Lelly enjoyed being outside but in many ways she was an indoor kid. She loved nature but she also loved staying in and reading MunFi novels. After meeting Merijest and Thesa back in Blinny [Dungeon] she started working on an emergency Boundless-Bag in case the Knights showed up, but she hadn’t maintained it well.
Making sure the rations, potions, and other supplies like her phiale were present was the first thing she did, of course, but it seemed reasonable, she thought, to have something to read during an emergency in order to stave off boredom if she was stuck hiding somewhere for a long time.
In the end, she took a short list of books which she expected would be hard to replace or most likely to be read:
- Otherside [Dungeon]
- Everyone in this Mundane World is Addicted to the Hyper-[Forums] except for me
- Reincarnated as an HVAC Technician in my Favorite Romance Light Novel but I Only Have Eyes for the Mean Office Secretary
- Long Live the CEO, Mundane Hierarchy Revolution
- My Harpy Girlfriend
She wasn’t likely to reread books like Killed by a [Dungeon] trap on the first [Floor], or I now own the biggest company in a Mundane World or Reincarnated as a Species of Worm in a World without Magic! Multi-Eon Evolution and they were both so popular she could easily replace them.
But even after all of that, she hadn’t found a bug. Looking through her books was sort of an excuse to turn her room upside down in search of something. Looking directly hadn’t worked, but maybe if she was doing something else that forced her to go through her belongings then it would show up, right?
Without a tangible object to dispose of, she couldn’t help but worry that she would be carrying the danger with her.
***
“Shhh.” Lelly gave Moomi a pat on the head, hoping to calm its anxious noises as they walked through the dark of night.
Rooroo was perched atop the Boundless-Bag on Lelly’s back, turning its head this way and that.
She wasn’t sure where to go. She didn’t have any ideal methods of transportation nor did she think she would be safe moving in the open.
Before leaving, she’d made an offering to Ki Shathra about it. The short, but unusually vivid, reply gave her three instructions. The first was to look in one of the on-campus training [Dungeons]. This one in particular was for brand new students in Adventuring 101. The class went back and forth between a month of training in the [Dungeon] and a month of more theoretical classwork. Lelly was pretty sure this was an off-month but she hadn’t checked. She would have thought it a dead end but she had a lot of trust built up with her [Deity].
The entrance to the [Dungeon] was usually locked at late hours, but the iron door was dripping and rusty as if it had sat at the bottom of a lake for many years. Lelly touched her tail to each ankle as she walked and silently thanked Ki Shathra.
The interior of training [Dungeons] actually contributed a lot to MunFi as a genre. They had large, open-[Floor] plans with windows into side rooms and a [Televator] for moving between [Floors]. During normal usage, the main room was usually filled with weak constructs to fight and the side rooms were used for storing practice gear and for more specific types of training.
At night, the room was eerily quiet with a line of Log Constructs motionless in the middle. The only side rooms that weren’t empty were those with practice gear behind desks. Maybe that was part of why Ki Shathra suggested the place? Practice gear wasn’t exactly top of the line, but Lelly had never considered herself an adventurer, so she didn’t have any good gear.
From the weapon room, she wavered between a knife and a spear. A knife would be easier to use without prior experience, but a spear would better keep enemies at a distance. She panicked and took both. She put the knife strap around her torso so the knife was hidden beneath her blouse for emergencies. She also took a short sword and a belt to keep the blade at her waist.
Every piece of armor she tried on was too heavy and had a dampening effect on her [Druid] magic. Not to mention the hair-like coral on her head wouldn’t fit in a helmet.
The next instruction she’d received from Ki Shathra was to use the [Televator] in a weird way. Usually, when a student completed certain challenges on a [Floor], they were given a complex series of numbers to press on the [Televator] wall. This passcode would send them to the next [Floor].
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Instead, she was instructed to press ‘1’ and wait. Nothing else. As she stood in the wide space with Moomi and Rooroo by her side, she fidgeted and picked at her fingers. She was near the door, anxious for what the [Televator] might deliver to her. She touched the backs of each of her ankles with her tail.
She thought she’d heard just pressing ‘1’ was an emergency option to transport anyone in the [Dungeon] back to the [Televator], but nobody was usually inside these places after dark. Of course, she wasn’t the only one capable of breaking rules.
Whoosh! The ambient sound swelled and the chamber filled with purple light. When it cleared, there was someone else in the room.
“Ah! Where the hell am I now?” the figure said. She was a human, no doubt about it, but Lelly couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
A woman in a dusty, black pantsuit with a loosened black tie. By human standards she was probably close to 30. Her dark brown hair was done up in a bun which had begun to fray. She had olive skin and her eyes were a deep brown. She…she looked like a character from a MunFi novel… Although, she was holding a battleaxe with more confidence than Lelly would have expected. And her arm muscles were so well-defined… Not that she could have expected any of what was happening.
The woman’s eyes flicked between Lelly, Moomi, and Rooroo.
“Wh-what the hell are you?” the woman asked. Her voice and expression were angry. It was more of a frightened demand than a question.
Lelly put her hands up. “Lelly,” she replied. “I’m not going to hurt you, promise.”
The woman was scowling. Her eyes narrowed like she was trying to read something in Lelly’s face. She had a determination that was hard to place.
“How the hell did I get here? And where the hell just was I?” the woman shouted.
“Honest, I don’t know,” Lelly said. “Are you from a mundane world?” She felt silly asking, but it was all she could think.
The woman’s scowl was disrupted momentarily by a confused look that melted back into a deeper scowl.
Lelly explained, “a world without magic or a [System], I mean. Like the ones in books.”
The woman’s grip on the battleaxe and the tension in her posture loosened the slightest bit. “Is this really some kind of fairytale?”
Lelly shrugged, unsure of exactly what the woman meant. “My name is Lelly, and these are my companions Moomi and Rooroo,” she said, gesturing to the CowDog and KangarooHawk respectively. “Who are you?”
“I’m not so sure I should tell you,” the woman replied, but just then she and Lelly both noticed the nametag stuck to her suit coat.
The woman’s hand shot up to cover it to no avail. Lelly thought she recognized the name.
“You wouldn’t happen to be a [Secretary] at a business called…what was it…” Lelly tried to remember. “‘Officely’ is from a different one…‘Corp Corp’? No wait, I think it was ‘Culture Fit Ltd.’!”
Effimia’s eyes narrowed again. “Who the hell are you? How do you know that?”
Lelly couldn’t blame her. This was an unbelievable circumstance. Although she hadn’t read the book herself, Lelly was pretty sure Effimia Mylona was the [Queen Bee] in Disruption, a popular MunFi series about a young [Entrepreneur] whose startup in the ValleySilicon is acquired by a larger firm. The protagonist’s ‘unique vision and skills’ lead to ‘a complete shake up of the corporate structure’ and he ends up marrying the [CEO]’s daughter. As a [Queen Bee] and a [Secretary], Effimia causes a lot of problems for the protagonist and is frequently depicted as a one-dimensional bad guy.
At least, that was what Lelly remembered from what she’d heard. With few exceptions, she only really read girls’ love stories. She’d heard some of the illustrations of Effimia were good if you were into attractive, professional women being mean to you (and she was)…but she hadn’t gotten around to checking it out.
“Well?” Effimia barked. She was waiting for a reply.
“I’m sorry, um, it’s hard to explain,” Lelly said.
Effimia looked at Moomi and Rooroo. “What about you two, do you know?”
Watching a grown woman shouting at two animals, Lelly couldn’t help but chuckle in spite of herself. Moomi and Rooroo both tilted their heads to one side in confusion.
“What’s so funny?”
A lot of MunFi novels only featured humans in worldbuilding because they were popularly considered to be the least magic of any ancestry. In this case, Effimia must have seen Lelly, a naiad, speaking and assumed that a CowDog and a KangarooHawk were just as likely to be capable of speech.
“Sorry, they don’t talk, Ms. Effie,” Lelly said.
“Hey, you can’t call me that!” Effimia replied, angrier than ever. She took the kind of breath one might take to avoid crying in front of someone and then her face tightened back into a scowl. “If anything I am Ms. Mylona to you.”
Uh-oh. Lelly wished this wasn’t a real conflict because the rumors were true. Effimia was the kind of woman whose anger could make Lelly’s heart race…But this was a serious situation so instead she got truly scared.
Lelly had accidentally used the nickname she saw fans use on the [Forums]. She hadn’t realized it was a touchy subject.
Family names or surnames were used more commonly in MunFi than in real life. In some, it was considered respectful to call someone by their family name with a title at the front or back. MunFi stories sometimes used whole systems of honorifics that differed across in-world cultures and stuff depending on the world building.
Angrier than ever, Effimia continued, “I’ve been stuck in this weird place for days and I just want to go home! Who are you and what the hell do you want with me, you–you monster!”
Lelly put her hands up and backed up a few steps. “Wait, wait. I’m not going to hurt you, honest!” She cowered as water built up behind her eyes. Lelly was much worse at holding back tears.
Effimia’s expression loosened a bit at the sight.
“H-hey,” she stammered. “I just–what the hell is happening to me? And why do you know who I am?” It was the same questions, but Effimia’s voice had softened noticeably.
“It might be hard to believe. But, you’re just, um, similar to a character in a book I heard about. I haven’t read it, but I can tell you as much as I know, honest.”
Thanks for reading!
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Dungeon Maps by Ailish Maura using
Region maps by Ailish Maura using IbisPaint and FireAlpaca
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