We awakened on the fourth day to the sound of gunfire. Cascadia was out of her room, standing with weapons out by the time I opened my door, rubbing my eyes. The sound had come from just outside the saferoom.

  Cascadia: Remind me the saferoom rules.

  I had made sure to ask Jasper about these rules, which changed between seasons. I had watched content from seasons where crawlers could attack other crawlers in saferooms, and were only protected against mobs.

  Gellen: Any attacks in a saferoom result in a timeout, during which the offender is frozen. The first offense is a 1 minute timeout. The second an hour. The third you are teleported without your gear to a monster den.

  Cascadia: Ok

  She put her staff away but remained standing, alert. It was early, almost an hour before our scheduled wake up time and the daily update. Since we had ended the day early yesterday I wasn’t too tired, but I was still annoyed. Waking up to gunshots is not my preference. I stayed in my doorway, pondering going back to sleep.

  The saferoom door opened and four crawlers entered. It was three large, heavily armed men and one smartly dressed woman. The men looked like sci-fi movie soldiers and the woman looked like she had just walked out of a board room meeting. They all had player killer skulls.

  The woman had only one, but the men had three each. They also each had two neighborhood boss stars. They were all level eight except for the woman, who was level six. She had dark skin, pale blue eyes, and a tight bun and was wearing slacks and a blouse that matched typical formalwear conventions but was clearly dungeon loot. The men had conventional rifles but one also carried a laser pistol. They all had dungeon made armor as well.

  Crawler # 7,000,244. “Patricia W 2”.

  Level 6

  Race: Human

  Class: Not yet assigned

  The rest of the crawlers were level eight. There was a period of tense silence; their eyes flashed as they sent messages to each other.

  “Well hello there,” the woman said. She had an easy way of talking that was pleasant to listen to. She walked up to Cascadia and held out her hand.

  “Patricia Woods, nice to meet you.”

  Cascadia did not take her hand.

  “I know, I can see your description.”

  “Of course,” she said, withdrawing her hand. “Silly me, holding on to conventions of the past. You seem to have adjusted well, you look like the most powerful crawler we’ve seen. Are you two together?”

  I walked out to stand next to Cascadia, fastening on my prosthetic hook.

  “Yeah we are in a party together,” Cascadia said. “You run into some trouble outside?” she asked one of the soldiers. Patricia answered.

  “We got into a disagreement with a few people. It escalated and we did what we had to. You know how it goes.”

  “You guys mute or something?”

  Their eyes flashed for a moment.

  “No,” said the one with the laser pistol. “Just choose our words carefully. How did you get so powerful? We haven’t seen anyone at such a high level yet.”

  “Just killing mobs. And a few enforcement officers who got too big for their britches.”

  The woman spoke again.

  “Quite a few boss battles under your belt. Is that silver star from a borough boss? Our game guide warned us away from trying to do one of them yet.”

  “What’s your deal?” Cascadia asked. “Were you in the government? Are these your soldiers or officers or something?”

  “No, no, no, nothing like that. I had some interests in a few corporate ventures. I was in the city for a worksite inspection when the collapse happened and I had a private security detail at the time. But that’s old history now isn’t it. It’s a different world down here, we have to build something new.”

  “And what are you trying to build?”

  “The same thing as everyone else I suppose. First we need to build a group that can survive this dungeon. Our game guide says that it is impossible to get to the eighteenth floor and reclaim the planet, but I am not ready to give up on it yet. If that is not possible then we need to position ourselves for the best outcome when we leave the dungeon. I’ve been able to figure out quite a bit about how we exit and what opportunities we can seize.”

  She smiled winningly at Cascadia.

  “You should join us. You are clearly extremely competent and I could sure use another female in the party. Right now there is a bit too much testosterone in the group for my taste. You could both join. Six is a perfect number for a core group of leaders.”

  “We are doing just fine.”

  “You may be doing just fine now, but I’ve been prying information out of our game guide and things are going to change. You are dominating right now, obviously, but there will be limits to how much just two can accomplish. The challenges are going to get bigger and crawlers may even be forced to work together. I think grouping together offers you a lot of benefits.”

  “Yeah like what? Reduced experience gain?”

  “The reduced experience would be more than compensated by our ability to tackle stronger opponents. And while you obviously have tremendous individual strength, people like you will need someone with vision and experience to organize and direct your efforts to achieve the greatest effect.”

  “Hey fuck you lady, what do you mean people like us?”

  Gellen: Holy shit Cascadia, chill out. You don’t need to antagonize them. They’ve clearly figured things out, they could be useful allies. What's your problem?

  The woman took Cascadia’s outburst in stride.

  “My mistake. I should follow my security’s example and choose my words more carefully. Old habits that I need to discard. Like we said, it’s a new world. I misspoke. Will you accept my apology?”

  Cascadia just stared at her.

  “Well, we came looking for food. Perhaps we can share a meal and get to know each other a little better? A more casual conversation may be a better starting point.”

  “We already ate.”

  She raised an eyebrow curiously, glancing at my just rolled out of bed appearance.

  “Very well. Still, I must ask after your plans for the day. I understand if you don’t want to party with us, some suspicion is probably healthy in this environment, but I do hope that we can perhaps team up for a boss fight. We were planning to eat, watch the recap episode, and go boss hunting. Together, I think we could handle a borough boss easily. There is one not far from here.”

  Gellen: It’s a good idea. A borough field-guide would be much more useful than just a neighborhood map.

  Cascadia and I had planned to take down a neighborhood boss first thing and then use the map to find eggs or the cybernetic juice that Parson wanted.

  Cascadia: They are trouble Gel. They said they were fighting other crawlers before they came in but they walked in cool as cucumbers. And they’ve got ten skulls between them.

  Gel: You’ve got three skulls

  Cascadia: And that should make a normal person suspicious of me. They didn’t even blink. And what kind of person has a personal security detail? I can’t think of a stronger indicator that someone is evil than a personal security detail. Look at them sending messages and sizing us up. I guarantee you they are trying to figure out if they can take us or not. Once they see all of our gear, they will try to take it for sure.

  Gel: Can they take us?

  Cascadia: Please Gel. We would wipe the floor with them.

  Gel: I don’t know, we aren’t that much higher level than them, and they are clearly trained fighters with military grade weapons.

  Cascadia: They might know how to fight a surface war but this is the dungeon. This is my domain, I’d destroy them.

  Gel: You’ve been in the dungeon for like 3 days. I think you might be overestimating how well you understand things.

  Cascadia: No thanks to you mister “I don’t know”. I understand enough. We could take them.

  Gel: Maybe we could, but we don’t need to. Come on, this is good for us. A silver boss box would be huge. And it might be good to see how a trained unit fights, maybe we can learn something. I am quite confident that non-evil people with security details exist.

  Cascadia: Fine, but if the boss box is a bust you have to eat ration bars until the 3rd floor at least.

  Gel:….I don’t agree to that

  Cascadia: whatever

  Patricia had been waiting patiently as Cascadia and I argued over chat. Cascadia spoke.

  “Ok, we’ll help you with the borough boss. We were headed that way anyway. We have an hour of training to do, then we’ll watch the recap before heading to the boss chamber.”

  Patricia smiled. She did that a lot.

  “Training! See boys, this is someone who knows how to thrive in our new environment. We’ll wait for you in the saferoom.”

  The four of them sat down at the counter and ordered food while Cascadia and I left.

  There were two crawler corpses right outside the saferoom. We stopped to examine them.

  Lootable corpse. Crawler Timothy C 3. Level 2. Killed by Crawler Patricia W 2.

  It also listed his few items, just clothes and a few personal effects. The other body was much the same.

  Lootable Corpse. Crawler Samantha C. Level 3. Killed by Crawler Jackson Strong 4.

  The dead crawlers were middle aged, dressed in common street clothes. They each had a single bullet hole passing through their torsos.

  “Look at this bullshit,” Cascadia said. “Evil. I bet they were using them as meat shields but got tired of dragging them around so they killed them for the experience.”

  “Maybe….”

  The circumstances did seem pretty unfavorable to make any defense of the killings.

  “What do you mean maybe? These guys look like they worked at an arts and crafts store and they are half the level of your new friends. You think they tried to get the drop on a group of armed soldiers for some easy loot?”

  “Whatever. I’m not a detective and neither are you. Let’s just get our training in.”

  We agreed to shift our training to before the recap episode for today only. We had slept early yesterday so we didn’t need to make up for the lost hour of sleep. We spent the morning focusing on healing; after our assault on the warehouse yesterday Cascadia had decided we needed to understand how healing worked much better.

  We had two main forms of healing. Our Nanite-Healing Burst ability and the Healtech Jet Injectors. We also had a few medpacks, which removed all negative conditions and provided healing, but we were saving those. Cascadia additionally had her Supercharged ability from her parasite that increased her healing to combat relevant speeds. The healing burst ability cost two energy points and healed a flat amount of health. Right now it was about 30% of my health and 20% of Cascadia’s. It worked almost instantly and had a thirty second cooldown. I knew that later we could upgrade it to heal a percent of max health.

  The jet injectors healed 50% of maximum health but healed over about two seconds. They also had to be physically used, not cast like an ability. With the fifteen second wait period to pull things from inventory, that meant you had to have one stored on your body somewhere to be useful in combat. All jet injectors shared a cooldown based on constitution. Mine was a full two minutes. Cascadias was fourteen seconds.

  The first thing Cascadia wanted to do was see how quickly her Supercharged ability healed her while also testing how damaging different parts of the body affected health. I carefully whittled her health down to 5%, targeting the areas she requested, and then she activated her ability. She healed to full in a little under ten seconds. We repeated the experiment a few times with different gear load outs to change her constitution. The results were the same best we could measure. She then tested simultaneous and staggered applications of all three healing methods, getting a feel for the speed and magnitude of total healing. I was still unwilling to voluntarily get beat to near-death and Cascadia didn’t force the issue; even just watching her stand there taking bullets while her health seeped away was unnerving. I didn’t like it. Instead, after she was satisfied, we practiced tethering. Her Gravity Coupling skill had gone up to level two which meant she could generate two g’s of force between her and her target.

  The force was mass-specific to her so if she coupled to the two thousand kilogram speeder it was barely affected. But if she pulled on one of her weapons, they would rocket back to her. If she coupled to me, we would be pulled together almost equally. Distance did not affect the force so if she activated the ability while the speeder was moving away from her she would accelerate to incredible speeds before she caught up with the vehicle, turned off her ability, and went rocketing past the vehicle, often nearly knocking herself out smashing into a wall. I didn’t understand how this would be useful but it was fun to practice so I didn’t complain.

  We moved back into the saferoom just in time for the recap. I watched enviously as Patricia and her guards finished their plates of eggs and breakfast meats. The recap episode followed the standard format, starting with scene after scene of crawlers gruesomely dying. The crawler victory segment continued to feature crawlers Cascadia labeled uninspiring but there were some interesting groups finding success.

  A crew of dancers had found some rhythm based weapons and were shown taking down a large blob like monster, their synchronized shots creating a resonance effect that exploded the sturdy mob. Like every season there was a military group that was doing well, the sixty crawlers clearing rooms and bosses with coordinated efficiency. Most interesting was the elderly man who had somehow built a rudimentary mecha suit. They showed him rescuing a group of crawlers from a pack of giant cyborg bat monsters that dropped stun grenades on people before sucking their blood. He blasted them away with a flechette shooter he had constructed, saving the doomed crawlers.

  The business like admin voice gave the daily update.

  This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

  Crawlers,

  There are now two days left until first floor collapse. Some crawlers have already begun to descend to the second floor. Be aware that you cannot return to the first floor after descending. While you may descend early, the second floor active area will be closed until the collapse of the first floor; you will have no access to mobs or full-service saferooms. Make your decisions accordingly.

  Boss battle numbers are not as strong as desired with many crawlers actively avoiding boss battles. For the last two days of the floor we are offering an extra loot box for any crawlers who defeat a boss monster for the first time. As extra incentive to engage in higher risk battles, any crawler who defeats a city boss will receive two gold boss boxes. Additionally, all boss lairs for the duration of this floor will include a med-station that will be unlocked upon conclusion of the boss battle, allowing for full healing and removal of all unwanted status effects.

  Inventory limitations are not a bug and your base inventories will not be enhanced. Utilizing dimensional storage items to overcome inventory limitations is not a bug and will not be punished.

  There are no additional announcements. The Valtay Corporation thanks for your participation.

  “Well that’s nice,” Patricia said. “We could have used that med-station after our last boss battle. Half of us had a health seeping condition that nearly killed us before it wore off.”

  “Let’s move, we’ve only got two days left.” Cascadia was all business.

  We had decided to keep the speeder in inventory, no need to show off everything we had, so we walked with them. Patricia made sure to arrange us so that she could talk to Cascadia while I was trapped by the mercenary types.

  “So what do you do?” One of them asked me. “That little drone can’t be all.”

  I motioned to the disc on my back.

  “This is a collapsible auto-turret. It’s really powerful. But it’s hard to control, so don’t get any ideas,” I said, forcing a smile. “I have an operator spike implanted in my brain that lets me control it, and my drone.”

  “Don’t worry man, Patricia seems to like you two. Are the borough boss battles that much harder? Did you two actually beat one yourselves? On the recap it has always been groups of ten or more.”

  “We joined up with another crawler for that battle. We still almost died though. Honestly I thought we were going to, but Cascadia pulled off a crazy maneuver and killed it. That was on the first day. I hadn’t planned on trying another borough boss for the rest of the floor. But I figure with the six of us it should be manageable.”

  “So you are the shotcaller then?”

  “…we make decisions together. Does there need to be a shot caller?”

  He shrugged.

  “It makes things run smoother, that's for sure. A group will never operate at peak performance without a shotcaller.”

  A sudden commotion ahead drew our attention. Cascadia had stepped back from Patricia and was nearly yelling.

  “Just leave it lady! I don’t care what you’re trying to accomplish or how important you think it is that the strongest crawlers band together to obtain a disproportionate amount of loot while driving the total crawler count beneath target levels to trigger compensatory game updates or whatever. The time of me having to listen to people like you come up with dumbass plans and rules and bylaws is over. The only reason we are together right now is because my brother is too much of a pussy to try to take on a borough boss with just the two of us.

  “I will not be joining your party. I will not be combining my strength with yours. I will not be helping you exploit the system. I will help you kill a borough boss and I will leave. If you aren’t dead weight, maybe we can do it again sometime.”

  Cascadia continued walking at a brisk pace; Patricia followed, attempting to placate her.

  “They don’t seem to be getting along,” I noted.

  “Yeah, that Cascadia seems to be a strong personality. So is Patricia. They will work it out though. Patricia always figures out how to make things work. You should really take her up on her offer, you don’t know how lucky you are. It’s not just because of our contracts that we are staying with her. If there is anyone who can figure out how to beat this and handle whatever comes next, it’s her. You wouldn’t have heard about her, before the collapse, but she was one of the real power holders. Someone who could actually make things happen.”

  “And she gave you permission to talk to me then? Ordered you to recruit me? And bring my sister with me?”

  “Yes”

  “….and what if we say no?”

  The mercenaries glanced at each other, eyes flashing, then shrugged.

  “Patricia plays a long game. You’ll come around eventually.”

  In truth, I found the offer extremely compelling. Patricia was undoubtedly a manipulative, power hungry, sociopath and her stooges were morally bankrupt guns for hire. But their points were valid. I had some advantages here because of my knowledge, but I didn’t really have any skills. I didn’t know how to organize people, I had no idea what it would take to be successful outside the dungeon, and after the first three floors my plans were really more of a few rough ideas. I still believed we could make it; we had leveling momentum, and there was no way Cascadia wouldn’t be popular. But nothing was guaranteed in the dungeon, and I had seen top crawlers drop like flies, especially on the deeper levels. Maybe I would see if I could get Cascadia to consider their offer, assuming we made it through this boss fight.

  We had entered an extremely upscale indoor water park, repurposed for the dungeon. The boss lair was what appeared to be an artificial beach. The beach was set into a pit in the ground, which would require us to drop ten feet into it. It was a wide, flat expanse of sand with a wave pool, about a kilometer wide and two hundred meters long, not including the pool. The sand was covered with thousands of oblong, speckled eggs. The boss was clearly visible next to the water line. A giant, armored turtle. Its shell had to be nearly three meters across. It was covered in metal plating and had some sort of swiveling weapon on top.

  “So how are we going to do this?” Cascadia asked. “Can you guys just shoot it from here with your rifles?”

  “Negative”, one of the mercenaries said. “That plating is going to require armor-piercing rounds. We’ve come across this a few times already. We either got close enough to hit unarmored points or just blew them up. We don’t have any explosives that will be big enough for that beast though.”

  Patricia took out a bottle of eye drops and applied them carefully. Her eyes flashed and a tiny HUD of white writing appeared in front of each eye. Information flashed rapidly as she focused on the boss.

  “The inner flesh is very weak, including the retractable head. The underbelly is also only lightly armored but the monster has the Rooted In Place skill, which makes it extremely difficult to displace. The top and sides have thicker armor than any we have seen so far. It is also vulnerable to hot and cold environments. Do either of you have any way to manipulate environmental factors? I don’t think my incendiary rounds create enough heat to be relevant for a creature of that size.”

  “Nope,” I said.

  “We should destroy the eggs from here, they will provide the boss some sort of benefit for sure,” one of the mercenaries chimed in.

  “Absolutely not,” Cascadia said. “We need those eggs, we need to preserve as many as we can.”

  “What do you need the eggs for,” Patricia asked.

  “A project. You are welcome to take your share of the eggs after the battle.”

  Their eyes flashed as they conferred via the chat system.

  “Very well,” Patricia said. “Then we drop in and carefully work our way to the boss.”

  “You all cover me, I’ll advance first. I have the best survivability, escape options, and close quarters skills. I don’t want to try to fight with 5 people crowding around me.”

  With that, we entered the boss lair through a small set of stairs set into the side.

  The world froze and the customary boss battle sequence played out.

  B-B-B-Boss Battle!!!

  Yertle the Armored Colossal Cybernetically Enhanced Snapping Turtle!

  Level 16 Borough Boss!

  Weighing it at over 5,000 kilos, Yertle is the undisputed heavyweight champ of this borough. Since receiving her armor plating, Yertle has found it too difficult to move. This makes her rather upset and she spends most of her time laying eggs and throwing them around the beach, hoping that eventually enough of them will hatch for her to command a throng of baby turtles to carry her around. Of course she has never seen one of her babies hatch because no one has been stupid enough to come into her lair. Armored colossal cybernetically enhanced snapping turtle eggs are programmed to hatch only after an unwitting human steps onto their beach. Hopefully Yertle isn’t too disappointed when she finds out what her babies are like.

  The world unfroze but nothing happened. The turtle remained motionless in the distance. Cascadia tossed her adhesion disc onto the wall.

  Cascadia: the adhesion disc stays by you for now, until you have better survival and escape options. If things get hectic and you are in trouble, message me and I’ll pull back.

  Gellen: got it

  “Gellen, see what happens if you get the drone up close. Maybe you can just shoot it in the head,” Patricia suggested. I sent the drone forward, examining the eggs through the camera as I did

  Unhatched Armored Colossal Cybernetically Enhanced Snapping Turtle Egg

  There was no additional information given. I crossed the beach quickly but when I got to within fifty meters of the boss the weapon on its back activated. It was a red cutting laser that spun around continuously. It completed about one revolution per second and seemed to adjust its angle to hit the nearest enemy, in this case, my drone. It was easy to dodge with the small drone but I feared even a dexterity enhanced human would struggle to get close. I started firing shots with my mini-cannon that bounced harmlessly off of the armor plating, the head was retracted.

  I lowered the drone, trying to line it up with the head opening while dodging the laser. I moved low, drawing the laser down, then hopped up over it, aligning with my target and firing a burst from the cannon. A health bar appeared and went down a sliver just as the giant turtle head exploded out, stretching three meters to crunch my drone in half with a metal plated beak. I flinched as the camera feed went black and the drone parts fell to the ground.

  Gellen: We need to let one of them get close to damage it. That bite will cut you in half

  Cascadia: No way. I haven’t given up on that show Gel.

  Gellen: That is the stupidest thing you’ve ever said.

  Cascadia: How am I ever going to get a hoverboard if I don’t get enough followers for a high quality sponsor or fan box.

  Gellen: I hope you are just messing with me right now.

  She wasn’t, and she started forward towards the boss, who had gone back to dormancy. She had made it about fifty yards when the first egg hatched. A small, black hatchling emerged and started crawling towards Cascadia. She bent down and picked it up, examining it. She suddenly hurled the baby away. It beeped once and exploded as it flew, knocking her back. Eggs all over started to hatch. Cascadia activated her Gravity Coupling skill and bounded back as baby turtles floundered after her.

  The mercenaries opened fire, blasting baby turtles and unhatched eggs alike. The eggs simply oozed orange fluid and blood but the hatched babies exploded when shot. Cascadia got ready to shout at them but Patricia beat her to it.

  “Don’t shoot the eggs! Focus on the hatched babies. Anyway there are too many eggs to make a difference.”

  I deployed my turret and we established a safe zone, blasting turtles as they approached. The babies were slow and clumsy, but there were already hundreds of them. I examined one that got close before it exploded.

  Baby Armored Colossal Cybernetically Enhanced Snapping Turtle

  It is said that only 1 in 10,000 of these cute little babies makes it to adulthood. Their existence is one of self sacrifice, their primary purpose being to blow the legs off of crawlers foolish enough to challenge a borough boss on the first floor. If you could overwrite their cybernetic implant programming and solve the exploding problem they might make a nice pet! Good luck with that.

  “We can’t move away from the wall,” one of the mercenaries said, firing his rifle. “We won’t be able to keep them back if we get surrounded. We have to wait until all the eggs have hatched.”

  “What!?” I said. “Do you even have enough ammo to hold out? That could take an hour. No way we can keep this up for that long.”

  “We all got unlimited ammo magazines from our first boss battle. Don’t worry about us, we can do this all day.”

  The mercenaries spoke calmly, maintaining a coordinated stream of fire at the approaching turtles. Patricia had produced a large pistol that fired incendiary rounds and was targeting the occasional turtles that started to get close. Between my turret and our four allies we were just able to keep the steady stream of hatchlings at bay. Cascadia drummed her fingers against her leg as she watched her field of eggs shrink.

  “This is not going to work.”

  “It’s the only option we have,” Patricia replied. “Do you have a better idea?”

  Cascadia tapped her foot on the ground for a moment.

  Cascadia: Get out the speeder Gel. I need you to throw me.

  Gel: You’re out of your mind. I’m not doing that. We can just wait this out, kill the boss, and find some other eggs.

  She turned to me.

  “You throw me or I’ll throw myself. I can probably do it, it will just be better with the speeder.”

  I could see in her eyes that she meant it, so I called the repair bay from my inventory. Fifteen seconds later it appeared and I pulled the speeder from it. The coordination of gunfire was interrupted for just a moment as our startled companions took in the speeder.

  “You have a speeder?! No wonder you were able to level so quickly,” Patricia said. She watched out of the corner of her eye, still firing at the turtles, as Cascadia tossed the adhesion disc into the speeder and moved off to the side.

  Cascadia: maximum speed straight towards the boss. You should be able to go fast enough to avoid the explosions, they have that 1 beep delay. Break right at 100 meters and I’ll untether.

  I wasn’t happy about it but I got into the speeder. Two g’s didn’t sound like that much to me, but Cascadia could reach incredible speeds. I didn't want to think about the math but when we were practicing this morning she was blowing past me while I was going ninety kilometers per hour. I looked at her one last time and she nodded. Patricia and her guards spared a glance but had to stay focused on keeping the turtles at bay. I slammed the throttle forward, accelerating at maximum speed. A second later I felt a slight tug as Cascadia activated her skill. Turtles turned to pursue us but the speeder was too fast. Cascadia’s timing was perfect and just as I banked right she shot past me. She rammed her staff, glowing with extra friction, into the ground and it bent to an extreme angle before launching her up and forward. I sped back to the safety of my turret and our allies as she soared into the air. She hit the ceiling, twenty-five meters in the air, and rebounded off it, launching down towards the boss. She had aimed slightly too far forward and briefly activated her Gravity Coupling ability again to correct her course. She lengthened her staff as she fell and unleashed a thunderous strike as she landed behind the turtle. The shell cracked to the sound of a gargantuan gong being rung, revealing a thin line of green-brown flesh. The spinning laser had activated and Cascadia ducked under as it passed, pulling her Veraklion Burrowing Dagger from her boot sheath and leaping up to the turtle's shell. She rammed the dagger into the small gap, hopped over the laser as it passed again, and activated her Gravity Coupling. She was yanked away from the turtle. When using her coupling she had a strange, bounding gait that let her maximize her speed gain. As her foot touched down, about twenty meters from the boss, a baby turtle exploded next to her, knocking her off balance and chunking a quarter of her health bar. She stumbled, sliding in the sand as her coupling continued to pull her. The laser came around again and found her just as she cleared its fifty meter range. The edge of the laser took her leg off just below the knee.

  She screamed and cut off her coupling, pushing hard with her remaining leg to stop her momentum. A turtle exploded in her face, pushing her health into the red. She activated her Healing Burst ability and slammed a jet injector against her leg as she dove, reaching for her severed leg. She grabbed it and activated her coupling skill again, skidding along the ground towards the speeder. She caught the edge of another turtle explosion, dazing her and causing her to hit the speeder hard, her health deep in the red.

  She rolled to her back, resting for a moment. I stared at her; even though she had pulled a stunt like this every day since we had been in the dungeon, I was still stunned by her sheer audacity. She recovered from her crash and sat up, lining up her severed leg with the still bleeding stump.

  “You know what I hate?” She said, as she activated her Benevolent Helminth, causing her leg to start to reattach itself. “Explosions. I hate explosions. Goddamit! This hurts a lot more than my finger did. More than getting shot too.”

  I just shook my head and turned back to the boss. It was thrashing about, its health steadily descending as the dagger burrowed deeper and deeper.

  “Thank goodness it’s so frail once you get past the armor, I don’t think that dagger would kill most bosses,” Cascadia said.

  “It’s not dead yet,” I replied over the continued sound of gunfire. Fortunately, Cascadia was right, and the boss was dead in a few minutes. The hatched turtles all collapsed as soon as the boss died and we were finally able to relax.

  Winner!

  “Well that seemed unnecessarily difficult,” one of the mercenaries said to Cascadia, who was still sitting down, leaning against the front of the speeder.

  “That’s where you’re wrong. In this place, cool is necessary. And we needed those eggs.”

  “If being cool was important and you’ve been pulling moves like this all along, then we would’ve seen you on the recap.”

  Cascadia sighed.

  “It’s a numbers game. There are still over ten million crawlers getting sifted, the process can take time. It’s ok, I’m used to it; it comes with the territory of seventh tier citizenship. I’ve always had to work harder and be better to get noticed. I’ll do the same here. I’ll make sure that when the watchers finally spare me a glance, they won’t be able to look away again.”

  The mercenary made to reply but Patricia cut him off.

  “That was incredible Cascadia. A remarkable display of skill and prowess. It is easy to see how you have been so successful thus far. But Jackson has a valid point. The risk was not proportional to the reward. There are no crafting materials on the first floor that are worth risking your life for. Your skills are amazing, but you have to be more judicious in selecting when to take the big risks.”

  Cascadia said nothing. She just stood up and started to walk out towards the boss’ corpse. Patricia scurried after her.

  “Cascadia. You need to listen to me. We have to work together. I’ve tried to give hints but if you’ll just listen I can explain. You need me to make it to the end, maybe to the eighteenth floor even. You know no one’s ever done it before? We could be the first ones. But you have to do what I say. If you won’t work with me…”

  Cascadia had stopped, allowing Patricia to catch up to her.

  “Finally, thank you Cascadia. I knew tha-“

  Cascadia spun, axe flashing. A moment later, Patricia’s severed head hit the sand. There was a second of stillness before action erupted. One of the mercenaries snapped his rifle up and started shooting at her, his bullets dissipating against her shield. I deployed my turret as Cascadia threw her axe, burying it in his gut as another mercenary tackled her from behind. To the first mercenary’s credit, he kept his feet until my turret mowed him down. Cascadia’s opponent had no idea what her abilities were and was caught by surprise as she activated her Friction Manipulation, easily spinning in his hold and stabbing him under the chin with her psi-blade.

  I had lost track of the third mercenary and as I looked at my mini map a thick arm grabbed me from behind. My assailant jerked me in between the turret and himself and held a laser pistol to my head. I put my hands up and deactivated my turret as Cascadia pushed herself up off the ground, two new skulls forming next to her name.