

And now that that’s out of the way, I notice I’m feeling pretty good now. Maybe it’s extra vitality, but I think my period is finally gone.

So I waste no time on equipping that ring.

Oh fuck that’s cold.

Yeah, apparently when it says it’ll “freeze” my shit, it literally feels like it’s frozen. I feel like someone just fisted ice cubes into my ovaries!

Fuck!

So I lay here in a frozen hell for maybe an hour until I gain the strength to walk again.

How much must I suffer?

The answer is a bit more, because I’m bullying myself into going back into the dungeon.

Even if I’d love to get some magic shit before heading in there, I still have no idea where to start. Spending years down here just eating crab meat and drinking lizard guts isn’t enticing just for some voodoo shit.

Getting ready, I pick up my new knife and swing it a few times to get a feel.

You have gained the skill [Dagger Proficiency]!

… Really? After that fight with the rat, I was just a few swipes away?

I go for another practice swipe and feel something… different. My feet shift slightly for better balance, and my grip adjusts to something more comfortable.

… I ignore the implications that skills can affect my very being and instead try and be happy at the improvement.

Last thing on the list, SP. I’m spending it. That strength saved me from the rat, and if I invested a bit more I might’ve killed it outright. I’m being too stingy with it. I still won’t spend it all, I’ll probably need something else from the shop like another healing potion. So I’m spending all but 50 of my points. I have 183 so that gives me 133 points to work with. That’s good… I think.

First, playing to my current strengths, vitality. I dump points in hopes to get it to 100, but it stops at 87.

You have reached the limit to this stat for your stage. Reach the next stage or train to increase the limit.

Dammit, of course. I was wondering about that. If everyone can just keep getting SP and dumping it into their stats, why would anyone take a class? You could just become all powerful anyways. And there’s my answer. It makes sense but it’s still annoying as hell.

I continue with my other stats, physical first since they’re the most relevant at the moment. Strength reached its peak at 63, which was disappointingly low. My agility did the same at 90. That left me with 43 stats left, which I split between intelligence and wisdom.

In the end, my stats came out like this.

Name: CJ Daunt

Species: Human

Age: 13

Sex: Female

Class: [Survivor]

Subclass: [Giant Killer]

Skills:

[Disease Resistance] Lv.3 [Anatomy] Lv.3 [Silent Steps] Lv.2 [Dagger Technique] Lv.1 [None] [None] [None] [None]

Racial Skill: [Thriving]

Personal Skill: [Intrinsic Mana]

Class Skill: [Perseverance]

Stats:

HP: 1740/1740

MP: 720/720

Strength: 63

Agility: 90

Vitality: 87

Intelligence: 71

Wisdom: 72

SP: 50

Boons:

Curses: Leptospirosis, Salmonella

Despite the disease, it feels good to make progress.

Now let’s go kill some shit.