BxR - Chapter 1: Duck or Horse?

It was the kind of question you only heard at bars. Some drunk guy leans over and slurs it into the table like it was a riddle from God.

Would you rather fight… a hundred duck-sized horses... or one horse-sized duck?

Dante had fielded it before—usually mid-buzz, when someone thought they were being philosophical with their tequila. Out of the many, many stupid things spewed at bars—this question came up quite a few times, oddly enough.

He never put too much thought into it, but his answer was always the same:

100 duck-sized horses.

Small. Fragile. Easy to punt. A well-placed kick would send them tumbling like toys in a child’s temper tantrum. Ethics and animal abuse issues aside—it was just common sense. Logical.

Now; the question was a dumb one, obviously. But if someone answered horse-sized duck? That’s when Dante would lean in. Not to defend his logic, but to dismantle theirs. He didn’t care about winning. He cared about making them realize how ridiculous they sounded. It had about the same energy as topping pineapple on pizza.

Unfortunately for Dante, the universe decided it was a big deal. And it was done with hypotheticals. Done with it, in the worst way possible.

System Message:
You have reached the boss room.
Defeat the dungeon boss to complete the tutorial.

In front of Dante, stood a duck. A giant, yellow duck.

It stared at him with its cold, soulless eyes. A wet snap came from its serrated beak. Its wings unfurled, wide as ones from a mythical Pegasus. He couldn’t be sure, but… he swore that the feathers on its wings looked oddly… sharp. Like, razor sharp. Sharp as knives.

Dante turned without thinking. His boots scuffed over the stone, mind already rehearsing escape.

But the gate was gone. No arch, no hinges, not even a seam to suggest it had once been behind him. Only smooth, unbroken wall remained. The cave had swallowed the way out.

He was alone with the thing.

He turned back and faced the giant duck monster. He gripped the jagged bloodied rock in his hand, knuckles white. The interface panel was still in front of him.

Boss Encounter: Horse-Sized Duck of Doom (Level 1)
Type: Tutorial Boss

“You have got to be kidding me.”

Dante didn’t wake up today, expecting to be fighting for his life against an over-sized bath toy turned-monster after work. Yet here he was, in the thick of it.

Hell, a few minutes ago, he was eating a turkey sandwich. Now? Well, he had just finished playing death-tag with rabbits—rabbits with horns on their heads. It was a miracle he wasn’t skewered yet, though the injuries on his body didn’t do him any justice.

He thought about the past ten minutes. How this all came to be—how sudden it was—and less importantly: where the fuck his sandwich had gone.

♠♠♠

10 Minutes Ago.

The first sensation was pain.

Rough stone against his palms. Cold air pressing against his skin. His head ached with a slow, nauseating throb, and his limbs felt like they had been filled with wet cement. When he finally opened his eyes, everything swam. His balance was off. His thoughts refused to connect.

He sat up slowly, the weight of his body unfamiliar. The ground beneath him was jagged, uneven. The scent in the air was thick with dust and the coppery sting of old blood. Everything around him hummed faintly, like the entire space was running on some quiet, malevolent current.

What the hell had just happened?

He remembered the breakroom. A sandwich in one hand, a crumpled napkin in the other. Andrew had been there too, still in his work shirt, laughing about the new Thai place two blocks over. They were debating what day to try it out.

Then something had shifted. Not in the room, but in reality itself. A voice had entered his mind—not through sound, but through force. The words hadn’t been heard so much as etched into his thoughts.

He remembered the look on Andrew’s face more clearly than anything else.

Panic.

Not sharp, one that made people scream or run. It was more quiet than that. Numb shock. Like watching the world fray at the edges and not knowing where to start fixing it.

System Message:
Attention inhabitants on planet X92-EARTH: Human known as John Doe has arbitrated on your race’s behalf. To ensure your species is eligible for convergence, you will now all face a trial. Those of you that fail will be expunged. Those that pass, will be given the opportunity to continue evolving. For the sake of your species: survive, and entertain. Prove your worth of matter.

The words had no emotion. They could have been read off a spreadsheet. Delivered without tone, like a machine reading the verdict of a forgotten trial.

At first, Dante thought he was having a stroke. Then he saw Andrew staring at the same thing. The same hovering prompt, flickering in the air like a dying bulb. He reached out to touch it, and that’s when the world vanished again.

Now he was here.

Wherever here was.

“What the hell is going on?” he grunted.

He straightened, brushing dust off his khakis. His outfit, a wrinkled button-up and office shoes felt laughably out of place. He was in some type of cave, a cavern of some sort. The walls around him pulsed faintly with veins of glowing blue light.

A breeze passed through the tunnel ahead, subtle but unsettling. It carried something. A sound that might have been scratching—or breathing—but buried just deep enough to be uncertain.

“Hello...?” he called out.

The word came out dry and hoarse, and he regretted it the moment it left his lips. That was always how it started. The idiot in the dark, trying to reason with a monster or burglar. As if they would call back politely and apologize for the noise.

He’d laughed at those scenes before in horror movies. Hell, he’d joked about them more than once. But those jokes weren’t doing him much good now.

He crouched and scanned the ground for anything solid. Anything useful. His eyes caught the edge of a jagged rock wedged half into the dirt. It took a moment to pry it loose. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. Especially when he was trapped in a dark cave. Which also begged the question: was he kidnapped?

If I bash someone’s skull in with a rock for kidnapping me… that’s self defense, right?

He straightened again, slower this time. The air pressed on him as he moved deeper into the tunnel.

The passage opened ahead into a wider chamber. Strange mushrooms clung to the walls, casting a faint green glow that rippled across the cavern like underwater light. The shadows they threw shifted and danced, some of them moving in ways they shouldn’t have.

That’s when he saw it.

At first glance, it looked like a rabbit. Small. Round. Covered in coarse black fur, with a jagged little horn jutting from its brow. It twitched once. Then turned to face him.

Its eyes were wrong. Red and glossy, lit from within like embers. Its mouth hung open in a slack grin, and for just a second, he saw rows of teeth. Too many. Some cracked. Some still growing. A line of drool slithered down its chin and vanished into the fur.

Dante didn’t speak. His voice came out anyway.

“What the fuck.”

He stood there, shoulders tight, one hand locked around the rock like it might suddenly become a sword if he gripped it hard enough.

This was the part where instinct was supposed to kick in. Where something useful was meant to happen. Instead, he froze—just like every raccoon he’d ever startled by the dumpster behind his apartment. Same posture. Same glassy stare. Like if he just didn’t move, the thing might go away.

It was the worst defense mechanism in the animal kingdom. A biological surrender flag.

And yet, there he was. Stiff, breath shallow, thinking of trash pandas while the rabbit-thing smiled back with far too many teeth.

He hated how much sense that made.

Whatever it was, the thing ahead of him wasn’t a rabbit.

The size was close, and the fur might have fooled someone from a distance. But up close, nothing about it made sense.

Rabies didn’t explain this.

It let out a squeal, but it wasn’t the high-pitched sound rabbits made when cornered. It was deeper, violent—a rasping warcry more suited to a charging boar. Then it moved. Fast.

Its body compressed once, then launched forward, a blur of fur and horn tearing through the space between them.

“Fu—”

The start of a curse stumbled off Dante’s tongue, but the rest was taken with his breath as panic stole his lungs. He turned and bolted. Back through the corridor. Past the chamber where he’d first woken up, legs pumping with more desperation than control.

For ten full seconds, he ran. Hard. His breath wheezed in and out of his chest. His shoes struck the stone like war drums.

Then—dead end.

He skidded to a stop, the wall looming ahead like the punchline to some cosmic joke. He turned just in time to see the creature mid-air. Launched. Horn-first. A living missile made of fur and fury.

Instinct snapped into place before fear could paralyze him. He lifted his arm—the one gripping the rock—and braced it with his other hand. His body moved before thought could catch up. A wild, crooked arc slashed downward.

Stone met bone.

The crack rang out sharp and wet. A brittle explosion that echoed through the cavern like a warning bell. Dante hit the ground hard, landing flat, his breath shoved out of him. His elbows flared with pain, but he forced his head up, searching.

The creature was off to the side, sprawled near the wall. Its horn had split down the middle, a jagged stump where the point had been. It groaned low, the sound thick like fluid moving through its throat.

Then it stirred.

Claws scraped the stone as it stood. One leg wobbled, but it didn’t fall. Its head turned slowly. Dante caught a clear look this time. Those teeth were real. Rows of them. Long, thin, uneven. Its jaw flexed like it wanted to bite something that could scream.

It touched its horn, winced, then glared back at Dante.

Something behind its eyes flickered to life. Not just pain, but fury.

Dante didn’t wait.

He scrambled to his feet, heart already racing again, and ran. Back into the tunnel. The mushrooms along the walls glowed faintly, casting shadows that stuttered with every step. He couldn’t hear it following, but he knew better than to trust silence.

The corridor turned left. He followed it without hesitation, boots thudding against stone. His legs burned, but he didn’t stop.

The tunnel opened again into a broader chamber. He barely had time to take it in. Stalactites. Shadows. The same blue glow webbing across the ceiling. And then, he noticed movement.

There were more of them.

Not just one. Not two. At least six, maybe seven. Scattered all across the cave. All covered in dark fur. All staring with the same red, burning eyes.

Every single creature locked onto him. A low chorus of growls filled the space. Then, all at once, they moved. Bodies coiled. Limbs tensed.

They leapt.

There wasn’t any time to think.

Dante ran in a zig-zag pattern. He moved, veering right, then left, ducking low, and even doing feints that would’ve put NBA players to shame. At least, that’s what he thought of himself after feinting one of them successfully.

He failed the next three tries.

One grazed his shoulder. Another swiped at his thigh. Pain bloomed all along his body, quick and sharp. Several claws tore through the fabric of his shirt and pants. Some swipes drew blood, as he could feel something drip down his arms and legs.

He managed to slip between two of them, shoulder-checking one as it narrowly missed stabbing him in the throat. It was sent tumbling across the ground with small thuds. He didn’t look back; he kept his gaze forward the entire time.

Screeches rang out behind him, high and furious. Something swiped at his back ankle, causing him to jump forward. With a quick turn, he sent a sweeping kick to the side of the tiny bastard that had just scratched him.

That rabbit, too—was sent tumbling away.

He took a deep breath and continued running. Stopping all six or seven of them was simply impossible for him. One fear that tugged at the back of his mind was if they had rabies. That might’ve explained the red eyes. And as far as he knew, there was no cure for rabies. There was a chance he was already infected, but he couldn’t help it now.

The horns, however—he did not have an explanation for those.

Several more twists and turns of the cave approached. He kept going until he came close to something odd.

An ancient slab of blackened iron embedded into the wall like an archway. Decorative designs and architecture that seemed almost medieval, flanked by stone pillars with odd runic inscriptions. It was some type of gateway.

Extremely suspicious, sure. But better than waiting to be skewered by the monsters chasing him.

He ran through and slowed, taking some much needed breaths.

Behind him, the snarls had stopped. It seemed like they stopped following, or had gotten lost.

He exhaled, half a sob, half a laugh. His legs trembled as he stood. He turned slowly, taking in the room.

A circular chamber stretched out around him; it was wide, symmetrical, and carved from some type of black stone. Gold filigree decorated the edges of the floor in repeating patterns, like some old cathedral had been swallowed by the earth and forgotten. Tall columns arched upward toward a domed ceiling.

It felt… ceremonial.

A noise erupted behind him, and he turned, just to notice that the gate had disappeared. He was now in a sealed room.

He did another 180, but then—

A transparent interface flashed before his eyes, causing him to flinch backward. Immediately after that, the room rumbled, and the platform within the center moved. It twisted and lowered with mechanical finesse. A few seconds later, it rose again, but now, something utterly nonsensical accompanied it.

The screen appeared again in front of him.

Boss Encounter: Horse-Sized Duck of Doom (Level 1)
Type: Tutorial Boss

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” he whispered.