He felt like someone had stabbed his leg with a red-hot poker. He cried out, muscles spasming, in too much pain to move.

  Squeak wrapped itself around the insect and restrained it while Jeremy lay on the floor, groaning.

  After an eternity, he could move enough to vomit on the floor next to him, and it was another eternity before he could do anything else.

  With a groan, he got up, drank some water, and ate a dungeon ration. Flint sat in his sulking corner with a smug look on his face.

  That, more than anything else, gave him the courage to expose his other leg and place the insect on his bare skin a second time. He remembered Clown Lord's words. In the dungeon, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

  It was a long time before he could do anything besides lie there and moan. The third time he did this, the pain was noticeably less.

  Flint cleared his noncorporeal throat. “For an adventurer who claims to wish to grow stronger, you've been doing a lot of lying around. Perhaps there's some nuance in your strength-increasing plans I'm not aware of?”

  “My pain resistance has gone up by two points,” Jeremy said.

  “I believe you would be better helped by something called weapons training.”

  Jeremy groaned, but got painfully to his feet and grabbed his sword with a shaky hand. “I hate you.”

  “Your stance is terrible,” Flint said.

  “My legs are half paralyzed from insect bites.”

  “Well, the thing about monsters is...”

  “Shut up.”

  ***

  Over the next few days, Jeremy alternated between painful insect bites and equally painful training. In the evenings, or what he thought were evenings, he worked on his puzzles and practiced with his magic light. He'd gotten to where he could keep a dim light going indefinitely.

  Jeremy's pain resistance skill reached its maximum level and merged with his mental fortitude skill to become Trauma Resist: 6 (max).

  Eventually, the insect's bites stopped hurting, even when they penetrated his increasingly tough skin.

  “Check this out. My skin is learning to resist mana-enhanced bites.” At the moment, there were three of what Jeremy had named Pain Beetles crawling on his skin, and he was fine.

  Flint stood up and cleared his noncorporeal throat. “You are now used to the most painful but least deadly of the insects infesting this part of the dungeon. What do you plan to do about the rest of them?”

  “I will handle them the same way,” Jeremy said. “As I was saying, I think my body can overcome the effects of any one of these dungeon insects. It's when they all attack at once that they overwhelm my body's defenses and kill me.”

  “And what if your theory is wrong?” Flint asked.

  “Squeak!” Squeak spoke up in agreement.

  “Then I die, but I'm pretty sure my theory is correct.”

  Flint let out a loud groan. “I must be the most unlucky adventurer in the universe. First, I get trapped in this dungeon for over a thousand years, then I get stuck with the most difficult adventurer I've ever had the misfortune to meet, who, let me point out, could be at home right now.”

  Jeremy yawned, crushing the three pain beetles with his hand. “Squeak, get me another insect.”

  “Squeak!”

  The next insect Squeak brought him was a stronger version of the lightning bugs he'd encountered in the previous section of the dungeon. Thanks to his electrical resistance, this insect was painful, but not particularly dangerous. “I have an idea,” Jeremy said, pulling out his water bottle.

  “That's never good,” Flint said from his sulking corner.

  “When I was seven, Dad told me electricity is drawn to water. That's why you never want to be shocked when standing in water. The electricity goes straight into the water by the shortest route, which is through your body.”

  He poured water on his feet, and then he picked up the super lightning bug.

  “Which is why you're planning to do just that?”

  “Exactly.” Jeremy touched the super lightning bug. He awoke sometime later. With a groan, he sat up and checked his stat sheet. “My electric resistance went up two points.”

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  Flint sighed. “I'm going to get used to my new home. As soon as you die, I'm stuck here.”

  “Squeak!”

  “But my electric resistance went up two points,” Jeremy protested. Once he recovered, he let it shock him again. This time, it only hurt a lot.

  A few days later, he moved on to the next one. Squeak brought him a venomous caterpillar. When Jeremy let it bite him, he received a poison notification and felt mildly sick, but he recovered quickly. His poison immunity rendered this one ineffective.

  Next was the mind-controlling centipede-like creature. He named it a mentipede.

  This turned out to be more difficult.

  Over the next couple of days, Squeak would release the mentipede, and Jeremy would find himself on the floor, paralyzed as the mentipede crawled up his body to his face, where it would make its way to Jeremy's eye, until Squeak, somehow resistant to the mentipede's control, restrained it again.

  “This is hopeless,” Jeremy moaned.

  “If I may make a suggestion,” Flint said. “You have two choices. The first is that you give up and take us out of this horrible dungeon. I'm in favor of that one. The second option is that you order Squeak not to interfere, regardless of what happens. You will either develop mental resistance or die.”

  Jeremy felt a sick, vomiting fear. Of all the dungeon monsters, the mentipede was particularly terrifying.

  He paced their small cave for what must have been hours, gathering his courage. “Squeak, go to the back of our cave, release the mentipede, and do not move, no matter what.”

  “Squeak?” Squeak did not like this.

  “Now, Squeak.”

  Squeak unwillingly went to the edge of their cave and did what it was told.

  Jeremy once again found himself on the floor of the dungeon. The mentipede crawled towards Jeremy. It was all he could do not to panic. The mentipede had somehow taken over Jeremy's motor functions while leaving the rest of his mind intact to observe helplessly as it crawled over to him to enter his eye and slowly kill him. As he heard it approach, he felt a wall trapping his conscious mind, holding him paralyzed.

  He fought to move. This mental wall—if he couldn't go through it, could he go around it? Under it?

  The mentipede reached his leg and proceeded to make its way up his body towards his face.

  Jeremy's eyes bulged; if he could have, he would have screamed. He mentally pounded on the psychic wall holding him paralyzed in desperate panic, accomplishing nothing.

  The mentipede crawled up Jeremy's neck and made its way to his face.

  Then its mandibles were in front of Jeremy's right eye.

  The mentipede froze.

  Or rather, the world around Jeremy froze because time for Jeremy moved very quickly. Much like it had a few times in the past, this wasn't much of a skill since he couldn't move any faster because of it. But he had a lot more time to think about how this monster was about to crawl through his eye socket and kill him, in a slow, painful manner, while giving him the dubious honor of bearing its young.

  Instead of pointless pounding on the mental wall, he carefully examined it. The mentipede had taken over his motor control through some instinctual and very creepy ability. But how?

  Jeremy felt waves from the mentapede as its mind overrode his own, keeping him paralyzed. Jeremy timed the mental waves and pushed as they receded. Much weaker than the mentipede, his mind withdrew, pulling back as the wave pushed forward, and he pushed forward as it withdrew. This seemed to go on for an eternity as the wave grew larger and moved more slowly, taking longer to complete its cycle. Then, finally, he somehow pushed through. With panicked speed and strength, he grabbed it just as its mandibles cut into Jeremy's eyelid.

  He crushed it with his hand. Wiping the blood from his eye, he thanked every god in existence that it hadn't had time to cut into the eye underneath.

  He had a new skill. Mental Resistance: 0

  He started laughing. “Squeak, get me another mentipede.”

  Over the next few days, his mental resistance went up to 3, then 4, and he worked his way up to five mentipedes crawling around the cave with him, their mental attacks having no effect.

  ***

  “You are aware that mana-eating parasites eat mana?” Flint asked.

  “But do they eat active mana or passive mana?” Jeremy responded.

  “I'm afraid I don't know; they may eat both,” Flint said. “Something to consider before letting this insect bite you.”

  “My skin is resisting the mana-enhanced bite,” Jeremy said, studying the giant yellow wasp-like monster crawling over his skin. “Unfortunately, I won't get any benefits unless I do this.” He cut his arm. His blood attracted the monster wasp to the cut.

  “If it weren't a complete waste of my time, I'd tell you this was a bad idea,” Flint said from his sulking corner.

  “Squeak!” Squeak agreed.

  “Shut up.”

  You have been infested with mana eating parasites.

  “I believe my body will learn to resist this infestation,” Jeremy said. He felt sick and weak as his active mana dropped to zero. However, his parasite resistance increased to 2.

  You have been infested with mana eating parasites.

  For the next couple of days, Jeremy wondered if his plan had failed. His parasite resistance slowly went up to 4, but it didn't stop the parasites from absorbing his mana and eating him from the inside. As a last resort, he could take poison like he had before, but he was out of mana and healing potions. The odds were not in his favor.

  On the third day, he felt better, and his parasite resistance increased to 5. His mana level went up to 1, then 2, slowly returning to normal. The parasites felt more sluggish until he became violently sick, throwing them up. Though the grub-like parasites were still alive, they were covered with a black film that rendered them inert. He crushed the grub-like monster parasites under his foot. By the end of the third day, his stat sheet infestation notice vanished.

  “I didn't doubt for an instant that this would happen,” Jeremy said. “If only I could become resistant to annoying soul parasites named Flint.”

  Flint didn't respond.

  “Come on, Squeak. Next insect.”

  “Squeak!”