I gasped, eyes open, drenched in equal parts sweat and dew.

  “Guys?”

  I pushed off the ground, sucking in a cool, slow breath.

  Indifferent wind burned against my shirt and skin, hissing and stealing in erratic pulses.

  Sunlight bathed the forest in dappled yellow light, twinkling on the glassy morning dew.

  Three people had died in a dungeon, and it hasn't made a single difference in the world.

  I sucked in a slow, cool breath.

  Why was I alive?

  Was I alive? Really?

  I pinched myself in the thigh, wincing.

  [(-1) 32 Hp]

  If I was dead, then I wasn’t doing a very good job of it.

  My head exploded in a sudden flash of pain, before the sensation died away, replaced by a faint tingly numbness, and then, a slow corrosion of thought.

  I glanced down at my trembling hands, clutching the ground. I let go and wiped the dirt from my hands.

  There was no danger here. Just a forest.

  Slow down. Think. Where are you, and what is happening?

  I am in a forest. I have just died. I am tired and scared.

  The wind picked up, scattering leaves onto the forest floor.

  Remember. Mall Cierin Dexten. They all die in the dungeon.

  Much of yesterday had already been lost, and the edges had all but dissolved, until I was left with a handful of scattered but important scenes and events. I remember the Dungeon Core. I remember the chest.

  But best of all, I remember Dexten, slumped over the Mall, brushing her hair.

  I sighed, pushing myself off the ground.

  There was something else. Something important that I’d forgotten.

  A three-headed bear chased through the forest, spinning full speed with claws outstretched.

  “Ah,” I said, nodding to myself.

  Then I dug my heels into the ground and tried running.

  Instead, I smashed face-first into a hearty oak tree, shattering the wood in a pattern not entirely dissimilar to the outline of my lower jaw.

  The bear dropped onto all fours, lumbering over toward me.

  Actually, what just happened? I’d been one side of the forest one second, then the next,I was here—

  A red notification blinked once—twice, before it disappeared.

  [(-1) 31 Hp]

  Since when did I have thirty-one Hp?

  I groaned, kicking off the tree to face the bear.

  It tensed, with one head keen to fight, but two who seemed more skeptical.

  I flexed my hand, watching muscles bulge. Muscles that I couldn’t seem to remember acquiring, and I certainly couldn’t have built up by any natural means, not with my physique.

  {GRIND}

  Level 0

  Rank “Common”

  [ 31 (33) Hp 26 Str]

  Level zero. That felt right, since I’d just died. But more than thirty health? And more than twenty-five damage?

  That shouldn’t—couldn’t be possible, natural or otherwise.

  The bear, too, was rather puzzled by this change in events, but it was nothing if not a three-headed bear with purpose, so it started charging again.

  I almost ran, before a sudden, starting thought came to me.

  Exactly how strong was this thing?

  It roared, jumping up from its charge, paw raised for a crushing blow.

  The bear was probably strong, but it was also slow, fat, and stupid.

  I dodged the strike easily, then the one after that, jumping out from its attacks.

  After just a couple strikes, it dropped back onto all fours, huffing for breath. It didn’t bother to try and defend itself—why would it? It takes a special kind of idiot to ram their fist into the stomach of a three headed creature easily twenty times their size.

  Thankfully, I was feeling remarkably special today.

  {TriBear (26) -2 Hp}

  The bear crumbled over and died, dribbling black monster blood on the bright grass. Then it deflated and, with a hiss, began to bubble, leaving behind a single large white orb.

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  After a brief moment of staring and gaping, I picked it up off the ground and wiped it, admiring the way the pearlescent white hue shifted around, turning copper-pink, and lime-green around the edges.

  I crushed the crystal and energy flowed out in a sudden burst, running down my hands and into my arms.

  [(+85) 85 / 100 Xp]

  Was that it?

  It’d seemed so strong when it’d first met it, and it sure seems like it would have ripped my face off, and it wasn’t like it was that weak—actually twenty-four-twenty-five Hp was pretty decent—I’d just been expecting something a little more…extravagant. This kill felt so pitifully ordinary.

  Was this a timeloop?

  So far, the last few respawns were the same as before.

  “You could've at least dropped some items,” I muttered, wiping monster blood off my shoe. “Easy fight, easy rewards, I guess.”

  A sharp metallic blade whistled through the trees, coming short inches from the end of my nose.

  “Wow,” she said, smiling from ear to ear, brushing chains as she tilted her head. “You have quite the reaction time for a no-rank.”

  I had Crapsholver out, edge sparking against her blade.

  “You’re not worth the trouble I suppose.” The woman sighed, dissolving her scythe in a flash of light. She slunk back into the trees, followed by a long trailing braid of chains and wire.

  Note to self: keep clear of that woman.

  I ground my heels into the dirt and started running.

  After a good hour or so, when I’d made sure that there wasn't a brimming young sociopath chasing behind me, I let myself relax.

  Enough to realize that a legendary item was currently resting in my hand.

  I blinked.

  Then I began to make small choaking noises, glossing over its decription.

  ~Legendary Item~

  [ Crap Shovel ]

  “This is a shovel that shovels crap.”

  [+1 Str]

  “How are you here?” I asked, turning the shovel over in my hands. It didn’t do much of anything interesting.

  It was like my stats. I kept them on respawn. Unlike my level. Or exp. Or any of my other items.

  I glanced down at my clothes—little more than a white t-shirt with brownish jeans that were too stained to be identifiable beyond that. Both were caked in sweat and monster blood.

  At the very least, they weren’t covered in crumbs.

  Actually, it was just about the same pair of clothes as before, looking the same as when I'd woken up with them the first day.

  So was my shovel like those clothes? I couldn’t even remember picking them out, but I always seemed to have them, which was rather convenient, if I did say so.

  I returned the shovel to my inventory.

  Wait.

  I don’t have an inventory, do you? I shouldn’t? I’m not even level one yet, and that’s when I unlocked it in the first place.

  I took the shovel out of my inventory. Then I put it back in. Then out again.

  “Weird,” I muttered, plucking a handful of small flowers from the forest floor, trying to add that into my inventory as well.

  [inventory full 2/0]

  I frowned, pulling the shovel and one of the flowers back out from my inventory. Since those worked fine, I went for sticks, rocks and leaves.

  [inventory full 2/0]

  “What is all this?” I said, asking no one in particular as I dumped the two objects out of my inventory. “Skill deck.”

  A blue notification appeared, followed by a large purple book.

  [Denied : you don't yet have access to this feature]

  I glanced down at the very open, very accessible book of skills in my hand. Still, all my skill points were gone, so it wasn't like I could buy anything.

  “So...do I have 'keep inventory?' Is that what's going on?"

  If it was true, then this couldn't be a time loop, could it? If it was, then I couldn’t have my stats, or my items, or my unlocked skills, because I wouldn’t have gained them yet.

  But I was in a time loop of sorts. Every day, NPCs went through the same motions as before.

  As this process continued—that is…thinking—I began to realize that this was an awful headache of a problem, and during times like these, food is a welcome comfort.

  Come to think of it, if this was a forest—one for the start of the game—then there’d ought to be food around here somewhere, right?

  I bent down to the ground, combing over brush for anything that resembled edible food.

  A bright waxy-red cap caught my eye, and I plucked it off the ground.

  Someone had said something about these, hadn’t she? It hadn’t been Mall, and it certainly wasn’t the devil-woman with the scythe, so—

  A knee knocked the air out of my chest, pinning me to the ground.

  “Are you stupid?!” Asiel shouted, ripping the mushroom from my hand and tossing it far above our heads.

  An echo rumbled through the forest.

  “I wasn’t going to eat it,” I wheezed.

  “Eat it? Those explode after just a couple minutes, once they’ve been plucked from the ground!” Asiel shouted into my ear. “You have to deactivate them first!” she demonstrated, grabbing a mushroom by the cap and then twisting. There was a fizzling sound and the red spots dimmed. “See?”

  I blinked. “How does that work? Biologically speaking, I mean”

  “Welcome to Teratetra,” she grunted. Ariel stood, dusting the dirt from her black jumpsuit and red cape. “You're welcome, by the way.”

  I stood, nodding. “Thanks again, Asiel.”

  A second later, I was on the ground again, with a long rusty blade pressed against my throat.

  How exactly do you know me?” Asiel hissed, pressing the edge against the side of my neck, face hard as iron. “think carefully.”

  I swallowed hard. “Well we met once—”

  “Did we?” She asked.

  I raised my hands into the air, giving a smile. “You took me to the tutorial. Remember? The old guy?”

  “Oh I know him but you’re not ringing any bells.”

  “Grind. G, R, I, N, D—Grind.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “That’s an odd name.”

  “You helped me pick it out!” I snapped.

  “I help a lot of people,” she snapped back, squinting. After a second, she shook her head. “You seem to know an awful lot for a kid without any levels.”

  “I used to have levels,” I muttered. “Before I lost them—”

  “Well that’d about do it,” Asiel grunted. She slipped her blade back into her inventory. “I assume you know the way to town?”

  I nodded.

  “Go there and get out of here,” Asiel snapped, pulling me up to my feet and shoving me toward the town. “The woods are a dangerous place for a leveless fool.”

  I sighed.

  She’d seemed so much nicer when we’d first met.

  Asiel shooed me away, and I didn’t feel like upsetting her, so I plodded along the path.

  “Thanks for the help,” I mumbled, chasing my shovel. “Had there been a real attack, I would’ve been in a lot of danger.”

  The shovel didn’t bother to respond.

  Why was I talking to my shovel anyway?

  I sighed, this time more at myself than anything.

  What was I going to do now? Dexten, Mall, Cierin—what was there to be done? They were dead, simple as that.

  Unless they respawned too?

  I shook the idea out of my head.

  This was the forest. They should’ve respawned here too. Besides, I just don’t know enough about respawning to be getting my hopes up.

  Instead, I kept myself moving, step by step, until the dirt path gave way to a sandy gravel road, then to the finer cobbled streets of the nameless city.

  Unsurprisingly, it was just about the same as it’d been before. NPCs cluttered the streets, muttering to one another in the same repetitive voice lines they’d been using the day before. Wherever there wasn’t an NPC, there was a player or five, haggling with merchants, picking quests, and going about all sorts of gaming business.

  By the look of their gear and party, a fair few were readying up to raid a dungeon.

  I need to get stronger.

  If I don’t, then the people around me are going to die.