Tangeni walked past empty warehouses with shattered windows and weeds pushing through cracked concrete. This part of Neo-Lumina didn't get rebuilt after the awakening because nobody cared enough to invest, which made it perfect for an F-rank gate that nobody wanted.
He pulled his hoodie tighter against the cold and kept walking, stepping over broken glass and trash that nobody bothered to clean up. A rat scurried across his path and disappeared into a pile of rubble, probably smarter than him because at least the rat wasn't walking toward a dungeon full of monsters.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. A message from Nia.
"bro you're really doing this?" she asked.
He typed back without stopping.
"yeah"
"ur insane lol. good luck tho, ill be watching"
"if i die delete my browser history"
"LMAOOO no promises"
At least he had one viewer lined up. That was something.
He found the gate behind a collapsed factory and it was smaller than he expected—maybe three meters tall, swirling blue-green, and it smelled like something died inside it. Goblin stench, according to the forums. He wrinkled his nose and kept walking, turning back now would be even more pathetic than going in.
Yellow tape and cheap metal barriers marked off the area around the gate, flimsy enough that anyone who wanted to get through could just step over them. A faded sign read "DUNGEON GATE - F-RANK - AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY" and nobody bothered to replace it because nobody cared. Guilds ignored gates like this because the rewards weren't worth the effort, so it just sat here for weeks until some government cleanup crew got around to it.
A bored guard sat on a folding chair near the gate's exclusion barrier, scrolling through his phone. D-rank hunter badge on his chest, doing grunt work because someone had to watch even the gates nobody cared about. He had a thermos of coffee next to him and a sandwich wrapper crumpled on the ground, probably been sitting here all morning waiting for absolutely nothing to happen.
He looked up when Tangeni approached and his eyes went straight to the lack of gear.
"You registered?"
Tangeni pulled out his hunter ID and handed it over.
The guard checked the ID, checked Tangeni's face against the photo, then laughed. "You're F-rank and you're going in there?"
"Yeah."
"No armor, no weapons and no party." The guard handed the ID back and shook his head. "You trying to die or something? Because there are easier ways, kid."
"Something like that."
The guard leaned back in his chair and studied him for a moment. "You know what's in there, right? Goblins. Hundreds of them. They're not smart but they'll tear you apart in groups. There's a reason nobody clears these gates solo."
"I know."
"And you're going in anyway. With nothing."
"I have a hoodie."
The guard actually cracked a smile at that. "Yeah, that'll help when they're chewing on your face." He shrugged and waved him through. "Good luck, kid. Don't die in there, the paperwork's annoying. Also I'm supposed to tell you that the Association isn't responsible for any injuries, deaths or dismemberments that occur during unsanctioned solo runs, but you probably already knew that."
"I figured."
"Smart kid. Stupid, but smart." The guard went back to scrolling his phone. "Gate's right there. Touch it and you're in. Touch it again when you want out, assuming you can get back to it alive."
Tangeni walked past the barrier and the smell hit him full force, like walking into a locker room that nobody cleaned for a century. His stomach did a flip but he swallowed it down, throwing up before he even entered the dungeon would be the worst possible start to a streaming career.
He stopped a few meters from the portal and took a moment to just look at it. The surface swirled and shifted, blue and green mixing together in patterns that didn't quite make sense, and he could feel something pulling at him from the other side—not physically, more like the gate knew he was there and wanted him to come closer.
This was real and he was about to do it, his hands were shaking so bad he shoved them in his pockets so the guard wouldn't see.
He activated Capture.
[Capture Activated]
[Recording Quality: Maximum]
[Storage: Unlimited]
The red dot appeared in his vision and that was it—he was live. He opened the streaming app through his System interface, connected the feed and set up a channel with just his name because fancy handles were for people who actually had viewers.
[Stream Status: LIVE]
[Viewers: 0]
[Chat: Empty]
Zero viewers, probably the loneliest stream in Neo-Lumina right now.
He waited a few seconds but nothing changed, no viewers, no chat messages and no sign that anyone in the entire city gave a damn about what he was doing. He expected this, it would have been weirder if people were watching.
Then the zero flipped to a one, and a second later to two.
One of them was probably Nia. The other one could be anyone—a random person scrolling through new streams, a bot, someone who clicked by accident. Didn't matter. Two people was more than zero and that was enough.
bestlittlesis: GO BRO GO 🔥🔥🔥
He grinned, that was definitely Nia.
He looked at the empty chat and felt a moment of doubt creep in because he was about to walk into a dungeon full of monsters with no weapons, no armor and no backup, all for an audience of two people and one of them was his sister. This was either the start of something or the dumbest way to die in the history of dungeon streaming.
"Yo," he said out loud, talking to nobody and everybody at the same time. "This is Tangeni. I'm about to do something really stupid and I'm probably going to die, but if anyone's watching, let's see what happens."
bestlittlesis: LETSGO TANGENI DIFF
randomgamer42: wait is this guy actually going in with no gear lmao
Three viewers now. The algorithm was doing something at least.
Nothing else came back, just him standing in front of a portal that smelled like death with three people watching him either succeed or get eaten alive. Not exactly the viral moment he was hoping for but everyone had to start somewhere.
He took a breath, walked forward and stepped into the portal.
He didn't know what he expected but it wasn't this—like someone grabbed his insides and squeezed, colors turning into noise and noise turning into nothing, then it all snapped back and he could breathe again. The whole thing took maybe two seconds but it felt longer, like his brain couldn't keep up with what his body was doing.
He stumbled forward and caught himself before he fell, blinking hard to clear his vision.
The sky was different—orange and red like the sun got stuck halfway through setting and gave up. A whole kingdom spread out in front of him, crumbling castles and broken towers everywhere, and it would have been beautiful if not for the goblin camps dotting the fields and the war drums that he could hear even from here. Actual war drums, like this was some kind of medieval nightmare and he just walked into it wearing jeans and a hoodie.
The air was thick and warm compared to the cold morning he left behind. It smelled like smoke and something rotting. He could see movement in the distance—small figures running between the camps, goblins going about their goblin business without any idea that a completely unprepared human had just showed up in their world.
[Dungeon: Goblin Fortress World]
[Rank: F]
[Objective: Defeat the Goblin King]
[Time Limit: None]
A pocket dimension the size of a small country with hundreds or thousands of goblins, and him with nothing but a recording skill and zero combat training.
He checked the stream and saw eight viewers now, which was more than he expected.
bestlittlesis: BRO THE GRAPHICS ARE INSANE
randomgamer42: no way he survives this
dungeon_simp: is this fake? no way someone actually goes in like this
"It's real," he said out loud for the chat. "I'm actually here. No weapons, no armor, no plan. Just vibes."
He definitely should have thought this through more.
He grinned anyway.
"Okay chat," he said to his eight viewers. "Let's see how long I last."