Pinning me down had only delayed their demise. It hadn’t even saved their friend.

  Do NPCs have friends? I wondered. Frank if I knew.

  Dumb had come at my neck from my disarmed side, so he was out of reach. But with a bit of stretching, I got my hand around the shaft of the tool stuck in my back and squeezed with all my might.

  Apparently, thirty Strength wasn’t enough to shatter a wooden shaft with one hand on grip strength alone. Not even close.

  Down one arm, and up two pitchforks, I found it nearly impossible to get up.

  I clenched my teeth, knowing this next little maneuver would hurt me way more than them. I rolled toward Dumber. Hard.

  The torsion in my back let out an explosion of rippling cracks along my spine as I twisted. Snap, crackle, and pop enthusiasts across time and space would’ve blown their load at the sound my back just made.

  The pitchfork at my neck slipped free of Dumb’s grip, allowing me to move my head again. With only one farmer holding me down, I pushed through and rose to my feet.

  My hand reached back for the shaft again. After I took hold, I spun, taking Dumber for a ride, but his grip didn’t break. I sent him flying; thankfully, the damn pitchfork went with him. The one in my neck also dislodged itself as I pivoted violently.

  Without hesitation, I went after Dumber, who’d landed on his back. A moment later, I pinned him with a straddle, slipping my legs around him. He wasn’t going anywhere.

  I wanted to test how stupid the AI was.

  Dumber flinched as I dropped my chest to his, but instead of going for a bite, I wrapped my arm around his neck and locked him in with a hug.

  I listened for Dumb’s footsteps as they scurried our way. Just as he was about to reach us, I threw us to the side, rolling to our right.

  Without an arm to get in the way, I counted on Dumb running Dumber through with his pitchfork. I couldn’t check, but I was pretty damn sure I had more than enough Vitality if he missed and got me instead.

  But he didn’t.

  “Ooph!” Dumber let out as the prongs slid into him.

  I squeezed him tight with my arm and legs, squishing the blood out of him like a torn trash bag. There were few things worse than emptying the trash bin, only to find the bag leaking last night’s leftovers all over the goddamn floor.

  Dumber pleaded with Dumb to stop and help, but his whimpering fell on deaf ears.

  Shit got real franked up when I couldn’t tell who wanted Dumber dead more, me or Dumb.

  He didn’t even try to hide the assisted murder. The homicidal idiot just pushed harder, like the dumbass was trying to get to me through the other NPC.

  A kill notification popped up during the struggle.

  [You’ve earned: 50 XP.]

  At least the System had the decency to give me the credit.

  I took hold of the shaft and held it tight against Dumber’s dead body so he couldn’t yank it out. Slowly, I shifted out from under his limp body while still holding Dumb in place.

  After I was free and far too close for the pitchfork to be a threat anymore, I let it go.

  Dumb lived up to his name as he struggled to yank the tool free. I palmed the side of his head and slammed him, headfirst, into the ground. He cartwheeled ass over teakettle as I spiked his skull into the ground like a damn football.

  I just kept digging deeper with every spike of his head into the pliant fertile field. Eventually, I remembered the rock in my inventory and pulled it out.

  It formed in my hand, and shortly after, I earned my next notification.

  [You’ve earned: 50 XP.]

  While Dickhead had been right, tools as weapons were annoying. But that’s all they were. I checked my Vitality. They had knocked it down a couple hundred points. Nothing a bit of brain couldn’t fix.

  I ate Dumb first for being a jerk.

  Eating him had maxed out my Vitality. I also took my time to scarf down Dumber and the first farmer I’d killed over here.

  Two notifications popped up as I ate.

  [Your Intellect has increased to level 7.]

  [Your Intellect has increased to level 8.]

  I liked the idea of taking a to-go meal, just in case I ran into another booby-trapped chest. It still chapped my ass that the System had tried to punk me. But that punk-ass bitch franked with the wrong Frank. I knew how to hold a grudge.

  My personal UberEATS plan ended up taking way longer than I thought. Using a pitchfork to pry off a human head with only one arm wasn’t nearly as easy as it sounded.

  But I was determined. I discovered that just stabbing the pitchfork down, repeatedly, would sever the spinal cord, eventually.

  I was pleasantly surprised when the System let me store a severed human head in my inventory. Then I picked up the least gruesome pitchfork of the four and shoved it into my inventory too. I could always toss it if I needed the space.

  Looting the farmers didn’t earn me much. Just more gold. I guess potions of healing weren’t a frequent drop. I got another loot notification each time I stuck my hand in one of their overall pockets. The last one said:

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  [You’ve gained: 15 gold. Total gold: 90.]

  Eating brains was strange. They tasted great and felt like euphoria, but I didn’t feel any different after each Intellect bump. But maybe that was the point? Maybe I wasn’t supposed to notice my gradual ascent into becoming a genius?

  I didn’t know, so I asked.

  “Dick, does Intellect actually do anything? I don’t feel any smarter.”

  “Intellect doesn’t make you smart. You’re still the total culmination of your knowledge and experience. That total hasn’t changed. Your capacity to fit even more knowledge has. You could think of it as a swimming pool. Gaining more Intellect doesn’t change the amount of water; it just makes the pool deeper so it can hold more. You’ve still got to go out and find more water to fill it.”

  That made sense to me. I always thought geniuses were born smart. But I guess most of those nerds read a lot of books and solved a bunch of problems in order to get smart. They earned it.

  I grinned because if those nerds could earn it, so could I.

  Out of curiosity, I brought up my Mana.

  Mana: 100% (142/142).

  I squinted at the number, wondering, Wasn’t that one-twenty-something back in my Lair? Something was off, and I wouldn’t let it bite me in the ass later. I started asking even more questions.

  “Dick, why’s my Mana higher out here than in my Lair?”

  “It shouldn’t be,” he said. “It’s a constant. Let me check something… Ah, I see what happened. Your Intellect increased again.”

  “How does that change my Mana? Are they linked?”

  “Vitality and Mana are derivative stats.”

  My eyes glazed over as he explained the formula.

  “Vitality is a hundred, plus your Strength times your Constitution, plus one-fifth your Constitution times your player level. Unfortunately, your player level will always be one. Also, your Undead trait substitutes Strength for Constitution because you don’t have a Constitution anymore.”

  I bit my tongue at the last thing Dickhead said. It hit me right in the heart. I guess shitty American politics weren’t the only thing ignoring Constitutions now.

  Unaware of my existential crisis, he explained the next formula. “Mana is like Vitality, but it starts with fifty, then adds your Intellect times your Fortitude, then you add one-fifth of your Fortitude times your player level.”

  “That’s… a lot of math,” I said, vaguely following along.

  “The short and sweet of it all is you’ll slowly fall behind in both Vitality and Mana as everyone else levels up around you, including the NPCs.”

  Franking great, I thought sarcastically.

  Next, I asked, “Does attacking use Mana?”

  “Yes, but innate attacks like Bite and Punch use negligible amounts. You’ll never run out, even in a protracted fight. Most of the energy wasted in fights comes from using advanced techniques, casting spells, or activating abilities. But you don’t have any of those slotted into your Cognitive Load right now. The only other way to exhaust yourself in a fight is through excessive movement, which your No Rest for the Dead trait negates, so you’re free to fight the day and night away.”

  I liked the sound of that.

  Before I took off again, I had a hunch I wanted to test.

  “Dick, how good are you at crunching numbers?”

  “Rubbish, but that’s what my computer’s for. What do you need?”

  “I’m going to give you some hypothetical player information, and I want you to tell me how much Mana they have.”

  “Okie-dokie.”

  I took a breath and rattled off some numbers.

  “Level one, ten Int and ten Fort.” I wanted my baseline to be the average human.

  “152 Mana.”

  “Level one, eleven Int and ten Fort.”

  “162 Mana.”

  “Level two, ten Int and ten Fort.”

  “154 Mana.”

  “Are you telling me a whole-ass level only gets you two Mana, but a single point in Intellect gets you ten?”

  “Sounds about right. Another reason why your Food for Thought trait is so good.”

  “Too bad I don’t have any use for Mana,” I muttered.

  “Yet…” he added.

  I wiped my greasy hands clean on Dumb’s overalls and got to my feet. Then I spat out some more numbers for Dickhead to crunch as I wandered into another field looking for a fight.

  “Level one, 100 Int and ten Fort.”

  “1,050 Mana.”

  Shit, that was a lot of Mana. Dickhead had mentioned a hundred attribute points wasn’t unheard of in World Dungeons.

  “Level one, ten Int and 100 Fort.”

  “1,070 Mana.”

  Basically, the same as before. I was curious how they scaled with levels.

  “Level 100, 100 Int and ten Fort.”

  “1,250 Mana,” he said, which was expected.

  “Level 100, ten Int and 100 Fort.”

  “3,050 Mana.”

  That wasn’t expected.

  I froze. “Holy shit, Fortitude scales really well with levels.”

  “It does,” he admitted. “But after the Tutorial expansion is over, the hardcore rule kicks in.”

  I’d played hardcore games before, but I didn’t like the idea of playing hardcore with my life. “That some kind of permadeath bullshit?”

  “Nope, that’d be too punitive. Alien players wouldn’t play if they lost everything when they died. Account unlocks are safe from Hardcore; that’s where all the QoLs go when purchased. They don’t get reset on death like your level and player inventory. That reminds me, it’s full loot on death once we get to the PvP-enabled expansions.”

  Another excellent reason to stay away from every other jackass trapped in here with me.

  I didn’t find another farmer, but I was refueled, restocked, and ready to hit the road again, I took to the path, sprinting toward the mountains. It was just Dickhead, my inventory, and me against the World Dungeon.

  Dickhead read up on more back-end changes from the whole player-NPC class-swap debacle. I worked on putting one foot in front of the other as the farmlands transitioned into hills. We steadily approached the white beacon in the sky.

  It wasn’t actually in the mountains, more like at the base of them.

  Ruins of mismatched buildings came over the horizon as we drew closer.

  Another notification flashed.

  [Your Running skill has increased to level 5.]

  Nice. Those had been popping up every few hours. Apparently, running for a couple hundred miles was a great way to skill up.

  “I’m surprised we haven’t seen any more NPCs,” I said after an extended stretch of silence.

  It took Dickhead a second to respond.

  “NPC patrols won’t start until tomorrow. They want to make sure all the players can get to town first.”

  “That’s… oddly civil.”

  “Not really,” Dickhead said. “They’re just waiting to see the player distribution before they set up the rest of the NPC spawns and all the patrols.

  “I’d guess it’s because they’ve got to hand over control of the NPCs after they’ve finished the initial configuration. This is their only shot at making sure every Tutorial town has equal NPC to player density. Alien players don’t like challenge disparity. It’s not good for business.”

  The sun had just set, lighting up an alien skyline I didn’t recognize. Above it was a darkening sky packed with stars. So many of them.

  I tilted my head back, half expecting something familiar to jump out at me, but I’d never taken the time to learn astronomy or whatever. I’d never seen them so bright before.

  “What city did this used to be?” I wondered out loud.

  “City? We’re still tens of thousands of tiles from the town.”

  My finger shot up from cradling my chest. “Those ruined skyscrapers.”

  “Oh, those buildings are from all over the world. They’re collapsing now that the spawn timer has expired. DungeonCore had free rein over the entire planet, crust to molten core, but they had to preserve every building with a native in it. They divvied up the population and crammed the buildings together just outside each Tutorial town, where the native players would spawn. That’s why they had you all wait indoors.”

  “What happened to those who didn’t listen?”

  “It’s best not to think about it.”

  That only made me want to know even more, but knowing wouldn’t help me any, so I dropped it.

  I slowed as a familiar building came into view.

  “Holy shit, Dick. Is that… the church?”

  “Uh, yeah. Looks like it.”

  I ran up to it and stopped. The roof had collapsed, and the brightly colored windows were reduced to shards on the ground. The front entrance appeared untouched, except for the door. It looked like the Kool-Aid Man had smashed through. All the splinters faced outward, so whatever it was had burst out from the inside.

  I stepped back, taking in the view. There was rubble everywhere, like someone had sacked a major metropolis with drones, tanks, and other terrible instruments of war.

  As if picking up on my mood, Dickhead said, “Keep going, Frank. It’ll clear up before we get to town.”