Going for the mini-boss was the logical next step. Char was pretty sure she’d skipped way past logic and could only blame her intuition… or sleep deprivation. It was probably the sleep deprivation. One of her bloodline gifts was called Primal Grace, though, so maybe it was something else driving her to become the hunter instead of the hunted.

  Steve had trained Lulu well. When Char led her to the intersection of two passages and told her to stay, she stayed, even though she could smell the vine-puppets just out of sight around the corner. There were two of them, and only one had thorns. That was perfect.

  After positioning Lulu, Char had climbed the junk wall and was now perched on top of a haz-mat placarded plastic tank, looking down on the vine-puppets. They were just standing there, staring straight ahead, like mannequins abandoned and overgrown with alien greenery. A shudder ran down her spine at the sight. They’d once been human beings. They wore blue jumpsuits, rubber gloves, and hard hats. Char was thankful they were wearing safety goggles, so she didn’t have to see their eyes. The Hello-Kitty sticker on the woman’s hard hat was bad enough. She had to keep thinking of them as monsters or she wouldn’t be able to get through this.

  The [Resist Poison] potion was back in her inventory. She didn’t want an induced resistance to interfere with her efforts to build her own. She was ninety percent certain that one of the remaining bosses was going to have a poison attack, and it was sure to be stronger than the thorn poison. If four stacks of thorn poison would kill her, then she wasn’t ready for a boss-level poison. But she thought she could get there.

  This was going to hurt.

  She jumped down behind the vine-puppets, placing them between her and Lulu’s corner and forcing them to turn her way. She brought her sword around and severed two of the vine-tethers on the thorny puppet. She would have to take that one out first. If it were one with poison, she couldn’t afford to take too many hits from it. The idea was to let herself take one or two doses, end the fight, and heal up. If she could do that several times without dying, she should get a poison resistance. Pain resistance popped up after only one encounter. Mental resistance had taken two. The System seemed to like handing out resistances like candy.

  Her body flowed on through the sword forms that the alien in the crystal had implanted in her, but her mind was only half on the fight. She was trying different ways of approaching a fight to find out what worked best with her new gifts. This one wasn’t such a good idea.

  Distracted, she didn’t move in time when the second puppet drove a fist into her solar plexus. The air rushed out of her lungs, and she couldn’t pull in a new breath. When her diaphragm refused to do its job, she nearly panicked.

  ‘Ok,’ she thought, ‘mind on the job, Adair.’ She backed up several feet, using the sword to fend off blows while she got her breath back. As soon as she could pull in enough air, she used it. “Lulu, come! Get’em girl!”

  The thorny puppet lashed a vine at her and shot out several thorns. Two of them hit her in her upper left arm, but she’d sidestepped to put the unthorned puppet mostly between her and the thorn flinger. She felt the burn immediately, and her heartbeat picked up with a spike of fear. It was too early in the fight, and she was already at the maximum number of stacks that she could handle.

  Lulu tore around the corner and hit the back of the thorned puppet like a cannonball. It went down hard, its hardhat bouncing away. She jumped back to avoid a lashing vine.

  Char focused on the puppet before her. One more hit might doom Lulu, or both of them. A kick to the puppet’s hip made it spin to the side. Char cut away its tethering vines. This one wasn’t the real danger here, so once it was cut free, Char sent it staggering down the passage with another kick and turned to help Lulu.

  The dog was bouncing and twisting to keep away from the vines. The puppet was still on the ground and was making no effort to get back up. Its vines were lashing out at Lulu, some grabbing, and some lashing like whips. One of the vines pulled back in a movement that Char recognized, and she severed it with a slash of her sword before it could fire its poisoned payload. But, as she dealt with that one, another vine slashed across Lulu’s rump, and her health bar on Char’s HUD sprouted a virulent green border to show that she’d been poisoned.

  Char severed the last tether and cut away the writhing vines, a ball of ice in her gut weighing her down the whole time. Had she been too stupid? Too sure of herself? Had she gotten Lulu killed? The puppet stopped moving, and she turned back to the unthorned puppet. It was already slowing, and it was quick work to finish it off.

  Lulu was whining and trying to bite at the thorn in her lower back, just above her left haunch. Char plucked it free for her and pushed in some vitality to replace what the poison was taking from her. She couldn’t give too much; there were two stacks of poison on her as well, and her health was ticking down at two points per second.

  She watched both health bars, ready to pull the healing potion from her Quick Access slot if either of them got too low. Her itching and burning got worse as she took on Lulu’s pain. The green glow that shed dim light over everything seemed more vivid, lending an ephemeral blue-green edge to every shadow. Subtle light-trails followed every motion, leaving echoes behind in the air. Flitting, half-seen motions at the edges of her peripheral vision made her turn her head to find nothing there, nothing moving.

  Her health bar stopped dropping about thirty seconds before Lulu’s. The psychedelic light effects remained. There was no timer for those, no way to know how long they would last. Her health bar was under 50%, and by the time she’d given Lulu enough to get her to 75%, Char was down to 20% of her health. It wasn’t just numbers on a screen. She could feel it. Her wounds were minor: scrapes, cuts, and bruises that were healing as she watched them, but she felt fragile. She was one good hit from death.

  From her wall-top scouting as they’d crossed the dungeon, she knew that some of the puppets patrolled, while others lay in wait around corners or in alcoves, but once she’d cleared a section of the maze, it would stay clear. This wasn’t a real monster lair. It was a training exercise. Artificial. If it hadn’t been, she’d be dead already.

  Every gleam of light had a rainbow halo, and even the shadows were limned with an ethereal glow. Char didn’t have much experience with hallucinogens, but she didn’t want to risk fighting when she couldn’t trust what she was seeing.

  She and Lulu backtracked to the alcove they’d used earlier. This time, she would meditate and get back all of her health, then she would try one more time to get a resistance. If it didn’t work, she had to face the fact they they weren’t ready for this and they’d leave the dungeon. It galled her to give up on a goal, even an arbitrary one she’d set for herself, but it was better than doubling down and getting killed. Or getting Lulu killed. That would break her.

  Deep breaths. This was OK. She wasn’t dead, Lulu wasn’t dead, and it was just the hallucinogen making her emotions more volatile. She had a plan. She knew she was going to get hurt, that Lulu might get hurt. As long as she chose her fights carefully, they could do this. Deep breaths.

  In and out. There were walls on three sides, and Lulu was watching the entrance. The surrounding area was scouted. There was no clock ticking. She inhaled deeply, filling her lungs, holding it, and slowly releasing. In and out.

  Lulu lay down next to her, her eyes on the alcove entrance. Char focused on her breathing and slowly brought her racing thoughts under control. She acknowledged the aches of her body, then let them go to become background noise. She did the same with her worries and fears, with the acrid chemical smells of the dungeon, and with her half-formed plans. She turned inward and found her beach again.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  It was different now. There was still an endless stretch of sugar-white sand, the dramatic dark clouds roiling with lightning out over the crashing sea. But now, the clumps of palm trees had become a rainforest behind the beach, dark and full of life, leaves whipping in the wind of the oncoming storm. A low mound rose where the sand met the trees, round and grass-covered, crowned with an ancient circle of standing stones, moss-covered and time-worn. Different trees grew around the mound, forming a buffer between it and the rainforest. They were deciduous European trees that didn’t fit with the lush jungle surrounding them: oak, ash, hawthorn, and yew.

  “OK, that’s new. Creepy jungle and an ancient rock garden. Great. Someone’s rearranging my imaginary safe space. That’s not worrying at all.” Deep breath. Let it out slowly.

  In the center of the beach, between the mound and the surf, floated a globe of golden light. It was about the size of a basketball. It hovered in the air at chest height. The light was warm and comforting. Char knew that this was her core. Or, it was a mental representation of it, at least. She could feel that the power within it was hers, just waiting for her call.

  She leaned in to examine it, and her mind started to race with questions. The beach started to waver around her as her meditative state started to slip. She breathed and focused on the sound, stilling her mind. There were so many things that she didn’t know about what was going on with her. It scared her. She recognized the fear, but didn’t let herself dwell on it.

  Keeping her mind still was hard. The mound whispered of secrets to explore, the jungle invited her to run through it, to hunt. The storm wanted to sweep her up to celebrate its glory. Strange blood sang in her ears; songs of magic and spirit and power. She gave herself the space to just take it in, to just sit with the newness instead of picking at the meanings and implications of it all. She needed to heal, and she needed the meditation to stay intact to speed that along.

  Was this part of her higher resilience stat? This new willingness to roll with the weirdness that kept gut-punching her? It had to be. By all rights, she should be a puddle of weeping trauma by now. But she was still going. She let the storm-wind blow across her face and stream her hair out behind her. She felt the droplets of sea-spray against her skin and listened to the surf rush across the sand. As her body healed, she let her soul find a moment of peace among the chaos.

  When she opened her eyes half an hour later, her health bar was full, and she felt like she’d had a nap. It wasn’t enough to wash away the exhaustion completely, but it helped. She felt more balanced, steadier in herself.

  Lulu was half-dozing in that way that only dogs can do. She was stretched out by Char’s legs, her head on her forepaws, and she was instantly alert at the minute shift in Char’s posture. Her tail thumped twice against Char’s side as her jaws opened wide in a yawn. She stood and looked at Char expectantly.

  Char pushed herself to her feet and stretched. “OK, let’s do this.”

  It didn’t take long to find a wandering trio of puppets. To be fair, it was the puppets who found them, rounding a corner fifteen feet away, and just outside the bare second of forewarning her gift afforded her. As soon as the puppets spotted them, two of them rushed forward. The third one hung back to launch a volley of thorns.

  Char shoved Lulu to the side, sweeping both of them out of the path of the thorns. That delay was enough to let the two normal Flesh-Puppets reach them. Char turned and slipped around a grasping vine. She stepped into her foe and around him with a passing step while slashing downward on a cross-cut that aimed to sever the creature’s vine tethers.

  Lulu harried the other puppet, darting in to bite or claw at it, then dancing back out of range. Char grabbed the one she was facing and spun it around to use as a shield against another volley of thorns, momentarily ignoring the vine tendrils that wrapped around her left wrist. A flailing arm clipped her across the temple and made her see stars. She shoved the puppet away, creating some distance. She brought her blade around to sever the vines that held her wrist.

  Then, she jumped.

  She used the shoulder of the puppet as a springboard, propelling herself toward the thorn-chucker and knocking her erstwhile shield to the ground in the process.

  She’d intended to land right in front of the thorn-thrower, but she misjudged the distance. She landed just out of her sword’s reach. The puppet already had a vine cocked back for another launch, and Char had to turn her landing into a roll before she became a pincushion. She felt the sting of thorns punching through the denim of her jeans as she rolled, followed by the burning pain of the toxin flowing into her. She didn’t have time to see how many thorns had hit her. Lulu was facing two puppets on her own, and she needed to get this done and get back to help her.

  Scrambling back to her feet, Char used quick, short cuts to drive back the vines that reached for her. She got both of her hands back on the hilt and started looking for an opening to use another passing step. The puppet moved in, trying to tangle or trip her with its vines. Char pruned them away as they came. She side-stepped a reaching vine and stepped in. She snapped a side kick into the puppet’s knee, then pivoted around it. A thorny vine raked at her eyes and she ducked under it.

  With a sweep of her sword, she severed the tether-vines. Her health was ticking down from the poison. It was dropping five points at a time, but there was an unread notification flashing in her peripheral vision. If that wasn’t a poison resistance skill, she was probably a dead woman walking.

  A few more cuts and thrusts used up the severed puppet’s reserves, and she left it to twitch out its dregs on the floor while she hurried back to help Lulu. The last two puppets went down quickly.

  Her health was dropping way too fast. If her quick math was right, at this rate, she’d die thirty seconds before the poison ran out. She pulled the healing tonic from her quick-access slot and quaffed it. Her health bar went up as the comfortable tingle of the potion’s healing magic went to work, but it wasn’t enough. The potion gave her back 100 HP, which was 50 HP short of what she needed.

  She dropped to the floor and pulled her legs into a lotus position. “Lulu, guard.” Death was staring her in the eyes, and she thought that would make meditation harder. Cold fear gripped her gut for Lulu’s safety, but her mind wasn’t racing. There were no other concerns to distract her. She would either succeed or she would die. Everything else was debris in the storm winds. It took several long breaths, but she dropped into meditation much easier this time.

  She could feel the poison coursing through her, could see the halos of color. Vivid, squirming fractals crowded around the edges of her vision, even here in her mind-space. She focused on her breathing. She felt detached. She knew that she was dying, and that if she died, then Lulu would likely die as well, and that thought hurt like a shard of ice in her heart, but here, on the edge of the end, she was calm. She whispered a prayer to the universe to look out for Lulu and her dad.

  Her heartbeat slowed. The waves rolling in trailed ghostly echoes. The light of her core broke into ragged rainbow halos around its edges. Her health bar dropped, slower now.

  15 HP

  12 HP

  9 HP

  6 HP

  8 HP

  The burning faded. Her health started to improve again. Her deep breathing was interrupted by a relieved sigh.

  She stayed in her trance while her health came back up, reversing the damage of the poison. She trusted Lulu to alert her if trouble came. When her health was back to half, she opened her eyes.

  She checked the flashing notifications and skimmed past the kill messages until she found the one she was looking for:

  New Skill Learned

  Poison Resistance

  Beginner

  Your body is learning to adapt to toxins.

  Try to avoid those berries next time.

  The completely inappropriate flavor text made her snort with laughter. The suppressed chuckle turned into a belly laugh, and she let it out. “I did it, Lu. That was probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, but it worked.”

  There were seven thorns in her thigh, but she’d only been taking damage from five doses of poison. If her math was right, that was around a 25% reduction. With the skill, the bracers, and the [Resist Poison] potion, she might just have a chance against whatever came next.