Dungeon Crawler (BNHA)
No Summary as of yet.
Chapter One: A Useless Quirk
The world was not always kind and fair, no matter what everyone tried to tell him. In fact, it was downright cruel at times. It could be worse, they had often said, you could be quirkless – as if that would be harder than what he already had to deal with.
Crawling through a tightly enclosed space in a damp cave, Midoriya Izuku would loved to have claimed otherwise. His quirk was not kind to him, not that anyone else seemed to realise it. When he had been younger they had thought it was the work of a bright young boy with a good imagination. Now he was older nobody wanted to listen about his so-called adventures and neither did he want his mother fretting over him. So for all intents and purposes his quirk made him vanish into a little blank space for an hour where he kept himself busy in his imagination.
The reality was vastly different. His hand scraped against a stalactite, the graze making him swear under his breath as the clack-clack of heavy, pointed legs against the hard stone rang out louder than ever.
It was close.
He clamped a hand over his mouth, heart thudding too loudly in his chest. It felt as though it ought to be audible, a beacon for the insect-like creatures to find him in their nest. Or lair. Whatever their preference was – if they had preferences at all. He tried not to think too much on that. In fact, he generally tried to focus on survival when it came to his quirk activating without his say so. As it always did.
It was at times like that he wished he had been born quirkless. Then he wouldn’t have been in that situation. Then he would have only had to worry about incessant bullying and verbal abuse and being treated as lesser. Maybe that would have been better than the constant threat of death should he make a single misstep. He was already mocked enough as it was for having a weak quirk that he couldn’t control. He was already mocked for ‘making up stories’ given only younger children were allowed to do such things.
It was like they had forgotten the existence of ‘authors’ and fantasy novels. In hindsight, maybe if he’d said they were made up stories everyone would have been fine and dandy and people would have thought he’d write the next bestseller. Never mind that wasn’t his main dream.
He wanted to be a hero, and that was where the problems had started. Hindsight was a funny, fickle thing which had a habit of biting him in the backside.
Clack. Clack.
Though, he mused wryly, he might be in danger of quite literally being bitten if he didn’t do something – ideally conveniently vanish. One hour in the real world was the equivalent of twelve hours in what he had come to call dungeons. They were like those portals in fantasy light novels which took people to strange places and within those fantastic worlds were dungeons where heroes dived in to face off against monsters to obtain treasure and wealth. The only treasure he obtained was his continued existence.
He pulled a high-calorie bar from the survival kit he kept on him permanently, cramming it into his mouth as he checked the time on his watch.
Five minutes left.
He could do this, he mentally told himself. Vibrations thudded through the rock above him, rhythmic and repetitive, and years of carefully honed instincts had him scrambling forwards. Rolling onto his side, he mouthed curses as he rolled out of the crawlspace which had been too small for the monster-insects to get him. Crashing down to the bottom of the larger round tunnel, stones skittering beneath him, he swore audibly that time. He didn’t need to see in the dimness of the tunnel to know that the hunt was back on. His eyes narrowed on the glowing numbers on his watch counting down the time until he was transported back to the classroom.
PREMISE: Eventual Gamer!Izuku, and hopefully something of a more unique take on it compared to what's already up. Izuku gains One for All which 'levels up' his original quirk, and the many consequences of this.