Dungeon Bait

The System evaluates every eighteen-year-old and hands back three to five class options. Tim Kowalczyk got one.

On his birthday, the System weighed eighteen years of Tim and returned a single verdict with the decline button grayed out: Dungeon Bait (Rare). The thing you put on a hook because you're counting on something bigger to take it.

Now dungeons spawn wherever he goes. Monsters track him like he's the center of a map only they can read. And the System has already tried seventeen times to scrape Tim out of his own skull and install something more useful. About everything else, it's being very patient.

The good news, if you can call it that: the overwrite left something behind. Bob. A dead merchant with fifty-three years in the trade, from a world that finished its Integration long ago, now riding shotgun in Tim's head with no body, no contacts, and exactly one marketable skill. Knowing what everything is worth. Including a walking dungeon factory.

The System wants Tim dead. Bob wants to build an empire. Tim just wants to make rent.