The Astral Highway [A Cooking LitRPG]

I put the car in park and blew out a long exhale, resting my head against the steering wheel. Even after months of knowing this was coming, I didn't feel ready. How could I? How could anyone?

Grandma Marks's house waited just outside, hollow and lifeless without a dozen grandkids playing games in the front yard. It'd actually been years since those summer days, but they were some of my favorite childhood memories.

The oak tree out front still had the rope swing hanging from it, and decorative lights lined the walkway up to the front door, nearly overrun by the flower bushes. They were finally in bloom, unlike how they'd been two months prior when I was here for the funeral.

"Come on, Madi. You can do this. It's just walking inside, facing all the cousins, collecting a few trinkets, and going back home," I said to myself in hopes of igniting some kind of motivation to get out of the car.

Taking one more deep breath, I mustered my strength and opened the car door. A gentle late spring breeze blew past, helping to calm my emotions.

I walked up the cracked sidewalk leading to the porch. The welcome mat was worn to the point of being unreadable, and the cushions on the patio chairs looked like they'd been through a lawn mower a few times, but that's how it had always been at Grandma's house.

My hand hovered above the doorknob as I braced myself to step back into a memory. Finally twisting it open, I walked into the living room I knew like the back of my hand. One long couch under the main window, and a TV positioned directly across from it with a large collection of DVDs and VHS tapes along a bookshelf next to it. Two armchairs were nestled along the far wall while a lamp with a colorful shade lit the entirety of the space.

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The only problem was that it wasn't the room I walked into.

In fact, I wouldn't call it a room at all. More of a cave-cabin thingy.

The walls were stone, roughly hewn, but cobbled together in what was obviously man-made while the floor was straight dirt. A few glowing orbs provided light, but the ceiling above me was pitch black, a seemingly endless void. Whatever door I used to enter was gone, leaving me stranded in the middle of the cavern.

I immediately panicked.

This couldn't be…

It wasn't possible!

There was no way that this was… a Dungeon?!

Gram-Gram's Dungeon A typical stay at Grandma's house–home cooked meals, a whiny dog, and a recliner that tries to eat you. Who would have guessed sweet, gentle Grandma Marks was a System-Integrated-User with magic abilities beyond comprehension? Definitely not Madi. But she soon learns the truth about her deceased grandmother when she's sucked into a Dungeon alongside the other grandkids. Only one of Gram-Gram's descendants gets to inherit the power, so Madi is pitted against her siblings and cousins to race through a Dungeon made up of ludicrous monsters such as [Overused Recliners] and [Incomplete Knitting Projects]. The first one to reach the end not only claims the greatest inheritance left behind by their grandmother but also gains the coveted title of [Grandma's Favorite]. In honor of her grandmother's legacy, Madi will do whatever it takes to reach the end of the Dungeon first, if only to ensure it doesn't go to any of her unappreciative cousins.