"Lacie, run!" Maddy yelled.

  Lacie ran. She sprinted down the hall, grabbed the door to the Tutorial Guild, and darted inside. Her heart was beating so hard she was having trouble seeing straight. A furry little beast looked up at her. Ezekius - Pooka. Level 50. Guildmaster of this guildhall.

  Lacie shrieked, stumbled back out the door in a panic, then realized it had said this was a Non-Combatant NPC. She rushed back in, realized that Maddy was still out there and cracked open the door to look.

  The rat-kin were racing away, down that hall.

  "You should stay here until the tutorial is over," Ezekius said.

  Lacie rushed back out, down to the intersection, trying to see anything in the dim hallways Maddy had run down. Just darkness, and a few blocky shapes like cardboard boxes. A gleam of light, reflected off eyes.

  Grabbing the bike, Lacie rushed to the Training Guild.

  New Achievement! Bike Thief.

  You found a bike whose owner wasn't present and decided it was yours.

  Reward: You've received a Silver Ride It Like You Stole It Box.

  New Achievement! Abandonment.

  Another crawler received the Baggage achievement for you and then promptly left you behind. I guess they really didn't like you.

  Reward: You've received a Gold The Bonds of Friendship Don't Count for Shit box.

  Lacie could already tell, with terms like Non-Combatant NPC, that there was a weird game thing going on, even if the achievement for saying "Isekai" had made fun of her, but knowing something was a game and knowing how to play it were entirely different things.

  Fortunately, the tutorial explained things. Not quickly. She kept stopping Ezekius to look out the door and yell Maddy's name. Still, she eventually got things explained, and also got to see what was in those boxes.

  Mostly, it was healing potions, bandages, and torches, which gave her a chance to learn about the hotbar. There were, however, three important rewards.

  Silver Ride It Like You Stole It Box:

  Awesome Anime Decal.

  Silver Adventurer Box:

  Tome of Invasive Growth

  Gold The Bonds of Friendship Don't Count for Shit Box:

  Nametag With Your Name on It.

  Gold Adventurer Box:

  Potion of Regeneration.

  With Ezekius's guidance, Lacie figured out how to investigate the items. The potion of regeneration was obviously amazing, but also completely useless of yet. It felt like a very weird reward, which to Lacie's gamer-senses meant it was probably important.

  Awesome Anime Decal.

  Your friend hated this show, but you loved it. Now that she's dead and you've stolen her bike, you can decorate it however you want. Hopefully it makes the bike better instead of just ruining the resale value.

  A timer appeared as Lacie started crying.

  After several minutes, Ezekius said, "If you don't use that, it'll disappear."

  "I don't care!"

  Except she did care, and she scrubbed at her eyes until she stopped crying, then put the decal dead-center on the front-post of the bike. It turned into a cat-boy with silver hair and red clothes.

  Stolen Bike of Running Away

  This bike moves twice as fast if there's an enemy within thirty feet of its rear wheel.

  "Long-term, that's not great," Ezekius said, "but it may help you survive until you have better options."

  Nametag With Your Name On It

  Place this on an article of clothing that doesn't belong to you to upgrade it and make it your own.

  Another timer appeared.

  "What do you have that doesn't belong to you?"

  Lacie looked down at Maddy's letter jacket. The sleeves and trim were yellow, while the body and the R on the left breast—for Rupert's Hill Rural Agricultural School—were dark green. Opposite the big R, "Madison" was embroidered.

  Taking off the Jacket, Lacie held up the name-tag, which was in the same green-and-gold, with "Lucille" embroidered on it. It would cover Maddy's name, if it was put there. Laying the jacket flat and open, Lacie placed the nametag over the washing instructions, just under the neck.

  "Borrowed" Letterman Jacket

  Grants +5 to all stats.

  If you are in a group with the person this belonged to, or if you return it to the person it belonged to, the effect of this item will change.

  Lacie grabbed the jacket, pressing it to her face and crying some more. When she gathered herself again and finally looked at the jacket, she found that all the yellow had become gold. Like, real gold, reflecting every bit of light.

  Lacie looked over at Ezekius again, who said, "That's a really good jacket to start out with, but you're going to be really obvious, so make sure you're ready to run away on that bike."

  "Yes, of course." Unlike most games, there was some reality in here, so how things looked mattered. She put the jacket on, immediately feeling stronger.

  "Now, you need to activate that Tome of Invasive Growth."

  "What's it do?"

  "It teaches you the Invasive Growth spell. I'm going to be square with you, that's one of the worst spells you could have gotten, but there's good news, too."

  "What makes it bad?"

  "The downside is that, to cast Invasive Growth, you need to touch the target. You'd be far better off with Magic Missile or even something more utility-oriented like Firehose. However, it's a very powerful spell, and could be really effective later on, especially if you level it up."

  Lacie sighed. "So, not great first-floor, may be good if you survive."

  He nodded.

  Lacie carefully read through the system's notes on the tome.

  Tome of Invasive Growth.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  Teaches the Invasive Growth spell.

  Invasive Growth

  Cost: 6 Mana

  Target: Touched creature

  Duration: 5 seconds + 5 seconds per level of the spell

  Afflicts the target with the Invasive Growth debuff. Each second, Invasive Growth deals damage based on the intelligence of the caster.

  I frowned as I read it. "So, this game makes a lot of assumptions about how things are going to play out."

  "The AI that runs the dungeon does make some plans. Some particular reason you say this?"

  "I came in with a 4 intelligence, but this costs 6 mana. If I hadn't also upgraded that jacket, I wouldn't even be able to cast this and I'd be fucked."

  "Not to put too fine a point on it, but the AI is fine with you being fucked. There are over 10 million crawlers in here, and they expect about two thirds of those to die before the next floor. Not trying to scare you too much, but you should be a little scared. Only you can prevent you from dying."

  On then one hand, that was terrifying. On the other hand, the little bear creature looked like a caricature of Smokey the Bear when he said that. They could have put him on a shirt.

  That was it for her tutorial, though. It was time to learn how to play the game and to look for Maddy.

  She rode through the dungeon carefully, looking for lone mobs. She spotted one of those rat-kin brutes, pedaled for all she was worth, readied an Invasive Growth, and slapped it on him as she went past.

  He died 7 seconds later and she was second level. The other three rat-kin giving chase prevented her from looting the corpse, but that was fine. She had a sense of how to make Invasive Growth work for her.

  Aside from never seeing another sign of Maddy, things went well for a while. She got a few more kills and found a pair of similarly-low-level crawlers. They figured out how to party—there was some bug with her interface, but she worked it out—had a tense conversation when they saw the Stolen Bike label, then went hunting together.

  Crawler Todd Jensen had entered with a ball-peen hammer and had gotten a big silver warhammer in a box of loot, which made them an excellent front-liner. Crawler Rebecca J had tried to prepare and had entered with a pushcart of heavy-duty fireworks, and now all she got were different types of dynamite.

  The dynamite was amazing, but often went off early so everyone had to be good at taking cover. Todd's hammer was good and repeatable, so he was constantly saving their lives. However, Invasive Growth outdid everything when only one target had to be damaged. It embedded a tiny seed into the victim, which began to sprout vines that grew into and down their veins. They died with their limbs twisted and broken by tree roots knotting about them, crushing into their organs if they lived long enough.

  It was incredibly disgusting, but everything was disgusting in the dungeon.

  The big problem was that they weren't finding stairs. Four days and thirteen hours in, they were efficient and powerful, all at level 7, and they had no idea how to get down.

  "We have to do it," Becky declared as they munched on Bopca-style poke bowls at an Arby's.

  Todd looked ready to cry, but he just nodded.

  Lacie looked across them all, taking into account all the new things they'd gotten, and said, "You're right, but how?"

  Three days earlier, they'd found what they knew was a burough boss. The recaps made it clear how dangerous those things were, and when they asked other parties to help, everyone acted like they were crazy. If everyone they asked had collaborated, there would have been twenty of them.

  "Let's make a list of what we know," Todd said. He snuffled and wiped at his nose, suddenly seeming like the little geek he'd been outside. A collection of strength buffs made him look powerful, but on the inside he was still the kid who got bullied out of his lunch money. The way he kept going even though he was obviously terrified helped Lacie keep going, too. "One, the rooms nearby are a morgue. Two, we found parts of zombies in the other rooms, but never full zombies." He paused. "Uh, do we have any other hints about what's in there?"

  "It's not too big," Lacie said. They both looked at her. "Check your maps. We've traced the outskirts, and that room is maybe thirty feet on a side. It's not going to be something huge like that bloated mess with all the vending machines."

  "Good point," Becky said. "So, probably undead, probably just a bit bigger than human, so it's a Frankenstein. Right?"

  We all nodded.

  Becky said, "With that small of a room and no way to send explosives in early, I can't risk dynamite. Movies-wise fire's the way to kill Frankenstein, but my options are more limited there. I can mix up something that will burn without exploding, but it won't be nearly as powerful. Totally open to other ideas, too. Seriously, I'm grasping here."

  "Have the dynamite ready, too," Lacie suggested.

  "In a room that size?"

  "If it's a frankenstein, maybe there'll be a gap and you can shove it inside the body."

  It all sounded good, but went very poorly. The flames hurt Borough Boss PHD Candidate Vicki, but she just thrashed about and put the flames out. Todd's hammer knocked an arm sideways, but that realigned itself. Invasive Growth drew a scream of agony, but the growths only traveled through one component of the stitched-together woman. It killed that one piece, so if Lacie could cast it about fifty more time it could kill the boss.

  PHD Candidate Vicki didn't kill them, though. Instead, she pinned them to metal gurneys, locking their limbs into the steel cuffs bolted to the metal. "You humans are so interesting, so good for my research."

  And then she started cutting on them while ranting about how she needed a grant because she couldn't afford the astronomical tuition.

  From her angle, Lacie could barely see what was being done to the others, although she could hear their screams. When it was her turn, she could see that Vicki was larger, pieces of the other two stitched into her whole.

  That in mind, Lacie looked at the other pieces and realized they were crawlers, too. Just a few small pieces from each, stitched onto the edges of a head and torso that once were Vicki. That core seemed real too, as if there was some seed person, but before Lacie could think about that, a bone-saw cut into her arm.

  She screamed until she blacked out, awakening to find that arm still intact. She looked at it, and saw a furry, heavy arm. A ratkin arm, stitched on in place of her own, which was now attached as though the whole limb was just one muscle in Boss Vicki's massive right bicep.

  At the foot of the table, Vicki set a goblin's leg down and was checking her saw before starting in again.

  That core body hadn't changed, though. It was still human-sized, a young woman who muttered about how she was going broke trying to be a doctor even though they always said they needed more doctors.

  Certain she was wrong, certain she was about to die no matter what she did, Lacie had a mad idea. It would have been a little less mad if she had a way to pull it off, but she decided she didn't care as much about this hideous new rat-limb.

  Gritting her teeth, she dragged at the new arm with all her might, ignoring the searing pain as the skin tore, bone scraping under the cuff. Her hand popped free.

  Vicki looked up. "Oh, silly you. I'll get that put right back in there."

  The frankensteinian boss approached. When she leaned down, Lacie swung at her. At the last instant, she pulled the regeneration potion from her inventory, shattering it on Boss Vicki's chest.

  It did nothing. The beast pinned her arm back down, unlocked the cuff, and began twitching. She fell.

  Lacie tore at her other cuff, but couldn't budge the lock. Hell with it. She tore that hand free too, then hit a potion on her hotbar and healed both hands. Her feet were still stuck.

  She sat up, seeing the beast writhing on the floor as the core Vicki regrew towards a full person, the stitched-on pieces breaking away and flopping about the floor.

  Looking around, Lacie spotted Todd's hammer, just in reach if she flopped off the table. The cuffs were still pinning her ankles, and dangling from them was agonizing.

  She got a hand on the hammer, though. She pulled it into her inventory, dragged herself onto the table, took the hammer back out, and began hammering at the ankle clasps. She hit her feet as much as the locks, but she eventually broke her feet free.

  She poured her mana into healing spells, her feet knitting back together. She got up and began taking swings at the loose limbs, slowly pulping them as she made her way to the others.

  Todd was tagged unconscious. His left leg was a goblin's, his right leg and hips from another rat-kin. She poured a healing potion between his lips and he awakened.

  She hurried to Becky, also unconscious, with a new heart in her chest. One leg was an orc's, and both arms from goblins. The healing potion brought her back, but the tag said Stitched-Up Monster. The beast began snarling and snapping with Becky's untouched face.

  Lacie scrambled back, almost dying when a scrabbling tangle of hands crawled onto her. One good casting of Invasive Growth killed that cluster.

  She got Todd freed swiftly, but he just curled into a ball. Honestly, fair enough.

  Lacie spent about fifteen minutes murdering each individual piece of a former crawler that fell off of Vicki, gagging slightly when she noticed they each reverted to being labeled as the corpse of one crawler or another.

  Eventually, when the regenerating Vicki had shed every last bit of stitched-on flesh, Lacie cast Invasive Growth on her.

  It looked agonizing, but Vicki just looked up sadly and said, "I could have been a good doctor, if they'd let me."