The first through the portal had little time to study the insides of the dungeon that opened to their eyes, not that there was much to be studied: the second part of the hemisphere that served as a ceiling in the previous room was there, but now it was made of the same veil that hung in the door, obstructing the view and preventing anyone from going deeper inside. It still cast a soft light, illuminating the room, which had nothing of interest to see except for somewhat uneven stone floor tiles.

  Once the last rat had passed through and the doors had shut behind them, a weird mechanical yet distinctly female voice rang through the dungeon.

  “The thirteen are present. Initiating the trial integration protocol.”

  A sudden jolt of pain ran through every rat’s head in the room, instantly rendering them unconscious.

  They awakened all at once, hearing each other grunting. All they could see was a solid blue colour, which took ten seconds to fade away. Several screeches and the sound of one rat vomiting broke relative silence. Once everyone regained their vision, they discovered five rats lying on the ground with their heads exploded, lying in pools of their own blood a gorey mess of skull bones and brain tissue scattered about in conical shapes. Sv?rd was wholly covered in remains of the rat that previously stood the closest to him. Another unlucky ratkin - a previously white small female was now soaked in blood and crying.

  Marik bolted to the door and started furiously knocking on it. “LET US OUT!”

  Somehow he was naked save for his underwear, his gear now gone. It took everyone a moment to look around and realise that he wasn’t the only one; in fact, everyone's gear and clothes were somehow gone.

  “WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE?” shouted a large brown—to the point of almost being orange— rat, the one that was the first through the portal.

  “Integration complete. The estimated success rate for the species R?ttor from planet Earth-13 is currently at 60%,”

  said the same female voice coming from all directions around them.

  “Who the fuck are you? What’s going on?” asked Sv?rd, looking at no particular place on the ceiling.

  “Cleanup complete,”

  said the female, ignoring their questions. The blood of the dead rats’ suddenly gathered in a pool between them, even the blood from their pelts gone and then quickly drained through the floor. The bodies and the gore just sank into the floor like it was quicksand.

  Instinctively, all the rats came closer to each other, forming a circle.

  “Does any of you have…” started a middle-aged ratkin with a rusting coat of fur and what could be called an excellent shape for a cook or a barkeeper, only to get interrupted by the voice again.

  “Issuing the first tutorial quest. You will see a blinking exclamation sign on your HUDs. Try to mentally open it.”

  “The hell…”

  “Everyone, look, I see it!” exclaimed Sozos. “Look here!” he shouted, pointing down at the ground where he saw a flashing yellow exclamation mark in a blue rectangle, not realising what a HUD was.

  “No, it’s here”, shouted someone from the other side of the circle, pointing forward and down.

  It took them a while to explain to everyone how to find it, but even more time to complete the second task of opening it.

  Sv?rd was the one to figure it out first, and he looked smug when he explained his technique to the rest of the group: “Imagine it’s a box and you’re holding it with your hands.”

  “I can’t hold it with my hands; I can’t even touch it,” replied Marik, pretty much annoyed.

  “Fuck’s sake, that’s what IMAGINE means. You don’t touch it with your goddamn good-for-nothing hands; you think really hard about it, and then you bring this box closer to your face, and then you pull it apart. And then…”

  “Wait, I still can’t make it work,” said the rusty bartender rat.

  “Imagine,” started Sv?rd again, impatience in his voice.

  “Oh, I’ve got it!” said the small white rat. “But I think mine was empty; it just disappeared…”

  “Look at the place where it was before,” said Sv?rd, full of self-importance. It felt nice being the one to figure something out first.

  “Oh, it’s there. It’s not blinking anymore, and there’s text underneath it. “Waiting for the group”. What does it mean?”

  “Probably waiting for other dimwits to figure it out,” answered Sv?rd without thinking, which prompted the large orange rat to appear and tower right in front of him.

  “Who are you calling dimwits, you little turd?”

  Sv?rd wasn’t a coward, but growing up in an orphanage, he learned to pick his fights and respect someone who was much bigger and stronger than him. Even if his friends were to join him in a fight against this giant, they would most likely lose or suffer a pyrrhic victory.

  “I’m terribly sorry, didn’t mean it like that. It was just a force of habit and friendly banter. No hard feelings, eh?” he said apologetically.

  “I’m not your friend, buddy, so watch your tongue,” the giant menacingly replied as he went back and sat to try to proceed with his mental task.

  It took all eight remaining rats some time to complete the task, but once the last of them was done, a semitransparent square blue box with rounded corners and white text filled their views.

  Some of them squeaked, surprised by its appearance.

  “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” asked Sv?rd, looking at his old comrades.

  “We don’t know what you’re seeing,” replied Sozos. “There’s a floating box in the middle of my vision and there’s some text. It says, “Quest T-01: Close this notification, access your equipment menu and get equipped”, and there’s another box at the bottom that’s flashing with the text “Accept””.

  “I see the same thing,” said Josephine.

  “Same for me,” said a small female rat.

  “Yeah, we’ve all got the same thing,” concluded Sv?rd as he managed to accept it, once again being the first to do so.

  Once everyone managed to click the “Accept” button, the dungeon voice boomed once again.

  “Access your inventory menu by mentally calling for it and then drag your equipment into appropriate slots. Notice that your equipment was changed in accordance with the classes you’ve been assigned.”

  Almost everyone said “Equipment” out loud.

  Several seconds later, Sv?rd exclaimed, “Wow!” Then, out of thin air, items started appearing on him, first completely blue, then changing to regular colours real quick.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  He was now wearing a set of leather armour and holding what appeared to be a sling in his hands. He had two belts: one on his waist, with a small bag attached to it, hanging on the left side, another one running across his chest with many wide loops sewn atop of it, all of them empty. He grabbed the bag on his side and took a peek inside. “Sweet!” he exclaimed, bringing out three round marble balls about 2 inches in diameter.

  “Equipment, equipment, equipment, equipment!” started the group again.

  If not for the previous encounter with the brown rat, he would have laughed out loud at them, but instead, he said, “Guys, you don’t have to say it out loud—just think it.”

  In about ten seconds, excited wow’s and ahhh’s started coming out of the group’s mouths.

  “How do I equip it?” asked the last member of the group who had remained silent so far, a lean black rat about five feet tall.

  “Imagine you’re holding an item in your hands and just move it onto a mannequin to the left,” helped him Sv?rd.

  One by one, their appearance started changing, clothes and items suddenly brought into existence all around the party members.

  After all were finished with the task, the group, which looked like a peasant militia before entering the dungeon and then like a group of indecent swimmers, suddenly apprehended the appearance of a bandit gang or a group of young ratkins playing pretend adventurers, even despite some of them being not that young.

  Sozos was now wearing a set of brown leather armour resembling the one that Sv?rd had, but with the addition of a small iron plate affixed to his chest, a helmet, and bracers. He was wielding a simple long battle hammer with a wooden shaft in one hand and a small buckler in the other.

  A small white rat stood in a pitch-black hooded cloak, armed with a wooden staff which ended with a stylised dead rat’s face carved on the thick part atop of it.

  The giant brown rat had the least amount of armour in terms of body coverage: short leather trousers with his chest bare save for two leather belts running across it. He was grinning, looking at a sharp bardiche in his hands.

  The bartender-rat now looked like a merchant, wearing nice colourful clothes and a triangle green hat with a single blue feather attached to it. He now held a leather bound tome of sorts and a messenger’s bag over his shoulder.

  The lean rat now had a green woollen cloak wrapped around him, with a short bow and a quiver hanging on his back.

  Josephine was wearing well-fitted cloth clothes with extra padding on her shoulders, elbows, and knees, and a lute was hanging from her back.

  “How are you fighting with a lute?” Marik laughed at her, drawing the attention of the others.

  “At least I’m geared to fight, not to shower,” she replied.

  Sozos and Sv?rd started laughing, as did the rest of the group later on, with only the giant rat smiling widely.

  The thing is, Marik was wearing a pink bathrobe and a pair of slippers, and his only weapon was a mug of steaming coffee in his hand. “It’s comfy”, he said before taking a sip out of his mug, “and the coffee is sweet, just the way I like it.”

  “And if combat starts, it will help you shit yourself faster,” Sv?rd finished his sentence, which caused another outburst of laughter.

  “Hey…”

  “Quest complete. Reward - access to the character menu. New quest issued,”

  said the same female voice once again.

  Another exclamation mark started blinking in the left corner of their vision, this time taking everyone only a handful of seconds to open it.

  Quest T-02: Character and bonding. Open your stats menu and introduce yourself and your class to the group.

  Later, once they learned how the integration worked, they would understand that those “quests” were a way to introduce technologically primitive nations to the system and let people learn the ropes, with some groups taking hours to get the hang of it.

  “Let me be the first,” said Sv?rd, enjoying being better at this than the rest. “I’m Sv?rd and I’m… a gunslinger? What the hell is a gun?” he asked, swinging his sling around with his hand.

  “Anyone?” he asked the group, people shrugging and swinging their heads, indicating a “no”.

  “There’s a class description; try reading it; maybe it has some hints,” advised a small girl.

  “A gunslinger is a ranged fighter specialising in wielding guns. That doesn’t help much,” he said, a bit disappointed.

  “Name’s Mihkel and I’m a navigator. It says that it’s a support class specialising in drawing maps, navigation and driving different means of transportation”.

  “Nice to meet you, Mihkel, I’m Sozos, and I’m a paladin of Zest, whoever that might be. The class explanation states that I’m a melee fighter who empowers himself and friends in battle,” Sozos continued the trend.

  “Nice to meet you, Sozos,” replied several others almost in unison.

  “I’m Josephine, and I’m a bard, which is a jack-of-all-trades class inspiring others in battle with her hymns.”

  Before anyone could reply to her, Marik inserted, “So you’re not even fighting with that lute of yours?”

  “Well, what do you do then, mister I’ve-just-woken-up-in-the-middle-of-the-day?”

  “I’ll tell you later.”

  “No, please, go ahead, I’m also eager to hear it,” Sv?rd joined the conversation.

  An awkward pause followed, Marik looking at the floor in front of him.

  “Well?” said Sozos.

  “Ahem… guys, I need to confess something. I don’t know how to read,” Marik replied with shame in his voice.

  “WHAT? HOW?” Sv?rd couldn’t hold himself as he was already thinking of ways to use this for the endless flood of jokes. “Weren’t you playing Ratkins and Dragons with us?”

  “That explains why each of his characters was named Marik,” said Josephine, “and we thought he didn’t have any imagination.”

  “Yeah, I kinda… no one ever taught me, so I can’t read. Could you please not make a big deal out of it?”

  “Right fucking now, it is a big deal,” said Sv?rd, half-joking and half-serious. “How the hell are we supposed to proceed if you can’t introduce your class?”

  “I have an idea,” intervened the rat, still covered in a cloak. “Back in our monastery, we had monks who couldn’t read or write; they treated symbols as pictures and copied the texts without being able to apprehend them, so if anyone could give Marik a piece of paper, he could try to trace the letters, and we’ll read it for him.”

  “A brilliant idea,” said Mihkel, tearing out a blank sheet of paper from his book, passing it to Marik, who immediately started on his task using coffee and his index finger in place of ink and pen.

  “I’m Alex, by the way,” introduced himself the cloak-wrapped rat, “I’m a ranger, a hybrid stealthy class”.

  “I’m Frida, and it says that I’m a priest of Death,” continued the small white rat. “Which is rather sad as I was a priestess of Life before we went inside.”

  “Aw damn,” Sozos reacted.

  “I hope it works out somehow,” she answered cheerfully.

  “I’m Boro, and it says I’m a destroyer. A fierce melee warrior bringing destruction upon his foes.”

  “That sounds promising,” said Mihkel. “Looking at our group, I wish we had more melee fighters.”

  “Guys, I think I’m done. Can you read it for me?” asked Marik, bringing his piece of paper with him.

  A single word stood there. The word was “Ha???ster”, with “m” having an extra leg.

  Everyone went silent, contemplating.

  “Are you sure that’s how it’s spelt, Mar?” asked Sozos, not believing his eyes.

  “I don’t think my writing is perfect, but yes. What’s the problem with it?”

  “The problem with it is that you’re a hamster in a bathrobe,” said Sv?rd as everyone completely lost themselves.

  “It’s not a good time for jokes! Please, tell me my class” Marik pleaded. “Frida, you’re a kind person, unlike those idiots, please tell me!”

  “I’m sorry, but if that’s how it’s spelt - your class is really called hamster,” she replied, holding back laughter.

  After gods know how many jokes from his friends along the lines of “Do you come with a cage as well,” or “Will you be biting our enemies to the death?” Marik was finally able to introduce himself to the group, almost sobbing, thus completing the task.

  “Quest complete. Reward - access to party interface, stats block, skills and quick panel. Your first skills are already added to the quick panel.”

  Their vision suddenly grew wider, but the extra space became occupied with a total of eight portraits in two columns on both sides. Under their portrait stood their name, with three vertical bars - red, yellow and blue—for some of them the latter was empty— to the side of their portraits, aligned to be closer to the center.

  A tiny transparent panel appeared on the bottom with a single skill for everyone already on it. Before they could adequately inspect everything, the voice sounded again.

  “Initiating the first trial. Difficulty - easy. Enemies - 2 skeletons (lvl. 3)”

  The veil suddenly disappeared, revealing the rest of the dungeon. Two skeletons started moving towards them from about 40 feet away.