The second floor had the same layout as an apartment building. One long row all the way down, with room for two apartments, based on the amount of doors that had to lead to something. There was a third door there that would have led to the other stairwell. Bagel was hesitant to go there.

  It looked like an apartment building in all the wrong ways, but it smelled like nothing.

  "Can you send your little swarm of tiny rats ahead of us?"

  In the time they had searched downstairs, she had produced another Omega Rat. Apparently, that was what they were called.

  There were some card effects that would have let him spy on the cards, but it would be public knowledge eventually

  "It's definitely an Omega Rat. I swear because I had to kill a Pizza Rat to get the specialty. And I don't have any other swarm types," Ashley said.

  "It's like you're really trying to hurt me here by making even more Pizza Rats. I'm tired of rats," Kate said.

  "Excuse me… But… I'm not here to work for you. I'm here for a job. Well, when we're done here, I don't want to see your ass, understood?"

  Bagel meowed. "Girls, we've got more important things, like the two open doorways ahead of us. I don't want to say I smell a rat, but I can hear movement."

  Both girls tensed.

  They turned to look at what he was looking at. On the second-floor landing, all they saw was a single hallway leading to the front, where presumably another set of stairs would lead to the second floor. Where there would otherwise be doors for apartments, door frames were open.

  Two more pizza rats lumbered through them. Why was it always rodents?

  They began an all-out sprint towards the group as Bagel urged his mount forwards. A swarm of tiny Pizza Rats surrounded Bagel and his mount, drawing their attention. Rather than going and doing the smart thing, these ones just picked the closest enemy in front of them, and the Omega Rats were just fighting Pizza Rats, and vice versa.

  Bagel tucked that tidbit away for later examination.

  His mount, however, had to approximate human speech and intelligence. This gave him the ability to stab discreetly with his cooking knife.

  Bagel snuck a look through the open door frame as the mobs fought the summons. It led into a large, empty room, about the size of an apartment. There was nothing on the walls, and nothing in the way that he could see that anyone had ever lived there. If there was an intelligent dungeon designer, they were making a mockery of the normal human living condition.

  This was fine for him, because humans were big dumb animals, useful for stabbing things.

  He was a handsome boy. He did not need to sully his claws.

  Bagel spurred his mount to circle around the Pizza Rats. It took potshots and attacks of opportunity where it could. Each stab, or attempted stab, warmed his heart.

  Each attack was a little nick on the enemy’s health.

  It would have been nice to have a ranged attack of his own. He wanted to be nowhere near the rats. Staying stable on the mount was enough work. Perhaps he might acquire laser eyes at some point in time.

  Bagel was looking for any other stragglers, as if there were only two rats per floor, and a dungeon was potentially five floors? This might not be that long of an affair.

  Considering how the layout changed between the first and second floor drastically, he predicted that the next floor would be a little bit worse, and either the spacing or the number of enemies would change. After all, a third-floor walkup was expensive in the city, especially if you weren’t from old money.

  Old money cats did shows and had lineage verification. New money cats like Bagel owned businesses.

  His mount finally took down the second rat.The area of effect attack from Kate's turtle totem meant that it was slowly poisoning the enemy mobs that were there. This was good for sneaking in some extra damage. Her overall build was focused on this creature. It meant that there was going to be times when she couldn't do a lot of damage at once. Bagel instantly understood the appeal.

  Still, this method caused her to be a sitting duck. They had already run into a few hairy situations.

  She would be an ideal candidate for another defending summon card. Without one, she would die—she needed some sort of armor. Maybe she could armor up like one of those superheroes on the television

  With the two rats down, both dropped a card. His mount reached out to pick up the cards, and tucked them away.

  Both were Pizza Rat cards.

  He then had him out poke his head through the doors to apartment-sized spaces, to make sure that they were empty.

  “Both of these rooms are clear, boss!” His mount’s hands were still on the blade, instinctively. The knife should have had some blood on it. It was almost as bad as the scentless ambiance. This was going to be a different kind of affair.

  He checked his status, quickly seeing if he’d leveled up.

  Bagel was surprised to see that there was a little mini-map. Or, at least, it looked like a map. It was a very small square, and it showed two axes where he gleaned that both of the rats had died. It also showed two green dots for the women, who were now stepping up to check out the open apartment rooms. There was a blue dot for his mount, the turtle, and the swarm, which the System recognized as one blob in the general area he could see it.

  Moving his mount around felt like an extension of himself, but he could easily forward it around, so he assumed that it would be the same thing for Ashley, and that she was doing this to get back at the other girl, for whatever reason that he wasn't going to look into anymore.

  After all, who wouldn't want to go through a dungeon with the handsomest boy on the block? Clearly, these two did.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Even though they were fighting each other. Well, not literally fighting each other.

  “Kate, you have to be more useful. You didn't do anything there.” Ashley threw her hands up. “It's like you're as useless here as you are in the real world.”

  “Excuse you, I did a lot of damage to those rats. It just doesn't show up.” Kate brought up a screen, showing it to Ashley and Bagel.

  Bagel looked. The words were… a lot. He didn’t know how humans did it.

  “It said that you did ten damage to the Pizza Rats.”

  “Several times! This is an aura attack! It takes time.”

  “Like we have time. But it's also going to take time for me to save your ass. You have no defenses, so maybe focus on that.”

  Kate scoffed. Bagel rolled his eyes.

  The girls stared each other down briefly, as if they were going to give way. Bagel returned to the sterile smell of the dungeon. Not having ambient smells was so wrong in so many ways. He felt blind with the acute loss of his nose as a player in this fight.

  Neither of the large apartment rooms had anything worth evaluating. They continued to the stairwell between the second floor and the third floor, down the hallway.

  There were two rats paused at the top of the stairwell.

  "Would you mind sending your swarm of rats up there first?" Bagel said. "I would feel a little bit safer then."

  This was clearly an ambush. Three rats remained firmly stuck at the top of the stairs to the third floor. Bagel idly wondered if Kate’s area of effect spell could work at this distance, or if this was some sort of trick.

  Yes, he might be just a cat, but he was concerned about anything that might affect his nine lives. The job would have been so much simpler if the girls could just do his bidding directly. He was an ambush predator, after all.

  “Are you going to head your way up there?” Bagel was talking to the turtle. The turtle turned to its master, who nodded. With great care, the turtle stepped up the stairs, one at a time. The rats above grinned, but remained.

  It was an odd feeling, seeing the turtle move up. The totem, a foot-long cylinder, crackled with dark electricity. He urged his mount into position as the omega rat swarms made their way up the steps.

  The rats then sprung, jumping right at his mount. Bagel yowled, taking evasive action.

  He landed with a hard exhale. Bagel’s eyes widened at the approaching rats. Neither was moving towards him, though they should. Janet began her distraction routine, trying to get lasers into their eyes. It didn’t even make sense, if Bagel assumed that they used some other sense than sight.

  Their rats ran directly into the fight..

  The cook waded into combat again, tanking a few hits before killing another one. Then it succumbed to its injuries. Bagel instantly pulled up his hand of cards. He sent another cook into the fray, as the energy spent on the first one returned to him.

  “Protect us!”

  “Yes, boss!” The cook made a warbling battle cry, then moved in to attack the three rats. The backlash of the lasers, omega rats, and the totem destroyed all three of the rats at the same time.

  “Do you think that we should make our way to the next floor?” Ashley said.

  Above them, the sounds of several enemies moving down were immediately obvious. Several loud thumps from directly above them caused Bagel to growl.

  Bagel didn’t even know what it was. “That’s definitely not a Pizza Rat.”

  “Fall back?” Kate yelled.

  “Fall back!” Ashley yelled.

  Rather than scramble up on top of his new mount, Bagel strode behind the girls. Kate scooped up her turtle, and then all of a sudden stopped. “Guys, stop. I’m still dealing damage.”

  She summoned a screen.

  “Shit.” Ashley skidded to a stop. “They’re above us, aren’t they?”

  "We're all stressed here.Let's just hold tight for a second," Kate said. "If we can stay underneath it, then we keep doing damage—ten damage every five seconds, meaning that it'll be pretty beat up by the time it gets here."

  "That would make them close to death by the time it gets down here. Bagel, can you send your summon up? If we could do that, it would make the next couple floors easier. It sounds like they’ve noticed that we're here, and they're just going to start ganging up on us."

  Bagel made sure that his mount knew what he wanted. It scampered up the stairs, taking them two at a time. It arrived and he could feel it engaging.

  Bagel saw the Omega Rats start to move, and then gasped. "Can you leave your omega rats here? Just in case they break through mine. It's gonna take me a minute to replace my cook. I don't have the other worker in my hand."

  He cursed his luck in having only three cards inside of his hand—it was not going to be exactly the cake walk that he thought this was going to be. If he could draw his own Pizza Rat, then he might be able to combat those Pizza Rats even better or if he found a card that was somehow immune to other Pizza Rats, as that was what he assumed was gonna be upstairs, based off of their previous experiences on the first two floors, and were moving into the third.

  The cooks screamed a battle cry, and Kate held her screen out for them. It showed that she was still doing damage.

  Over the next thirty seconds, it had done at least sixty damage, which, combined with the previous seconds. That meant ninety damage was already done by the time they got down.

  Whatever these were, they were stronger than the average Pizza Rat, which only had eighty hit points.

  The next set of mobs were not actually Pizza Rats. They were turtles. They were a version of the Totem Turtle that Ashley had, minus the AOE power.

  The turtle’s carcasses flopped down the steps, almost knocking over the cook. Bagel hissed but they were clearly dead. Cards popped up over them.

  "Are those…?" Ashley moved over. "Heck yeah! It's the EX version of your turtle card, I think."

  "The EX version? Let me see that."

  The girls looked it over.

  Bagel approached the abomination to nature.

  Stairs.

  They were never just right, having been designed for humans. Bagel went up them anyway, listening for activity. The only thing he heard was the two women breathing heavily.

  If he continued doing these dungeon runs, which was a huge if—he was going to need to figure out a way to deal damage himself.

  He was thinking about a cool thing that might let him send some fireball spells over there. Maybe he could pick up a card like that. Maybe one of the turtles had that. Or maybe he could get another mount that had a fireball skill. The Pizza Rats seemed to only have electricity, which wasn't exactly what he wanted, but he would take it if he had to. He might prefer lasers, but who knew if lasers were going to be in the cards for him?

  So many things hinged on him having lasers.

  Maybe the humans would find some for him. They knew how to navigate the outside world, after all.

  If these girls are going to try to be his friend, then he was going to try to ask him to take care of things for him, and the first thing he needed to be absolutely clear about was that he did not need them. They might be helpful, but they were not the entire game. Even now, when they dragged him to this dungeon, he felt in charge.

  He was, after all, a handsome boy. The handsomest boy on the block.

  He got to the third floor, and the two women had grudgingly decided to follow. His cook waited at the top for him. He briefly considered leaving, but that didn't feel right at that exact moment.

  He needed to check the floor, but rather than having a hallway with rooms that were the size of apartments that were just bare,he entire floor was a single empty room. Normally, you wouldn't be able to see the outer walls, but all there was here was floor and inner wall.

  This would be the perfect place to have a larger battle, and Bagel wondered if some of the other mobs around were going to try to get to them.

  That was when the ceiling crashed down.