Zane finished his search up north, so it was time to go south. Soon, he hit upon the route the others had gone, broadly. He saw it in dim pockets of essence crystal—already taken. He saw it in open, empty chests; the treasure had been claimed. They were heading south in a fairly straight line. Just how far down had they gone?
The plains were oddly quiet. It was early noon; the sun glared bright overhead. Hmm. He was in the dungeon, but he still saw the sun—this place was in the real world. If he had wings, could he just… fly out?
Something told him it wasn't so simple.
As he wound his way South, he came across a smattering of boars. None were strong enough to give him a real fight, but he still smashed the ones that bothered him. After half a dozen or so, he was rewarded with a notification:
𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝕌𝕡!
𝔼𝕤𝕤𝕖𝕟𝕔𝕖 𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝟚𝟡 -> 𝟛𝟘
ℍ𝕖𝕒𝕝𝕥𝕙 𝔼𝕗𝕗𝕖𝕔𝕥: ℍ𝕖𝕒𝕝𝕥𝕙 𝔽𝕦𝕝𝕝𝕪 ℝ𝕖𝕤𝕥𝕠𝕣𝕖𝕕
ℂ𝕝𝕒𝕤𝕤 𝕊𝕜𝕚𝕝𝕝 𝕃𝕖𝕒𝕣𝕟𝕖𝕕:
𝕊𝕒𝕔𝕣𝕖𝕕 𝔹𝕚𝕟𝕕 𝕀 (𝔸𝕔𝕥𝕚𝕧𝕖) [ℝ𝕒𝕣𝕖]
𝕆𝕟𝕔𝕖 𝕒 𝕔𝕙𝕒𝕚𝕟 𝕙𝕒𝕤 𝕗𝕦𝕝𝕝𝕪 𝕨𝕣𝕒𝕡𝕡𝕖𝕕 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕖𝕟𝕖𝕞𝕪, 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕔𝕒𝕟 𝕚𝕟𝕗𝕝𝕚𝕔𝕥 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕡𝕒𝕣𝕒𝕝𝕪𝕤𝕚𝕤 𝕙𝕖𝕒𝕝𝕥𝕙 𝕖𝕗𝕗𝕖𝕔𝕥. 𝔼𝕗𝕗𝕖𝕔𝕥 𝕤𝕔𝕒𝕝𝕖𝕤 𝕨𝕚𝕥𝕙 𝕪𝕠𝕦𝕣 𝕝𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝. 𝔼𝕗𝕗𝕖𝕔𝕥 𝕤𝕔𝕒𝕝𝕖𝕤 𝕨𝕚𝕥𝕙 𝕝𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝕕𝕚𝕗𝕗𝕖𝕣𝕖𝕟𝕔𝕖 𝕓𝕖𝕥𝕨𝕖𝕖𝕟 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕪𝕠𝕦𝕣 𝕖𝕟𝕖𝕞𝕪.
For shits and giggles, he tried it out on a Level 14 Boar. When he wrapped it and applied the skill, it was like it was trapped in amber—it froze still. Only its eyeballs could move. As he went, he held it aloft with his chain; an hour later, it was nowhere near unfreezing. He could feel his essence and the effect. To clear it, the boar's essence had to whittle his essence down first. At this rate, it'd be hours.
Now this was less than half his level. The skill as it was likely wouldn't trouble something like the Hobgoblin Chieftain very long. But as he leveled it, who knew what it could do?
He'd been a wrestler. He'd liked the visceral violence of grabbing hold of someone and slamming them, and crushing them, and mauling them—like a shark dragging its prey into deep waters, never letting go of the bite. He liked that these chains might let him do the same. One day.
***
"Boss...?" said Ralph hesitantly.
Brad whirled on him so fast the big man nearly fell over. "What do you want?"
"It's, uh, Mara. I think… I think she's about to keel over, boss."
A vein bulged on Brad's temple.
"You think I care?" Brad hissed. "Every second we waste, Brick Walker gets a little closer to finding that boss before us! Don't you get it?!"
Ralph shrank, nodding fast, and Brad sighed.
How did it come to this? Life had been going so well. After years of hard work putting in countless 40-hour weeks, he'd finally gotten promoted to VP at his dad's consulting company. He was the youngest VP in the company's history, and he would have gotten there earlier, too, if his jackass boss Roger hadn't said no at first. But good ol' Dad took care of that. "Some people can't spot High-Value Men when they're standing right in front of 'em," Dad had chortled over beers.
Then it all went to shit. Three days later, the world turned upside down. Now Brad was stuck here with these Low-Value People in a Godforsaken forest. And he didn't even have coke to take the edge off.
Somehow the nightmare had gotten even worse. Brick Walker, little Brick Walker from high school, had gone from a small, stuttering, awkward weirdo to a huge, menacing, awkward weirdo. He had the balls to threaten Brad in front of his whole fucking tribe!
And Brad had just... let him. That was the part Brad hated most, the part he kept replaying. He should have done something. He should have put his hands on that smug fuck. Too late now; the damage was done.
He swore to God everyone was disrespecting him now. First, it was Nick questioning his plans—"Maybe we should cut through the valley, maybe it'll be faster." Or Ralph saying maybe they should spend more time gathering wood; "Boss—are you sure there's enough for the campfires?" Brad had had enough by then. He'd exploded—"Yeah, okay, okay, you think I didn't think of that? Is that it? You think I'm a fucking moron, is that it?"
And he'd just gone and done it again. Brad watched Ralph go, seething. He felt kind of bad about it, actually. Jess—his on-again off-again girlfriend—was always on him about his temper. It was most of the reason behind the 'off-again.' He'd done pretty well keeping himself in check, too, he thought. But man, these last few days... they were getting to him.
He took a deep breath. He'd bought a book—well, Jess had bought him a book and left it on his nightstand—something by some hippie old Asian dude, maybe the Dalai Lama? He'd skimmed a few chapters; it said visualization was supposed to help. Sounded pretty woo-woo to him, but when he'd tried it in the past it kind of worked, surprisingly. He tried it now. Yeah… he was visualizing his anger like a hot ball of twine in his chest, a hot ball unspooling… he breathed deep, in, out, in… he was starting to feel it, this sense of Zen calm trickling over him…
He opened his eyes. Ralph was coming back, looking sheepish. "Uh, Boss?" he mumbled. "Don't mean to question you or nothing, it's just, Mara's asking if we can maybe take a break."
Brad stared at him. "Say that again."
"…Uh," said Ralph. "It's just—Mara—"
"A civilian," he breathed. He almost couldn't believe what he was hearing.
Even a fucking civilian was questioning him now?!
He marched straight over to the civilians, way out at the back of the party. "Which one of you fuckers is Mara?!"
They all flinched at the sight of him. For a moment, no one seemed to want to admit it. Then, a little ratty-haired old lady raised a trembling hand. Her whole body was hunched over a walking stick, like an upside-down L. That's right, she was an English teacher, or something. Brad remembered. Middle school English teacher. He always hated English. He stomped right up to her, right in her face.
"Ralph here tells me you think my plan's shit. You think you want to make your own plan, you want to take a break. You think you should be chief, you should decide things. That it?" he snarled. "You have something to say to me, huh? You have something that you want to say to my face?!"
The old lady swallowed, trembling. She looked like she might really do it. Then she took in the expression on his face and shook her head. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, that's what I thought. KEEP MARCHING!"
***
Not ten minutes later, Brad was vindicated.
They found the boss lair! The ground sloped down into this huge, craggy valley, and at its bottom was the mouth of a cave. A giant red dot lay just a few hundred yards in.
He was so relieved he started laughing. Then the dot started to move. Out toward the entrance—toward them. "Alright, boys," Brad said. He put up a fist.
His lieutenants looked at him, baffled. "You fucking morons," he said, "we said the fist means 'get ready', remember? The fist means 'ready'!"
They scrambled, pulling out the little nuggets they'd scrounged from chests—F-grade bows, a few shitty daggers. "So. Lieutenants, go left. Warriors, go right. Scouts with me down the middle. Let's ambush this son of a—"
The beast left the cave, and Brad's words died in his throat.
ℂ𝕣𝕪𝕤𝕥𝕒𝕝𝕓𝕒𝕔𝕜 𝔹𝕖𝕙𝕖𝕞𝕠𝕥𝕙 (𝕄𝕠𝕟𝕤𝕥𝕖𝕣)
𝔼𝕤𝕤𝕖𝕟𝕔𝕖 𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝟛𝟠
It was like a rhinoceros on steroids, huge, almost unbelievably muscular. Its skin was rugged dark hide, studded with gleaming boulders of blue and purple crystal. A line of spear-like crystals ran down its back. It had tusks big as an elephant's and deep-set glowing red eyes, eyes the color of dying coals. And when they turned to look at Brad, he felt all muscle control leave his body.
Something warm trickled down his leg. He shrieked.
Then he ran. They all did.
He'd run for nearly a minute until he was shit out of breath, until he realized the thing wasn't chasing them. It took nearly five more minutes for the rest of the group to catch up. Brad was still hyperventilating.
"Okay," he gasped, "Okay, calm down, everyone, calm the FUCK DOWN, holy FUCK!" He ran a hand through his sweat-matted hair.
The stragglers said apparently the boss only poked its head outside. It was probably coming out for air; it went back in pretty quick.
Yeah, fuck that. Brick could have that monster. The two were made for each other. It took about half an hour for Brad to calm down. When he did, he made a new plan. As luck would have it, Brad had fled pretty close to an essence deposit. They went up to it as a group. This one was much more manageable; a few Boars roaming around, none over Level 15.
And those essence crystals were pretty damn big, too. If they followed the usual plan—that was, send in the scouts as cannon fodder, then swoop in once the monsters were busy, they could clear this. It would be rough, and maybe a scout or two would go down, but they could do this.
He was in the middle of relaying his plan to his underlings, trying not to think about what had just happened, when they saw a white dot with a golden 'S' on it drawing near.
Brad leapt up from behind his rock cluster hideout, trembling.
Brick Walker was strolling toward the treasures—Brad's treasures.
This motherfucker!
A man could only take so much. He felt hands grabbing at him, trying to pull him back, but he shrugged them off. Then he made a beeline straight for Brick. He felt anger bubbling up in his chest; he was so mad he felt like he might explode.
He didn't even have time to shout. Brick pulled out these huge black chains out of nowhere. The boars all rushed him at once.
Then he spun, and the chains spun, and Brad was knocked screaming off his feet.
When he got up again, the Boars were gone. Annihilated. Like that.
A freak of nature stood at the essence stones, casually absorbing them.
Then the freak looked at Brad—just looked at him—and his heart leapt to his throat. He choked. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out but a low whine.
He felt in that moment exactly the same as he had when the Behemoth looked at him. Like he was a gnat, easily crushed, like he was nothing. He felt this pressure down to the bones, down to the soul. This aura… this power…
ℤ𝕒𝕟𝕖 𝕎𝕒𝕝𝕜𝕖𝕣 (ℂ𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕥𝕦𝕣𝕖)
𝔼𝕤𝕤𝕖𝕟𝕔𝕖 𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝟛𝟙
"Yes?" said the freak.
Brad swallowed. Then he laughed nervously. "Oh, just, y'know, we were just about to take that. The essence stones, I mean. We have this whole, uh, plan—but you're good, man, you're good! You have it—all yours!"
He was sweating. What was wrong with him?
"Oh." The freak turned back to the crystals.
All Brad could do was stand there, burning with humiliation. Humiliation and despair. He hadn't understood how weak he really was. There was nothing he could do. There was nothing any of them could do. All they could do was watch and grovel as this freak of nature took everything from him—
Then a great idea struck him, and slowly he began to smile. "Hey," he said. "We found the Boss lair, by the way."
"You have?"
Now he got the freak's attention.
"Yeah, it's in this cave," said Brad. "Deep in there. It's Level 24—you think you can take it?"
His idea was more complicated than just leading the freak to believe the thing was much weaker than it actually was.
"Show me," said the freak.
"Sure thing!"
A plan was taking shape in his mind. His smile widened. After that thing took the freak out, it'd be badly weakened, right? Then Brad could swoop in and finish it off—and reap all the rewards. He was getting giddy just thinking about all the Levels he'd get.
And on the off chance that freak happened to win, well…
Brad saw no reason he couldn't do the same.