In the end, Roman found himself standing before the stairwell, the vanguard of the group. No one had made the suggestion; they had merely watched his admittedly maniacal laughter and said nothing when the tattooed giant drew himself up to his full height and took point. Having a few of those rat pricks behind him made the nape of his neck tingle, but he didn’t spare it a second thought.

He was ready to go. Adrenaline seeping from his kidneys, endorphins from his brain, violence from his thoughts. Hadn’t seen many children since the initiation of the Chaos Playground--not living, unaltered ones, at least. Wasn’t a big surprise that they were being held for special occasions, like being slavebait in some horrible dungeon.

More than ever, he knew every half-baked godling ego behind this genocidal vicarity needed to be put down. By any means possible. People like Abigail--kind, noble Abgail--were destined to be snuffed out, torn between their virtues and necessary evils until they inevitably split her in half. The Watchers would applaud her gory end and move on to the next one.

People like Roman--devils, villains, the unyielding vanguard--would be the ones to survive this ordeal. To thrive within it. He would be at the front because he needed to be ahead of everyone else, no matter the cost.

Memories of his younger sister battered at the violent haze of his thoughts. Some leaked through, as they always did, no matter how much he tried to think of something else, no matter how many attribute points he pumped into his Will.

One of them in particular took front and center in this new assault: thirteen-year-old Roman, already stone-faced and head and shoulders taller than his peers, gasping for air, knuckles raw and bloody; scattered on the ground around him, the three battered, groaning assholes that had harassed his sibling; and behind him, his sister, her eyes wide with awe (and not the fear of him he had dreaded, the fear that he was like their father).

That was the moment he committed to becoming a fighter. Seeing that gleam in her eyes.

He’d always been rough, but, man, after that, his sister had loved to tell anyone who would listen how hard a bastard Roman was. Especially if he was around, Charisma too low to completely mask the small smile breaking across his granite face whenever his innocent-looking little sis bragged her big bro would fuck their dads up if they didn’t pay proper respect. He would just cross his arms and tuck his chin into his chest as if that was enough to conceal his pride.

Sensing his mood, the dark joy of his purpose, he other Party mostly remained silent as they filed behind Roman. Even Abigail and Noah took position without a word. After a moment, Mixie stepped beside Roman, as if declaring himself an equal to the beast. Roman didn’t care. Whatever motivated the ghoul, no matter how alien the ideals, had proved time and time again that Mixie was one of the peculiar brand of demon he would be happy to march beside.

Roman opened his mouth, considering some kind of speech or rally cry. Despite the so-called random system granting him the Actor Quirk, he doubted he would be taken seriously if he launched into some heroic monologue or veteran’s warning about the coming peril.

“Let’s go,” he rumbled in a low, cold voice.

Without bothering to acknowledge the others, Roman descended the staircase, fists clenching and unclenching. Slowly at first, then picking up the pace until he was flinging himself down the stairs six at a time, pausing only to balance his toes onto the edge of a step before leaping once more. The only source of light came from smears of bioluminescent moss and fungi along the walls, casting a dim blue glow speckled with their drifting spores. Probably poisonous to the average human. Even with his enhanced constitution, Roman held his breath against the pungent miasma as he descended.

The tunnel headed deeper than he expected--around two hundred steps until he caught sight of the bottom. Despite the sheer momentum behind his berserker plunge into the depths, he restrained himself at the last moment, landing in a light crouch.

The end of the stairwell opened up to a cliff overlooking a vast subterranean cavern. Colossal stalactites and stalagmites jutted out all along the walls, like the teeth of some slumbering behemoth whose maw they had wandered into. In the valley below, thousands of monsters swarmed through a labyrinthine city shaped out of the stone itself, like ants through a hill. Mostly goblins, though the occasional ogre or abomination wandered in their midst. They clumped together in crude town centers, talking amongst one another; they entered stone obelisks and emerged holding purchases; and somewhere, hidden from his sight, they were eating human children.

Faint sounds of their gibbering language echoed throughout the cavern like the buzz of a locust swarm. Roman clenched his teeth, as if he was imagining biting down on one of their necks.

Mixie landed beside him a few seconds later. The others followed quite a bit later--Alexander and Mary surprisingly at the forefront. The older lady had summoned a chaotic flame that danced upon the palm of her outstretched hand and, every so often, emitted wild flares that made Roman wonder just how close she was to blowing them all up. He was half-surprised her flames hadn’t ignited some eldritch methane and nuked the entire dungeon. A reminder that he preferred being on his own, instead of slowing down his pace to accommodate them.

Noah and Abigail came down next, safely in the middle of their formation. The slick-haired lawyer kept his hands in his pockets and his opinions to himself for once. Abigail had fashioned an entourage for herself during the descent: a pair of waist-high golems made from loose stone, as well as one of bioluminescent moss that undulated over her shoulder like some mutant stingray.

Annoyed over having to wait for them, Roman glanced over his shoulder. “I’m going to do some reconnaissance. Figure out your own shit, then meet back with me here in thirty minutes. If I hear a bunch of explosions in the distance, I’ll try to help you as long as it’s not a suicide mission.”

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Noah opened his mouth to speak.

Abigail held out a hand. “Wait--”

Mixie, for his part, winked one of his diamond eyes at Roman and tapped the brown-hilted sword at his waist. The gesture may have meant something like ‘I shall’ protect them in the meantime’ or ‘I shall watch my back’, but Roman thought it far more likely the ghoul was indicating he was going to cull the rival Party in his absence.

Roman shrugged and stepped off the ledge, casting [ Flash Step ]. An instant later, he appeared on the outskirts of the city. The patch of earth he had selected was illuminated by a dense briar of glowing vines creeping along the far wall, offering him a perfect landing spot.

The moment he arrived, he realized the spot was too perfect. A trap. Seams appeared along the vines along the wall; they opened, revealing rows of porcelain thorns like grinning teeth.

The stone floor was slick with some translucent liquid as slippery as oil. Roman managed to keep his footing and tap the toes of his right foot onto the ground in front of him. The movement was sufficient to activate [ Flash Step ] and carry him twenty feet away, outside of the range of the vine fiend’s grasping tendrils. Dozens of ivy tendrils converged upon his former location, forming a cage that would have shredded and digested him, nice and slow.

Realizing that its prey had escaped its grasp, the mass of tendrils waved in the air, mouth-like stomas gaping along their lengths. Roman sneered at the vine fiend and considered ripping it to shreds, but flinging himself into range of the monster for a handful of experience seemed unwise. Better to complete his objective. Before he left, Roman pointed at the vine fiend as if promising he would come back to deal with it; the grinning tendrils waved in response.

His movement technique carried him deeper into the city. He kept his distance from the humanoid figures shuffled about in a facsimile of civilization. No doubt their senses in this environment were naturally superior to his; if he could see them, they could likely see him. The glimpses he caught of them were enough to confirm his suspicions: the entirety of the dungeon seemed artificial, a theatrical misunderstanding by its creators that had looked upon the bustling metropolises of earth before the Chaos Playground and understood nothing of the humanity they witnessed.

The dim bioluminescence dappled them in sickly blue, highlighting the absurdity of their actions. They wandered out from shops, trinkets in hand, only to drop them to the ground a while later because they didn’t understand the point of such a useless burden. A cluster of bickering goblin youths, laughing with one another as if engaging in some casual banter, suddenly broke into violence and tore into their companions, faces paralyzed into rictuses of joy. All of their interactions were a farce. Their temples were altars to ignorance, their markets dens of avarice.

A few minutes into his exploration, one of them finally caught sight of Roman. A female goblin, loose pale skin and rags drooping from the nobbly coatrack of her skeleton, pointed directly at his rooftop perch without bothering to look. Cursing under his breath, Roman flickered away, returning to a home in an abandoned district.

He crouched in front of one of the crude windows, peeking out into the street. The female goblin, along with a half-dozen guards in rusted plate armor, swarmed straight to his location. Without pausing for a moment, they approached his exact building, ululating in triumph. Like bloodhounds locked on to a scent. Not easy to escape them, then, and they were already sounding the call to arms.

Sighing, Roman rubbed his massive hands together. [ Flash Step ] carried him directly into the path of the frontmost goblin. The twisted creature, no taller than his waist, managed to halfway lift its scimitar before Roman’s fist shattered the brittle metal of its helmet and pulped its warm brains against the other side of its skull.

Grimacing at the gore, he shook the corpse off his arm. It flew forward, knocked the next two goblins off their feet. Outraged at their leader's death, the rest loosed wild cries and charged him. To Roman’s disgust, he batted them aside like children, the casual swing of his knuckles reducing their sternums into mush, his stomping foot crushing them into a pile of broken metal and imploded gore. Experience notifications spewed across his vision.

Was this it? Had they actually wiped out all their defenders above ground, and this city was their reward? Lay waste to it like savages, annihilate their people, spill an ocean of feeble blood to harness that delicious experience? Roman figured there was still some sort of boss or secondary objective, but the point of the dungeon was to complete the quest. To free the children from captivity and lead them back into the real world. Anything else outside of those parameters was fair game, more or less.

The female goblin’s pathetic chanting broke Roman out of his thoughts. She waved a set of bronze scales in one hand and with the other flung handfuls of salt from a pouch at her waist. A priestess, then? She had some sort of power, to be able to detect his presence. And as she mumbled, motes of sinister green energy appeared before her. Before she could finish her chant, Roman punted the goblin priestess hard enough to decapitate her. Her rag-doll body flailed off to the side, collided against a wall with a wet thump.

A note of distaste towards himself--towards the brutality--broke through the berserker haze creeping red-hot across his vision. Roman shook his head and mustered his focus, calming himself and spreading his [ Impose Will ] domain around him.

He had made a hell of a lot of noise. Incoming shouts made him take a step forward, ready to [ Flash Step ], before he realized they were coming from the other direction. Behind him. Which meant that someone else had been following in his wake, and had drawn attention of a separate group towards this abandoned location.

Roman turned his head enough to catch sight of a shadow atop one of the buildings, between him and the newcomers. A person. They noticed him. The familiar energy signature of an enchanted pistol was drawn from its shoulder holster. Pointed his way. At the same time, another shadowy figure leapt out from beside Roman. Leo’s face, shrouded in sickly blue luminescence, blank and expressionless. Roman bent his head forward and a spearhead grazed across his scalp, drawing a thin line of blood. A second later, an enchanted bullet pierced through the air, but Roman disappeared into a [ Flash Step ]. The projectile struck the wall of a building like an artillery shell and left a smoking ruin behind.

Grinning, Roman appeared behind Scott on the distant rooftop.

They had finally taken the bait.