“Any twos?” Irion asked, glancing up from his hand. Thanks to a new pair of glasses—bought from the market—seeing was substantially easier. Unfortunately, they did little for the kind of battle he now faced.

  Dexten frowned. “Which one is the two again?”

  “Does it say two on it?”

  Dexten squinted. “None of these have words—”

  Bruce grabbed his other hand. In it, there was a two, and an ace, and a ten, and then a shower of all the other cards Dexten had “misplaced,” collecting in a pile on the floor.

  “I KNEW IT!” Quin shouted, pounding the table. “I knew nobody could possibly be that bad at a game!”

  “How’d those get there?” Dexten asked, brow knitting in the most total of confusion.

  Mall scoffed, nudging Throttle. “Boys.”

  “Shuttdap, hon,” Throttle grumbled. “I’m trying to win here.”

  Irion took the card from Dexten, making himself a pair.

  Throttle cleared her throat. “Irion? Any threes?”

  “Threes?” He frowned, checking over. “Actually yeah—”

  Me and Sern crashed through the ceiling, breaking the table and scattering cards over the room.

  I patted myself down, surprised to find I hadn’t taken any damage.

  Throttle sighed, tossing her cards on what was left of the pile. “I think that's game.”

  “I win!” Dexten cackled.

  “You idiot!” Quin shouted, smacking me on the head. “And I had an ace too!”

  “Poker?” I asked.

  “Go-fish,” Irion muttered.

  “I like Go-fish. New glasses?”

  He nodded, giving them a little adjustment.

  “They suit you,” I stated.

  Sern blinked, wobbling to the table. “Fish.”

  “Not like this fish, I'm afraid,” I said. “I could teach you to play, if you’d like. It’s relatively simple.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Mall snorted. “We’re heading to the two-star dungeon in eight hours, at the cusp of dusk. We don’t have any more time to waste.”

  Cierin yawned, flopping out of a hammock, and collecting cards from the pile.. “What, Mall, don’t think you can win?”

  Several hours then passed.

  “Mall, any twos?” Dexten asked, reaching into the pile.

  Mall frowned. “You have to wait until I say Go-fish.”

  “But you don’t have any. I already checked,” Dexten stated. He pulled a card from the pile, gasping in surprise. “A four!”

  He then made a pair.

  “THat’s it!” Quin shouted, drawing swords.

  “Should we stop that?” Bruce asked.

  “They’re fine,” Mall sighed. “It’s the only way he’ll learn.”

  “So this is a three,” I said, peeking over Sern’s shoulder. “You need another three to get a pair.”

  She tilted her head.

  “A pair gets your points.”

  Throttle grabbed a card from the pile, nodding to Sern. “Your turn.”

  Sern paused for a moment.

  She opened her mouth, and pointed to Quin. “Three.”

  Quin glanced at the mangled cards in his fist. “Uh, yeah, here you go.”

  Sern took the card into her hand, eyes wide. She poked it a couple times, turning it over, before setting it onto the table. Then she laid her other three ontop of it, flinching back, waiting for some kind of magical reaction.

  When nothing happened, she squinted.

  “That just makes a pair,” I said.

  She tilted her head.

  “That means you have one point.”

  Sern looked up at me, then down at her cards.

  “Yes, it’s a point,” I said. “But you need more to win.”

  Her eyes lit up, and she grabbed her pair, keeping it close to her little section on the floor.

  Later, Throttle groaned, tossing Sern the last card in her hand.

  The Go-fish pile had long since run out, leaving just cards already paired.

  “That girl’s gotta be magic, right?” Throttle huffed.

  Sern nodded to herself, setting the cards into another pair. “Win.”

  Dexten checked. “Well you’ve got thirty-four pairs. And I’ve got…” he started counting. “Six.”

  “You cheated your way to half of those,” Quin snapped. “I had the most legitimate points!”

  “Second most,” Throttle corrected, gesturing toward Sern’s hoard of points. “And I caught you peeking around.”

  “I was seeing if she was peeking around,” he grumbled. “Thirty-four turns, thirty-four pairs.”

  Eere peeked up from her cards, frowning. She sighed, kicking Quin in the shin, and he started translating. “Sern just counted the cards people had and hadn't used, out of the total cards in the deck, then used a simple mathematical approximation to guess who had what. That, or she just asked for numbers that people had already stated they wanted.”

  He glanced at Sern. “Didn’t you just learn this?”

  She wasn’t paying attention, currently counting and then recounting her stack of points.

  “What exactly does the winner get?” I asked.

  Irion shrugged. “It was just a game for fun.”

  “Speaking of fun, we’ve had plenty of it,” Mall snapped, standing up from the pile of wood previously called a table. “We've got work to do.”

  “Is somebody feeling grumpy?” Cierin chuckled.

  Mall glared back, cutting him off. “It’s three in the afternoon. We’re supposed to meet with the adventurer's union in thirty minutes!”

  The group around the table took a moment to consider.

  “Wait, don’t we still have a lot of packing and purchasing to do?” Throttle muttered. “And we spent three hours playing Go-fish?”

  “Five, if you include the time before this game,” Cierin stated, counting on a nearby clock.

  Irion squinted. “Three hours for one game of Go-fish?”

  Bruce sighed. “Well, there's Grind and Sern, myself, Quin, Eere, you, Throttle, Dexten—” Dexten waved. “---Cierin and Mall. That's nine teams with ten people in total. And it wasn’t a serious game so with thirty-four turns, and ten people, even at thirty-five seconds per team that’s still a three hour game.”

  “You did all that math in your head?” Dexten asked, lounging. “Nifty.”

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  “It’s a gift,” Bruce admitted.

  “Thirty minutes, people!” Mall shouted. “We need to get moving!”

  “Suppose you’ve got a point,” Irion sighed. “And we’ve got a lot of loot from the dungeon break last night, most of which still needs to be sold.”

  “Oh yeah,” I said, perking up at the mention. “How was that?

  “Some weebish adventurer stole the final blow, so he got the core,” Throttle muttered. “And it was a durability core too. Almost a hundred durability, taken, just like that.”

  “Is that good?”

  “It’s enough to completely negate most attacks from most first-area monsters.” Irion said. “It’s very, very good. Well, most of the time, anyway.”

  “Most of the time.”

  “Durability changes based on what you fight,” Irion continued, breaking into his lecture-mode. “Durability is much stronger against weaker opponents, and much weaker against stronger opponents. A couple durability makes you invincible to one damage gnats but it won’t do squat against a dragon. With a hundred durability, it still won’t stop a dragon, but it’ll stop a bear. Goblins, even in hoards, would be a joke. That would’ve made this dungeon much easier.”

  Mall cleared her throat. “Still thirty minutes!”

  “It’s got to be less than that now,” Cierin stated.

  “Then what are we waiting for?” Throttle asked. She punched a hole through one wall and jumped out into the street.

  Mall grimaced, poking the shattered timber. “We can’t keep breaking this inn.”

  “Sure we can,” Dexten chuckled. “This whole place regenerates at midnight.”

  He kicked out a window.

  Mall groaned. “I’m using the door.”

  After a short jog and a little sprint, we found the adventurer’s union, standing beside the dungeon notice board. Their leader was currently dressed in long flowing robes, as any adventurous leader ought to be, with his team wielding weapons larger than most cars.

  “Right,” he said, with a voice like granite. “Let’s get to business.” His skin was old, weathered and wrinkled, and while there was a dangerous glint in his eyes, he looked tired above all else.

  He gestured to the three union-certified adventurers. “Leo, Harva, and Ardenidi will be your escorts for this mission. If any of you are level five or lower, the union requests that you hang back. You will be compensated.”

  I glanced at Mall.

  She glared back. “I’m level nine, nimrod.”

  “Seriously?” I gawked.

  “It’s been a week,” she mumbled. “And I’ve done four dungeons since then.”

  “But…I’m level nine,” I mumbled back.

  The union leader started coughing into his robe, before he continued. “We would advise extreme caution on this fight. Our research team has marked the area in which you may be in danger, so you won’t have to worry about pedestrians.”

  He took out a staff, tracing a path on the map of the city. From what I understood, almost the entire forest had been sectioned off as a level-5-threat area.

  Irion whistled. “That’s quite the danger zone.”

  “Should that monster break from its dungeons, we would have an area-wide crisis,” the leader sighed. “Fortunately, that doesn’t look likely.”

  “No?” Throttle asked. “Then what’s with the warnings?”

  He blinked. “I’m sure you’re aware of the recent dungeon break in the town square, yes? And the three before it in the forest areas?”

  “Yeah,” Irion said. “We’ve killed two escaped Cores ourselves.”

  The leader hunched forward, folding his hands and staff into his long elegant robes, before taking a deep, grizzly breath. “It is our understanding that none of those Dungeon Cores were yet ready to shed their husks.”

  The team went dead silent.

  I coughed. “Sorry, rookie here. What does that mean?”

  “It means those four cores were spoked or tricked out of their dungeon,” Cierin muttered. “Which is ridiculous just to say. A core without a dungeon is like a crab without a shell. To leave would be suicide, unless there was no other option.”

  “Do you know why I asked we meet in the town square?” The leader asked. He pulled back out his staff, tapping the map on points along the outer edge of the city. “It’s simply to demonstrate the scope of our issue. Our research team has discovered traces of an unknown two-star aura over the entire first area. It’s weak, but everywhere, which probably means that the Core has been intentionally warning the monsters in this area.” He nodded to himself, tapping nearby areas, one and two. “These both seem to have massively increased monster sightings, but the ones they find are weak and scared.”

  I stepped forward. “Exactly how strong is this thing?”

  “I imagine it has a few stats to the regional maximum,” the leader stated. “But that is not the problem. Two-star cores do not have higher functioning intelligence.”

  “But this one’s smart?” I asked.

  The leader chuckled. “A two-star core is only able to learn fighting tactics and basic trap setup. This one has formed some sort of coherent multi-step plan.”

  I turned to the new adventurers. “And these three will be enough?”

  The biggest and strongest—Leo—clamped a hand on my shoulder, grinning.

  ~Rare~

  {Leo}

  Level 51

  [400 Str 543 Hp]

  A dangerous, almost acidic energy washed over the town square, searing into the meat of my shoulder. The ground around us began shaking, then splintering as the stat-based energy erupted outward, biting into the ground.

  “Calm down, Leo,” a short frail girl with brown hair—Harva—grumbled.

  ~Rare~

  {Harva}

  Level 25

  [10 Str 10 Hp 10 Mana]

  Leo gave me a little pat. “Don’t get in our way, shortstack, and we’ll be fine.”

  The leader nodded. “With their help, there should be a reasonable possibility for your team to exit the dungeon without a single death. For their services, they shall split the dungeon loot.”

  Throttle, Quin, Eere and Mall all bristled.

  The leader held up a hand, and they settled down. “You will be generously compensated. This is worth far above anything anyone your level should do, after all, but staffing is short at the moment, and I’m sure you want a piece of the pie.”

  “Compensated,” Mall huffed. “Dexten, are you okay with this?”

  He shrugged. “We’ll grumble about loot once the Core’s two yards in the floor. I don’t really care so long as I get my revenge.”

  “Revenge?” Leo scoffed. “Kill your girl or something?”

  “Yes and me too, actually,” Dexten grinned. “Long story.”

  Ardenidi, the third member of the adventurers, was the only one of the four without the formal black union robes. Instead, she wore a dusty brown coat, with a black scarf that wrapped around her face, covered in large colonies of mold and fungi.

  When she spoke, it was with a voice like rustling nails. “Get moving before it's too late.”

  ~Epic~

  {Ardenidi}

  Level 65

  [100 Str 100 Hp 100 Mana]

  The moment she spoke, the other two snapped to action. She turned to Dexten and Irion, our leaders.

  “You do whatever I say, understand?” She hissed.

  Irion nodded.

  Dexten just laughed.

  Ardenidi locked eyes with him, then flexed.

  {Ardenidi}

  //1000 Str 997 Hp 250 Mana//

  Instantly, my arms and legs went numb. The air pressure dropped like a rock, before skyrocketing, flattening grass and potted plants into a green paste. The ground below didn't crash so much as it disintegrated, leaving feet-size holes in the dirt below.

  {Ardenidi}

  //10 Str 10 Hp 10 Mana//

  My ears popped, and I gave them a little wiggle.

  Ardenidi examined the party. Except for myself, Dexten, and Ardenidi’s group, everyone else had paled at the sudden expression of power. I would have too, if I hadn’t already felt similar waves of crushing force on numerous occasions, shortly before being killed.

  She pointed to Dexten. “You have guts. If something happens, you’re third in charge.”

  “Third?” He frowned. “I assume you’re first?”

  “I’m second,” Ardendidi stated. “Grind first.”

  “Huh?” I blinked hard.

  “You’ve already died here, haven’t you?” Ardenidi asked, and I nodded.

  “Word must get around fast.”

  “It does, if you know where to look,” she said, with strong hints of a lisp. “You will lead the investigation, until you reach a point where you run out of relevant information. Then I will lead. If something happens to me, Dexten will be appointed.”

  “He’s a nutjob, no offense,” Irion said, with a frown.

  “None taken,” Dexten giggled, juggling arrows in his hands.

  “If I’m dead, we’ll need a nutjob,” Ardenidi stated.

  Leo huffed. “Before we go, could somebody address…that?” He pointed to a corner of a building, where a little elvish head was poking out.

  I raised a hand. “She’s mine. It’s a quest.”

  “Just checking,” Leo said, with a shrug. “She won’t attack us?”

  “No,” Mall said, “But I might, if you lay so much as a finger on her.”

  “If this discussion is over, we shall get moving,” Ardenidi said, clasping her hands behind her back and starting off down the path to the dungeon. “You have three hours to gather supplies. Meet us then.”