Entering Floor 3

  I stepped from the Tutorial Guild and, rather than a golden hallway, I found wooden slats under my feet, a dark sky overhead. I panicked and jumped backwards, kicked off the wall, and landed fifteen feet away.

  Bizekki sighed. Gesturing as though I was still right beside her, she said in the most defeated voice I'd ever heard, "I present, to absolutely nobody, Dungeon Crawler Madison Pomegranate, the Level 1 No-Hitter Ace Tundra Elf." Turning around, she mumbled, "Good fucking luck," as she returned to the tutorial guild.

  On my own again.

  I was in a faux-medieval town. Wooden slats lined the road, the buildings were wattle-and-daub with occasional stone, and high above were a moon and stars. I still didn't understand how I was outside again.

  I walked slowly, glancing into a dark alley and continuing past. Dark alleys could be risky in real life, and this was a nightmare deathscape. Along the road, I saw a lot of signs, some of them real dungeon signs—Tutorial Guild, Restrooms, something called a Vanquisher's Guild. Other signs were just regular signs for stores. All the stores looked closed and I had no money.

  I hated how obvious my passage was. Those dumb twinkle-toes were sending off flashes of light every step, like the brightest LED-shoes ever. If there was a monster anywhere, it was definitely going to see me.

  Nothing came to attack me, though. Soon, I was at a gate, looking out of the still-standing town and into the ruins of a much more developed town. Roadways ran through tall, stone-walled buildings with broken roofs and damaged walls. Presumably, there would be monsters out there.

  I bit my lip, trying to think of anything else to do. The only way to improve was by killing things, and things to kill would be out that way.

  I took the little glass knife out of my inventory, looking at it. One of the ruined buildings had a wooden door. I threw the knife, immediately losing track of the transparent blade. A second later, it was in my hand again.

  It took some reading, but I figured out that I needed a bit of a wind-up to do either a fastball or a breaking ball. The fastball made a much louder sound as it hit the door, but did nothing else I could see. The breaking ball curved way more than I was thinking and skimmed along the stone of the building.

  I tried sliders, curveballs, cutters, splitters, slurves, and screwballs. It became clear that, although I could kinda just will the breaking ball to turn when I wanted, it helped if I put real spin on the throw. I threw a dozen more, until I had the feel of it. Nothing for it but to do it, then.

  While I slowly entered the ruins, an announcement came on. Welcome, again, Crawlers to the third floor! There are still a few stragglers working on their class and race choices, and that's okay.

  Apparently I wasn't the last person to finish making my choices, which I guess was good. The announcer rambled through a lot more details, like that there were nearly a million of us on this floor, and some changes to rules. Sponsorships seemed weird, but I had just learned this was all televised a few hours earlier.

  More importantly, I soon spotted a monster. A pair of powerful legs, like the T-rex from Jurassic park, stood maybe ten feet tall, with a tangle of really thin tentacles, or possibly slowly-shifting hair, sprouting out the top.

  Tentacled Chicken-Walker, Level 11.

  The product of an actual nightmare that was given life by a cruel wizard, the tentacled chicken-walker wants only to consume. It doesn't have a mouth so it can't actually consume, but it can rip you apart and stomp on your shredded remains. Don't worry. Once you're dead, it won't be scary anymore.

  I swallowed a bit of bile. "Alright, let's get back to that first date."

  I went all out for this fastball, doing a proper leg-kickup and everything, and absolutely sent that knife. It reappeared in my hand, nothing apparently having happened. I wasn't sure if I'd even hit, as I couldn't see the dang knife once it left my hands.

  I tried again. A green bar appeared, tentacles started flailing, and the thing turned towards me.

  New achievement!

  You've inflicted damage on a mob.

  Hopefully it won't hit back!

  Reward: It's probably going to hit back.

  I had my knife back in hand, so I threw again, just with a bit less wind-up. The green bar shrank slightly, so that was some sort of damage tracker.

  The beast was starting to run at me, so I threw one more time, then got to the top of the building beside me—forty feet up—in three quick jumps. At the top, I stopped with one foot over the edge, toes hooked around a stone block, the other on the side of building, my whole body leaning out like I was halfway into a human-flag. These skills it kept inserting into my head were giving me really weird instincts about what were safe ways to stand.

  I threw again, and this time saw nothing change.

  It was directly below me, the tentacles reminding me of an anemone. As I drew back for another throw, those tentacles began to lengthen. Rapidly.

  I threw the blade, then ran across the roof and jumped towards another. Mid-air, a sound like a soggy gunshot sounded. I twisted, flattening myself as I sailed along, watching a yellow-green ball of goop with flames pouring out of its back tear through where I'd been, the noise of its passage deafening.

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  I vaulted to the next roof, staying low and looking for the source of the burning glob. This was so stupid. You weren't supposed to practice a new skill in a real situation. You trained and trained and trained for countless hours before you entered a real competition.

  Focus on breathing, I reminded myself, chuckling as I remembered the notification that I'd leveled my breathing skill to 11 so far, something for which there appeared to be no benefit. As I thought about where to move, I saw fine tentacles creep over the wall. The bar was much lower, and underneath it listed a bleed debuff.

  Well, that knife worked as intended. I still needed to run, though.

  Springing up, I fell into a dead sprint for the first time since coming down a level. I'd hit 13 in running while on the back of Glory, where the odd circumstance had prevented me from really feeling the speed. Now I had the Tundra elf buff on top of that. All told, I was going somewhere north of thirty miles per hour, I estimated. Definitely fast enough that I couldn't afford to crash.

  I ran to the corner and leapt across the intersection, clearing half the next building. One of the other skills I'd leveled an enormous amount was light on your feet. The last notification I'd seen for that one had been 9, letting me leap quite far. Combined with tumbling, which was at 10, I had become a shockingly-skilled acrobat.

  As I came to my feet over there, the source of the yellow-green blobs also appeared.

  Snot Rocketeer, Level 9

  All the pollen in the overcity really gets these guys acting up. Be careful not to let them hit you. In addition to being kinda dangerous, they'll cover you in globs of actual snot. Ew.

  It was a nose the size of my torso, hovering on dragonfly wings. Also, there were five of them, one above the next roof ahead of me, two more further away and a bit to the left of that, and the last two coming up from behind.

  All five noses widened as they inhaled, then shot backwards several feet, blasting five globs of burning snot my way. I jumped high, to let them all pass below me, and saw two collide and stop dead, right where I was gonna land. Twisting and turning, I managed to get a hand down first, off to the side, and send myself away from that disgusting mess without touching the ground.

  Just as I landed, laid-out flat on my back, a tentacle reached over the edge. I lashed out by instinct, the knife cleanly slicing the tentacle off. It began to flail, spraying blood across me like a sprinkler.

  More were coming, reaching for my legs. I sprang up, trying to find a route with nothing in the way. The first tentacled chicken-walker was behind me, another ahead, three snot rocketeers left and two right.

  Well crap. I rushed the two, thinking that would be back towards town. As I ran, I flung the knife, but without a wind-up I wasn't able to trigger either of my skills. It missed. I threw again, then side-stepped more snot-rockets.

  The downside was that I wasn't killing anything, but at least everything was easy to avoid. So far. I'd been worried the monsters here would be dangerous, like that rage elemental.

  I threw twice more, missing twice more. Almost to that trio of snot-rocketeers, I saw more motion in the ruins ahead. I couldn't identify anything, but red dots appeared on my mini-map.

  It was only then that I realized I could have used the mini-map to orient myself, in which case I wouldn't have been all turned around.

  I slid under another few snot-rockets—only two, as the five were no longer in sync—and reversed to sprint the other direction. As I ran, I threw the knife with little backhanded tosses, activating neither of the Breaking Ball nor the Fastball skills.

  Ahead, there were now three of those tentacled chicken-walkers, their seemingly-endless tentacles reaching most the way across the rooftop. I dove through a gap in the center, throwing the knife as I went.

  I slowed my sprint to think more thoroughly, although I was still going faster than I could have run on the surface. A few more snot-rockets came, and I dodged those as well. The simple fact of the matter was, none of these things was fast enough that it seemed very dangerous.

  If I got ambushed, I imagine a single hit would have done me in, but I had 13 dodge, and that was apparently an enormously high skill-level for the third floor.

  Going back to top speed, I blew past the remaining creatures between myself and the town, then spun and skidded to a stop. Dodging another barrage, I began throwing fastballs.

  After getting the hang of using the skill, I stopped missing and started ticking away at the health of one of the snot rocketeers. I had it down to half by the time the tentacles were close enough to worry me.

  The constant snot rockets, all hitting the wall about the top of this roof, had left a pile of disgusting goop as tall as my shoulder. The rocket part meant that whole mass was smoldering, so the stench was an added motivation to move on.

  From the cornice to a balcony to a second-floor window to the ground was three easy jumps and I was rushing towards town once more. I'd at least learned that I could damage things, and I could come back and try again later. For now, I needed to—

  A claw-tipped leg on a spider the size of a small van was coming straight at my face. I'm not sure if it was the dodge skill or some quirk of the way this horrible game worked, but I had a split second to think. I wasn't going to be able to duck. Sprinting had both my feet clear of the ground for the smallest fraction of a second.

  I mentally activated my hitai-ate, the metal plates instantly closing about my head. The claw struck and a gonging echo battered my senses. My momentum at a sprint was so high that it didn't toss me backwards. Instead, I flipped under it, wrenching my neck. The back of my head bounced off the ground, and then I was rolling along the dirt street, collecting bruises.

  The green bar in the corner of my vision had turned a flashing red. I struggled to my hands and knees. It was approaching, but I couldn't tell exactly what it was.

  Oh, right. I still had the hitai-ate closed. I opened it. Looking up at an eyeball the size of a beachball with spider-legs growing out of it.

  Eye of Terrors, Level 10

  A roaming eyeball, carrying in its gaze all the atavistic terror humans hold for the humble spider. There's nothing humble about a spider this big. You should be scared.

  Lying there, looking into that eye, I could feel it pouring terror into me. A dark, unspeakable horror, seeping into my bones. It left them heavy, too heavy to move. The weight of my ribcage crushed my lungs, driving the air from me.

  I forced a single controlled breath, gaining a thin moment of clarity, and closed the hitai-ate again. The weight was gone, the fear gone, as well as my ability to see the darn spider monster.

  I jumped back, stumbling as my battered limbs refused to work properly, and threw my knife wildly. I wanted to pause to figure things out, but I could hear it scurrying at me.

  No time for planning. Still able to see the eyeball's red dot on my minimap, and with the wall to my back to align myself, I turned and sprinted. If I hit a wall now, I'd snap my neck.

  I took one breath. Two breaths. Three. I skidded to stop, opened the hitai-ate, and looked around. A tentacled chicken-walker was one street over, turning my way. Two snot-rocketeers had just posted up on the roof, aiming down at me.

  I spun, threw a fastball at the center of that darn eye, dove away from the incoming snot-rockets, and resumed my flight towards town. I was only maybe a half mile off, barely a minute at the pace this new body could manage, and when I arrived at the gate I wasn't even winded.

  Standing by the wall, looking to see if they would follow, I finally remembered I had potions. I drank one, and all my pain disappeared.