Deadworld Isekai

As Matt backed away from Fatty, he stumbled over the outstretched leg of a dead mole. As off balance as he was from missing a full foot, this knocked him flat on his ass.

Without wasting any time, Matt started crawling away. He ditched his spear, there was a near-zero chance he could actually kill one of the moles in a one-on-one fight. It was better to run away faster.

Glancing back, Matt saw that Fatty's speed was limited by his massive body maneuvering around the other dead moles and a natural fear of fire. The two moles with it made no attempt to rush past, possibly out of deference to Fatty's size.

Adrenaline was surging through Matt. The rough rock floor was tearing away at his knees with every crawl. They were like dozens of pin-pricks all at once. His efforts weren't doing much though. From experience, he knew that he couldn't outpace the moles even at a full sprint. Although Fatty wasn't built for speed, it was still faster than him. Much faster.

After a few agonizing seconds, Matt felt a pinch against his leg, and then mind-blowing pain. Fatty had taken his other foot. Matt rolled sideways to see a glimpse of his foot disappearing into the thing's mouth, followed by a heavy gulp from the monster. He yelled, half in pain and half in desperation. Fighting back the shock, Matt inched back a bit more and swung the torch he had kept in his left hand.

Fatty reared off its front legs at the sudden light. With its head back, it roared in defiance of the flame. His too-large bulk slammed against the top of the cave, dislodging even more dust. Matt could hear the other two moles chattering behind the roar, probably waiting for their turn at him.

None of the three seemed to be in a hurry, which made sense. Matt was well past the point at which he could run. He was well past the point where he could put up a fight. As far as they knew, dinner was served.

Matt closed his eyes, etching the image of a roaring mole into his mind. The swing of his torch at Fatty wasn't desperation, he had a plan.

Back home, he had spent enough time as a teenager looking at weaponry on Wikipedia to get a primitive understanding of something called a directional explosive. Claymore mines were directional explosives. At a high level, they were just a layer of c4 explosives and another layer of ball bearings. To keep the bearings from flying in all directions, the back of the claymore had a heavy metal plate. With a single claymore mine, a single soldier could take down a whole group of enemies.

Matt didn't have a heavy metal plate, c4 explosives, or ball bearings. But he did have a cooking pot with a screw down lid, fuel canisters, and handfuls of weird Gaian mystery metal.

He didn't have a detonator, but he did have the multi-tool that could turn into a spike and punch a hole in the back of the pot. He also added a few needle-thin holes to the gas fuel canisters before he placed them in the pot. And finally, he had dumped the entire lot of metal into the pot before sealing everything shut.

A couple of days earlier, he had found a nice spot for the contraption. With the lid angled upwards, it was bound to give someone a bad time.

Matt hoped that the earlier explosion hadn't shifted the makeshift claymore, or worse, exploded the thing. His prayer was answered when the torch reached near the back of the pot, and he heard a sizzle.

Fatty was so large he didn't even have to aim the claymore. It just had to work.

And it did work.

Just not the way that Matt expected. He had to close the pot to keep the gas in, and so his directional charge plan hinged on the fact that the metal of the pot was stronger than the threading on the pot's lid. It wasn't.

The entire jerry-rigged apparatus exploded apart. It turned out he hadn't built a claymore. He had built a frag grenade and set it off a few feet from his body.

The result was like a meteor falling through the atmosphere. It tore everything apart.

Matt had secured the pot in place with a couple of heavy rocks. The back was well-supported with a hole for the trigger, the sides as well, and nothing at the front. So when the pot burst, it showered mostly rock and the occasional bits of metal at Matt. Matt first felt a blast of air hit him, before the rocks and metal came. They pelted him, broke his bones, and burned his skin.

After the shock wore off, Matt was pleasantly surprised that his eye had been spared. He could see the aftermath.

Fatty had gotten the worst of it. One of the mole's legs was completely ripped off, and it was perforated by pieces of metal in dozens of places. It laid limp on the ground, hissing softly, but unable to move at all.

It was small comfort to Matt, who was also dying. Matt smiled a bit through agony-clenched teeth.

He laid on the ground, face-to-face with the badly injured mole as they watched each other die. At some point, one of Matt's breaths caught in his chest. He tried to labor the breath out, and found he couldn't. This was it. He had lost.

—

Suddenly, Matt's eyes shot open again. He was still in the cave, but he was seeing double. It took a second for it to register on Matt that his other eye had come back. He tried to roll, and instead of phantom pain coming back from his legs, he found himself surprisingly nimble. His feet had come back.

As far as Matt knew, there was only one reason that could be. He had cleared the dungeon. Sure enough, a plinth was rising from the ground only a few meters away. He began to crawl toward it.

Halfway through, he realized how dumb that was.

Wobbling, he stood up with both of his very appreciated feet and made his way to the plinth, which was still rising into place. Before he could relax, he heard something out of place.

It was the chatter of a mole.

Looking back, Matt saw Fatty's two assistants looking back at him. More importantly, they were unharmed. Fatty's sheer size had absorbed the blast and protected his two assistants, and they looked ready for revenge. Or a meal. Probably both.

Matt slapped his hand on the plinth, but nothing happened. It apparently needed to be fully exposed to work. Come on, come on! He mentally screamed.

Finally, the plinth was almost up, and Matt jerked his hand towards it only a fraction of a second too late to avoid the full weight of a mole slamming into him like a mutant, underground linebacker.

Matt’s entire world turned into pain as the two animals flung him around like a ragdoll. He was bitten and scratched and bitten again, so fast he couldn’t track the damage. He resisted as much as he could, but it was futile. It wasn't even a fair fight. Finally, he went limp under a pile of mole, just at the base of the unused plinth. For a few seconds, there was nothing but the sounds of mole teeth clacking through muscle and bone.

Then a bloody arm shot out of the pile, touched the plinth, and the whole dungeon ceased to exist.

—

“Matt! Matt!” As Matt struggled back to consciousness, Lucy’s voice was more than loud enough to cut through the fog and hurry the process along. He opened his eyes to see a frantic little girl, one frightened enough to have forgotten she couldn’t actually touch him with her tiny holographic fists. She soon noticed his open eyes. “You’re awake! Are you okay?”

Matt realized that he didn't know. He did a quick inventory, finding all the normal Matt-parts in all the normal places. Apparently, the teleport out of the dungeon allowed for the same kind of full auto-heal as a victory inside it. Maybe the dungeons were all just a bad dream, he'd ask Lucy about it later.

“I’m fine, I think. How long was I out?” Matt asked.

“What the hell happened?” Lucy ignored Matt's question.

“Things got… pretty bad right at the end. I think I might have fainted.” Matt reached toward her and pantomimed a reassuring shoulder pat. “I’m fine now.”

“Fine? You were gone for weeks! I got nothing, Matt. No notifications, no system alerts, nothing. What happened?”

“I think…” Matt paused as he realized he didn’t need to assume. He knew the truth. “The system tried to kill me.”

He recounted everything that had happened, from the weird teleport to the horrifying welcome of an over-powered dungeon. He explained the time he had spent away was because of the sheer number of preparations he had to do to have even the barest chance of winning. He briefly considered sparing her the gory details, but decided she had a right to know. Whether she was there or not, she went through the same risks he did.

He ended with an understatement of the year, “I thought the first few dungeons were close calls. I had no idea.”

“Oh, Matt. Oh, shit. I’m so sorry.” Matt could see her putting together her next sentence carefully. “I, uh, believe you when you say you think the system did this. But are you absolutely sure? It’s very lazy, Matt, but that doesn’t necessarily make it a murderer.”

Matt told her about the questions he had asked the system while he was hiding in the dark, and how he had triangulated the possibility that it had tried to use the dungeon as a weapon.

“And there’s one other thing. While I was down there, hiding? It tried to make a deal,” Matt said.

“What kind of deal?” Lucy asked.

“It offered me another chance at reincarnation, to another planet. With increased support, no less.”

“Wait! That's incredible. The system doesn't usually admit or fix its mistakes. Why… why didn't you take it?” Lucy began to hesitate by the end of her sentence.

“Part of the reward was the assignment of a new, improved system guardian.”

“Oh,” Lucy's said in a small voice. She blinked. “OH. That fucking asshole.”

“Agreed.” Matt sat down on the ground. It was hard for him to be upset after what he had just gone through. There was no better feeling than surviving a near-death situation, and having feet. Even the system's betrayal couldn't damper his happiness.

“Still, though, Matt. You probably should have taken it.” Lucy looked serious. “If I’m being honest, it’s not like our chances of survival are that good anyway, especially with the system against us. Do you think if you asked, it would…”

“Guardian! Lucy! Look at me. Look at my eyes,” Matt yelled, surprising himself. He waited until Lucy looked directly at him. “No. Absolutely not. We're a team. We have no idea what that jerk would have done with you. We aren’t doing that. Not now, not ever.”

Lucy eyes betrayed conflicting emotions. After a few moments, her expressions firmed up, and she nodded. Matt nodded back.

“Now that that’s done, I honestly need to sleep a little. I’m sorry. I know you must have been bored while I was gone.”

“No, I'm… just good to have you back. Honestly. But Matt, before you go to bed, what did you get as a reward? You just went to a level ten dungeon. Maybe even level fifteen. What was the loot?”

Matt hadn’t thought about that. He pulled open his notifications, noting that none of them had come directly from the system. No surprise there. He couldn’t imagine the system was going to give out many rewards right now, or in the future. The rules might force it to, but it wasn’t something Matt could count on.

But there were notifications from the dungeon system, notifications that confirmed Matt’s suspicions that the dungeons ran on a different OS than the system. He saw the reward, and his jaw went slack.

What is it, Matt?”

He told her. Her eyes lit up.

“Oh, hell yes.”