Esteemed Journal,

  Pride and good business often find themselves in surprisingly similar brackets. Returning to a shop you confidently left, begging to purchase one of their highly interactive closets that you previously dismissed as “overpriced gimmicks”, was an act that would hurt both deeply.

  And yet, standing before what could generously be described as a stall, Lionel J’Khall couldn’t help but wonder if that was, in fact, his better option—if Stonemason Bac offer had been downright decent.

  A weathered tarp hung precariously between the separate restrooms for quadrupedal ladies and legless hermaphrodites, sheltering what was, apparently, Iv & Ix’s Stall of Good Deals!

  The name was scrawled in a font that could best be described as “enthusiastically unplanned”—leaving generous space for the initial letters but not so much for the latter—painted across a large piece of cardboard that Lionel was fairly certain had been stolen from a storage room just down the hall.

  Despite a lot of scraping, the Neo Nexus’ logo still clung stubbornly to one of the corners. A silent witness to the crime.

  And then there were the proprietors.

  Reason suggested the two jittery figures standing outside, calling out deals with the desperate enthusiasm of people who had just discovered the concept of fraud and were eager to test the limits, were Iv and Ix themselves. Though, there was a distinct possibility they were just borrowing the names for tax purposes.

  “Dungeon adventures for a penny!” one of them yelled, only for their voice to be drowned out by the other’s shouted: “Incredible viewer ratings for a dime!”

  “Unbeatable deals for the daring entrepreneur!” followed shortly after, along with a dozen other statements that Lionel mentally translated to:

  “We are definitely a scam. Stay away!”

  With a sigh, he ran a hand through his hair. The old adage seemingly held true: the only thing less trustworthy than a fat imp was a skinny one. And these two horned hustlers were practically spectral.

  “This is a terrible idea, isn’t it?” he murmured under his breath as he glanced down at the note in his hand for the third time, just to confirm—again—that he hadn’t misread the name.

  Then he exhaled, deeply.

  “Why do I feel like this will be one of those moments I look back on for years to come, knowing this is where everything went to shit…?”

  ***

  It was with a groan, a wheeze, and an unreasonable amount of hacked-up water that Annabell sat up in the rubble of her latest stunt. Scratching her belly, she hazily looked around her surroundings. Surroundings that didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

  A high-pitched whine rang in her ears. Which, all things considered, was preferable to the continued plings! of System notifications.

  Achievement Unlocked…

  Undead # “Who Cares” Slain…

  Xp Threshold Exceeded…

  Last thing she recalled, she had been bobbing up and down in a very dark, very flooded apartment. Now, she was sat in the remains of what was, technically, a street, though it had recently started moonlighting as a disaster zone.

  The air smelled of charred furniture, shattered concrete, and the deeply accusatory scent of something that had absolutely not been meant to explode.

  A few unfortunate trees smoldered nearby. A sorrowful fire hydrant, struck down in the prime of its life, gushed its last watery lament. And where her apartment had once stood, well, there was now an open-plan design concept that was perhaps too open. Exposed interiors gaped at her, the architectural equivalent of someone caught with their trousers down.

  With a quiet cough—clearing her throat in the kind of way that deeply implies “I had absolutely nothing to do with this mess”—Annabell wiped some soot from her cheek and painstakingly swayed to her feet. Though, the groan she let out—worthy of a retirement-home’s finest—was mostly for theater.

  All things considered, she was surprisingly fine. The utterly disintegrated brooch on her chest had done its duties well, and Future Annabell would thank it accordingly by promptly forgetting it was ever there. Such was the fate of life’s quiet soldiers.

  For now, she blinked a few times, looked around, and then gave a firm nod.

  “I see,” she said, flicking open the bedraggled lighter still clutched in her fingers, “this is what they call Teleportation Magic, isn’t it?”

  There was no other explanation for her sudden relocation. Annabell just hadn’t realized she was that powerful.

  She gave the lighter a few tentative flicks. No grand explosions. No abrupt changes of the scenery. Nothing.

  “You know, Wallace, maybe Gremlin is actually an acronym for Greatly-Revered-and-Eminent-Mage-we-Love-and—”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Before she could finish her sentence, the metallic groan of something at the end of its life cut through the night.

  She turned, gaze lifting just in time to witness the heavy store sign, a noble sentinel of consumer convenience mounted there to the crumbling wall, lose its battle with gravity. It wobbled, creaked, and finally succumbed to the inevitable, crashing down with a finality that sent ripples through the puddles and something sharp through Annabell’s chest.

  Nothing physical, but deeply emotional.

  The faded letters read:

  Mini-King’s Convenience Store

  And oh, how they cut her.

  Not like a blade. Not even like a pointed bit of rubble. No, this one reached deeper: a wound of the soul.

  For behind that fallen sign lay the last bastion of goodness in this cruel, uncaring world. The one place that had never judged her for buying three bags of crisps and a soda at two in the morning. The last glimmer of civilization amidst the Dungeon’s madness.

  Her haven.

  Her snack source.

  Her happy place.

  Ruined.

  It was as if all her dodged injuries caught up with her at once.

  “N-no…”

  Annabell staggered, knees crashing into cold water. A forlorn splash she hardly noticed. She reached out, hands trembling with the purest grief, as though sheer willpower could undo what had been done.

  The shattered front. The caved-in ceiling. The cheerful pling-i-ding door chime, silenced forever.

  Gone.

  “It can’t be…”

  Her breath hitched, the tragedy deepening as a lone chocolate wrapper drifted past, carried by the rippling water like some cruel, sugary funeral procession.

  Annabell blinked down at it. Sniveled. Then, with the solemnity of a knight reclaiming their fallen comrade’s sword, she plucked it from the water and turned it over.

  It was…carefully peeled open and licked clean?

  Her brow furrowed.

  She lifted her gaze toward the ruins once more, narrowed now with something far deadlier than sorrow.

  Because there, through the shattered glass and crumbling beams, she saw the signs.

  Bags of crisps torn open. Candy wrappers strewn about like the aftermath of a sugar-fueled rampage. And more damning than anything—not all the perpetrators had made it out, leaving random loot scattered across the floor. Zombie teeth and copper coins, telling a tale harsher than collapsing convenience stores.

  Falling buildings did not, as a rule, open bags of crisps before caving in. They did not unwrap candies.

  This was not merely a disaster.

  This had been a raid.

  This tragedy had absolutely nothing to do with her and everything to do with them. (Totally.)

  “Wallace—"

  Annabell clenched her fists, water dripping from between her fingers.

  “—those undead bastards were snacking on our turf.”

  This was personal.

  There could be no co-existence.

  Annabell’s grip tightened around her bag of loot as she rose, slow and deliberate, like a weary gunslinger in some old, forgotten western. The street was eerily silent, the kind of calm that only ever comes before the storm.

  A very, very disastrous storm.

  “So,” she whispered, tilting her head. “You really insist on going down this path, Mister Dungeon?”

  She flexed her fingers, cracked her neck, and reached inside her loot bag with the sort of bitter resolve that only came from dealing with utter nonsense long past snack time. And nap time, for that matter.

  Annabell was not in a good mood.

  “I was fine keeping to myself, you know,” she continued, voice low, measured. “Fine with letting you play whatever games you wanted to play. But if you’re really intent on dragging me into this…”

  Both her hands were moving now.

  Quick. Efficient. That same bottle that had guided her out of Grimy Garth’s lair—a relic of another ill-advised adventure—spun between her fingers. Another container, marked by three skulls and a whole lot of hazard signs, was opened. A slosh, a splash, and a whole lot of glug-glugs, and the empty bottle was not so empty anymore.

  Filled with a transparent, acrid smelling, eye-watering liquid, Annabell corked it with a grimy rag.

  “…don’t expect me to play by the rules.”

  As if by some unseen cue, the street’s shadows deepened.

  From dark alleys and ruined corners, the glowing eyes of the hungry and the restless undead flickered to life. Figures shuffled forward with undeniable intent, shedding the pretense of background menace. Their name tags, once helpfully color-coded by the System in varying degrees of please-don't-touch-this, now gleamed red in the dim light.

  Vengeful Dead (Level 7)

  Hungering Wight (Level 8)

  Shambling Colossus (Level 10)

  Bigger. Meaner. Hungrier.

  It was clear the Dungeon had made a decision: this ended here.

  Which was just fine by Annabell.

  With a sharp exhale, she blew into the lighter. Shook it. Slapped it.

  A flick. A spark.

  A flame.

  Molotov Cocktail: Ignited.

  A few empty bottles, some greasy rags, along with a lighter and a canister of rather dangerous fluids. Someone had decided to give the Gremlin an Explosives Kit! (Level 1) in her Bag of Boss-slaying Goodness.

  This might not have been a good idea.

  “If you take away a girl’s snacks,” Annabell slung the loot bag over her shoulder with one hand, holding her newly-minted rebuttal in the other, “If you force her to stay up past naptime, don’t be surprised if she gets a bit cranky.”

  LEVEL UP CLAIMED…

  LEVEL UP CLAIMED…

  LEVEL UP CLAIMED…

  Health Partially Restored

  Annabell Smith (Level 8): 7/15 HP

  SCENARIO:

  The Dungeon’s Revenge (Final Showdown)

  In Progress…

  ***

  Lionel wasn’t sure what he’d expected as he approached the dubious stall.

  After Achim and Bac, probably something unfortunate. At best, a transparent scam, forcefully shoved down his throat with the enthusiasm of a street magician who insists you picked the King of Hearts. At worst, an annoying waste of time.

  He had not expected this.

  The Dungeon right that lay before him—propped up against the helmet of some unfortunate Delver (unfortunate in the sense that the helmet had clearly been split down the middle and barely taped back together)—thrummed.

  Not in the ominous, slightly sinister way that most Dungeon related business often did. No, this was the kind of way that made the small hairs on the back of his neck stand up. It was potential. Raw, unrefined, and possibly going to explode if handled incorrectly kind of potential.

  The kind you expected to find in some ancient king’s lair, and not in the hands of a street vendor who still had crumbs from their last meal dusting their fingers.

  “So,” said Ix, beady eyes bright with the eager gleam of a saleswoman who had definitely spotted a sucker more desperate than themselves. “Are you going to buy it?”

  No explanations. No disclaimers. No questions asked.

  Which after having had to deal with Achim and Bac, Lionel reflected grimly, was the most suspicious sales tactic of all.

  Still, what sort of caveat, what disastrous foot note, could ever hope to dull the treasure that lay before him?

  It would have to be something very disastrous, indeed…