Literature / I've Been Reborn as a Dungeon Monster?

I've Been Reborn as a Dungeon Monster? is a Web Serial Novel updated on some Mondays on the SpaceBattles.com by Friendlysociopath.

The story follows the adventure of the human protagonist when he's shoved into the body of a dungeon monster after his death in a previous world. This new reality is dangerous and the now-trapped human has to learn about the new world and understand it as quickly as he can before he perishes again- or worse- loses all memory of himself.

The story is available to be read for free here.

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I've Been Reborn as a Dungeon Monster? contains examples of:

• Absurdly Sharp Blade: Within the first several chapters an adventurer reveals his sword can carve through stone like it's butter.
• All There in the Manual: The SpaceBattles.com website allows for different markings in a given thread to separate posts- enabling the author to repeatedly explain and elaborate on various ideas and concepts in tabs marked as ‘Informational’.
• An Adventurer Is You: Played straight- anyone from the outside world who manages to survive even briefly in the Spiral Dungeon becomes an adventurer complete with one of fourteen classes. How these classes are chosen is, as of yet, unknown.
• Animal Lover: The protagonist seems to develop a soft spot for the Wolves on the beginning floor of the Spiral Dungeon.
• Anti-Regeneration: While seemingly everyone in the Spiral Dungeon can regenerate so long as they’re not out of HP- a facet of some powers includes ‘damage potential’: low potential is basically unable to deal significant permanent damage beyond drawn blood and discomfort, medium potential can actually do stuff like taking off limbs and destroy organs, but high damage potential impairs the ability to regenerate the injuries or heal it with most methods.
• Armor Is Useless: Justified in that it's not that ALL armor is useless- you just need much better armor than mundane materials can supply and most likely a few enchantments to buffer it up.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Played straight for the most part.
  • In the Spiral Dungeon most minions follow anyone stronger than them through if only because the alternative is typically being killed by them.
  • Outside the Spiral Dungeon it has been established the stronger adventurers generally do what they want and the rest of the populace either cheers them on or runs away.
  • The protagonist attempts to use this diplomacy several times to mixed results. In fact it backfires on him once one of his allies notices the protagonist isn’t kicking enough ass and instead joins the enemy.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Played straight in that the stat relevant to physical defense isn't applied evenly- your eyes, throat, and other such vital areas get less protection. Targeting the eyes especially is a tried and true Pixie battle plan.
• Audible Sharpness: Openly invoked, each time Vik 'The Bladesinger’ draws one of his three swords everyone present can hear the things ‘sing’. Notably every adventurer within earshot immediately either runs the hell away or does their best to become as inconspicuous as possible.
• Back Stab: Ninjas, which totally aren't assassins, get a skill enabling them to deal more damage when they attack an opponent unaware of them- typically meaning from behind.
• BFS: Only one example so far and it's easy to overlook but Thaig's greatsword is implied to be a full foot in width and forged of solid gold or a gold-like metal.
• Big Brother Worship: Averted since just about every interaction between Lenn and Vik involves the former disliking the latter for some reason.
• Big Damn Heroes: The protagonist just after he gains a material body. The first thing he does is race through the forest and send a T-Rex-sized Daemon skidding backwards with a hit just before it can eat Lavender.
• Bloodless Carnage: Averted with a passion- the text repeatedly emphasizes injuries produce a great deal of blood. Also just everything involving the Vampires.
• Blood Knight: Kriegshund in a nutshell. The Demon Dog was so into the thought of battle that he put up a fight even before he was properly born.
• Blown Across the Room: Just about anyone that takes a hit from a big enough boss like Ripper. It'd be a shorter list to point out the number of people that aren't sent flying by him- Elena.
• Body
• Bottomless Magazines: A little bit of everything.
  • Adventurers have a limited number of arrows but they can enchant quivers to hold an endless amount or a bow to make its own arrows.
  • Those who live in the Spiral Dungeon will have their own personal stores of bullets/arrows/whatever replenished every day but if they use them up then they’re gone until enough time passes.
  • Anything not personally used like the munitions in abandoned tanks will never be replenished and will stay gone.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Revealed several chapters after their introduction to be the cause of the Seed's malice and inability to really learn or develop beyond murder-hobos.
• Bullying a Dragon: Seemingly invoked when Incubus gathers a group of Crossbreed Daemons on the Giant's floor and happily sets one of them, a Hunger Daemon, after one of the Pixies the Giants had only recently met and happily granted the right to live there. The Giant's response? Creating and throwing an entire thunderstorm through the portal.
• Came Back Wrong: Arguably this applies to the protagonist (as he didn't die and then be devoured like everyone else) and equally to Harkin since, while it's beneficial to the party, he didn't respawn 'correctly' and so was isolated from his peers.
• Casting a Shadow: The protagonist’s soul was shoved in the body of a Shadow- basically a sentient patch of darkness with a bad attitude. As such the vast majority of his powers relate to manipulating such.
• Character Death: All kinds.
  • When a Spiral Dungeon defender dies it eventually respawns but most of its memories regarding any other creature will have been lost.
  • Played straight with adventurers- when they die they stay dead.
  • Unfortunately for the humans stolen from other settings to be reborn as Spiral Dungeon creatures- their second death apparently is borderline-instant as their souls are consumed for fuel.
• Charged Attack: And how- Elena's Smite goes from throwing Ripper (who is five times larger than a human) through a concrete column at a minor charge to piledriving him through five floors of a parking garage with a full one.
• Chill of Undeath: Subverted- Vampires are room temperature and their reliance on their own blood for activity actually makes them more susceptible to cold rather than less.
• City Guards: Played straight- the Spiral Guard are noted to serve more as guides than guards but otherwise fill the role as you would expect.
• Combat Tentacles: Played straight with the Seeds. They're basically human with two exceptions- the third eye in the middle of their foreheads and their ability to create and manipulate tentacles that can be used for just about anything from crushing things or gaining edges to slash and stab them.
• Content Warning: On-site readers firmly requested the author add a warning to how grim the story would be.
• Cool Versus Awesome: A few chapters in the protagonist is steadily drawn deeper into a coming battle between two bosses and their minions. The factions involved? Daemons vs Undead.
• Dark and Troubled Past: The Spiral Dungeon seemingly goes out of its way to gather creatures that are ready and willing to fight and kill- which is noted to not exactly create a dungeon filled with bunnies.
  • Luc died in some fashion in order to even get to the Spiral Dungeon.
  • The Pixies had their home burned down and were enslaved by Abyssen.
  • The Seeds massacred an entire city due to the Root dominating their bodies and spirits.
  • The Vampires have an entire world seemingly without a meaningful amount of human life thanks to war.
  • Troglodytes come from a place where their creator race all died to a magical virus and left the creations on their own.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Played straight and subverted.
  • Shadows as a species are noted to be basically incapable of anything other than pure malice.
  • The protagonist however generally tries to help others despite possessing a Shadow's body.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Subverted, played straight, and entirely denied all at once.
  • Minions respawning will cost them memories and will reduce them to their initial state of joining the Spiral Dungeon- which will almost always be weaker than their state prior to death.
  • Seemingly played straight with Bosses given they have different rules- one of which is they remember everything no matter what. Abyssen is noted to game this feature of the dungeon by dying easily the first time you face him so he can respawn with better knowledge of the adventurers later on.
  • Denied by adventurers- who remain very dead when they die.
• Deconstruction: How intentional the deconstruction is can be unclear but the series seems to actively enjoy poking at the Isekai genre and how horrific some parts of it can be.
• Demonic Possession: Reversed in the sense that the Shadow is entirely aware the human protagonist has taken over its body and is far from happy about it. In this case the protagonist is the possessor instead of the possessed.
• Early Game Hell: The protagonist is unable to be harmed only by traditional physical damage- enchanted weapons work fine and are easy to get and just about any magic will hurt him. And his HP is his worst stat with only a single HP to his name early on. It’s strongly implied this weak start plus the Shadow’s raw aggression and lack of caution guarantees its death so often people are surprised to see them at higher levels.
• Evil Is Burning Hot: Played straight with Daemons- they all seem to have recurring influences for heat and fire.
• Exactly What I Aimed At: The protagonist and the Seed Harkin have one of these moments when firing a tank turret at some adventurers. While the first round hits- the second is blocked by a shield and the third 'appears' to miss- only for the protagonist to point out he was aiming at the rock wall behind the shield.
• Extreme Omnivore: The version of Troglodytes featured in this setting consists of multiple sets of teeth and an anatomy that was explicitly designed via magic to let them eat anything.
• Fairy Companion: Three of them. Rosemary, Lavender, and Buttercup are Pixies that the protagonist finds on the 2nd Floor and eventually befriends though the relationship changes from mentors to student to protector and allies as the series progresses.
• Fantastic Racism: While slavery is illegal and the outside world’s races all seemingly consider one another equals- there is no doubt they still seem to harbor certain unflattering images of one another.
• Fish out of Water: The protagonist spends a substantial amount of time in areas that, while Earthlike, don't resemble anyplace he'd actually been during his original life. As the story progresses these areas become more and more fantastic and consequently the protagonist feels more and more out of his comfort zone.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Noted as possible in the setting and one such hybrid, a Human-Elf named Lenn, serves as a POV in a given chapter and several side-chapters. Unusually, this confers no advantage to the hybrid and in fact seems to offer nothing but disadvantages as only pure bloodlines of given races get full access to their gifts: Elves live longer, Grokko get harder skin, etc.
• Gentle Giant: Two of them. Grita, an Earth Giantess, and Kragi, a Sky Giant. The two reside in the Spiral Dungeon on one of its ‘safe’ floors and seemingly don’t really need or want to fight anyone as they’re on their honeymoon.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Invoked quite often:
  • Seeds and all Root-associated forces have glowing red eyes- three of them
  • Daemons have glowing eyes of several colors- the more bestial types favor red
  • Vampires have eyes that glow bright blue when they use their powers
• Gone Horribly Right: Incubus' intent when empowering the protagonist was to gain a pawn he could use to infuriate his creator, Abyssen, as Incubus knows there is no love in Abyssen so the best twisted attention he can hope for is hate. While Incubus' control attempt failed utterly since he gave the power first- before establishing control- the protagonist has been a thorn in Abyssen's side ever since.
• Good Feels Good: The protagonist puzzles a lot of the creatures in the Spiral Dungeon by appearing entirely genuine in his wish to help first given the chance rather than immediately jumping them for the experience or overpowering them to force the creatures to help.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: Almost every battle or momentary conflict involves either adventurers or minions taking injuries that would kill or badly maim a normal person- almost all of which are healed in moments.
• Great Offscreen War: Just about every other minion seems to have a backstory involving a war, battle, or large-scale application of violence. But it takes over 50 Chapters before anything more than a dozen fighters crops up.
• Guns Are Worthless: Subverted but also played straight. Locke, a WW1 Vampire Colonel, uses a rifle in battle and is still able to harm enemies since his ATK stat influences the gun- though he often has to use his psychokinesis to amp the bullets if he wants to deal significant damage.
• Hammerspace: Prominently displayed in Chapter 56 where a Thief refers to 'Claimed Space' and pulling items from it and placing them back into it.
• Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: Lampshaded as the Spiral Dungeon’s magic hiding helmets- though oddly this doesn’t apply to ninja face-coverings, owl-shaped masks, eyepatches, blindfolds, or regular hats.
• Hit Points: The Spiral Dungeon appears to allow adventurers and its denizens to regenerate endlessly so long as their HP isn’t brought to 1 or less.
• Home Field Advantage: Introduced when Harkin goes to the Vampire floor- just being there at all provokes an almost unstoppable hate of everyone and everything. The trope is called out more properly when Locke (a Vampire) goes to Harkin's floor and finds the rampant hate the Seeds and the Root have for Vampires actually is attacking his Spirit just for being there.
• How Do I Shot Web?: It takes the protagonist the entire first chapter to learn basics like how to move, open his status window, and use an ability. This is somewhat justified given he’s not in anything similar to a regular human body.
• I Surrender, Suckers : Incubus when he battles the protagonist makes an offer, on his knees, of restoring the protagonist's memories of his family and friends. When a surprised protagonist asks if this is possible? Incubus responds, "No" and shoots him in the face with a burst of fire.
• Invocation: Played Straight for spells at least. A full incantation along with gestures draws out its maximum power while you can cut both down to cast faster but weaker versions.
• It Can Think: While only hinted at in the story proper a side-chapter has made it clear that the Troglodytes shouldn’t be capable of thinking at all but they’ve begun evolving to the point where they develop tactics and understand the concept of hiding and allies.
• Item Crafting: Seemingly the entire purpose of the Crafter class given they’re noted to be the weakest class for actual dungeon-diving.
• Jerkass: Abyssen. Side-chapters have gone into detail that his only regret in ruining entire kingdoms is that he killed too many people and so ended up without anyone to rule over. The time in the Spiral Dungeon has done very little to improve his disposition.
• Kaiju: The Jaeger on the 7th Floor resembles a large mechanical turtle with spikes growing out of its ‘shell’. While an exact height is never specified each of the spikes is described as the length of a bus and the Jaeger itself can evenly look at someone on a silver stone hundreds of feet tall.
• Lava Adds Awesome: At least one weapon in the series has already been noted to make use of lava for attacking- in this case filling the areas a sword slashes open with it.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Openly invoked as the reason Shadows typically die quickly. They either refuse to learn caution and strategy or outright cannot do so without someone else intervening.
• Level Goal: Not all floors in the Spiral Dungeon require a boss to be defeated. Some just require you to correctly find the end- typically depicted with a rippling white light.
• Loophole Abuse:
  • Abyssen’s main hold over the Pixies is that Rosemary agreed for him to have power over them until he respawned them in exchange for bringing her sisters back from the dead. The loophole is that Abyssen is not responsible for this happening at all and so the blood contract is essentially never going to end.
  • A group of adventurers realized their enemies won’t respawn if they’re not killed and so attempt to set up a crystal-farm on the 7th floor of the dungeon via incapacitating the boss without killing it. Unfortunately for them this earns them the attention of the dungeon’s Keeper- who decides to change the rules in response.
  • Seemingly knowingly done by Vampires. Because their HP doesn’t hit 0 until their blood is destroyed- they can regenerate pretty much endlessly until that happens even though this apparently was not how it worked in their original world.
  • In a side-chapter Lenn is put through the wringer when he can’t get his pay due to the wording of his contract.
• Loss of Identity: Noted as one of the darker parts of the story. While humans Isekai’d into the Spiral Dungeon normally ‘die’ instantly when their souls are consumed it turns out if they don’t perish immediately like the protagonist- the minion will slowly consume their memories until nothing is left of the original human.
• Monster Adventurers: While the protagonist is arguably still a human- most his retinue consists of monsters/minions that he has successfully managed to form into a party that (mostly) works well together.
• Mook Horror Show: Played straight- the protagonist sees the aftermath of an adventurer party steamrolling early floors of the Spiral Dungeon and is horrified at the ease of which the minions are killed given he’s become one of them.
• Mordor: Abyssen’s main floor is comically grim and dark complete with literal rivers of blood alongside the burning heat and desolate landscape.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Abyssen fairly accurately judges the protagonist's power and character after the Shadow draws blood in their banter and set a newly-sworn adventurer to trap and attack the party. Had Incubus not interfered in his desire to gain his own control over the protagonist- the story would've ended right there on the third floor.
• Nothing Personal: With few exceptions the protagonist doesn’t hold grudges against other minions or adventurers he comes into conflict with.
• Oh, Crap!: Basically the reaction of the entire adventurer team when they realized the Jaeger had broken free of its magical prison.
• Older Than They Look/Younger Than They Look: Played With as a concept. When the protagonist asks a Vampire named Locke how old he is, Locke responds by asking whether he should answer as a human, a Thrall (a weaker stage of Vampire), a Spawn (the next stage), and whether they should count the time between deaths or not. Ultimately the question isn’t answered but it does imply Locke is overall older than the protagonist despite looking younger.
• Our Hydras Are Different: While not yet revealed- the author has made it clear he's unfond of the standing trope of dragon > hydra and insisted such a thing is not going to happen in his work.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Openly invoked multiple times when the protagonist and an adventurer both mention the Vampires they encounter aren’t what they expect. In the Spiral Dungeon Vampires are closer to sentient masses of blood than humanoids with a skin condition though they otherwise still demonstrate many traditional Vampire powers like enhanced senses.
• Perception Filter: Desire Daemons like Incubus have this as a skill- enabling them to always sound and look just a bit more like what the person wants to hear and see. Incubus even has a permanent unhealing injury on his chest that people skim over when looking at him.
• Portal Network: Seemingly the only way to get between the Spiral Dungeon’s floors normally is to find an entrance or exit located somewhere in the environment. They vary between being visible and waiting to sometimes needing a certain criteria to open them.
• Portent of Doom: When Kragi tries looking at the protagonist's future the power fails and a black line embeds itself in the sky- permanently marring the clouds and sun. Inside the Spiral Dungeon this isn't considered a big deal but outside in the surrounding world it's considered bad enough that the Dwarf population of the city borderline vanishes overnight and everyone else is quite concerned that the sky is starting to split in half.
• The Power of Friendship: Played straight when the protagonist is about to be consumed by a Shadow. The Shadow is seemingly aware of this trope too which was why it targeted memories of the protagonist’s family and friends first in order to make it easier to consume him.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Occurs when the protagonist battles a Shadow for control of his body. He wins the fight and so ensures his control is uncontested but the battle costs him most of his memories from the old world regarding family and friends.
• Reincarnation: Literally in the title.
• Respawning Enemies: Played entirely straight from an adventurer POV as everything in the Spiral Dungeon seems to come back eventually after they kill it. The only times this hasn’t happened involves sitting on the same floor for an extended time period- which either prevents the dungeon from respawning the enemies or makes it undesirable for some reason.
• Succubi and Incubi: The first Crossbreed introduced is an Incubus- a Desire Daemon by another name. Later on a Succubus is introduced alongside the aforementioned Incubus. Both Desire Daemons are blatantly fine with using their looks and magic mojo in order to influence their enemies.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: A magical dungeon springing up in a random world offers a lot of potential for the people who can actually get to it and survive. However races and nations without immediate access are rapidly being left behind as the miraculous treasures and powers within are lost to them.
• Stat-O-Vision: One of the few perks of being a Shadow- the protagonist has easy access to status windows just by looking at the shadow of a given being. He can see their stats and their powers but cannot see what their equipment does.
• Squishy Wizard: Played straight. Magic-based adventurer classes and minions based around using abilities typically have lower health point, attack, and defense stats than their beefier counterparts that fight in a more physical arena.
• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: In general it does seem by accident or design that the Spiral Dungeon supports the idea that more mobile and damage-heavy minions and adventurers are best suited to jumping squishy caster-style opponents and that the beefier and stronger equivalents make short work of the mobile types if they get the chance. Magic users can seemingly pull a massive variety of spells out but they need someone to protect them or else they'll die quickly.
• Tank Goodness: While it does ultimately fail- the protagonist and a Seed ally do make extremely good use of a tank turret against a party of adventurers. The cannon rounds are indicated to be decent threats to adventurers of that level and the turret’s armor holds up to several attacks before giving out instead of failing immediately.
• Unbreakable Weapons: They exist but they require magic enchantments to work. Regular weapons, even magical ones, can still be damaged and broken. Informational tabs also explain being physically Indestructible does not necessarily mean the equipment is magically Immutable.
• Unwitting Pawn: The protagonist has been bouncing around various versions of this trope basically ever since he got shoved into a Shadow’s body.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • Abyssen via proxy threatened the protagonist and the Pixies to have them relentlessly spawn-killed. This is regarded as entirely possible by all concerned and for good reason.
  • The protagonist has noted the health system in the Spiral Dungeon makes it entirely possible to continue taking far more pain than a human body would ever be designed to deal with in reality.
  • Given drowning only takes a single point of health away before your lungs refill with air- the bubbles on the 3rd Floor that seal you in solid stone must take a very, very long time to kill you.
• Wall Run: Admittedly it’s more of a wall crawl but a Shadow can in fact only do this as true three dimensional movement cannot be done by a two dimensional being. Later on this trope is played straight as at least one adventurer class can stand and run on walls and the Shadow's materialized body can even run on the ceiling without issue.
• Weakened by the Light: The protagonist is routinely infuriated at how often this happens since his powers rely on darkness being present or at least possible to work.
• What Is This Feeling?: The Seed known as Harkin is chock-full of this trope. His inner thoughts indicate prior to encountering the protagonist he didn't feel much more than a vague desire to seek out an all-powerful 'Root' and to gain strength to further that quest. Once the protagonist and the Pixies encounter Harkin he begins to instead doubt his purpose and feel concern for other beings and even conflict over the idea of backstabbing them.

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