Among the metaphors on earth, there is one that I don't really like. The one that says, "Fuck around and find out."

  After all, if no one ever fucked around, we'd never find out!

  — System admin 007.

  ***

  Whenever Zayn didn’t leap towards problems, problems sought him out. Staring at his newest problem, his insides twisted into knots, bubbling into a bitter feeling in his throat. The sphere of mana shifted, churned, moved inside him—utterly independent and conscious.

  He’d been patient, cautious even. He leashed his greed. Yet, trouble still came to his door and made its bed on his lap.

  All because he tried to steal ideas from a vine.

  While he despaired, something moved. No. Someone. A swift, dominating presence, heading right towards him. He didn’t notice until the clattering noises of armour rang behind him.

  At the last moment, he lunged forward, sending the ashes flying beneath his feet. The attacker for some reason hadn't attacked even though his back was wide open.

  Zayn didn’t lose his composure, getting himself into a defensive position. And the best defensive position was one where he could run the hell out at a moment's notice.

  “What year is this?” An authoritative, feminine voice commanded.

  Clad in a heavy black armour, she stood with immense authority. Even her face hid behind a slanted helm. The scar in the middle of her armour was distractingly large, spurting out a shadowy, iridescent fog.

  Thud

  The armoured figure phased right in front of him like a ghost.

  “I asked-” The hollow holes on her helm glared piercingly. “What. Year. Of. The. Second. Immaterial. Age. Is. It. Now.”

  Zayn awkwardly pursed his lips. In this dungeon, there were two “people” other than him—a madman and a ghost, and he was somehow the third-best person to ask this question. He didn’t even know what day it was right now!

  Is it 2029? The apocalypse year 01? The dark age of mankind?

  Zayn shrugged. "I have no idea either."

  A chilly aura veiled her as she locked her hollow gaze onto his.

  Backing a few steps, he made a mental command to his heart. His heart only returned a weak burst of red energy.

  Always unreliable whenever he needed it the most.

  He glanced at her black helm. The shadows exuding from her armour. His skill, 'I see you now', soon displayed a name.

  Faeria, Lv ??

  Faeria? Like Treants... Fae? She must be the final boss of Fae, or something.

  Assessment interrupted…

  “You didn’t just do that!” The dark particles simmering around her armor froze for a second. A slight amusement cracked in her voice. “You did. What a brave, valiant young man you are.” She pointed her curved, shadowy glaive towards him. “Seems like they don’t teach manners to the younguns these days. Then, allow me.”

  The eye sockets of her armor gave off an eerie glow, and she shot back a beam of dark mana from her glaive, slashing toward him at a blinding speed —without giving him any chance to react.

  He attempted to dodge, but as if the beam knew his position, it locked and pierced through his chest like a speeding bullet. Panic filled him as he was launched back from the impact.

  He breathed in. Breathed out.

  Restore! Shift the damage to my arm! I don’t care if it bursts. Left arm, Gauntlet. Then I have to just race to the old man! It doesn’t even hurt. It doesn’t—

  He stopped.

  Actually, it didn’t hurt. Not a bit.

  Faeria was just as surprised as him, and shot out another two beams at him just in case.

  He shifted, skirting around the first. But the second still struck him. But he remained...unharmed.

  What in the cinnamon fucking toast had just happened? He’d seen her fire at him twice. Seen it punch through his chest.

  How was he unharmed?

  “You–it's inside of…you!” Visible shock leaked through the holes of her eye socket. She receded and almost fell to her knees, having to use the glaive to anchor herself.

  Her shoulder shook as she stared at him without a pause. Then, a laugh rang out from her. Almost mournful. And increasingly… delirious.

  Apprehensive, Zayn backed a step.

  There was...not a single normal person here.

  Finding that he couldn’t be harmed by her, he no longer ran. He had a hint of an idea of what the sphere inside of him was—he wanted her to confirm it wasn’t what he thought it was.

  Poising himself to run at the first sign of trouble, he started. “I have no idea what year this is. All I know is that all my kind has been brought here by ‘The system’.”

  After a while, the woman in the armour stopped quivering and recovered to being unnaturally calm again.

  “What dungeon zone is this?”

  She didn’t know?

  Zayn hesitated, but decided to tell the truth. “Hell zone.”

  “Don’t kid me! Hell zone is reserved only for an elite team of contestants above Adept level. You are barely an apprentice! The gall on you for trying to fool me!”

  Zayn felt stumped. He turned around, wanting to leave, but something shadowy stopped him, bound him in place.

  “What rank is your race? Which gods do your people worship? What houses do you follow? And are you all so irresponsible that someone so weak and insignificant like you has been let inside the hell zone?”

  That was a lot of questions. And Zayn took offense to that last comment. “We were integrated just yesterday, and I don't know—”

  Another energy glaive made of shadow motes struck the ground between his legs. But this time, they did real damage, shattering the platform beneath him.

  Like that was going to scare him anymore.

  He was already scared enough!

  He tried to convince her again, “If I were this weak after years of integration, I wouldn’t be here, you said it yourself. I don’t have a death wish!”

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  That was a lie.

  “I was brought here yesterday, with no consent of my own, by something called ‘The system’, right as apocalypse struck my old world.”

  She stared at him in confusion.

  “The third covenant sanctions that,” Her tone thick with distrust and a lack of understanding. ”All sentient and sapient beings have the right to the tutorial.”

  Well, I am sorry for having my rights violated, alright? He snorted mentally. How could he explain that a system admin had sent him here because Zayn had ignored the-troll-of-an-admin for trash-talking his favourite movie?

  He’d rather eat a fly.

  “It’s because I offended someone called Sysadmin007.”

  “You made that word up.” She was up and standing again, relatively stable by now.

  Zayn just stared at her blankly.

  Not only had he not gotten any answer, but he was also the one getting flipped around.

  “Look, lady—”

  “Faeria.”

  “Lady Faeria, can we not joke around—"

  “Just Faeria is fine.”

  He sighed and gritted his teeth.

  Communication was hard. But he’s going to do it for Raka. He owed it that much.

  For the next few minutes, he explained the things that happened since he’d gotten here. He didn’t give away all the information, like the encounter with the old man, nor did he ask anything about Raka reviving, or the ground that swallowed things.

  Often, he sensed a disdainful look flash under the helm as he spoke. Later on, he also got bombarded with sarcastic questions. Eventually, she nodded, seemingly trusting his part of the story.

  “So, you offended a First-tier overseer and got yourself dumped into the hell zone. I’ve never heard of such a thing. Actually, that’s…impressive.”

  Zayn snorted and mentally laughed at her.

  At least I wasn’t trapped inside a dungeon since ancient times!

  That was pretty much the only information he fished out of her. She was tight-lipped when it came to everything else.

  Gazing around the chamber, she then struck the floor with her glaive. “I take that you don't know how a dungeon is ranked? Tell me, why is a hell dungeon called a hell dungeon?”

  “Because hell zone is the hardest zone?" Zayn probed. As far as he knew, there were five difficulty of dungeon zones. Normal. Hard. Extreme. Lethal. Hell. And it was easy to guess which was the hardest.

  “Naive!” She explained with a snort, “It’s not merely about the difficulty. Some extreme zone dungeons have stronger foes than those of the hell zone. But what makes a dungeon hell zone…hell zone is its constant unpredictability."

  That somehow made a lot of sense.

  "Always a downward spiral, here. Always, something goes wrong. Bad becomes worse, and terrible situations unfold as time passes.”

  He nodded.

  Ever since yesterday, he has been in a constant state of screwing himself over. No wonder. It was because everything here kept getting worse.

  But then, a terrible realization dawned onto him, “Wait, that means it’s about to become even worse than now—”

  A loud rumbling rang from the depths of the chamber, like the snarling of an enraged beast.

  "Correct. Get ready for a workout.”

  “Workout?” He tilted his head up and down, noticing the hairline cracks that had appeared on the chamber, and then they spread. The entirety of the chamber began to crack like a broken vase.

  Zayn only needed a second to know what was happening. He’d consumed too much fantasy not know.

  Everything was going down now…

  Every fucking thing was going down now…

  “Who the fuck wrote this script?!” He shouted, but nobody was there to answer.

  Faeria had vanished, leaving him stranded alone without help.

  He ran for his life.

  With the vines gone, the pits on the ground—hollow, amorphous holes—stared at him like the eyes of an abyssal beast. He’d gotten used to some truly abhorrent stuff, but he still needed a moment to ignore the crawling sensation in his skin.

  He moved through them.

  Small cracks spread from the holes, resonating with each other, amplifying and turning into longer cracks. He was quite literally running on eggshells.

  "Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck."

  What kind of luck was this?

  It was like all the problems in the world had jumped up on his shoulder.

  From the corner of his eyes, he caught movement within the empty holes. Dark, slithery veins crawled out from them en masse, like a nest of snakes. They hung in the air for a second, as if they didn’t know what to do. Then one of them spotted him, and their attention all shifted to him.

  Bringing the half-broken sword out in one hand and threw Reinforced fist whenever it got crowded, but for every vine he burst through, two sprang out to take its place.

  Fae blood siphoned! 5.09>9. 01%

  The blood siphoning didn’t help with the running, unfortunately. Still, he kept overexerting his arms to tear a path open.

  Fae blood siphoned! 9.01>14.3%

  With fourteen points in constitution, he could use Reinforced fist twice with each hand, without much discomfort. After that, he’d have to let his hands rest for half an hour.

  But he ignored all the rules today.

  He jumped, stumbled, and trudged forward. Injuries piled upon him one after another, but he struggled his way back to the wall where he’d entered from.

  He stopped for nearly half a second, for something caught his eyes.

  There were many hollow holes on the wall, each shaped like a different individuals. Some of them were of wildly different races than humans.

  He quickly recognised one that was the shape of a human—or rather…him.

  Me?

  Why the hell was there a shape in the wall, just his shape?

  He dashed inside, making his way back into the hallway. The quaking inside the hallway was a step more intense.

  Everything, the statues, the masonry, and the ornaments, had broken down. And whatever didn’t break was on the verge of breaking down.

  The wall behind him cracked too; countless vines slithered out from behind. His heart dropped as he realised the distance.

  Even at his best speed, it would take more than a minute.

  By then, these vines will be doing a victory lap around him. Exhaling loudly, he fixed his mind. His eyes turned resolute.

  He decided it was time to gamble.

  Zayn forced out a charge, mimicking the motion of Reinforced fist, without actually activating the skill. After several excruciating failures, his heart vomited out a thread of destructive mana. It circled his body like a lost child before he pushed it down to his right leg.

  His eyes widened when he saw how much mana he pushed out, but by then, it was too late. The arrow was out of the bow.

  His leg struck the floor like a warhammer as he took his next step. The force shattered the floor beneath him, and Newton’s third law did its work—it flung him upwards using the repulsive energy.

  He bent his body down to an awkward degree to ensure he went the correct way. Almost hit a couple of boulders before he landed with a thud.

  Feat [Autodidact] - (Bronze) unlocked!

  Autodidact: How?! How did you, of all people, find out a new application of your skill, that too all by yourself? That’s actually impressive. Can’t say the same for 95% of your populace.

  Effect: +2 Intelligence.

  Tiny changes happened to his body, and he felt the mana more clearly than ever before. He even caught mana particles in the air, glowing with brilliant colours.

  But a disgusting feeling of something going amiss crept up in him.

  He felt it in his next step, that his right leg had gone numb from that. Behind him, the slithery, abominable things scrambled to catch up, shooting forward like a nest of snakes.

  Alarmed, he called out for Restore. After two or three attempts, the Nameless gauntlet finally sent a confused response back. It was asking where to shift the damage.

  “Left hand, transfer the damage to my left hand!”

  The bite force of a beast struck his hand. But that was merely the beginning. The muscles and tendons of his hand cracked before dislocating. But his leg gained it's mobility in return.

  Hissing, he once again sprinted to the door.

  This time around, he was careful to pull smaller amounts of charged mana. Each step he took cracked the already broken floor like a thin sheet of glass, propelling him like a rocket. Air cheered him, and the destination became closer with each breath. And soon, he was at the doorstep.

  He turned around to grin at the vines for one last time.

  “Later, losers.”

  And then he leapt out.

  Out of the house, he huffed on his knees. Even his bones were sore. But the thrill of successfully making out alive made him forget all squawking in his bones. Even his torn hand.

  That was…something.

  He might be addicted to this feeling, alright.

  “You are not as hopeless as I thought.” Faeria appeared right behind him, like spawning out of his shadows.

  What? He was confused how she could have gone within his shadow.

  “You would have made a decent foot soldier back at Volume of Black Ravens.”

  Zayn shot her a side-eye. That sounded like those sketchy unpaid internship offers. Also, what was a volume in the context of army? Like battalion? From her demeanour, she couldn’t have led much more. Then again, many incompetent people got to high position not through merit but connections.

  Stuck lamenting, he didn’t notice the heat in the area increasing, until a strange…blistering heat struck his skin.

  Rustle…

  He crinkled his nose at the familiar smell of sulfur and rotten eggs. Eyes wide open, he surveyed all directions.

  What the hell?

  Tongues of flames sprang out of the ground and covered everything in his vision. The patches of grass and roots were the first to turn into ash, followed by the impenetrable mana wall of before. The thick trees surrounding them fell, too.

  "What...is this?"

  He scrambled to avoid getting touched by the fire, but eventually, everything in his vision was submerged underneath. Though, despite the heat and smell, the fire didn’t burn him outright. It just passed through him, as though it existed in an entirely different plane of existence.

  As though he was a mere passerby to all this.

  He glanced at Faeria for an explanation, but she too was stuck in place. Her shoulder trembled as she peered at the remains of the house. He followed her line of vision…

  This is—

  The hellish heat dialed up. A soul numbing scorch assaulted his feet, as if earth itself was exhaling death on him. With a thunderous crack, the ground beneath convulsed and split apart. The house broke down, from which rose a molten, colossal ape-like face, streaked red with magma.

  The face of a walking, burning mountain.

  Stone ape - Lv ??

  “Fucking hell.”