I darted forward eager to slice through the monsters at the other end of the hall. Reid shrieked behind me, “What?!” I didn’t look back. Aureus was there if anything went wrong. I was on them within the second, the faces of the three closest to me went blank as they faltered backwards. The rest of the group still seemed bloodthirsty.

Now that I was close, I realized they were on average about three and half feet tall. If their eyes weren’t so vicious they’d look quite cute. That and their yellowing and broken sharp teeth took away from their small and cute appearance. Their fur actually looked quite soft and they had small pink puppy noses. Truly a strange combination of features for a monster.

I didn’t even bother coating my blade with mana as it bit through the chest of the monster in front of me. Blood sprayed across me as I twisted my hips to stab into the next monster, my dagger slid smoothly into its neck. I was aware that they were small, but was still shocked when the knife nearly decapitated it. My shoulder was thrown backwards when one of the little furry goblins threw something at me from the back. I never saw it, but I wasn’t really paying attention to the others anyway.

I didn’t consider the fact that they might throw things at me, I knew I was lacking in combat experience, but it seems I was also lacking in common sense. The bags on their backs might be for collection, but there was no reason they couldn’t throw the items within it when an enemy surfaced. A fire blazed on the back row of the kobold like creatures, Aureus’ annoyance tinged on the back of my consciousness.

Aureus, I really appreciate your help, but can you give me a little bit of time to practice fighting on my own? I know you can protect me, but I’d like to know enough to protect Princess Reid.

Hahaha, yes this healer does resemble a princess. Should I trap him in a tower for you Master?

Did he just make a joke? I snorted as I pulled out my old knife I had been using from the beginning. It was starting to dull, but I wanted to try dual wielding. These things weren’t putting up much of a fight. A pickaxe swung for my stomach, I side stepped right into another one. It caught me directly in the back of my knee, and I buckled to the ground. A few more smashed into my shoulders and arms as I stood back up. Well, that’ll teach me to get cocky. The blows weren’t severe, I’d end up with some gnarly looking bruises, but they weren’t life threatening if I could prevent blows to dangerous areas.

I tried to use this opportunity to practice protecting my vitals, allowing a couple hits to land as long as I blocked attacks to my torso and head. It was painful, but I could feel myself improving. Focus, you can do it. Just breathe and dodge what you can and block the dangerous ones. God, these things suck. Two picks swung at me from the right crashing into my leg as I blocked another that was swinging at my back. After blocking I tried a sweeping kick, I was getting a bit swarmed at that point.

It was moderately effective, four of the closer monsters lost their footing and fell to the ground. I smiled to myself as I swung my knives down into the closer two. The knife Caro made for me quickly killed its mark, but my old knife barely scratched its target. Thankfully the weight behind the blow took the wind out of it. As I was standing up to full height a row of the monsters who hadn’t been affected by my kick stepped forwards as the others scrambled up. They really weren’t going to give me a moment to rest or collect myself.

I sighed, tossing my head back to get my hair out of my face. The blood on my face made that effort partially futile. There was barely even a moment before the new monsters began launching their attacks in conjunction with the group in the back. It seemed like they had gotten braver since Aureus wasn’t interfering after that first attack. That’s fine, I can handle this much. Just dodge the rocks and the pickaxes. No biggie. It was much easier thought than done though.

I got hit in the head with rocks four times before I lost my cool. I pushed a small amount of mana into my legs as I jumped over the first row of monsters. Raining attacks down on the creaming fluffy creatures. They were failing to block my attacks with their pickaxes, one of them lost the weapon all together when my knife split the hilt in two. My rage fueled flurry of attacks were an effective fear tactic but not nearly as deadly as my previous calculated ones.

Most of the backline sported deep but nonfatal wounds. My hubris quickly caught up with me as they surrounded me on all sides. Several weapons swung for my knees, I jumped, but not as high this time. Reaching out and slicing through several more before I landed in nearly the same spot again. Several rocks pelted me throughout the process. Fuck these things are annoying. I’m already in a bad mood, I thought stomping on these murderous monkeys would make me feel better. Why doesn’t it help? I should be happy to kill monsters that would otherwise be injuring people.

I did a quick survey of my surroundings, there were about six dead and three dying. A head count yielded much more than just ten as I had thought previously. They were hiding in the other corridors. There had been at least twenty-five, maybe thirty when I started. I was whittling them down, but I decided I should stop here. I didn’t need to make Princess Reid work any harder than this. Plus there wasn’t much point if gore and violence wasn’t going to soothe my strange feelings.

I couldn’t put a name to them. I mean I had gone through hell and back and I’d killed people for the first time, but I felt… Strange. Excited to fight, but disappointed by it. Happy to be alive, but guilty. Scared and worried about the future. Was I going to die later because I stalled my leveling now? How quickly would things get difficult? Were they really expecting Candidates and Adventurers of their levels to be able to handle what they’d thrown at Reid and the gang?

Maybe this place was supposed to keep us on our toes and I was interfering with that, it was supposed to be dangerous right? Would I get punished for messing up their plans? Would the others? More than anything I wanted to grab the GGC and shake it while I demanded answers. But… There was no way they would tell me anything. I had a feeling even if they tried the system would obscure it. Like it had when “Abandoned Bloodied Sword” attempted to ask me about something.

Aureus, I thought as I leapt twenty or so feet into the air. I was caught under my arms as usual, but our typical smooth flight was interrupted by portions of the wall that shot out towards us. Aureus hitched backwards, dodging around and to the sides of various piston like machines that launched themselves at us. After a swift flight I was plopped next to a distressed Reid. I smiled at him as Aureus went off to claim his prey.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Don’t burn them if you can, I think their pelts will be a valuable resource.

Ugh, fine.

Wow, sass?

I don’t know what you mean Master.

I mused on the idea of teenage Aureus throwing around sarcasm and complaints with a new dark alter ego. I laughed as Reid tried not to tear up while healing me. He was much too soft for this place, the attitude he had before suited it much more. Maybe after some time he’ll get used to it and tap into whatever portion of his personality makes him angry robot Reid.

“What’re you so upset about? These are pretty mild injuries, you know?”

“Since when have you been so reckless?” He whined as warmth filled my body. It felt significantly different from the way he healed in the past. Caro and Noel had mentioned it, but I hadn’t had the chance to experience it myself until now. It was warm and refreshing, similar to leveling up but much less sudden. Healing from leveling up felt… jarring. It was nice because I wasn’t hurting anymore, but it was more of an explosion of rejuvenation. This was more like… sinking into a warm bath or drinking a hearty mug of soup on a cold day.

Reid raised his eyebrows at me, I had gotten lost in the feeling and zoned out. “What?” I’d forgotten what we were talking about.

“You’re being so reckless. Can’t you be more careful?”

“Well I mean, I disagree. I think learning more about how to fight now when it’s safer is the best thing I could do. I think ignoring the fact that I will be in a situation like that in the future and passing up on chances to grow is reckless… I’m not really injured right? Just bruises?”

“Yeah…” A long silence followed after that.

“Well, did you see those things! Those big rock piston things? Honestly this whole labyrinth feels like it was built by someone in blockcrafting.” I chuckled a bit as I tried to lift the mood.

“Oh yeah that was strange, why would they put things like that all the way up there? I mean the one they put behind us I understood, but up there?” He asked as he watched Aureus practicing with wind.

Aureus hadn’t used wind as much as his other elements, I supposed that he was trying to take this opportunity to practice as well. I taught him right. With a smile I commented, “I mean probably for people like me and Aureus. I’m sure there’s someone who is able to fly and might try to avoid the monsters instead of fighting them head-on. So there was a moving wall behind you?”

“Yeah, see.” He gestured to the wall behind us, it took me a few seconds to process what he meant. The paths we had just went through were gone. It had closed up so there was no option but moving forward and fighting the monsters. If anything that made the ones higher in the path make more sense. People who were trapped were more likely to try going around the monsters rather than fighting them.

The bejeweled chat window caught my attention.

[“Collector of Gems and Stones” claps with glee exclaiming that things are finally getting more interesting.]

[“Reflection of an Empty Throne” asks if “Collector of Gems and Stones” only wanted violence regardless of if the humans struggled.]

[“Abandoned Bloodied Sword” asks what’s wrong with that.]

[“Whispering Playwright behind a Mask” exclaims that the dragon is putting on a good show.]

“Huh, I thought the god that created this labyrinth wanted us to struggle, but it might not be the case.”

“Really? I dunno, my patron god said that the god that made this place was pretty simple. Just that they wanted something fun. They complained when I entered and I commented that they were disappointed because I was already dying, but my god disagreed.” He stared into the distance as he zoned out for a moment before exclaiming, “Wait! How did I get healed up? I checked and I never leveled up?”

I just stared at him, he seriously didn’t know yet? What, did he think it was divine intervention? … Wait, that was actually plausible and… well that was what actually happened in a way. I sighed, “I was sponsored by your patron god and I fed you a potion. You know how shocked I was when I saw you? You looked like you’d died already honestly.”

“It was that bad huh?” His eyes darkened as he looked off into the distance again. I waited, I knew he wanted to say something. After a couple minutes he started, “That thing, that weird morphing thing. It just… showed up a minute or so after I fell. I was bleeding everywhere and everything hurt.”

He looked at me as pain flickered across his face. Breathing deep he looked forward towards Aureus again before he added, “It was mimicking you, I don’t know how. I couldn’t see…” he choked up for a moment before continuing, “It led me away from the group, I was trying to make small talk with you. Or well… not you…”

“I know what you mean. You can refer to it as me, I don't mind.”

“Are you sure, I said some… awful things earlier though.” I nodded and he began again, “You were annoyed, complaining that we were holding you back. That you regretted coming down here with us. We got to those steps and that was the first time we had gotten close – you had been keeping your distance. I lost my footing and reached out to you, but some weird… Fin? Was what I grabbed.”

“A fin? I didn’t see any fins on it though? I mean I guess it did have scales.”

“Yeah it felt like a fin, it was rough. The scales cut me a bit. I panicked, instinctually I knew something was wrong I didn’t have a chance to think I just ran. I guess I caught it off guard because it didn’t catch up to me until I had already made it to the top of the stairs. I turned to look behind me out of habit…” He laughed, “there wasn’t much point. I couldn’t see it but I guess it hit me? My head hurt like hell. I fell backwards and scrambled on all fours until I was up against the door. It caught me in the chest that time. I think I opened the door after that? I’m not sure. It’s been hard to patch up the memories but I think that’s what happened.”

“Don’t worry about it, you’ll figure it out. Or you’ll block it out and you won’t have to think about it anymore.” I laughed as I smacked his back, trying to keep the mood up.

“So Caro and Reid ran into it?”

“Yeah, they thought you were dead. I guess they thought it’d killed you to take your place… which now that I think about it wasn’t really so far off. You nearly died.”

“They’re okay though?” He asked anxiously.

I glanced at him and then back at the system in front of me clicking on the party window. They were still injured, but they hadn’t lost any more health. I guess they were just sitting at the door. Maybe it disappeared. I realized I was zoning out again so I told him, “Yeah, they’re alright. Well they’re deaf right now.”

“Oh yeah, you mentioned that. What do you mean deaf?”

“I mean like the condition of not being able to hear? They were screaming at me and crying like little babies thinking you’d passed. I guess they sustained some sort of sound damage or something. Or maybe they injured themselves to avoid like siren magic or something I dunno.”

“Oh… So you came in here to get me to help them?”

“I mean yeah? But mostly because I wanted them to stop freaking out. Also you were heavily injured so I wanted to help. Look at what that got me.” I laughed as I pointed at my clearly uninjured nose.

“Shut up!” He whined playfully as he elbowed me.

Yeah this was much better. Relaxed and happy Reid. I had completely forgotten about my anger with him from earlier. It’s not like he was trying to do that to actual me. Plus fake me was apparently a big ol’ bitch. I could excuse that behavior after what he’d dealt with that day. It's not like I hadn’t acted out recently either. Patience and understanding would be key to enduring this hell hole, and something I knew I already needed to work on prior to awakening anyway. We weren’t on the brink of death all the time, but it wasn’t really easy either.