Cillian was falling. More accurately, he was rolling, head over heels, smacking his skull on dirt and rocks and screaming at the top of his lungs. There was dirt in his mouth, and he landed with a splash in a puddle of mud.

He was absolutely drenched. Panting, he took a moment to calm his racing heart. It was dark. He couldn’t even see in front of his face. Pitch black, and for a second, he thought he had maybe hit his head so hard he lost his vision, which didn’t bode well for his survival chances, but then his eyes focused and he saw a pinprick of light, far, far away.

Okay. It was just dark in here. He was fine.

Slowly, he came to his feet and patted around for his hatchet. There it was, right on the ground next to him, completely covered in mud, and he hurriedly wiped it off on his shirt, only succeeding in smearing more across his body.

Julius Strange has requested to accompany you.

Y/N

Irritably, he hit ‘no’, and checked his body for injury. Bumps and bruises, but it didn’t feel like anything was broken.

“Well, at least I didn’t die by zombie,” he muttered and called up the status window.

VIT 37/40

Okay. He was fine, and it wasn’t ticking down. How the hell he was supposed to make it through this entire level with only 40 health was beyond him. Didn’t you need to kill things to level up? Wasn’t it a bad idea to go into the next level only at level 4? Or was he ahead?

“I should eat that fish,” he said aloud. It seemed like the best option right now. He had no idea if his luck would go up, but there didn’t seem to be anything down here, but if he ventured further… Well. He watched Indiana Jones, thank you kindly. But would that affect anything in place, or would it just make things miss him? What did ‘luck’ even qualify as? Did it make things more difficult so there was a higher reward? Luck didn’t fill in the hole of skill. He knew that better than anyone. All of his opportunities in life came from his skill.

Maybe he shouldn’t. He needed to do risk assessment here.

Or he should just be impulsive. He was never particularly smart, anyways.

“Item box,” he ordered, and the box flickered into life before him, illuminating the tunnel. Without even waiting to see what would happen, he opened the three fish filets and stared at them. It said to eat them raw. Should he just eat them?

Fuck it.

He needed all the help he could get, and he was hungry.

Cillian bit directly into the meat, and immediately almost gagged.

He knew this taste, way too well.

When he was a kid, his dad came back from the city, where he had somehow wandered into an Asian market, brandishing a spiky fruit. When they cut it open, it had these strange pockets of flesh, and the flavor. It was somehow good and awful, stinky, wet, slimy, and this… this was the flavor of durian.

In a fish.

You did not want your fish to taste like durian.

It was melting in his mouth, and he wondered if he should actually be eating this, but he had already committed to his own stupidity, and it was time to follow through. If he died, he died an idiot, and it wasn’t like he was planning on going out any other way. Better than being eaten alive by zombies, at least.

Squeezing his eyes shut tight, he took another bite of the painfully sweet fish, chewed, and then flinched as it proceeded to just melt in his mouth. Swallow. Take another bite. Couldn’t you die if you ate a whole durian by yourself? Or was that an internet hoax?

Oh, well. Chewing and swallowing was his only prerogative right now. Chew, swallow, chew, swallow. The flavor got better the more he ate, and oh, gods, he was really going to eat all three hunks of fish in one sitting. What was he thinking? There were zombies above his head, and he was having an impromptu un-vetted sushi session.

Impulse control. He was going to need impulse control if he was going to survive this dungeon.

Before he realized it, his stomach was completely full, and the meat was entirely gone, leaving him sitting in mud and darkness and wondering what the hell possessed him to do that.

Julius Strange has requested to accompany you.

Y/N?

Again? Whoever this Julius was, he was damned persistent. Cillian hit ‘no’.

“Status window,” he said, and the tunnel lit up once more.

CILLIAN JAMES

LEVEL 4

STR 18

DEX 18

INT 15

WIS 15

MANA 18

VIT 40

LUCK 156

SKILLS: NONE

STAT POINTS TO ALLOT: 0

ITEM BOX: 1 ITEM

Oh… Oh, that was a fuck ton of luck. How much was that? He was bad at math, and tapped his fingers to count down from 156 to 66. 90?! That was 30 luck per each fish?! Seriously??

Ding!

Congratulations! You have received your first skill!

Oh, great. That would hel---

Oh.

Timelord

We only have so much time in this world, and you have chosen to live it by your own questionable rules. As such, you have the ability to freeze time in place. Time may be frozen for .25 seconds according to your amount of luck.

Mana: 50

So… so he couldn’t use it. And he wouldn’t be able to use it for a long time. It was an OP skill, no doubt, but if he was only at 18 mana now, and he got five skill points per level… Oh, he couldn’t do math, who was he kidding? He would… he would…

“If I’m at eighteen now, I need to get to fifty, which is thirty… two?” he mumbled under his breath. “And it’s five points per level? So I could only level up mana and nothing else per each level? That’s… that’s…”

Six levels? Maybe seven? Of only upping mana? But wouldn’t it be good to also level up luck so it could last longer? What was .25? One fourth? Why did the Tower require math? He was a writer. He didn’t do math. He failed stats before he dropped out of college.

“Alright,” he said and came to his feet, slowly working out the kinks in his shoulders. “I just have to survive till I can use it, and then I can just run away from everything. It’s fine. I totally got this.”

He did not, in fact, have this, because this tunnel was very long, but the slide he had come down had zombies swarming it. And hidden tunnels… didn’t they normally mean hidden bosses?

Nah. The Tower wouldn’t do that. He was way too low leveled for an actual boss fight this soon, wasn’t he? Yes, of course he was. It was probably a hidden treasure room. Of course it was.

Emboldened by his naive hopes, Cillian broke into an easy jog, the mud squelching under his feet. Should he be suspicious at the lack of traps so far? Absolutely, but he was not going to be engaging in that sort of negative thought. There was a light at the end of the tunnel, and he wasn’t going to focus on the question of how many levels there were, or how he was going to get out of here, or if he was even going to survive. He wasn’t going to focus on this currently useless skill that was so insanely OP it was almost a guarantee that he would not get a new one for awhile.

Hatchet gripped tightly in his filthy hand, he picked up the pace, boots wetly slapping in the muck, and the light slowly grew ever larger. Now that it was closer, he realized it was not, in fact, a white light, but a sickly green, and the realization almost made him stop in his tracks, but…

Momma didn’t raise a quitter.

Granted, there was no actual mother, just him and his dad, but…

Did he really have to keep going?

Cillian pulled to a halt and looked over his shoulder. He could try to climb back up that hellish slide. He really could give it a shot. But there was a horde of zombies out there, and the very thought made him shudder, because that was not chocolate syrup.

No, he had to keep going.

He was a bit out of breath, but felt strangely good. It had to be the Tower, because he had been basically sedentary for six years, with a horrid eating schedule, sometimes going days at a time without food because he was so busy writing. At times, Jeremy had to come to his apartment and force him to shower and go out to eat.

Jeremy…

Cillian missed him already.

Nope, no time to dwell if he was going to survive. But, he kind of wished their last conversation hadn’t been so pathetic. Wow. He was going to have to brain bleach that.

Cillian broke out into a jog again, heading directly for that green light that would definitely spell his doom. Within a few strides, his feet hit cobblestone, which felt more ominous than it deserved, but that might be the anxiety speaking. Even so, he kept running, because there was virtually nothing else he could do.

He was frustrated. It was boiling under the surface. He knew it wouldn’t take much time to blow off and engulf him, but it wasn’t like the Tower was expecting him to not be frustrated.

Gods, he wished he was in his shitty shower that would sometimes turn boiling hot for no reason right now. He really wished he was anywhere but here.

The light was getting bigger and bigger until it took form into an elaborate arched doorway. Cillian couldn’t see beyond it, but he still skidded to a halt just past the entryway.

Tall windows were the first thing he saw, looking out to a starry night sky, tinted green from the stained glass all in varying shades. Ornate gothic arches, and a large hall made of mosaic tiles in some spiraling circle design. And, at the very end of it, hidden in the shadows of an alcove was…

An utterly massive half-rotted corpse, dressed in armor, slumped over a huge hammer, and Cillian’s eyes went a little wide. It was easily taller than a two-story building, sitting in what looked like a throne, with a crown on its head. And it was very, very still.

Too still, actually.

Congratulations!

You have found the hidden quest: The Decrepit Queen.

Bonus objectives: defeat the Queen with no damage dealt by you or to you.

Slowly, Cillian looked down at the tiny, so tiny hatchet in his hand.

“WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THIS?!” he screeched, louder than he intended. The Queen slowly lifted her head to reveal pinpricks of glowing green eyes beneath her helmet.

Oh.

Oh, he was definitely going to die this time.