Young Writers Society

Day 1

Most creatures can’t describe what it’s like to be born. To me, it felt...cold. A cold dark mess that was quickly overtaken by light. I heard faint muttering, some far off laugh, and then a scream. I heard beeping, followed by footsteps before someone yelled “STOP!”

…I tried to talk, and then the world went a heck of a lot darker.

When I could finally see I found myself in a dirty stone room with no doors or windows, bare of decorations except for a lazily carved stone throne. No doors, no explanation for why I was there, and no memories to point out what I was. 

I had vague spots of information, I could strangely name the room as a room, and the throne as a throne. I could name me as me. But I couldn’t figure out much more.

Without any hints as to what I was or what I was doing in this place I decided to interact with the only thing in the room.

The throne.

It was a pitiful thing, a solid stone lump that looked like someone punched it into the shape of a throne, rather then planned it. I didn’t want to touch the thing for some reason. Like I was finalizing some plan that I was no longer aware of. But as it was the only thing in the room, and there was no way out of here, I figured I might as well take a seat.

So I did.

“Following the orders of the Greater Goddess of the Underworld [Narull], and Lesser God of Dungeons [Snover] you have been granted a base level Dungeon, and a level one boss body.”

“What?” I said, confused at the words in my head.

“For further advancement please pick a boss body from the following monsters.”

A screen appeared in my head listing off three monsters.

-Hobgoblin

-Orc

-Kobold

I realized for the first time that I never actually saw myself. When walking around, looking down, and stumbling throughout the room, while I could feel, and roughly gauge where I was, I never actually saw my own hands. So I finally looked down to see…

Nothing.

I was a floating existence, hanging in the air.

An awareness without a body.

I refocused on my choices, all of them monsters, slightly higher then the lowest existences this world had, my mind told me. I suppose even as a [Boss] monster I was placed in a level one dungeon, so I couldn’t expect much. Thinking it over for a few minutes I decided on Hobgoblin, which was the most human of the options. For some reason I felt like that was the closest to what I was used to being.

The Orcs, and Kobolds, while humanoid as well were a bit more distorted then I was comfortable with. Orcs had large brutish bodies, massive clumsy hands, and tiny eyes. Kobolds, while reasonably sized, and quite powerful, had a dragon like face, and webbed fingers that i judged as awkward in the dry environment I am in.

Hobgoblins being short ugly green creatures with long ears, a massive nose, and gnarly hands. Their mouths are a hardened bone-like jagged line with curved teeth inside. But at least it would allow me to function better then the other options according to what little information my mind had. 

Out of the three Orc's seemed focused on power while sacrificing intelligence, something I would like to keep. 

Kobolds seem set on defense, and movement in water, since I see no water, it would be useless to me I figured.

Hobgoblins seemed like they were a balanced species with a slightly focus on speed and attack.

So I decided on Hobgoblins in the end.

As soon as I made my choice I could see my hands, which were grey for some reason. If there are any other changes from the standard Hobgoblin, I had and have no means of finding out.

As soon as I picked the option a screen appeared.

Name: －－－

Gender: Male

Level: 1

Race: Hobgoblin Variant [Boss Class]

Titles: None earned at this time

Skills:

[Dungeon Administration lvl 1/20 rank up possible]

[Blessing of the Underworld lvl 1/20 rank up possible]

[Skill Copy lvl 1/20 rank up possible]

[Dungeon Override lvl 1/3 rank up possible]

[Flail lvl 1/20]

Status points:

HP: 100

MP: 20

Strength: 3 (+1) = 4

Dexterity: 2

Endurance: 2 (+1) = 3

Intelligence: 3 (+35) = 38

Charisma: 1 (+35) = 36

Magic: 3

Agility: 2

Luck: 1 (+1)= 2

“As a Dungeon boss class monster, Intelligence and Charisma have been boosted beyond species perimeters in order to allow proper dungeon administration.”

I tried asking a few questions about the screen, but the text in my head didn’t reply, so I was forced to experiment myself.

After playing around with the screen a little bit and testing what I could, I determined that:

[Dungeon Administration] was a skill that allowed me to control the layout of the structure I am trapped in.

[Blessing of the Underworld] is a passive skill that boost my strength, endurance, and luck.

[Flail] is an active skill that causes on attack of mine to count as four low chance to hit attacks. It seemed to have a second long cool down.

[Skill Copy] I had nothing to test on at the time but it looks like a skill that allows me to copy any skill that I see, the level deciding how high the chance that I actually learn it is.

[Dungeon Override] doesn’t seem to do anything at the moment, but it sounds important.

As I focused on the skill [Dungeon Administration] a map appeared, outlining my room and how much space I can lay out rooms and halls. A number hung in my vision telling me how complex I was allowed to make the dungeon, how many traps I could lay down, and how many monster spawns I could place. Along with mentioning that I was required to make my room attach to an entrance point in my dungeon.

Because I could only lay down two simple traps and only had enough freedom on complexity to create a straight line to the exit, I decided to place the only monster spawn, a goblin, in my [Boss] room. I noticed I could [rank up] the monster but I didn’t have enough of the [coins] they were asking for. I also noticed I could change it’s weapons, but as I didn’t have anything other then a club myself, I decided to leave that alone for now.

As soon as I mentally pushed [execute] a simple archway formed on the side of the room I laid out for an entrance. I watched as walls shifted to allow simple traps, and then heard a buzz as a goblin spawned off to my left, dressed in a rag that covered most of it’s chest and legs, and armed with a simple club.

The goblin seemed just as ugly as me, just shorter, but unlike me it didn’t seem capable of anything other then following simple directions. I tried talking to it, but it didn’t do anything other then making growling noises. I am not sure if that is a goblin language or if it is too stupid to have a language. I decided to name the goblin Ash because it had gray skin for some reason.

I tried to leave the dungeon several times, but some invisible barrier stopped me from actually exiting. Outside of my dungeon I noticed it was night, even though it seemed dark I could see quite clearly, it seemed like my dungeon was based in some abandoned mine as I could see some rail carts and pick axes littering the landscape, overgrown weeds locking them all in place. The only other thing worth noting was there were two moons in the sky, one big white one, and one small red one. I don’t know why but I felt like there should only be one moon.

With nothing else to do I dozed off on the stone throne, it was strangely quite comfortable.

Day 2

Today was quite a boring day.

I woke up to my only companion, the goblin Ash I placed a spawn for staring at me and behind it I noticed a small pile of gold. Quickly checking my screen I realize that I had more gold now, not enough to rank up the goblin I had, but more, and that a [gold spawn] was marked on my map, saying:

“Time till next coin spawns, 12 minutes and 43 seconds.”

There was an option to upgrade the coin spawn rate and shorten the spawn time. I only had enough coins for one of them so I raised the coin spawn rate, since the time shortening only lowered the time by one second.

“Time till 3 coins spawn, 11 minutes and 12 seconds.”

The small pile of coins in the center of my [Boss] room dwindled, sinking through the floor till there were only a few coins left. Waiting till it ticked over three more coins spawned in the pile and I realized it takes two hours per what ever many coins it was set at, in this case 3.

Nothing else happened so I spent my time trying to talk to Ash, which didn’t go well. So instead I practiced fighting against it, training I reasoned. We didn’t gain any levels but I figured out how to move my body more, and Ash seemed more capable by the end.

Day 3

Today was a weird day. Not that it means much given the last two days since I was born.

But let's talk about how it started first. After waking up and boosting the number of coins that spawn several times until it was 10, I heard a noise and then text popped up in my head.

“Warning, Two Level 1 Adventurers approaching.”

A corner of my mind told me that I should either kill them or scare them away otherwise they would kill me. Which I figured was a bad thing. So I ordered Ash to hide off to the right of the entry in order to surprise them, and I decided to wait on my throne in order to draw their attention.

As they entered my dungeon and easily avoided the two lazy traps I noticed one was a well armored, blue haired human woman. She looked strong, yet the way she moved was rather clumsy like she had never worn armor before. Behind her was a weak looking little human boy in a cheap and torn up robe. Somehow he didn’t run into any of my traps, despite tripping over his robe so many times. The girl seemed to be the weak boys older sister, and she kept lecturing him as they walked. It was pointless bravado chatter so I won’t write it down. But even to a newly born creature like me, it was clear that she didn’t really know much. I felt sorry for them.

But as soon as they entered my [Boss] room, I signaled to Ash and it attacked the small boy.

While I felt sorry for them, I still didn’t want to die.

While the small boy was panicking, I rushed the older girl. Some text in my mind telling me she was a warrior class. While I didn’t have much power, she didn’t quite know what to do with her sword. Luckily since I trained with Ash for an entire day I knew what I was doing a bit more, bashing her in the face several times. After only a few seconds I used [Flail], missing twice but still overwhelming her defenses, I had killed her, her body rapidly turning into bones before disappearing. It seemed weird to me, but at least I didn’t have to clean up the bodies.

The pale boy, the text telling me he was a cleric looked over, screaming out the name “Anna!” before Ash caved his skull in. The boys’ body disappeared and a text message appeared.

“Invading adventurers defeated, 10% of their gold has been added to your stockpile.”

Along with that I noticed left over gear from their deaths, a limbs worth of armor and a weapon. Apparently anything cut off stays where it's left rather then being brought with the looser.

After using the money to boost the coin spawn rate to 13 I heard a noise and the alert text appeared in my head.

“Warning, Two Level 1 Adventurers approaching.”

I directed Ash to hid off to the side again and waited on my throne. To my surprise the warrior girl named Anna and her cleric brother entered my dungeon again. While I didn’t know the rules of this world, it felt weird to see someone I thought I killed alive again.

“I’m going to get you this time, you weird grey goblin!” She yelled. Her previously cut off arm perfectly fine, though without the fancy armor she had originally came in with.

To her credit, she did ‘get’ me. After predicting the surprise attack of ash, and killing it, the both charged at me, I was slightly stronger then the blue haired girl, the constant healing by her cleric meant she killed me in the end. It was weird how calmly I took it, fading off to the sound of that girl jumping and cheering.

“Invading adventurers won, 10% of your gold has been added to their stockpile.”

After what seemed like a few seconds I woke up on my throne, the two adventurers waiting further back like they had been waiting there a while. This time when they attacked, I won, using Ash to back me up rather then surprise them. The fighting went back and forth, with me winning most of the time, but they kept attacking me, both of us slowly leveling up, my [Flail] ability reaching level 3, my self in general reaching level 7, and Ash reaching level 2.

“You're my rival now! I only lost three more times than you! So you better not lose before I come back!” The blue haired girl yelled at the end of the day.

It was a weird day.

With the money I got I raised the coin spawn rate to 15.

Day 4

Nobody showed up so I spent the day training with Ash, raising my coin spawn rate to 20 by the end of the day. Still not enough coins to bother with slowing down the spawn time. I'll just wait till I have a bunch of money to lower it by a bunch. Maybe when I have enough to remove ten minutes from the time. But that might take a while.

Day 5

Several adventurers arrived, all human at level one, as I had gotten to level 7 I killed all of them quite easily. While a few tried again, most of them left after one try. So most of the day I just waited around. Sadly they didn’t have enough coins on them to raise my coin spawn rate. I raised it to 22 by the end of the day. Me and Ash spent the rest of the day training. 

Since I knew that Ash would just re-spawn, I didn’t worry about killing it this time. So I feel like we both got a lot better at avoiding damage by the end.

Pretty sure Ash was glaring at me by the end of the day though…

I wonder what gender Ash is anyway?

I don’t know if it would be rude to check or not.

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Glossary