That would be it, going forward. No bosses, tag everything in sight with a bleed, and just keep running. Sometimes, when I got a big guy alone, I'd just send fastballs at his face while he charged me.

  As that skill leveled up, it's damage increased, soon starting to make an impact aside from the bleed. Breaking Ball, by contrast, got better control as it leveled, but didn't increase in damage. I could reliably hit a trio of mobs, if they were roughly in a line, and as I was all about that bleed, it became my go-to.

  The plan was no bosses, until I spotted a boss version of the stitch-divers. Loom Parrot, Level 16 Neighborhood Boss. It will weave you into a tapestry of pain. Seriously, though, this parrot is a true artist, making tapestries fit for the walls of a palace. If it wasn't always weaving entrails into its art, it would probably be a successful etsy retailer.

  It trailed like fifty threads from its wings, and I saw at a distance as it wrapped-up another crawler. I first attacked trying to save them, but only managed two fastballs before that person died. Their party fled, leaving the boss interested in me.

  Having seen it attack him, I knew I could evade its basic attacks. I was proven correct as I slowly bled it out.

  With that dead, I headed for yet another town. Again, I found no sign of Lacie, although I added another seventeen crawlers to my growing list of contacts.

  I spent the rest of that day killing some weird three-legged insect things, found a second town that same day—this one apparently mid-sized—and again found nobody who knew any crawler named Lucille.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  That night, I had to run a long ways to find more mobs that weren't bleed immune, finally finding a cluster of something called a Third Remant which looked like a half-melted candle made of several people. I threw up the first time I saw one die of my bleed, the various body-parts sloughing off of each other and piling into a waxy mess on the ground.

  Because I have to jinx everything, I muttered, "I wish there was actually a good way to train dodge."

  I'd finally realized that my dodge was only high because I'd so royally screwed up the first two floors that I spent hours with Glory, constantly on the verge of being killed. If I did things right, I never got a chance to dodge at all.

  Within the minute of my saying that, a Winged Third Remnant, Level 12—It's melting, melting, oh what a dungeon, what a dungeon—flew towards me, followed by another fifteen of those, all diving at me as I tried to flee. I managed to bleed a few, and the rest turned off as I ran back into town.

  "Wow, I'm actually feeling tired." I was, in fact, finally feeling tired. I wasn't sure how long I'd been awake, but I was sore and staying that way.

  The exhaustion was in part because I'd just stopped running. If I had to do things, I'd be able to ignore it longer. Which was a good enough idea. The ignore fatigue skill was really paying off.

  The crawlers I'd talked to were sleeping eight hours a day. I was training 24/7. It was worth being a little tired and sore to gain 50% more grinding time.

  If I was going to head back out, I'd need a strategy for those melting birds, though. The issue with the melting remnants was that they could sort of smoosh together and slide through each other. That meant, when they closed in, there weren't always gaps in the wall of molten flesh to escape through.

  Before I could step off and take another stab at them, a blue dot appeared behind me. I turned to look.

  Crawler Evelyn Pomegranate. Level 18 Harbinger of the Coming Dawn Human.

  "Mom?"