I slowed to a walk and looked down at my thigh. The blood wasn't flowing, but the skin was bright red, like it had gotten some instant, flash-infection. My shoulder was similar, pain starting to radiate from the scratches there. I desperately needed to find a place to rest.

  Limping along, I shifted my running bag to the front and dug out one of the water bottles, then got out an energy bar and took two bites. Closing it all back up, I tightened all four straps so it would be flat and tight on my back again, then got to looking for any sign of a tutorial room.

  I saw a sign that said, "Da Tutorial Guild" which seemed like an even more obvious trap than "Petting Zoo" had. Still, I looked at it for a bit. As I stood there, I found myself wavering, like I'd spiked into a severe fever about five minutes after getting a scratch. If this was a video game thing, I was probably about to turn into a zombie.

  I chuckled at that, but the chuckle promptly turned into gagging. Doubling over, I vomited up the bar I'd just eaten, then vomited basically nothing but stench and bile. And again, and again, and likely a few more times, until I started to feel fine again.

  My thigh didn't hurt. I poked at it, and didn't feel the sort of radiating pain poking an infection gave. What the heck? I guess if the game was going to make diseases start instantly, it could also make them end instantly.

  I stood, and realized I was still looking down the hall at Da Tutorial Guild.

  Lacie loved playing games, and I loved watching Lacie play games, for what little time I could hang out at her place after school. I wasn't an expert, but there was no way she would think that Da Tutorial Guild wasn't a trap. Being as she had been incredibly excited the instant she saw whatever she saw, it hadn't looked like this.

  Besides, I had to keep moving. I wasn't far from those rat-kin.

  Maybe the game was somehow watching what I thought. The instant I worried about the rat-kin, a voice behind me yelled, "That's her, The lady that wouldn't give us any money."

  I looked back to see a rat-kin sniveller between two rat-kin about the same size as him. These two didn't look so weak and poor. They had soccer jerseys on, and stood up straight, their fur not patchy and uneven like the sniveller.

  Rat-Kin Hooligan. Level 6. Hooligans are the smartest, fastest, and ugliest of the Rat-Kin race. While not as roided-out as a Rat Brute, or as Imma fireball yo ass as a Rat Shaman, Rat Hooligans offer the best of both worlds. They are physically strong, and they have a decent grasp of magic.

  I saw one lift it's hand, a faint glow starting to form, and I realized I had no idea what to do about magic. I resumed my previous sprint, trying to get past Da Tutorial Guild and around a corner. There were noises coming from Da Tutorial Guild, clanking and rumbling sounds, but nothing appeared as I ran by. Glancing back, I didn't see anyone yet, although I heard a yell of, "Get back here, you!"

  I rounded a corner, then another, and slowed. Breathing, pacing, all that nonsense. Unfortunately for me, this place seemed to be swarming with monsters. I got ten paces down that next corridor when some gigantic cockroaches called scatterers scurried into the path. That seemed less dangerous than a hooligan, so I hopped over them without slowing.

  Less dangerous didn't mean not-dangerous. Within moments, the mostly-open hallway became a mostly-full hallway. I was dancing between these things like a game of hopscotch where the squares kept sliding about, always just barely balanced. I tried to turn back, but I could see the hooligans at the end of the hall, glaring.

  Nope. Very nope to whatever magic could do to me.

  All-in on hopscotch, I made slow but steady progress through a veritable carpet of scatterers. These were all level 1 or level 2, and they were even easier to predict than the rat-kin had been. As long as I kept moving, stepping fast enough to tap-dance, I felt certain they would never touch me.

  Naturally, that didn't help me. Up ahead, I heard a strange hissing sound, like steam from a kettle, followed by a sharp pop. I slowed, but knew I couldn't go back. I also couldn't not go anywhere, as my legs would eventually get tired. I was already sore, and kinda tired, but I was used to that.

  When I started doing the 800-meter dash, Coach explained that you run the first 400 as fast as you can, then you don't slow down for the next 400. That was basically how I approached all races. Five-K? Figure out how fast you can do one kilometer, then get the endurance to do five of them. I'd won some statewide titles, but only came in fifth in the last heat of my best event during my best year at nationals.

  The important point is that I felt like I was into my third consecutive 400-meter half of the 800, and the only reason I could keep going was because if I didn't I'd die. So, I quick-stepped my way ahead, ignoring another pair of piercing wails followed by sharp pops.

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  I finally got close enough to see, and found a small herd of enormous llamas spitting globs of lava onto the scatterers. The heat seemed to cook the scatterers until they exploded.

  On the other hand, the llamas looked to be unable to trouble me, as they were actually losing that battle. They were backing up, step by step, spitting lava to keep the tide of scatterers from advancing. I kept going, eyes settling on the largest of the llamas.

  Bad Llama Mama. Level 5. It's a bad llama that raises other llamas that are also bad. You know how mothers work, right? See, when a Bad Llama Mama and a Bad Llama Papa get drunk and fuck, out pops a new bad llama. Just like her bad babies, the bad llama mama is filled with magma so she can spit lava. Isn't your language dumb?

  She looked right at me, her neck glowing blinding-bright. She made a hacking noise, getting ready for a good proper spit, then a ball of bigger than a softball hurtled straight at me. I dove, and by some impossible instinct, I planted one hand between some scatterers, sprung off of that to take two running steps along the wall, dove through another one-handed hand-spring, and got back to dancing down the hall.

  My feet were on auto-pilot as I stared back in confusion. I didn't know how to do a one-handed handspring with mats in the gym, much less while kicking off a wall like some cartoon ninja. There was something seriously weird going on here. Was this something like when it said I got a dodge skill and it was suddenly easier to dodge the ratkin?

  I giggled at the thought of a handspring skill, which I think is when I realized I was tired. I'd gotten up early, then gone non-stop for far too long, and I still had to keep going. The world about me was jittery, like I'd been up for three days through brute applications of coffee.

  Lacie was still at the forefront of my mind, the core of all my most terrified thoughts. Nobody could possibly survive in this place. There were monsters everywhere, and they all had impossible powers that no human could ever match. We should have stayed topside and died in the cold.

  We hadn't stayed up there, though. And I wasn't the sort to stop going. I kept flipping and hopscotching my way through the cockroaches, forcing my mind into that zen-like flow-state I managed during long-distance competitions. There was no end, no beginning, there was just the next ten steps.

  When I was fifteen, after the triathlon, I'd started training for my first marathon. I'd focues solely on pacing. Mom mapped out the path for each day's distance, because of course I needed to have a path to run. Once I started moving I forced myself to forget the details. As each turn came up, where Mom had planted a little blue surveyor's flag to note it for me, I made the turn, not counting how many turns I'd done.

  When I actually ran my first marathon, I felt like I was going to die halfway through. I just kept going, ignoring the pain, and when my distracted thoughts bubbled up that I had to be at about eighteen miles, the end came into sight. When I'd thought I was halfway, I'd actually been two-thirds, but I'd been so focused on my pace and those next ten steps that I hadn't realized.

  Right there, in that hallway, I did the same thing. There was no path, no plan, just constantly moving until I found Lacie or a tutorial club.

  Achievements kept sliding up into the corner, but my only focus was on the next ten steps. I got away from the scatterers, finding myself in a hallway with sheets dangling from cords, so I could barely see anywhere. Waddling penguins wearing togas came out of that mess, and suddenly I was sliding across an ice-slick expanse.

  It changed nothing. They complained about my music being too loud, while I took advantage of the ice to knee-slide through a cluster, then kicked off a wall and used one of the lines to propel myself past another cluster. Laundry lines, something in the back of my mind declared. The hallway was filled with laundry lines, and the big squares of cloth on them were drying togas.

  It didn't matter. Into another chamber, and I was face-to-face with a penguin wearing a laurel wreath and a monocle.

  Imperial Penguin Landlord. Level 4. The imperial penguins are certain they are the correct race to conquer all the world, and once they've conquered it they can extract rent. I hope you're not late on your payments. They might garnish your health bar.

  I think that was supposed to be a joke, but I was moving, already past another two penguins by the time that one bit down on air. Even as my body was aching and my head was buzzing with exhaustion, I felt light and quick.

  For a bit, I decided it was in fact a dream, and I felt all light and fuzzy because I was going to wake up. I didn't wake up, though. I fled further, penguins chasing me.

  It became a blur, just more monsters, more things to evade, as I floated past things that just weren't ever going to land a hit on me. I remember some announcer voice happening, but that was when I'd accidentally looped back around to the llamas.

  Bad Llama Papa. Level 7. The bad llama mamas and papas have a band. It's dad llama rock, and they only do shows in the local bars, all of which they've burned down from all that lava. Actually, since the dungeon is underneath the earth's surface, is it all technically still magma? Why would you have words like this? What's the benefit?

  Huge wads of lava-spittle were coming in pairs, along with smaller gobs from the regular bad-llamas, and the slow-cooling lava also meant that the floor was running out of space. That was the first time I kicked off a wall and managed a running step on the ceiling to send myself hurtling forward.

  It was like the dungeon had condensed the ten-thousand-hours rule of training into ten-thousand-seconds, and I was mastering everything I tried. Just keep dodging, just keeping running, just keep breathing, just keep focused on the next ten steps.

  The rest is a blur, right up until I spotted a stairwell past a swarm of scatterer brood guardians, the bugs that were half the size of Dad's dog. I tried to turn back, thinking of Lacie, and saw that my constant running had drawn a veritable swarm of monsters towards me, blocking any escape.

  I leapt and dove and flipped, still moving faster than I ever could have sprinted before descending into this hellscape. The scatterers were piled atop each other, clinging to the walls, a few even up on the ceiling. I dove through the gap, twisting and turning in mid-air to let their snapping maws catch air.

  Despite the impossibility of it, I landed that dive with another one-handed vault off of a stair several steps down, flipping into a dead sprint without feeling like I'd ever miss a step along the way.