The Bone Tyrant's fist came down like a meteor.

  Suzume threw herself left. Stone shattered where she'd been standing, fragments cutting her cheek as she rolled. The boss pulled its hand free, bones clicking and adjusting as it tracked her movement.

  [Video 8: Bone Tyrants have a three-second recovery after heavy strikes.]

  She darted forward and drove her knife into its ankle. The blade scraped against bone, leaving a scratch that might as well have been nothing. She didn't bother checking its HP. It would die when it died, if it died.

  The Tyrant's other foot swept across. She saw it coming and jumped, but didn't stick the landing and ended up rolling on the floor.

  She pushed herself up. The Tyrant was already moving, faster than something made of bones should move. Its hand swept down again. She rolled between its fingers, each one as thick as her torso.

  [Think. There has to be a weak point.]

  Most monsters had one. The Cave Weaver's thorax. The Jewel Spider's nerve cluster. But the Bone Tyrant was different.

  [Undead. No organs to target. No soft spots to exploit. I'm guessing the only true weakness it has is a weakness to divine magic. Which I do not have.]

  Green fire blazed in its eye sockets as it opened its mouth. She knew what came next from the videos—acid breath that could melt through steel.

  She ran toward it, not away.

  The acid sprayed where she'd been. Running toward a boss during breath attacks was counterintuitive, which is why it worked. She slid between its legs as green liquid splashed behind her, eating through the floor.

  [Spine. In the videos, they always targeted the spine.]

  She jumped, grabbed onto a vertebra, and started climbing. The Tyrant reached back, trying to grab her. She swung around to its front, using ribs like ladder rungs. Her knife found gaps between bones, wedging in to create handholds.

  The creature shook itself. She held on, muscles screaming. It slammed backward into a pillar. The impact rattled every bone in her body, but she didn't let go.

  She reached its neck. The skull was connected by a single massive vertebra, thick as a tree trunk. She drove her knife into the gap where bone met bone. The blade snapped.

  [Shit.]

  The Tyrant's hand closed around her. Finger bones tightened, crushing her ribs. She felt something crack. Her vision went white.

  [HP: 3/70]

  [CRITICAL DAMAGE]

  It lifted her to eye level. Green fire stared at her. This close, she could see into its skull, see the swirling darkness where a brain should be. It squeezed tighter.

  Then she heard it.

  "Stand up."

  [That's... impossible. I'm being crushed.]

  "Stand up, Suzu."

  Akane's voice. Clear as if she was standing right there. Suzume knew she was hallucinating. Oxygen deprivation. Dying brain firing random neurons. But it sounded so real.

  "This is just a puzzle, isn't it?" The voice was amused, fond. "And no one can solve puzzles like you can."

  [I can't solve being crushed by a giant skeleton.]

  Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

  "Sure you can. You solved that Cave Weaver. You solved those spiders. What makes this different?"

  [It's Level 45.]

  "So? You're Aoi Suzume. You got into Tokyo University at seventeen. You memorized every dungeon guide ever written. You're down here, alone, because you're too stubborn to let people die."

  The Tyrant's grip loosened slightly. Not mercy—it was repositioning for a better angle to crush her completely.

  "Look at it properly," Akane's voice instructed. "What do you see?"

  [Bones. Hundreds of different bones.]

  "From how many creatures?"

  Suzume's eyes widened. The shoulders—human skulls. The ribs—from something massive, maybe a drake. The arms—dozens of different femurs. This thing wasn't one creature. It was hundreds, held together by...

  [Magic. The green fire. It's not eyes—it's the binding force.]

  "There's my genius sister."

  The Tyrant started to squeeze again. Suzume pulled out a flare with her free hand and cracked it against the creature's thumb. Red light exploded in the darkness. She jammed the burning flare into the Tyrant's eye socket.

  The creature roared—a sound like an avalanche. It dropped her.

  She hit the ground hard. She activated Emergency Treatment, warmth flooding through her as bones knitted and organs stopped bleeding.

  [HP: 33/70]

  The Tyrant clutched its skull, trying to dislodge the flare. The green fire in that socket flickered, dimmed. Some of the bones in its left arm came loose, clattering to the floor.

  [Disrupt the magic, disrupt the body.]

  She grabbed a femur from the ground—heavy, solid, better than her broken knife. The Tyrant's other eye blazed brighter, compensating for the damaged one. It lunged at her, moving wild now, uncoordinated.

  She ran straight at it.

  "There you go, sis!" Akane's voice laughed.

  Suzume slid between its legs again, but this time she swung the femur up into its knee joint where the binding magic glowed brightest. Bone met bone with a crack like thunder. Green fire sputtered.

  The entire leg came apart.

  Suzume's eyes widened.

  The Tyrant toppled sideways, catching itself on one arm. It swiped at her, but she was already moving, already targeting the next junction. The femur came down on its wrist. More bones scattered.

  [I'm nowhere near strong enough to break the bones. Another player, someone actually meant to tackle this dungeon, would run in and smash this thing to bits. But I don't need to break them!]

  Just disrupt the connections. Interrupt the magic holding this thing together.

  The Tyrant tried to stand on its remaining leg. She threw her second-to-last flare into its other eye socket. It went down again, both eyes flickering now. More bones fell away. Its roar became less sound and more the rattling of loose parts.

  But it wasn't done. The scattered bones started moving on their own, crawling back toward the main body. The magic was trying to reassemble it.

  [No.]

  She grabbed her last flare and ran to the center of the dissolving creature.

  The skull had fallen free, green fire guttering in its sockets. She shoved the flare into its mouth and wedged the femur across its jaw to keep it there.

  The flare burned brilliant red inside the skull. Green and red light warred for a moment. Finally, Suzume checked its HP.

  [HP: 0/1200]

  Then the skull exploded.

  Bone fragments shot outward. One caught her shoulder, spinning her around. Another grazed her temple. She hit the ground as pieces of the Bone Tyrant rained down around her.

  [HP: 9/70]

  Silence.

  She lay there, breathing hard, waiting for the bones to start moving again. They didn't. The room grew brighter as torches along the walls ignited on their own—the dungeon acknowledging the boss's defeat.

  A sound like ripping fabric filled the air. Where the Tyrant had stood, reality tore itself a new hole. A portal. Silver-edged and shimmering. Home.

  And, of course, because of her class, Suzume received 0 EXP for any of this.

  "I knew you could do it," Akane's voice whispered.

  [I'm definitely going insane.]

  "Maybe. But you're alive and insane, so that's something."

  Suzume laughed. It hurt her ribs, but she laughed anyway. She pushed herself to her feet, legs shaking. It almost felt like Akane was helping her up, but, as soon as she was standing, that was it.

  No voice. No Akane. Just the portal humming, patient and inviting.

  She walked toward it. No stumbling, no crawling. She walked.

  The portal's light washed over her. She could see through to the other side—not the seventh floor of the office building, but the street outside. Evening light. People walking past, oblivious.

  She stepped through.

  The transition hit like diving into ice water. Her lungs seized. Her vision went white. Then she was through, standing on wet pavement in Koto district. The office building loomed behind her, the portal already closing.

  Three people stood nearby They stared at her, confused and shocked. She probably looked like death—covered in blood (hers and monsters'), clothes shredded, carrying a femur like a club.

  Her legs gave out.

  She fell to her knees on the sidewalk, femur clattering away.

  The adrenaline was fading now, leaving only exhaustion and pain and the weird echoing feeling of having heard her dead sister's voice.

  "Holy shit," one of the bystanders said. "Is that... is that Rescue Girl?"

  [... That's right.]

  She looked up at them.

  Blood ran down her face from the temple graze. Her tactical gear was more holes than fabric. But she was alive. She'd faced a C-rank boss at Level 4 and lived.

  [I'm Rescue Girl.]

  Her eyes closed. Consciousness left and exhaustion took its place.