Life... It flowed like rusty water through the pipes of an office building - monotonous, predictable, tasteless. Every morning I would sink into a chair in front of a flickering screen, turning my soul into columns and graphs. Coworkers? Ghosts in ties, whispering about quarterly reports. Lunches? Insipid sandwiches that I would chew while staring at a wall with a crack that resembled a map of a forgotten continent. Even dreams became flat, like an Excel sheet - sometimes I caught myself thinking that I was dreaming in .xlsx format.
The fateful day began like any other: I was carrying coffee through the park, trying not to think about the 11:00 meeting. And then - a yellow flash under my shoe, the world fell into an absurd ballet. As I fell, I managed to see the ill-fated peel: a perfect crescent, like a mockery of the universe. "Seriously?" flashed through my mind as the back of my head hit the cobblestones. "Not an existential crisis truck, not a falling grand piano of fate... A banana?!"
The darkness wasn't scary. More like a switched-off monitor after an eight-hour marathon. And then... Sound. A hum vibrating through my bones. The smell of damp stone and iron. I opened my eyes, and the world bit into me with granite fangs.
The vaulted ceiling of the cave breathed a bluish glow. My palms - rough, scarred and calloused - clutched a pickaxe, its handle pulsating with a warm pattern. But the strangest thing was *this*: a translucent window hung before my eyes with the inscription "Activation system: 97%".
"Oh my God, am I in an isometric RPG?" — I laughed hoarsely, and the laughter echoed through the tunnels, as if a hundred underground spirits were answering me.
When the system finished loading, reality shuddered. The stones were covered in colorful labels: "Iron Ore (normal)", "Rotten Air (debuff)", "Hidden Passage (requires 15+ perception)". Instinctively, I poked the pickaxe into the wall - the blow echoed with a strange melody, and in the corner of my vision popped up: "+2 mining experience".
"So that's how it is," I whispered, running my hand along the cold vein of quartz. "You wanted me to dig deeper? Well, Mr. Office Worm turns into a philosopher mole."
Somewhere below, in the womb of the world, the underground wind rang. It sang of caves where crystals grow like ideas, of labyrinths leading to the core of reality. I spat on my palms, feeling the system weave into my muscles, turning every movement into an equation of efficiency.
"Let's start small," the pickaxe swung up, striking sparks. "First the ore. Then the secrets. And then, maybe, we'll get to the answers."
And the stone groaned, giving birth to the first crack - perfectly straight, like the Gantt chart of my past life.