The world faded back into existence. It did so slowly, like the dawn taking the sky once more. I was looking up at a wooden ceiling, plain with a few knots in it I found fascinating for some reason. There was a plank running down the middle of it with a bunch of squiggles and illegible words carved into it.

  Blinking away the dross of sleep, I saw even clearer. Those words were names. Signatures.

  I sat up to get a closer look, only for my body to realize it wasn’t quite ready to move yet. The pain was lesser now, but it became rather sharp when I moved. Maybe a floating rib was still out of position. I dropped back onto the bed.

  A concerned young woman appeared in my vision holding yet another mug of that wonderful drink. She looked me up and down, then proffered the mug. I took it and held onto it. I wanted to ask a few things first, but she wouldn’t have it. She gestured for me to drink it, saying something I couldn’t quite make out. Stupid concussions getting in the way of proper speech.

  Looking around, I took in my surroundings. The room wasn’t barren like I had first thought as much as it was just clean. The walls were lined with small shelves filled with various herbs and other such things. Still, I marveled. This was a healer’s house alright.

  Slowly shifting my legs, I found they were whole. The shattered bones had been set and healed. Surely it hadn’t been that long, right? They can’t have been left to heal on their own. Could the woman really make potions to heal? That should have been impossible. Potion making was a class skill set. I threw an identify her way.

  Herbalist Healer(Lvl 4) - NPC

  This healer specializes in making herbal remedies. That includes basic potions and poultices. She also has a great many other medicinal and semi-magical talents.

  What on earth? That was ridiculously unfair. Dungeoneers didn’t get classes until they hit level ten and completed their class task. And NPCs just appeared with them at all levels? Still, I guess I was grateful for that, if a bit jealous. She had all but saved my life with those herbal remedies of hers.

  It was at this time the woman got fed up with my stalling and just took the mug from my hand and held it to my mouth. She even pinched my nose shut so I would be forced to open my mouth and drink it.

  Twenty seconds later I sank back into the bed and a deep sleep washed over me. It wasn’t peaceful, per se, but it was better than nothing.

  My dreams were filled with green eyes and thunderous bangs.

  This happened at least a couple more times before I was finally allowed to stay awake. Each time my comprehension of speech got a little better until I could finally understand what that woman was talking about and respond in kind. This is when my supply of the sleep drug was cut off.

  That day, or whenever it was, started off a pretty average day, all things considered. I sat up, stretched, and yawned my complaint against the world for bringing me back from whatever peaceful dream I was having at the time.

  It appeared my wounds had been fully healed, which was good news. I could feel my toes now. The best news was what the doc said when she came into the room.

  “Look who’s back to the land of the living,” she said, walking into the room and taking in my sitting form. She pulled out some kind of stick and waved it over my head in an odd assortment of moves that made me feel a bit weird. “Ah, good. Your mind seems to be back in perfect condition again.”

  “Yeah,” I said slowly, tasting the words on my tongue as I spoke, “It’s not a particularly nice feeling having your brain sloshed around like a pickle jar. I don’t recommend it at all.”

  She gave a tiny huff of laughter at that. “I don’t suppose I would either. Now, I think you’re ready for discharge. There are some clothes on the nightstand for you. I’ll be back in about five minutes.”

  The healer walked out and shut the door behind her. Odd woman. She was supposed to be chatty. That was what women were supposed to be, weren’t they? Maybe not this profession, though.

  I hurriedly shoved the clothes onto my body, barely recognizing them as my old ones with all the bloodstains washed out. They were softer too. No more scratchy polyester stitching or semi-demi-cotton lining. They felt smooth, much more like silk but without the heating problem. But all my identify could get out of them was that they were newly refurbished, whatever that meant.

  The woman returned with a meat and cheese sandwich, bless her. I could eat that treant out there with how hungry I was feeling. And the drink was good too. It seemed like a mix of traits between a few different drinks. It offered the energy boost of coffee with the flavor of orange juice and the strengthening qualities of Powerade or whatever electrolyte drink you could get your hands on at the nearest convenience store.

  “So, how much is this treatment going to cost me?” I asked. Hospitals outside were rather expensive affairs, sometimes totaling to more than thirty silvers a visit, depending on how you got there. A car would set you back just the base amount, an ambulance would set you back a few thousand more, and a helicopter? Well, let’s just say you didn’t want to arrive in one of those.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “Cost you?” The woman sounded confused. “Why would this cost you anything?”

  Now I was confused. “Healing people like me takes money, right?” When she nodded I continued, “So people come to you and pay for your healing abilities. How could you afford to continue if otherwise?”

  That seemed to clear things up for her, though why she was confused in the first place was beyond me. That was just standard economics. You can’t give and give and give without gaining something even if it’s through other means. You’d run out of things to give rather quickly.

  “My husband makes plenty for the both of us, and the community pitches in some as well.” She said this with a straight face as though her husband making enough to pay for a full medical operation even in a smaller village wasn’t pure insanity. What would I give for a job that could do that? I didn’t know, but it was bound to be quite a lot.

  “Well take this as a thank you.” I pulled out fifteen bronze and handed it to her, about half of what I had. This was a massive gift on my part. It was more spare money than I could make in months on the outside and I was giving it as a gift. But she refused, much to my consternation.

  She shook her head. “We don’t accept donations from patients. That gives the impression that we might accept bribery or payment. We don’t.”

  I blinked. Now that sounded borderline sensible. Unlike a great many politicians in the wide world, these people were honest and straightforward. And they had an ounce of common sense. Odd how rare that was in our current day in age.

  What a crazy and idiotic world.

  Nodding to her, I allowed myself to be led to the door. It felt an awful lot like being walked out of the hospital, and I wasn’t certain how much the system took from our world and how much it just made up on the fly but this certainly felt copied. Even if the people were very much real.

  That was the thing about the dungeon. Everyone here was truly alive. Yes, they were designated as NPCs, but they were alive and breathing. The NPC designation just meant they were people native to the dungeon. They lived lives, they had children, they lived and died and loved and lost, they could move up and down floors. They were real. They just couldn’t leave.

  The monsters, however, were just straight up generated by the dungeon. I didn’t know why, though I had read some pieces of research on the topic. Some people thought it was because of the risk of floor-wide depopulation, which happened on some of the higher floors as people got more and more powerful than their floor was meant to handle. I wasn’t so certain. The dungeon could have just made them breed like rabbits in spring. Then again, you didn’t really ever see baby monsters, just lower level ones. So the theory might have at least some merit to it.

  Stepping out the front door, I turned back. “I’m sorry, I got so caught up in things that I didn’t even ask you your name.”

  She smiled, understanding. This sort of thing probably happened all the time for her, at least with strangers. People in so much pain they couldn’t think properly. Not with her regular community; this was a small town and everyone knew everyone here.

  “It’s Meredith,” she said.

  “Meredith. That’s a nice name. Well Meredith, it was nice to meet you, however brief. And thank you very much for healing me. I hope I’ll see you again someday. Though, not as we met this time. That would be… unfortunate.” I nodded respectfully. As a proper gentleman would. Well, as much of a gentleman as a cashier for a large chain corporation could be.

  Meredith smiled again, a little wider this time. I could tell she was hiding a snicker under there. Ah well. That would be the last time I ever tried being a proper high-strung nobleman. It just didn’t fit me all that well. Perhaps I should have bowed my head a little lower?

  Waving goodbye, awkwardly noticing the—not unfriendly, just uncomfortable—stare of the husband out the front window, I left in a hurry.

  At the gate of the town, I found the guards once again in their normal positions. They were standing lazily, looking around at the woods as though the woods were feral kittens. It was almost laughable.

  The senior guard saw me first. “Ah,” he said, not hiding a smirk like Meredith had, “Here he comes. What did I tell you, Boaz? Meredith patched him up right good. And in under a week as well. Strangely resilient, that one is.”

  “So you said,” Boaz monotoned, “So you said.”

  Turning to speak to me directly, the senior guard said, “I don’t think we’ve officially met, apart from words promptly ignored. My name’s Fisher. This here is Boaz, my companion.”

  “My name’s Felix.” I said, shaking hands with each of them in turn. “And I didn’t ignore your warning, I just didn’t have a choice. The thing basically found me. The only reason I survived is because the thing wasn’t smart enough to punch around my shield.”

  Fisher looked at me skeptically. And I didn’t blame him. Really, I didn’t. I had come here asking for details about the town’s problem and they had warned me off. When I had insisted, they had told me only to have me come back a short stint from death a day later. What else was he supposed to think other than that I had gone looking for the treant.

  “Look, you said you had a need for lumber, right?”

  “Right. You were supposed to bring back some. The town is nearly out.” Boaz said.

  I looked around, taking in the clearing around the town. It was wide, going nearly a hundred yards further than the town walls in every direction. Plenty of room there for the trunks I had brought back.

  “Where do you want it?”

  The two of them directed me to a distant spot in the clearing where there were the remains of a fairly large woodpile. The treant seemed to have been a fairly prolific with its wood gathering back when it hadn’t gone crazy and tried to murder the town. What was up with that, anyway? My quest status hadn’t changed, so I knew I hadn’t quite figured out what was wrong with the thing other than the fact that it was crazy and the moon had done it.

  I pulled out log after log, stacking them in neat piles as they showed me how. All in all there were forty-three of them, all about eighteen feet long. There was also a stack for rounds, of which I had about thirty, and a stack for branches, which I couldn’t actually count by myself. It was in the thousands.

  When we were done, Fisher and Boaz stepped back and examined the haul, nodding.

  “This will sustain the town for at least half a month,” Fisher said. “Even better, it will help with palisade repairs. That treant sure does a number on our walls each night. The last few nights it’s gotten closer and closer to toppling the wall. It always attacks in the same spot. Say anything about that thing you like, but don’t say it isn’t strong. The fact you’re still alive and breathing after taking a pair of hits from it says more about you than it does about the treant. The wall says enough for it. Either way, thank you for this. You’ve helped more than you can imagine.”

  I nodded, but one look at my floor quest said I hadn’t quite done enough. There was still work to be done. And to do that, I couldn’t just stick around at level two. That was far behind the curve. I needed to be at least at level four, if not higher. So I said goodbye to the two guards and set off into the forest.

  There were monsters that needed killing, and I was not going to sit around and wait for them to come to me. I had done that way too much during my time in the dungeon, waiting. It was time I went out and actually did something apart from chop wood. Time to be proactive in my leveling.

  Monsters beware, your death is near at hand.