The troglodyte’s rge fist sms into my shield and I’m unched off my feet. I nd on my back, and getting up costs me willpower.

  It’s not the damage, although that’s significant. It’s the sheer exhaustion. The constant fighting, the way too often nearly ending up dead; which, if not for the items we’ve picked up along the way, would have been a sure thing. Turns out my armor’s tough as fuck.

  I gre at it as it shrugs off another fireball. It’s not immune to them. The bckened skin fcking off attests to that, but it’s got some level of resistance.

  “Alright, ugly,” I grumble. “Let’s try this again.” I run at it, duck, ssh, dodge, stab. Kick when I have to, and that strength boosting ring actually makes it stagger. Then I’m dodging, backing up when Helen or Silver call for it. When the fires died down, I’m on it again.

  It probably takes nowhere near as long as it feels like, but it eventually falls, and I do the same once I make sure it’s dead and not faking it. I keenly remember the broken bones from the one that pulled that off; three, no, four troglodyte fights ago. You’d think keeping track of them would be easy; nearly dying should make them memorable. But there’s a point when even that feels like just more of the same.

  I refuse the offered stamina potion. “We’re just going to rest.” I down enough healing ones to top myself up, then gnce at the team list, checking in on Brandon like I’ve gotten in the habit of doing after every fight. His heath’s a sliver lower, it feels like, but that might be my own remembered pain.

  I pass jerky around. I should cook something. If only to work on the skill, but I haven’t had the energy in…I don’t even know how long we’ve been down here anymore. We’re on the fourth floor of I have no idea how many. I can’t tell the days anymore because we sleep when we need to, and it’s got to be more often than once a day with how much each fight’s been taking out of us.

  Silver sleeps with me when we’re both doing that, but there hasn’t been any sex. I don’t think I could even perform at this point; I’m so tired each time I crash. And it’s more because she needs the comfort than for a hope something will happen.

  This is taking its toll on her. All of us, but her mostly. I don’t think she was ready for this. I surely ain’t. But I’ve been training to be a guard, to fight, to take damage. She’s been training to be an entertainer. I don’t think she realized what adventuring might mean any more than I did. Stories do not do this stuff justice.

  When my stamina tops off, I don’t feel anymore rested. I still have the ‘bad sleep’ debuff, but I can’t even tell if it’s affecting my skills anymore; I’ve been fighting with this for so long. I push to my feet.

  “We good?” I ask, and Helen snorts, but gets to her feet too. Silver’s slower.

  If Brandon’s life wasn’t in the bance, we’d be heading out. Instead, we head in deeper.

  *

  My hand touches the quiver, then my fingers grope around. By the time the realization hits that I’m out of arrows, the three golems lumber past the halfway point. I shove the ‘how the fuck can I be out of arrows’ to the back of my mind as I equip my sword and shield. It’s new, magical. The old one broke a…long while back.

  Helen screams a curse as I hear lightning fizzle. I told her now wasn’t the time to try new spells, but she just fucking doesn’t listen.

  The shield takes the blow, and instead of being sent flying, its magic reflects some of that force onto the golem, and it staggers back, while I barely slide half a meter. Then I’m sshing.

  I so fucking need a better sword. Everything’s tough enough, at this point, the fights take way too much out of me.

  Fuck Brandon for forcing me to do this alone.

  Fuck Dad for not being able to understand the worlds isn’t what he needs it to be and adjust.

  Fuck Base for letting me leave, instead of knowing better and forcing me to stay.

  “Fuck you Rich, for ruining my life!”

  I drop to my knees. Rubble all around me. Out of arrows and a fucking broken sword. Just how much more useless can I be?

  Arms wrap around me, and I bury my face in Silver’s chest, crying.

  I just want to go home.

  *

  “We’re leaving,” I groan as I roll on my back. How the fuck can a bunch of pixies be that hard to kill or hurt so fucking much? “I’m sorry about your brother, Helen, but I’m fucking done with this.”

  “You don’t mean it,” Silver says, cradling my head on her p. “You’re just tired and hurt.” She hands me a healing potion, and I nearly gag at the thought of swallowing another one of those.

  Who’d ever thought there was such a thing as too much healing.

  “How much further, do you think?” Silver asks. I’m about to tell her I don’t give a fuck, but Helen answers.

  “No way to know. We didn’t think to get details about the dungeon.” There’s no reproach in her tone, just exhaustion.

  This is what? The seventh, eighth floor? All I’ve got to show for it is going up one level. I’ve put the point in Grit Strike since that’s the pn, but I’ve not assigned any other points. I’m not so far gone that I don’t realize I am in no state to decide where those go.

  I try to push to my feet, but Silver holds me down. “Let’s just rest. If you still feel the same after, we’ll leave.”

  Sleep isn’t going to change my mind.

  *

  I stare down the stairs. “Can we reach the end already?” Yes, I’m whining. I no longer care. Fighting without a sword kind of takes it out of someone. I have one now, magical, according to Helen, but no idea what it does. It cuts and stabs, and that’s enough for me at the moment. But there’s been way too many fights before it dropped.

  “We have to be getting close,” Silver says, voice filled with hope. I have no idea where he pulls that from.

  “Closer, at least,” Helen says without hope whatsoever in hers. But she starts down them.

  *

  “Yes!” I send the centaur’s arrows to my inventory. It can’t be normal to be this excited to find a treen of them, but fuck, that means I don’t have to throw myself at the monsters anymore. “You two good to go?” my mouth hurts from the grin, and the look Silver gives me isn’t comforting. “What?” I equip my bow. “We can take them down at a distance again.”

  She exchanges a dubious look with Helen. Then they shrug and we’re moving again.

  *

  “You have got to be fucking kidding me,” I grumble, lightly banging my head against the stone door. “We have to go through this thing, and we don’t have the key.” Who fucking heard of a dungeon with a lock on a door? They’re all supposed to be puzzles and shit. And Helen can deal with those.

  “Maybe we missed it?” Silver suggests. “We can go over the floor. It should be safe, right? I mean, we killed everything already, and dealt with the traps.”

  “We are not retracing our steps,” Helen says in a tone that makes me look over my shoulder. “Move, Dennis.” She starts saying magic words as she approaches the door and I hurry out of the way in the hopes I can not hear them. Fuck, I hate magic. And then, I keep backing from the heat she generates as she pces her hands on the stone. The noise at least covers what she’s saying.

  Then something cracks, and the heat goes away. She’s drops to her knees as the glowing stone of the door falls away from her. We’re at her side, and I have a stamina potion to her mouth before she falls over. I can’t see any left in the team window. Silver has an Aether potion ready as soon as she’s done drinking it.

  Beyond the now open door is a short corridor, and yet another set of stairs.

  *

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I curse as I dance around, my feet on fire. I’d gre at Silver’s snickering, but I’m kind of busy trying to come up with a way to keep from burning my feet.

  Then I step in water, and steam rises around me.

  “I told you not to step on them,” Helen says smugly.

  “How was I to know this wasn’t going to be another one of those drop floors where all we need to do is test where to step?” There have been a lot of those getting here. However deep this is.

  “I told you it was magical.”

  “Every fucking trap’s been magical. That’s how the floors were held up.”

  I study my boots. The leather is fine. Looking at them, you wouldn’t know I lost a fifth of my health to fire. There were no fmes, just this sudden, burning heat.

  “But that doesn’t mean it’s always been the same kind of traps,” she counters. “Maybe let the sorcerer look them over before you stomp on them next time?”

  “Fine, see what you can find so we can move on to the next stairs and the one after that, and the ones after that. Like there’s even an end to this pce.” I gnce at the team screen. Brandon’s health is just below half.

  The man holding him said Brandon had about three weeks of life in him. Does that mean we’ve been in here a week? It feels like a whole lot more, so I hope it’s just been a week.

  “Got it,” Helen says, then those fucking words slip between the yers of my brain and I feel like screaming.

  *

  I eye the door. “You are sure about that?”

  “As far as my spell can tell, it’s an ordinary door,” Helen answers.

  “As far as your spell can tell,” I repeat. “Not as confidence inducing as I’d like.”

  “It’s the best you’re getting. Deal with it.”

  Sword and shield in hand, I approach it. The hinges aren’t on this side, so hopefully, whatever its trap is, I’ll have time to step out of the way.

  I push and move to the side.

  The door barely moves a handful of centimeter.

  Nothing happens.

  “Maybe it’s safe,” Silver says.

  I grin at her. “You are welcome to push it the rest of the way.”

  “You’re the one with the indestructible armor. You can keep going.”

  I doubt it’s indestructible, but it’s certainly tougher than any other armor I’ve had yet. I lean around to pce my hand on the door and stop. In the gap, I see lights.

  What can those be that I can see them through Helen’s magic sight? “Helen, cancel your sight spell.”

  She doesn’t question me.

  Silver gasps at the colored lights that spill out. Unlike with the magical sight, they are slowly shifting in color. Looking through the gap, I can’t make out what’s creating them. I put my shoulder to the door and push.

  The room isn’t bright. But it’s lit.

  The best way I have to describe it is that the back half of the room, walls and ceiling have veins of shifting colors running through them. No, like roots emerging through the stone and crisscrossing each other as they travel to the back until they reach the—

  “Is that it?” Silver whispers in awe.

  I fight the excitement; hard.

  “It looks like what he described,” Helen whispers back.

  It’s a colored crystal, its light shifting just like the ones in the roots. There’s a sense of movement in how the colors changes, from the crystal and away, through them. I want to run to it. Pull it out and leave.

  But if there is one thing this dungeon has taught me, is that rushing hurts. Potentially kills.

  “Let’s stay on our guards.” I step in, alert for…anything.

  I’m a nervous wreck well before I reach it. Nothing’s happening.

  This is clearly the dungeon’s treasure, so where the fuck are the monsters protecting it?

  “I have a bad feeling about this,” Silver whispers.

  “You and me both,” I reply.

  “Add me to that,” Helen says.

  We’re standing before it, and still nothing’s happening.

  “So, it triggers when I touch it?” I ask.

  “Must be,” Helen replies.

  I reach for it with my shield-hand. “Ready?”

  “Does it matter?”

  I touch it, and immediately turn, ready to fight…

  “How long will it take?” Silver asks.

  I wait a few seconds, then reach behind me and pce my hand on the crystal.

  “A decoy?” I ask when nothing happens after what must be a full minute of me touching it.

  “We didn’t find any other doors,” Helen points out. “Unless it’s hidden, this is the st room.”

  “Keep guard, just in case.” I unequip my shield and sword and study the crystal. It’s rger than I expected. From the description, I’d been left with the impression of something I could hold in one hand, but it’s almost three times that size. Without putting that in my inventory, carrying it out would be a problem.

  It’s embedded in the roots, which are embedded in the stone. I have to take my gloves off to manage to get some purchase on the edges. It’s surprisingly warm, and it pulses lightly.

  “You think it’s magical?”

  Helen snorts. “Have you looked around? Of course it is. I don’t think that lich guy just wants a pretty stone to put in a neckce.”

  I hesitate. “Should we really be giving it to him, then? What can he do with that kind of power?”

  “The alternative is we let Brandon die,” Silver points out.

  She has a point. “But what if this is one life in exchange for hundreds?” I look at Brandon’s health. Definitely below half now.

  “If you don’t want that on your conscience,” Helen says. “I’ll pull it out and take it to him.”

  “For someone who is constantly screaming at him,” Silver says. “You’re willing to risk a lot.”

  “He’s my brother,” she replies, then adds, in a voice that sounds forced. “Our parents would never forgive me if I let him die.”

  And he’s my friend. I won’t forgive myself if I don’t at least try to save him. I grip the edges tightly and pull. I don’t think I’ll manage it, then I feel it move. And then I’m falling back, hurrying to pull it to my chest to make sure it doesn’t break.

  I nd and my head rings from the impact, but I don’t let go.

  I should have sent it to my inventory as soon as it was free.

  I do that now and stand.

  “The colors are still going,” Silver says.

  “Did you think they were going to stop?” I ask, alert for an attack.

  “It looked like that’s where they were coming from.”

  “That could just be an illusion,” Helen says. “Or this is just a light show to make sure we know that’s the prize. And it’s going to regrow for the next team who braves it. How about we get out of here and leave what those lights are for people who actually want to be in here?”

  She has a point. “We’re leaving the same way we came in. Carefully. Any creatures we encounter, you and Silver bsts at a distance. When they cross the halfway point, I engage. Hopefully, the dungeon won’t have regenerated too many of them, but let’s not get overconfident.”

  They nod and we set out for the exit.

  Kindar

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