~ Chapter 1: I’m a WHAAAT?! ~

Ah!~ Life! So beautiful and yet... so fragile...

Although filled with countless opportunities and unexpected moments, not all of them managed to knock at my door. Most of them slipped through my fingers, leaving me with an endless regret, while others showed me the hope for a better tomorrow.

If I was still alive, maybe I could have experienced more, but alas... such a thing was not meant to be.

What happened? a man asked as he looked around.

This person or entity before me was nothing more than a globe of white light with some specs of darkness here and there. He was the soul of a man who most likely died just moments ago. Next to him was another soul similar to him.

Who are you? Are we... Are we dead? asked the other one.

Looking down, I saw a man holding a gun and trembling at the sight before him. This guy was still alive.

I died... I said as I looked at my own body.

A blood splatter covered the monitor of my computer, and my head now had a very fashionable hole in it, which even the medical technology of the year 2023 couldn't fix. Truthfully speaking, it was partially my fault for ending up dead.

I'm never buying noise-canceling headphones again! I grumbled to myself as I remembered the last moments of my life.

There I was, sitting in front of my computer, with my headphones on, the lights turned off, and smashing the keyboard with my fingers like a madman. I was playing a recently released game: Ultrademons 3. It was the masterpiece of the year. Unfortunately, I was too poor to buy a VR set for the best experience with the game.

Afterwards, what happened was pretty simple. That guy sneaked up behind me, pointed his pistol at my head, point blank for better accuracy, and then pulled the trigger. Human cranium 0, lead bullet 1, and that was how I lost the battle. I didn't even manage to finish my game... or save.

Letting out a sigh, I looked at the other two souls, who were staring at their own corpses. As far as I could see, they were the unfortunate drivers of two cars who collided with each other outside of my apartment building. One was a taxi, and the other was a police car.

It happened so suddenly, they could hardly believe they were dead. There was one thing I wanted to know, though, and that was how did one thing led to the other. How come their deaths led to mine?

So, can one of you two explain what just happened? I asked as I flew next to them.

This flight thing was a weird sensation, but nothing new. This wasn't the first time I died. Souls tended to reincarnate time and time again, we usually lost all of earthly memories as soon as we did so. One thing that never changed was the way souls panicked when they saw their dead bodies. That was always fun to watch. The more experienced you were, the better control you had over yourself. As a soul, you simply viewed things from another point of view, but it took a couple of hundreds of reincarnations to get used to it and not scream around like a little girl whenever it happened.

In other words, I was a lot older than these two in front of me.

I was driving a client home, and then... that's it... BAM! CRASH! the taxi driver explained.

It's the same for me, only I was driving a criminal to the Police Station. We just managed to catch him... Then... God, my partner is completely out of it, but that bastard... What about my wife? the cop was starting to panic and so was the other guy.

Pull it together, buddy! Calm down! What happened next? How did your criminal end up in my apartment? I asked because there was no other explanation as to who was the guy who shot me.

Erm... Ah, he got out of the car. The bastard managed to escape with just a few cuts! He grabbed my partner's gun and then fled into your building. I guess, he was confused or something, but he entered your apartment and when he saw you, he shot you. he explained.

The other details he left out I could figure out by myself. The man first broke the lock to my door, then looked around, saw nobody was there, walked up to the fridge, and took the first bottle of alcohol he could find. He then saw me or heard me smashing the keyboard, got scared, walked up to me, and shot me.

In my next life, I'll definitely never buy noise-canceling headphones.

Looking back at the criminal, I could see he was trembling and panicking. I must have been his first kill. The police and fire department were already on the way, he stood no chance, and with my body laying over there, this counted as a homicide.

Have fun behind bars...  I scorned and then looked at these two.

I'm dead... I'm dead... Why did I die? God?! Why? the taxi driver was panicking, and I was the most calm out of all of them.

I sighed.

There was nothing I could do now, and I was just happy Alina, my girlfriend, wasn't there when this nutjob came in. If she ended up with a bullet in her head instead of me, I would have been completely devastated, destroyed, pulverized. She was my light in this life, the guide who pulled me out of my own darkness. Losing her or seeing her hurt would have been too much for me.

I'll miss you, my love... I said as I looked at the only framed photograph of the two of us in that entire apartment.

She was a beautiful woman in her late twenties. We had both beautiful and sad memories together, but now, it was time to say farewell. Mine would never be heard, but hers would be shown through her tears shed for me.

Children... come! a voice called to us.

It was time for us to say farewell to this world. I couldn't hear anymore what the others were saying, they were probably begging for a second chance, I simply accepted the inevitable without fighting against it. A bright light appeared before me, and without a single worry or regret, I flew closer to it.

I really didn't have anything holding me back in this world... maybe one thing though.

With one last gaze behind, I wondered how the story in my game ended and also... if I should have manned up after all this time and proposed to Alina?

It's too late now... but maybe in my next life, I won't hesitate... I thought and looked back at the light.

My life flashed before my eyes...

I was born as a normal boy in your typical hard-working Romanian family. To be not confused with the Romani people, also known as gypsies, who were a nomadic ethnic group and had no relationship whatsoever with us, the Vlachs. So yes, I wasn't Romani, French, German, Japanese, or Russian. I was a Romanian born and raised in good ol’ politically corrupt Romania!

Well, enough with the unimportant details... I grew up in relatively normal way. I wasn’t bullied, I wasn’t the bully, I wasn’t the handsome guy in the class nor the disgusting guy who kept digging for gold up his nasal cavity. I had friends. I was... how should I put this... average. I went to an average High School. I studied like an average student at the University Politehnica București and became a sales manager at a sweets company.

What? Not everyone who goes there ends up as an engineer. Even if we had a diploma in the field, most of us wandered off in completely unexpected directions, but that was life, and also one of the things I disliked about it. Anyway, to escape my boredom, I bought a good computer and started to play games. Aaand I played a lot… I mean seriously, my collection was impressive! Good ol’ Seasonal Sales!

Surprisingly, outside of my fictional worlds, my life was pretty much boring. At the very least, I managed to get myself a cute girlfriend despite fulfilling the condition to become a wizard at the age of 30. So yes, Alina was probably my first, my only, and my last true love in that life as a human. Also, to make things clear, I met her AFTER I was 30. It was pure luck actually...

Sigh... it was about time I met my pretty Valkyries. In that life, I was an orthodox christian, but the idea of beautiful war maidens coming to greet me to take me to Heaven sounded nice... Besides, what was written in those books wasn't exactly true. Past experience was proof of this.

Ah~ My beautiful Valkyries! Here I come! I said with a smile.

The light vanished and there was only darkness around me...

Huh? What? Where? Where are my Valkyries? A cute angel chick would be good as well... I’m not picky... Erm? Hello? I shouted, but there was only darkness around me.

To top it off, those memories that flashed before my eyes a moment ago were becoming very blurry, like they were slipping away from my grasp. Still, this wasn't the first time I experienced this... or was it? I had no idea what was happening to me. My mind and thoughts were a mess, and all I could focus on was the idea of cute Valkyries wearing sexy metal armor.

“Is this it?” I heard the voice of a stranger, a man, coming from everywhere.

It startled me, and I all those thoughts of past lives, souls, and whatnot completely slipped out of my mind.

Hello? Can you hear me? ECHO?! I shouted, but nothing...

“Ah! This is it! Chant this... here... er no, here... I think?” said the man again.

He sounded old, like really old.

Erm...

I heard some weird chanting and then suddenly an explosion.

“ARGH!” the old man groaned in pain.

“Quick! Cut them off before they spread throughout the academy!” shouted another man.

“The imp! Kill the imp there!” shouted another while sounds of sword clashing and monsters screaming were heard from everywhere.

I started to get worried.

What’s happening? I wondered.

I listened to the battle, but they were either chanting some weird words or slashing at something. The sounds were strangely familiar to what I previously heard in my games, but honestly speaking, where was I? Hell? Heaven? Was I resurrected as the cleavage of a beautiful elf maiden? Nah!

Considering my luck, there was a chance I got resurrected as an old guy’s butt crack!

Sigh... 99 bottles of milk on the wall~ 99 bottles milk! You take one down, you toss it around, 98 bottles of milk remain on the wall! I started to sing while I was listening to a background that sounded like a strange battle between a party of heroes and a bunch of monsters.

After I reached the 46th bottle, the noise ceased.

Hm?

“Should we break it? It might be safer this way...” said one of the men there.

Oh, I confirmed something meanwhile, there were no women in their party, just grumpy men. I had a very bad feeling about this...

“No! Absolutely not! We can do this, just focus...” said the old man again while heaving.

He must have gotten tired after all that chanting.

Suddenly, things went silent, and I didn’t hear anything anymore.

Hello? Anyone? Banana! CAT! God? Mommy? I started to shout, but nothing and no one replied.

I sighed again and waited...

Then it happened. A bright light cast off the darkness, and I opened my eyes, but what greeted me wasn’t the beautiful bouncy mountains of an elf maiden but the grizzly gray beard of an old man.

“AAARGH!” I shouted.

“AAA!” the others shouted.

“AAA!” I shouted.

“AAA!” the others shouted.

“AAA!” I shouted.

Then we stopped...

“Where are my Valkyries? Where am I? Who are you all?” I started to ask and tried to move, but I was stuck.

I looked down, but what I saw weren’t my legs but some strange symbols carved into the floor tiles and what looked like the bottom of a floating giant green crystal.

“Huh?” I gasped.

“Oh! You see! I told you it would work!” said the old man with the ridiculously long beard.

“Hmph! I still say we should smash it.” said the big guy with a big sword and dressed like your typical big, brawny warrior.

“Nonsense! Anyway, please excuse us, Lord of the Dungeon! I am the High Mage Tuberculus! This here are my associates, Berserker Warrior Angius and Master Tamer Paladinus the Third!” he declared all of a sudden.

“Erm...” I looked left and right, but it appeared as though he was talking to me. “Me? Lord of the Dungeon? What dungeon? Are you guys sane?” I asked and tried to tilt my head, but no chance... I couldn’t move.

“Oh my, did we actually break it?” asked Paladinus the something.

“Impossible!” stated Tuberculus.

They looked at the chant one more time, it was written on an old fashioned scroll, then they looked back at me. They kept exchanging glances, making me feel quite uncomfortable.

“So, erm...” I tried to speak.

“You are the Lord of the Dungeon. Or to be more exact, the Core of a Dungeon we made artificially from various destroyed Dungeon Cores. Your job is to take not of a dungeon but the Magic Academy located on your Dungeon Territory.” he stated clearly, but his words confused me.

Three minute later, he looked at his scroll and then back at me.

“Hm, I believe we might have made a mistake somewhere. You didn't react as I was expecting, and you claimed not to know who or what you are... This is quite troubling. For now, try to adjust to your current environment. We will return in a few hours and try to answer any questions you may have, although, please don’t summon any monsters? OK?” he ended his explanation with a typical forced smile the politicians on the news usually showed.

Speaking of which, I couldn't remember the exact names or faces of any of those fellows.

“I think so...” I replied, but his words did over 9000 damage on my sanity.

“Then we will be back before you know it!” and just like that I was left alone in a completely trashed room.

“Lord of the Dungeon... me? I’m a what now?” I said about fifteen minutes after they left.

Aaand that was how I began my second life as the Core of a Dungeon. The only problem was that I wasn’t exactly in a dungeon...