“Mike!” Maria yells as she appears in the boss room beside me. “What the hell happened? I couldn’t go into the portal! It’d been like fifteen minutes, and I was worried you’d accidentally gone up against a mutant boss. Instead you just got a sweater? Where did you even get that? OW! Nevermind, we’ll figure this out after the snowman is dead.”

“Probably a good idea,” I say as I dodge out of the way of another clump of ice. “There’s kind of a lot to discuss, and I might have some insight into what you can look forward to with your smith class.”

With that we rush the golem, and begin assaulting it. Maria was definitely right though, I probably could’ve handled this on my own even with it being so close to my Level. It’s strong, but incredibly slow, and very predictable. It reminds me of an old video game I played a lot of with massive boss monsters that attack very slowly with choreographed attacks.

The only problem is, we don’t seem to be doing any sort of lasting damage to it. Every swing of my hammer knocks its body apart, but it just regenerates the snow that I’ve knocked away from it. I yell to Maria, “How do we kill this thing?”

“I don’t really know, that’s kind of a Carlos thing. Keep hitting it and look for anything special I guess?”

Very helpful. But she is a smith after all. I can’t have expected her to know monsters like the rest of the group does. She probably only even enters the dungeons because it’s the only way to gain Levels.

“Ok big guy, let’s see if you’re hiding anything. Open wide!” I say as I activate [Shatter] and swing my hammer, aiming for center mass. It explodes into a flurry of white powder camouflaging the damage I’ve done, but for just a moment I see a flash of blue right below where I was aiming before it begins reforming.

“Aim for its crotch! There’s something in there!” I yell to Maria.

“You seriously want me to hit the snowman in the- You know what. Whatever. I’ve gotten weirder directions from Carlos.” She immediately begins targeting the crotch area of the snow golem with the ferocity a woman who’s just walked in on her husband cheating on her. I make a mental note and fill it with ‘don’t piss off Maria’ until it’s filled top to bottom.

Eventually I hear a ‘clang’ ring out as her hammer manages to find purchase on whatever it is that I’d previously seen inside of it. A moment later, I’m hit in the chest by a blue glowing orb that rockets out of the snow golem. “Oof.” I grunt as the wind is knocked out of me. I throw it to the ground and go to smash the orb, but am stopped as Maria shouts.

“Wait! I might be able to use that! Try getting it away from the snow so it can’t reform!”

“You’re kidding right? We’re in a goddamn blizzard, Maria. How do you expect me to keep it away from the snow?” I yell back. Whatever. If it’ll make her happy, I’ll humor her for a bit. The snowman was pretty slow, and I’ve got a feeling we could take it out again relatively easily if this doesn’t work. I crouch down and lock my legs into place as the snow golem begins to take shape around me. If I wasn’t cold before, I am now. The thing is beyond frigid. I may not take damage from the blizzard, but if I stick around inside of this thing for all that much longer, I have a feeling it may be a bit different. Right as it fully forms around me, suffocating me from the outside world, I leap into the air at my full strength and rocket out of the snow golem, and into the sky. I watch as some of the snow in the air arcs toward me and tries to reform it for a second as I gain altitude, but it can’t keep up.

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As I reach the peak of my jump, the snow seems to grab a slight foothold and a face forms around the orb, snarling at me. I yell in surprise and shake it off of the orb as I begin my descent. I’m hoping the snow may offer me a better landing than the mud did previously, but I’m not counting on it. I don’t have a whole lot of control over my fall, but I aim toward what looks like it might be a slightly thicker snow pile.

A moment before I land, Maria’s idea pays off as I get a notification letting me know that I’ve slain the Snow Golem. Then I crash into a pile of snow. Actually I should say through a pile of snow, because the icy rock I land on, definitely doesn’t feel very soft. I groan and roll over to my side, as Maria rushes up and claims her prize as it rolls out of my grip.

“Yes! I bet I can do something great with this! Let me check its stats!” She exclaims, examining the orb in her hands.

“Thank you Mike, that sure looked like a hard fall. I appreciate you doing that. Do you need a helping hand up?” I wheeze out in an attempt at mockery.

“Just a moment, Mike. I’m trying to read something.” She says, fully engrossed with the blue orb.

I take a second while she’s doing that to laugh to myself. It’s definitely not lost on me that the snowmans blue ball was in its crotch. Whoever created this thing, definitely had a sense of humor. Wait, are golems created? Based on what Dalia said, this is just a monster that thought the best way to get powerful was by entering dungeons. Food for thought.

“Are you kidding me? This will only let me summon another snow golem! I can’t even repurpose it to do anything else!” Maria shouts in annoyance.

“Snow golem is better than no golem?” I say in an attempt at humor.

She stares at me with a blank expression as a blue light encompasses us and suddenly we find our way at the entrance of the dungeon.

I stare wide eyed at it, realizing this is the first time I’ve been conscious at the end of a dungeon. “It just transports you back to the beginning? We walked probably twenty minutes into it, and it just shoots us out at the entrance? I guess that makes our lives easier, but I’m not going to lie, it feels a bit easy.”

“Well, we did kill the strongest thing this dungeon could throw at us, so it kind of makes sense it would shoot us out to the beginning. The system doesn’t want to kill us, it just wants us to grow stronger. At least that’s my experience with it. Every time I try to push my smithing to a new level it’s a lot harder, but the items I’m able to make, more than make up for the extra challenge I take on.” She responds.

“I guess that kind of makes sense. I’m not going to lie and say I’m fully following, but the logic seems like it’s there.” I say back.

“I’m a bit disappointed with the orb just allowing me to summon a snow golem, but I suppose it’s better than nothing. I’m sure I can find a use for it. It turns out your waiting for so long and locking me out of the boss room was a good thing after all. Speaking of, why did you lock me out?” she asks.

“Ah, that. It wasn’t me. It was some dwarf lady I met named Dalia. She gave me some interesting insight into the dungeons and the monsters within them.” I respond.

“However, what I think you’ll be more interested is this. It’s made of some kind of metal I’ve never heard of before, and made in a way I didn’t think was possible. I can explain everything else to you on the way back, but I figured you’d want to take a look at this first. Dalia said dwarves are the best smiths in all The Planes, so even just looking at this might give you ideas as to how you could progress your smithing.” I say, with a big smile on my face as I pull off my sweater and hand it to Maria to inspect.

Maria’s pupils dilate as soon as she begins inspecting the item. By the time she’s done looking at the screen the system pops up for her to view, I can barely make out the slight brown of her eyes. “Mike. I need to meet this smith, and I need to meet her now.”

“Yeah, about that. I don’t know how to make that happen, plus Dalia is technically a monster and I don’t even know what Plane she came from. Like I said, I can explain more on the way back, but for now can we leave? It’s so fucking cold.” I say as my bones threaten to shiver right out of my skin.