The corridor’s air was thick, like breathing through a wet rag. Each footstep left a print in the wet ground. The walls sweated beads of black, oil leaking out in sickly veins. John’s every nerve wanted to recoil.

  Different already from the flat dull rock in the game.

  He adjusted his grip on Moonfang. The blade’s runes glimmered, faintly responsive to the ambient charge.

  The tunnel angled down, crooked and wrong, like the earth had been twisted by a giant’s fist. The stones didn’t match, didn’t line up. Some were ancient and banded with fossil-shell, some poured as if with fresh concrete. Occasionally a rib of strange metal jutted through, flexed and trembling.

  He crept forward. John almost missed the first stutter of motion. A silhouette, glossy as tar and twitching with nested limbs, darted across the passage ahead. Leaving only a wet clacking in its wake.

  He hunched, listening.

  The thing dropped from the ceiling not five feet in front of him, so fast his mind barely caught up. It hit the ground in a boneless scramble, spidery limbs splaying out, head whipping toward him. Not a lesser spawn. This one’s torso was armored in bands of black filament, its skull half-exposed, gums pulled back to the bone. Its eyes were wrong. Each socket teeming with glassy beads, not two but dozens, all swiveling toward him.

  No time for thinking. It moved in a blur, claws splitting the air. John jerked left, but the thing anticipated, read his step, and slashed for his thigh. He backpedaled, parried with Moonfang, felt the clang in his elbow. Another swipe, vertical this time, so close he smelled the brine coming off its hide.

  He ducked under the next blow and countered, blade humming. Moonfang caught the edge of its carapace, shearing a plate. The beast shrieked and doubled its assault. It wanted to kill him, utterly and without pause now. Each strike, each movement, played out at blistering speed. Moonfang’s edge flashed, and his arms knew what to do before his head did. The beast feinted, a lunge low to sweep his feet, but John’s body remembered the pattern. He shifted weight back, and swept the blade out in a lateral arc. The sword sliced clean through one limb, then another as it tried to twist away. The cut left no drag, just a chemical stench and a brief red where the wound cauterized instantly.

  The monster tried to retreat, but John pressed. Sweep, parry, counterthrust. He didn’t have the strength or speed of a high-level character, but the motions were so deeply ingrained he barely had to think. He let the reflexes take over, moves drilled into him for years, on buttons yes, but now here, in a corridor of stone and death. The beast spat a rope of black sludge, but he rolled beneath it, brought the blade across its throat, and nearly took the head clean off.

  It collapsed. No theatrical thrashing, no dying shriek. The thing simply stiffened and slumped forward, leaking a puddle of oil onto the floor. John tipped it over with his boot, the body light as cardboard, then leaned on Moonfang, waiting for his pulse to settle. Nothing came out of the walls after. The silence felt heavy.

  He knelt by the body, studied the banded armor, the flex of the exoskeletal plates. Not a copy-paste from the game. This thing was a little too wet, a little too real. Here, he couldn’t help but notice the teeth still glistening in the ruined skull, or how one of its claws twitched, phantom nerve signals fizzling out.

  John prodded the corpse again. Half-expecting it to come alive again. It didn’t. Just a flex of dead weight, the shell softer on the underside, more like a crab than an insect.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  He took a breath, let it out. Adrenaline keeping his fingers tingling. That had been a start-of-dungeon trash mob, right? The baseline. He replayed the fight in his head, catalogued the feints and angles, the way it had seemed to learn from his first dodge. If that was the opener, what waited at the midpoint? Or at the end?

  He looked down at himself and only then realized the sweat soaking his shirt. That was supposed to be a forgettable fight. Something you breezed past to get somewhere more interesting. Here, it took everything not to get nailed in the first six seconds.

  John walked forward again.

  He caught the twitch of disturbed dust ahead just in time. A line, perfect and deliberate. He edged forward, senses pricking. Dungeons had tells. Sometimes, they tried to outsmart you.

  He squinted, eyes scanning the corridor until he spotted it, twenty feet above, a faint seam cutting across the ceiling. He stepped forward on the balls of his feet, reached down, picked up a small rock from the floor, and hurled it toward the seam. The rock bounced off the stone, clattering loudly as it spun through the dusty air.

  The world stuttered. A microsecond later, the ceiling split in three, razor plates dropping like stage curtains. Brutal finality, no warning, no showy preamble. Just silent, unyielding metal that cut the air so cleanly he barely heard the sound. No question what that would have done, had he walked under it.

  He stepped back, heart in his throat, and heard a sound.

  Skittering.

  Sharper, closer.

  He spun, Sneakers slipping in dust. Two more of the things tore down the corridor behind him, twisting over and under each other, limbs flared for speed. The leading one was bigger, its plates striped with white ridges, and it shrieked when it saw him. The smaller one hung back, watching him with a dense hive of eyes, each bead glimmering with hungry calculation.

  John raised Moonfang, and prepared. The big one didn’t hesitate. It launched off the wall, scything claws wide to herd him left. The second moved high, scrambling up the opposite side like a gecko. They boxed him in, classic pincer, and he half-smiled in spite of himself. The devs would have applauded.

  He swung hard at the first, but it tanked the blow and snapped for his arm. He yanked back and stomped its foot, buying a sliver of space before the second monster dove from above, jaw distending grotesquely. He caught the strike on Moonfang, sparks shrieking as carapace grated against steel.

  Muscle memory took over.

  He ducked and drove the point up, catching it under the chin. This time, the kill wasn’t clean. The thing thrashed, splattering black blood down his arm. He planted his foot and twisted, wrenching the blade free. The monster’s jaw clacked shut on empty air and it tumbled, legs windmilling before slamming into the wall.

  The bigger one was already on him. It came low, leading with its shoulder, trying to barrel him down the passage. He let it overcommit. Stepped sideways, just enough, and hammered the pommel into its exposed orbital cluster. Dozens of glassy pupils burst under the blow. The beast reeled, shrieked, and lashed out, but he rode the lurch, sliding along its side, planting Moonfang through the narrow seam under the armpit. The blade bit deep, all the way to the hilt. The thing convulsed, and spasmed so violently it nearly yanked the sword from his grip.

  He held on and twisted hard, the edge shearing through whatever grotesque organ it protected. The spawn went slack in a spill of fluid, flopping to the ground. John heard the other scramble up for another pass. He ducked the swipe, used the body of the first as a shield, and jammed the point backhand into the second’s exposed jaw. Pop. The head jerked sideways on a stalk, hanging limp.

  He fell still, sweat dripping down his nose, chest rising and falling with a shallow gasp. He staggered a few steps and braced his palm against the wall.

  Silence.

  For a moment, he leaned against the wall and just breathed. His muscles trembled, his teeth ached. He flexed his off hand, making sure it still worked. The sword was slippery in his grip, blood slick as grease.

  [LEVEL UP! x3]

  [Unspent Attribute Points: 60]

  Oh. Yeah.