I poked the gong with the tip of my spear, and another specter flowed into the arena. This time, a blue-green vapor appeared. The level 6 monster’s nameplate read Teal Specter.

  Fabulosa lashed at it before it attacked the blemmy, and we fought it to zero health with the same ease as the first. When it died, it dropped a teal mote—piece number 16 out of 32.

  Its white rarity rating made me groan.

  “What’s wrong.”

  “It’s not rare.”

  “Why is that a problem?”

  “There’s no color or rarity correlation between the specter and their motes. It’s random. That means some of these motes might be infrequent drops.”

  Fabulosa chewed on her lip. “That stinks. I kinda wanted to complete the collection.”

  I summoned a crimson specter who dropped a mote of uncommon rarity. After that, I invoked a honey and rosewood specter with multiple gongs using Creeper. The monster names reminded me of house paint colors.

  Fabulosa summoned another specter. “It feels good to grind. It’s relaxing.” Even though her buff ran out, we summoned and killed two at a time. The meager experience points were free, which meant we’d discovered a monster generator in The Book of Dungeons.

  Role-playing games avoided monster generators because players could exploit them. Grinding monsters made for boring gameplay, but we couldn’t pass the chance of gaining free levels. Fabulosa and I could kill level 6 monsters outside Belden, but it would take many hours of travel between each one.

  While the opportunity to grind presented itself, we also wanted to see what completing a Spectral Spectrum collection would give us.

  After a few hours of summoning and wiping out specters, Fabulosa pulled a level 15 indigo specter. The deep blue almost looked black, and it rained an Ice Storm upon us, causing a surprising amount of damage—an outlier, but not unmanageable. By this point, we’d learned that Compression Spheres caused nearly 50 points of force damage. We dispatched the fiend with ease while also killing our third teal specter.

  Between bouts of specters, Fabulosa caught my attention. “Do you see what’s going on here, right?”

  I tilted my head to show I didn’t understand the question.

  “The gremlins sacrifice one another to the specters. As if they aren’t creepy enough, that’s the deal with the pit. The specters come running when someone rings the dinner bell.”

  Maybe if we kill enough to complete the set, the specters will leave them alone.”

  Fabulosa snorted. “I don’t think the specters are the only evil things here. It’s a rotten setup, sacrificing one another to ghosts.”

  Fighting specters of different levels wasn’t quite the same as a monster generator. While a level 15 foe seemed child’s play, it implied we could just as well summon a level 66 specter next. We counted our haul—19 unique motes and many repeats. We drew two at a time, stopping only to Rest and Mend whenever we had half health or mana. A string of minor debuffs always filled my peripheral vision, but since they faded after five or ten minutes, I stopped paying attention. Including our downtime, we averaged a specter every five minutes.

  After four hours, we’d garnered 25 unique motes by grinding through scores of specters. Most hovered around level 6. The highest-level enemy reached level 20, and when we killed it, Fabulosa hit level 22. Hours later, I joined her.

  During one of our Rest and Mend breaks, Fabulosa’s love for grinding broke. “This is like a job.”

  I felt the same way. The novelty of free experience had worn off, and I wasn’t happy that the game hadn’t awarded me an intelligence point. Since we were under no immediate pressure, we called it quits until we got some sleep.

  We put the blemmy back into the street and rested. For the first time, we had no access to firewood, but perhaps starting a campfire in the middle of an uncleared dungeon wasn’t a wise idea.

  I summoned Beaker, and we played with him a bit. When his eyes darted to the movements of the blemmies, I telepathically commanded him. “No-no! The blemmies aren’t food. They’re our friends, even if their worshipping habits are ugly.”

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  Beaker cocked and turned his head. “Food?”

  I almost countered his thought when I realized he referred to the little lizards on the city’s outskirts. His keen eyesight couldn’t miss them, making me happy to grant permission. “Lizards are food. Not the little people, okay?”

  “Lizards are food!” Beaker leaped from my lap and toward the room’s edge. Sand flew in the air behind him as he scurried across the ground. But flapping his wings to gain speed only alerted the lizards to their all-too-slow predator.

  The lizards nearby ducked into their holes. Beaker clawed in vain at the sand until catching sight of another lizard. When he darted after it, nearby reptiles emerged from their holes. Thus began The Great Lizard Catching Contest, wherein everyone who wasn’t a griffon won. Fabulosa and I chuckled at Beaker’s fruitless pursuit, a chase that lasted half an hour before my pet relented. He returned screeching in protest at the unfairness of it all.

  “Poor baby, come here, hon. Let momma hold you.” Fabulosa ruffled his chest to settle him down. The domed ceiling made his screams incredibly loud, but the racket hadn’t drawn wandering monsters.

  I wanted my pet to be around while I slept to allow him to grow a little. He provided a pleasant source of body heat, something I’d missed since Charitybelle’s departure. My Familiar showed no signs of dissatisfaction for being around only when we slept. After we finished eating rations, we pulled out our bedrolls on the outskirts of town and eschewed the Dark Room. Beaker made a fine watchdog and kept the little lizards at bay.

  My slumber reset my cooldowns, but I felt restless and had a constant headache. The previous day’s exertions were a dress rehearsal for what awaited us—killing more specters. My experience point total climbed to 350, more than enough to attain a new level. One aspect of grinding included ranking up our magic skills during combat. We fought low-level creatures, so it wasn’t as rewarding as a desperate struggle, but you took gains where you could find them in RPGs.

  Fabulosa looked in better spirits and speculated about what a complete set might do.

  The possibilities were endless, but the topic failed to energize me. I’d grown sick of killing specters and secretly hoped for reasons to stop.

  Without secret doors in the complex, Mineral Communion had limited use. The spell’s only notable vignettes showed town gatherings. The wandering blemmies encircled the arena, hit the gong, and sacrificed one of their own to the specters. Regardless, I hoped completing the collection of specter motes might break their vicious tradition. Without females, I wondered how the town of Odum repopulated its sacrificed citizens.

  As the hours passed, I conjured theories and scenarios about the temple. I considered drinking a shrink potion we’d taken from Winterbyte’s lifeless companion. From what I could see, the temple’s interior stood empty and inanimate, and this didn’t surprise me after playing with objects scattered in the city streets. The miniature pots, looms, carts, and wells looked incredible, but nothing worked. Fake doors and windows didn’t open—jiggling their handles broke them. Wagon wheels didn’t turn, and buildings weren’t hollow. It wasn’t a city, just a shrunken facsimile.

  I meditated on the elements surrounding the place. The city-tomb recreated the world, fitting the concept of an immortality engine. Beyond its streets stood vases filled with reports of distant civilizations. The curved hallway hosted altars signifying the four elements, replicating the universe as a primitive culture understood it.

  After dismissing Beaker, I let Fabulosa set the pace when we began grinding ghosts. We fought specters for five hours when we hit level 23. I received an agility, stamina, and willpower bump when I earned another level instead of an intelligence point. Easy leveling felt like a luxury, but this wasn’t getting us closer to destroying the relic.

  Worse yet, we weren’t ranking up our melee skills. Aside from the modest gains from spellcasting, battling lower-level opponents didn’t impress the game.

  After I hit 23, a level 8 plum specter we’d killed several times before showed a gray threat level. We would receive no experience from killing it.

  It felt like someone lifted a weight from my shoulders. Grinding out experience in a game became tolerable in a comfortable setting. Sitting at home, eating junk food, and chatting with friends made the exercise tolerable. Fully immersed repetition felt like a waste of time, and we couldn’t indulge ourselves too long with Winterbyte sniffing around Hawkhurst. I sighed in relief and hoped that my partner agreed we could stop killing specters.

  Fabulosa wasn’t happy about my suggestion to stop. “We have one more mote to collect, right?” The squint in her eye girded me for more specter-grinding.

  I abandoned hopes of giving up. “Alright. Let’s finish this collection.”

  Growing up in Atlantic City, I’d seen people fishing off the seawall on Sunset Avenue, but the activity never appealed to me. This collection reminded me of what it must be like to set up a lawn chair by the ocean, drop lines in the water, and drink all day.

  Our quest for the specter spectrum kept us busy, and I found nothing zen about it.

  We missed a single mote—number 7. We’d killed hundreds of specters, some rarer than others. So far, the toughest specter reached level 26, but even the exotic ones made for lackluster enemies.

  Randomized loot tables and rare rewards acted like a siren’s song to obsessive-compulsive players. The need for closure trapped us in a war against the uncaring gods of chance.

  Our quest ended 6 hours later when a juniper specter descended from the hole of a green tile.

  Killing the specter of the missing color presented very little challenge. It fell like any other level 6 monster, unremarkable aside from its rarity. I stood guard for the entire one-minute fight. I prepared for the specter to flee or bleed our battle into another encounter, but the juniper specter died with little fanfare.

  “Who do you think ought—”

  “Go ahead. Take it.”

  Fabulosa studied me suspiciously. “Wait. Do you think it’s cursed?”

  We sat down for a quick Rest and Mend.

  When we finished, I rebuffed with Heavenly Favor and prepared myself for anything. “No. Maybe. But we would have quit a long time ago if you hadn’t pushed. It’s yours.”

  Fabulosa cocked her head. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m just glad to be done with this.”

  After rebuffing, Fabulosa bent over to take the last mote. “Hmm. I can’t pick it up. My hand goes right through it like it’s an illusion. If this is a trick—”

  A booming voice interrupted her.

  “Who dares to sully the divine trance of Odum, blessed be His name?

  Behold the eternal singer! Witness His grace!

  You, who shall incur His imperishable wrath,

  You, who shall wither beneath His all-knowing gaze,

  You, who shall suffer the passion of His song,

  Must now prepare for the infallible judgment

  Of Odum, the Magnificent, blessed be His name.”