DIE TRYING [A Roguelite Extraction LitRPG]

Wade's eyebrows shot up. The region location announcement was standard video game stuff - he'd seen plenty of those. But… "Lethal Difficulty? What the fuck?"

If you survive, you'll be way ahead of the pack!

"And if I don't?"

Just gonna have to try again harder (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧

Wade stared at the phone. "I'm starting to think you're less 'mysterious game guide' and more 'asshole with a phone plan.'"

Aww, I'm flattered you think so highly of me already

How much self-loathing was dug down deep enough into his brain to bring something like that into his dreams? Maybe he really did need therapy. He put the phone down and looked around to take stock of where he was. Lethal difficulty huh. All he ended up in was just a bigger underground cavern. This was a dungeon of some kind?

The golden glow he'd followed had come from crystal-like lanterns sitting on curved metal poles with weird designs, lighting up the shallow creek. Giant stone slabs lay abandoned on makeshift sleds, ropes and gear still connected.

Wade's eyes followed the wet walls up into darkness. This wasn't just a cave - the structured layout suggested something more deliberate. A mining outpost maybe? Which meant there should be workers.

There were. Or rather, there had been.

Bodies littered the stream bed, all bones. Metal hardhats still crowned skulls, gear and tools clutched in skeletal hands. Some were half sunken underwater, moss and mushrooms growing over where it was damp enough. Others slumped by the slabs, ropes still tied across empty ribcages like they'd been used to pull the slabs. Wade forced a nervous laugh - if this was his subconscious sending a message about overworking himself to death, it was laying it on a bit thick.

The phone buzzed. He looked down at it.

Better start running 。。。ミヽ(。＞.＜)ノ

What the hell di- his train of thoughts ended the moment he noticed the skeleton twitched. Then came the horrifying sound of bone scraping against stone as the first skeleton pushed itself up on its hands and feet.

Others followed, their hollow eye sockets somehow finding him in the gloom. Mouths opened up like a silent warcry from their rotten throats. Then, as one, they charged, some scrambling on all fours before reaching upright into a full sprint.

Because, of course they would. This was a nightmare after all, walking dead bodies was just par the course.

Still feeling like everything was a lucid dream, some part of his head didn't quite panic at the sight. Which meant he could very rationally decide to do the obvious choice:

"Ah-hah-hah-ha, nope." Wade turned on his heel and sprinted right back to his hidey-hole with a mildly unhinged laugh at how utterly ridiculous this all was.

He didn't care if this was a dream anymore - he wasn't about to get torn apart by the undead. He dove right into the gap in the wall and started to scramble and claw his way back inside, getting his feet and chest fully inside, afraid that he'd get yanked out if he left anything out in grabbing range. "Nope, nope, no, and fuck no." He muttered to himself the entire time, like a desperate mantra.

Bony fingers dove after him, catching at his shirt as he wiggled deeper into the opening, tearing the fabric. One cold slimy skeletal hand covered in mud and silt grabbed his ankle and started reeling him back, stronger than he'd ever thought.

Dream or no dream, getting grabbed was going to freak him out no matter the situation.

He kicked hard at the hand in blind panic. More hands dug after him, the pile of skeletons trying to get a firm grip and yank him out like some nine-year-old menace trying to pull a hermit crab out, leg first. This dream was feeling less and less like a dream by the second. But he was wiggling downwards faster than they were catching up, getting cut up and scratched but not fully grabbed again.

Wade shoved forward, ripping off a good amount of cloth and skin to break free past the rocks, finally tumbling through the other side.

And the skeletons were still after him, dragging themselves into the hole like demonic hellspawn, slowly blotting the light behind.

Wade did the only rational move he could think of. He heaved a stone stuck in the mud under him and slammed it into the open hole as far as his hand could shove. He didn't stop there, getting more stones piled up, until he couldn't fit more. The final one could barely be lifted, so he rolled it over the ground, and then pushed up into place after some heavy shoving.

He sat behind it, held it in place with his back, breathing heavily, listening to the frustrated scratching from the other side of the hole. Okay. What if this wasn't a dream? Because his sides were scratched up and bleeding. And it looked real. Plus, after the last few minutes of utter panic and terror, that should have woken him up out of anything.

A sharp jab at his side made him leap onto his feet and snap his head around to see. One of the skeletal fingers had wiggled through all the rocks. It curled out, wrapping around the rock.

The only thing that came out of Wade's mouth that wasn't a terrified scream, was an equally terrified string of swear words and incoherent babbling.

He could run, or fight. Wade instinctively picked fight.

He kicked that finger as hard as he could with his feet. Socks didn't make for good stomping equipment. So he yanked out a muddy hand-sized rock by his feet and got to slamming it like a caveman again and again. That was far more effective. "Good, get fucked." He hissed as it got crushed by the last swing. Surprisingly tough for delicate finger bones.

Wade took a moment to breathe, trying to calm down. He was safe here. He wasn't safe out there, but here he was safe. And so long as the giant stone was wedged into the hole, none of them could crawl through.

They'd give up eventually, or he'd come up with a new survival plan.

…

The scratching on rocks stopped. He thought they'd given up.

Then he heard the sounds of metal picks tapping away at the rocks.

They were using their tools. These weren't just feral fast-running skeletons, they were intelligent feral fast-running skeletons.

When had skeletons ever been smart in any game or movie!?

Wade took a peek through the cracks, moving his phone light close by to get a better view. White bone stared him back with empty hatred, well lit in the light. It opened up in a silent scream, trying to bite. But Wade saw what he needed to: The skeletons were too jammed in to use actual pickaxes, the picking sounds were from chisels and smaller tools being used further behind. "How are you fuckers intelligent!?"

Something inside Wade's head finally clicked on. Two options in his head. Take this seriously, or don't.

If he was wrong and this was just a nightmare, Jason would give him that smug look tomorrow. 'Even your subconscious is staging an intervention, dumbass.'
And then he'd probably ask if the skeletons had better work-life balance. Good time.

If he was right and didn't act, those things would lovingly rip his eyes out and kill him. Horribly. Bad time.

Options starkly clear, Wade locked in and got to work.

There were weapons behind him. Picks and hammers he could use. Could he pry the keystone rock back a bit, and then go whack-a-mole with all the skulls that popped out after?

The hammer strategy could work, but he wanted redundancies. If he couldn't keep up with the head bonks, then they'd dogpile him. Then the eye gouging and eating would happen. He got up and raced around, gathering whatever he could in the small cavern. Two solid sledgehammers, a pick, and several choice rocks to act like a desperate cork in case of the worst. Which was likely to happen.

That was it for preparations. That was all he could do. With exception to the game system. He contemplated taking a look that direction. Did he have time? He turned the phone light back on, and looked through the hole to see what their progress was at.

A partly uncovered leering skull stared back as it had before. Deep within the hole, two or three feet on the other side. It silently opened its jaw up and down again, shaking violently, trying to get closer in every possible way it could. The chipping was coming from behind that skull, probably another skeleton with a better angle. This one just wanted to claw his eyes out and couldn't do anything else.

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He stared at the phone screen. "You got any ideas here on what to do?"

Look who's come crawling back to little old me huh (＃￣ω￣)

This piec- Wade shook his head, the texts wouldn't be here if whatever on the other side didn't care. "You want me to live through this right? Help me. Give me some advice or something."

You got the game system, right? The system that turns everything into game logic? The system that can warp reality itself around you? That little system? Kind of a big deal Michael, you should use it~

Fuck it. Probably the better option than running blindly into the tunnels. And encountering new enemies without any strategy.

There were what, quests? Stats? A useless boon that needed a bow and arrow and he didn't have any of those. The quests gave rewards, something called a storefront coin. Maybe those could get him further rewards? A gacha from hell type thing, where he'd redeem the coins for a pay-to-win weapon that he could actually use? He needed a real weapon, the coins might get him one.

He brought up the one quest he might have a chance of completing in time:

System Quest: Glasses of the trade - Use identify thirty times on unique targets. Rewards: One storefront coin.

"Asshole, how do I even use identity in the first place? Where's the tutorial?"

Saying 'quest' out loud had done the trick. So by that logic…

"Identify."

A red bar appeared above the skeleton, floating superimposed in his vision. And above that were letters.

Level 12 Undead Nathir Slave - 100%

Three more things happened. First, the glasses quest went up to one out of thirty.

And second he instantly got hit with two more quests on his notification.

New personal quest added: Baby's first kill - Defeat a hostile target higher level than yourself. Rewards: One storefront coin. Increased confidence.

New personal quest added: Press gang ganged - Defeat the workforce of skeletal pursuers after you. Rewards: One storefront coin. Increased confidence.

Har har, the system was also a troll. Was the system directly talking to him through the phone while it kept things more neutral in the interface?

The scratching became more furious as he got closer in order to get a view past the first few skeletal slaves all bunched up. Well, he needed 30, and there were a lot on the other side here.

"Identify."

Level 13 Undead Nathir Slave - 97%

Level 11 Undead Nathir Slave - 99%

Level 12 Undead Nathir Slave - 99%

The quest bar remained at one out of thirty. "Unique targets, oh fuck off." This wasn't going to work. He gave a few more curses, then swapped gears.

He didn't need to identify just enemies. There's an entire world here to test out.

He turned and tried it on the rocks next.

Stone.

You don't say.

Glasses of the trade: Identify targets 2/30

Obvious stone was obvious, but points were all that mattered.

He did the same for the tools at his feet. Picks, hammers, phone. Each one gave him a point in the quest.

Glasses of the trade: Identify targets 5/30

He then went on to checking out the wooden support struts, mud, water, or anything else he could cut in half using some of the discarded tools here to cut things up. 'Wooden handle' and 'broken-off pickend' triggered a new point each. And cutting off a chip of wood from one of the support struts gave him just regular old wood as a target. He took his shirt, socks, pants, underwear, nailing a point for each.

A small rip of cloth gave him another point for 'textile', but he couldn't milk it with the socks and pants as they all returned the same type. Making a drawing on the ground also didn't trigger anything more than 'mud' which he'd already gotten a point out of. He went back to the hole and tried using identify on some of the gear the skeletons had, like their helmets or rope, but the system just gave him the unit as whole. He bit off a bit of nail and a strand of his hair, both returned 'Organic Material.'

All in all, he got to twenty three out of thirty before he hit hard limits. He just needed seven more targets.

He could break his phone down for more sub-components, though he immediately discarded that idea. The phone was too important to survival. There had to be other things nearby to work with.

Running out of targets, he hit himself.

Level 1 Player - 94%

Glasses of the trade: Identify targets 24/30

He just needed six more targets and he'd get that coin. Maybe there was a way to keep it running constantly?

As he thought about it, the world popped up with name tags and red health bars. A bunch of stones, all the tools and tunnel supports, and a lot of red bars on the other side of the cavern. Now he had numerical proof he was outnumbered like thirty to one. "Lovely."

One new thing showed up that he hadn't noticed until then.

Level 2 Blackrot Rat - 84%

Glasses of the trade: Identify targets 25/30

When he looked for the smaller red bar, he found a tiny rat squeezing its way near the hole he'd come from. It got free, plopped silently on the ground, then raced past him to the back of the cavern like a tiny black missile. It acted terrified, though he couldn't quite tell how it looked. More like a black rat-shaped thing, with a shimmering white outline to it that flashed around for a half second. It was leaving small traces of blood behind, dust rising up from the droplets, before fading away.

That was weird. But the rat wasn't trying to kill him, which meant it automatically went into the 'low priority' category. And probably wouldn't count as a hostile target for that first quest, even if he could chase after that rat fast enough to catch it.

The picking continued behind him, he could hear the rocks being scratched and cleared away. They'd be on him soon.

Fuck. He needed to delay it a bit more. He set his phone off to the side so he could read any texts the came, on the small chance they'd be useful, while grabbing mud and dirt in hand. Then packing it into the hole. It splattered all over the skull on the far side, but so long as he piled the entire channel up with dirt and loose rocks, it might further reduce their range of motion.

They'd dogpiled after him without any plan, and he was going to abuse that mistake against them. Plus, while he clawed things off the ground, he might find something new to identify.

Half a minute passed, and the channel was steadily getting filled with debris and smaller rocks. But he couldn't find anything new to identify.

Racking his brain, he came up with one more option: "Stats" he called out, and then cast identify right on the floating text.

Glasses of the trade: Identify targets 26/30

The panel shifted. More detail appeared. He read through it rapidly, looking for anything he could use while he frantically piled up the defense.

"Thanks, real helpful." Sure if he survived all of this, then he'd take a closer look, but right now there wasn't anything he could get out of this. But it did give him another point.

Further down the stats list, he found his buffs and debuffs. Those now had explanations.

There had been mention of the storefront, and Wade suspected THE GAME was this system interface. But why was "Play" capitalized? Was it a name?

"Who's Play?" he asked, frantically shoveling another clump of dirt and rocks into the hole.

You're making me sad here Michael, took you until now to ask me my name?

"….You're Play."

:]