The entrance to the Dungeon was not a cave mouth. It was a giant, open book made of stone, leaning against the side of a cliff. The "pages" were layers of sediment, and the entrance was a dark tunnel carved right through the middle of a paragraph.
Above the tunnel, a sign carved in jagged runes read:
"ENTER YE WHO ABANDON HOP."
"Abandon Hop?" Barnaby read from his jar, which was strapped to the First Son's chest. "Is this a dungeon or a brewery? Or are they forbidding us from jumping?"
"It's a typo," Aryan said, his [Reality Architect] eyes glowing blue. "And in this dungeon, typos are traps. If we try to 'hop' in there, we'll probably take damage. Everyone, keep your feet on the ground. No jumping."
[SYSTEM ALERT: DUNGEON ENTERED]
[TYPE: PUZZLE / LINGUISTIC]
[DIFFICULTY: HARD (FOR ILLITERATES)]
They stepped inside. The air was dry and smelled of chalk dust. The walls were covered in glowing graffiti, but the words were floating slightly off the stone surface.
They walked for fifty meters until they hit the first trap.
The corridor ended abruptly. A massive pit blocked their path. Sprouting from the bottom of the pit were hundreds of sharp, rusted iron spikes.
A floating neon sign above the pit read:
"DEADLY SPIKES AHEAD."
"That looks remarkably fatal," Sarah said, her [Cowardly Tactician] passive skill causing her to vibrate with anxiety. "We can't jump over it (No Hopping rule), and we can't climb the walls. We're stuck."
"Not necessarily," Aryan said. He stepped up to the edge of the pit. "The System controls the reality here based on the text description. If I change the description, I change the reality."
Aryan raised his mahogany finger.
[SKILL ACTIVATED: THE RED PEN]
[MANA COST: 10]
He reached out to the floating neon sign. He tapped the word "SPIKES". A holographic keyboard appeared. He backspaced the "I" and the "K". He typed "O" and "N".
The sign flickered and changed to:
"DEADLY SPONES AHEAD."
"Spones?" Rhea asked. "That's not a word."
"Wait for it," Aryan muttered, quickly correcting his typo. "G... E..."
"DEADLY SPONGES AHEAD."
POOF.
The sound was soft, like a pillow landing on a bed.
In the pit, the rusted iron spikes instantly morphed into massive, soft, yellow kitchen sponges.
"Jump!" Aryan commanded.
They leaped into the pit. Instead of being impaled, they bounced harmlessly on the giant, squishy sponges.
"This is dignified," the Talking Stove grumbled, bouncing up and down. "I feel like a crouton in a very soft salad."
The Run-On Serpent
They climbed out of the Sponge Pit and entered a massive, circular chamber. The floor was covered in ink-stains.
Suddenly, the ground shook. A hissing sound filled the air—not the hiss of a snake, but the hiss of a person talking way too fast without taking a breath.
"...andthenIdestroyedtheintrudersandIatetheirbonesanditwasdeliciousand..."
From the shadows slithered a nightmare.
It was a Run-On Serpent.
The monster was fifty feet long, but it had no scales. Its body was composed entirely of a single, never-ending sentence of glowing green text. It coiled around the room, suffocating the space with words. It didn't have a tail; the sentence just kept generating from its midsection.
[BOSS: THE RUN-ON SERPENT (LVL 10)]
[ABILITY: RELENTLESS NARRATION - The boss attacks continuously without a cooldown phase because it has no periods.]
"It never stops!" Mira shouted, dodging a strike from the snake's head (which was the word "THEREFORE" written in bold).
The Snake lunged at the First Son.
"...andIwillcrushwoodandturnitintosawdustand..."
CRASH.
The Giant raised his shield, but the Snake hit him three times in one second. Bam-Bam-Bam.
"I can't tank this!" the First Son rumbled. "It has no attack interval! It's spamming!"
"It needs a full stop!" Aryan yelled. "We need to end the sentence!"
He tried to get close to use [The Red Pen], but the snake was moving too fast. Its body whipped around, creating a whirlwind of adjectives and conjunctions.
"I can't get a lock on the text!" Aryan shouted. "It's moving too fast to edit!"
"Allow me to assist!" Barnaby yelled from his jar.
The fish narrowed his eyes. He focused on his [Disaster-Grade] potential. He didn't have a weapon, but he had a fin.
Barnaby twitched his left fin exactly 3 millimeters to the right.
[SKILL ACTIVATED: THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT]
[CALCULATING CHAOS...]
[RESULT: GRAVITY ERROR.]
Suddenly, the ink-pot hanging from the ceiling (a decorative fixture) rattled. The vibration caused a single drop of ink to fall. It landed exactly in the eye of the Run-On Serpent.
"...andIwill- OW!"
The Serpent flinched. For one micro-second, it stopped moving to blink.
"Now!" Sarah screamed. "Tactical window open!"
Aryan lunged. He didn't try to rewrite the whole sentence. He sprinted toward the Serpent's midsection. He leaped into the air, his coat flapping, his mahogany finger glowing bright red.
He slashed the air vertically.
[INSERT: PUNCTUATION MARK "!" ]
He slammed a massive, glowing red Exclamation Mark right into the middle of the Serpent's body, between the words "bones" and "and".
BOOM.
The effect was catastrophic. The sentence was forced to stop.
The front half of the snake slammed into the invisible wall of the Exclamation Mark. The back half kept moving and crashed into the front half.
The Serpent shrieked in grammatical agony.
"...SYNTAX ERROR!"
The glowing text shattered. The snake dissolved into a pile of harmless alphabet soup letters on the floor.
[BOSS DEFEATED!]
[EXP GAINED: 1000]
[LEVEL UP! ARYAN IS NOW LVL 2]
The Mimic and the Merchant
In the center of the alphabet soup lay a glowing golden gear.
[QUEST ITEM: GEAR OF LOGIC]
Description: Used to fix the elevator to Floor 2. Side effect: Holding it makes you winning arguments easier.
"We got it," Aryan said, picking up the gear. He felt a sudden urge to explain why Star Wars prequels were misunderstood, but he suppressed it.
"Look," Rhea pointed to the corner. "A Treasure Chest!"
It was a beautiful, wooden chest with gold trim. It looked perfect. Too perfect.
"Wait," Sarah said, holding out her hand. "I'm a [Cowardly Tactician]. My passive skill [Paranoia] is tingling. That's not a chest."
Barnaby squinted. "It's breathing."
The chest lid snapped open, revealing a row of razor-sharp teeth and a long, slobbery tongue. It was a Mimic.
But instead of lunging at them to bite, the Mimic coughed politely.
"Greetings, travelers!" the Mimic said. Its voice was oily and fast. "Before you loot me, I'd like to talk to you about your car's extended warranty! Or perhaps term life insurance? The dungeon is a dangerous place!"
It was a Salesman Mimic.
[ENEMY: HAGGLE MIMIC (LVL 5)]
[ATTACK: DRAINS YOUR GOLD PER SECOND BY TALKING.]
"My gold!" Aryan checked his system interface. His coin count was dropping. 500... 495... 490...
"It steals money by wasting our time!" Aryan shouted. "Attack it!"
"No," Sarah stepped forward. She adjusted her glasses. A cold, ruthless light entered her eyes.
"I used to work in Human Resources," Sarah whispered. "I can handle this."
She walked up to the Mimic.
"Excuse me," Sarah said, her voice dripping with bureaucratic icy calmness. "Do you have a permit to solicit in this zone? I'd like to see your Manager."
The Mimic froze. "I... uh... I am a freelance dungeon asset..."
"Freelance?" Sarah raised an eyebrow. "So you aren't declaring your taxes to the Dungeon Core? That's tax evasion, Section 4, Paragraph 2."
The Mimic began to sweat wood polish. "Now, hold on, lady..."
"I'm going to need you to fill out Form 10-B," Sarah continued, relentlessly boring. "In triplicate. And until then, I'm seizing your assets."
[CRITICAL HIT! EMOTIONAL DAMAGE!]
[THE MIMIC HAS FAINTED FROM BOREDOM.]
The Mimic groaned and collapsed, spitting out its loot to get Sarah to stop talking.
[LOOT DROP: SKILL BOOK - "SHADOW STEP"]
[LOOT DROP: 200 GOLD]
"Remind me never to annoy Sarah," Mira whispered to Aryan.
"Agreed," Aryan said. He picked up the Skill Book.
[SKILL BOOK: SHADOW STEP]
Class Requirement: Rogue / Anchor.
Effect: Teleport short distances through shadows.
"Mira," Aryan tossed the book to her. "It fits you."
Mira caught the book. The moment she touched it, the book dissolved into violet light and absorbed into her skin. She blinked, and suddenly she was standing five feet to the left.
"Useful," she smiled.
The Elevator to Floor 2
They returned to the surface, the [Gear of Logic] safe in Aryan's inventory. They approached the Great Elevator, a massive glass tube that pierced the clouds.
Aryan slotted the Gear into the control panel. The machine hummed to life.
[SYSTEM: FLOOR 1 CLEARED.]
[DESTINATION: FLOOR 2 - THE FOREST OF WHISPERS.]
As the elevator doors closed, Barnaby floated up to the glass.
"Floor 1 was a grammar lesson," Barnaby mused. "Floor 2 sounds like a stealth level. I hate stealth levels. I have no feet to tiptoe with."
"Don't worry, Barnaby," Aryan said, looking at his leveled-up party. "If we get caught... we'll just edit the rules."
The elevator shot upward, breaking through the cloud layer.
Below them, the Meadow of Beginnings shrank to a speck. Above them, 99 more floors of madness awaited.
[CURRENT STATUS:]
Aryan: Lvl 2 Reality Architect
Mira: Lvl 1 Anchor (with Teleport)
Barnaby: Still a Disaster.