My original plan had been to bring Naomi back the way we had come in, but I wasn’t about to do that if she wasn’t paying us first. Sure, I could just tell her the way, and she’d probably have made it. But why would I do that? It was mean, maybe even manipulative. But that’s fine. Small prices. I had debts to pay.

Even if Naomi was lying about having money back on the surface, having her help us could be the difference between defeating the dungeon and dying. “Is there a rule about teams being a max of three people?” I asked.

“Sure there is,” Naomi said. “But you don’t strike me as the rule-following type.”

“I’m not,” I said, looking at Cadoc sideways. “I have no problem with cheating. My friend here, however, randomly decides it’s not okay. Any objections, Cadoc?”

“Do not antagonize me, Miles,” Cadoc said through gritted teeth. “You know this isn’t the same.”

I laughed a short, bitter laugh. “Do I? If this is a competition between all of the teams, isn’t that really just a big duel with multiple competitors?”

Cadoc narrowed his eyes in thought, and I quickly held up a hand. “Stop. Too late. You’ve already agreed.” I turned back to Naomi. “It’s a deal.”

“Great,” she said. “I’d love to shake on it, but…” She motioned her head to her tied hands.

I knelt down beside her and untied her hands. I was surprised the Kalamuzi had been able to tie a knot so well, but that one ratman in particular had seemed quite intelligent. For a Kalamuzi.

“Freedom!” Naomi yelled, the moment she was loose, jumping to her feet and shooting her hands up over head. Now that she was standing next to me, I realized she was pretty short. The shortest of us four, definitely.

I took a moment to look her over. I hadn’t really processed what she’d looked like, yet. It was a side-effect of treating people as NPCs until they prove themselves otherwise - or until I had no choice but to pay more attention, even if they were NPCs. I hadn’t decided about Naomi yet, but I was leaning towards her having a spark. Either way, it wasn’t worth crowding my brain with all sorts of useless information about lesser people, and I certainly didn’t want anything about them, even their mannerisms, to rub off on me. So, I would block it all out. It was easier to do than you might think. They became like vapor, incorporeal ghosts with little impact on the real world.

She was short, and deeply tanned. I wondered if she came from a different part of the world, or if she just spent every waking hour in the sun.

Her hair was black, cut shortish a little above her shoulders, and her eyes were a strange green-yellow color. She wore leather armor, similar to the rest of us, as well as a dark cloak with a hood - though the hood wasn’t on. Her armor was the oldest looking I’d seen, dirty and worn - it had to have seen better days. It was hard to tell, but it seemed like there were even parts where it had worn through completely, and the dark fabric of the clothes underneath peeked through.

I couldn’t help but compare her to Amaia. She had a much more feminine appearance than Amaia did, an impish smile, and an hourglass figure - though it would have been an uneven, bottom-heavy hourglass.

“Like what you see?”

I turned away, blushing. And also angry, suddenly. Shit. Calm down. She’s just fucking with you.

“I was just joking, jeez.”

“If you’re going to make a break for it,” I said, changing the subject. “Now’s your chance. I’d rather have you go and die now then run away later, when we don’t expect it.”

“Who, me?” Naomi looked up at me sheepishly. “I would never! Besides, I really would die out here alone. Didn’t have much of a choice before, but no sane person chooses to be in a dungeon by themselves.”

“Didn’t a few people enter the dungeon alone, though?” I asked. “That guy, Botros? I think that was his name.”

“Crazy person,” Naomi said. “Suicidal, maybe.”

“Or he’s a cheater,” Cadoc interjected. “And he’s joining up with another team once they’re inside.”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Smart,” Amaia said.

I considered this. That was pretty smart. Maybe we wouldn’t be the only cheaters down here. That only made cheating an even more justified move. Anything to win.

“So uh,” Naomi said. “If I’m going to be like, a team member for awhile, I think I ought to know your names, huh?”

-

We took stock of our situation.

We had used two health potions on me, which left us with only one remaining. They were surprisingly effective, better than any medicine from Earth, and I probably hadn’t even needed the second one, except that it sped up my recovery. Cadoc and Amaia had decided it would be better to get me back on my feet sooner than to have me laying around. Cadoc had probably not wanted to wait to yell at me, too.

“Wait a second,” I said, holding up our remaining potion. “Could these things cure cancer?”

Amaia looked confused. Cadoc asked what cancer was.

“How effective are they,” I asked more generally. “Could they cure diseases? Like, really bad ones?”

“Ah,” Cadoc said, and the fact that he answered me showed that a sort of uneasy truce had formed between us, for now. “In that case, no, they cannot. There are more specialized potions for that sort of thing, and they are much more expensive. These are for physical wounds only. And not too-severe ones. If you lose an arm, Miles, you will need something stronger than this.”

Damn, I thought. I had been thinking about the insane amounts of money I could make if I sent home a cure for cancer. Still, such cancer-curing potions might exist, it sounded like, and even physical ones like the one we had left would probably sell for a ton on Earth. I wasn’t about to send off our last one, but I’d have to keep that in mind, and keep my eye out. I imagined people back on Earth, keeping emergency health potions in their cars, in case of an accident. It was better than a first-aid kit, and much better than crossing your fingers and hoping an ambulance showed up - not likely ever since the strikes and shortages started a couple years back. To think, somewhere out there, people are worrying about the cost of healthcare, and not the danger of the rat men.

The other reason to use both potions on me, and not to leave me lying around too long, was that we were low on food. My recovery certainly hadn’t helped- I had been ravenous, sleep-eating a significant amount of our supplies. That was a common side-effect, Amaia told me in spurts, as your body still needed the raw material to repair itself. And taking Naomi on board only exacerbated the problem further. She had already run out of food, and so now we were feeding four with our limited supplies.

“I’d been scoping out those big worm things,” Naomi said. “Thinking a good shot might just do the trick. But the trouble was getting one on its own. Didn’t want to end up swarmed, if they happen to like each other.”

She had waited inside one of their tunnels, imagining that one would return, she would kill it, and since the others couldn’t see her, they wouldn’t attack. “Hopefully, anyway. I was low on good options,” she said.

“What is your magic, anyway?” I asked. I motioned to her staff, which she hadn’t let from her grip since she had been untied. “You an enchanter?”

She laughed. “Nope. I’m a conjurer, same as Cadoc here. I use cut.”

“Cut?” I asked. That didn’t sound like much of a spell.

“Sure,” she said. “There’s lots of names for it, y’know. Blade magic, edge magic, cutting magic, whatever. But it’s basically just cutting things.”

I hadn’t forgotten how her spell had taken a Kalamuzi’s head clean off. I guessed that’s what she meant by “cut.”

“Pretty powerful magic,” I said. “Based on what we saw. I’m surprised your team was defeated.”

“You throw enough bodies at someone,” she said. “And you can beat just about anybody. Unless they’re like, a Fifth Ringer or something. Probably. I don’t know. I’ve never even met someone above Ring Three.”

I scratched my chin, thinking. “And you ran out of mana. Does that happen a lot?”

She looked away. “Maybe.”

“Definitely,” Amaia said.

“How many shots?” Cadoc asked. “Two? Three?”

Naomi hung her head. “One.”

I stared in disbelief. “One shot before you run out of mana? Every what, every day?”

“Yeah,” she said, almost in a whisper. “But hey!” She said, cheerful again. “Sometimes one shot is all you need, y’know?”

Amaia grunted in disapproval. She was, as usual, standing behind us, head on a swivel, presumably looking for approaching enemies. It was like bodyguarding was in her blood.

“How did you guys end up in a team with her, anyway?” Naomi asked, clearly wanting to change the subject.

“She saw the glory of our adventure,” Cadoc beamed. “And her admiration drove her to join.”

“She invited herself,” I said. “And she plans to leave whenever she feels like it. So I’m not sure how much of a ‘team’ that is.”

“Really?” Naomi asked, eyes glowing. “Hey Amaia, when we get out of here, how about we team up? We’d make a great duo, y’know. You’ll be the brawns, and I’ll be the looks.”

“Sounds stupid,” Amaia said.

Naomi pouted. “Well I was only joking anyway,” she muttered. “I can see why you keep her around. Real dry sense of humor.”

I’m not sure if anyone else saw it, but Amaia cracked a thin smile at that. Naomi might have been right about the dry sense of humor, actually.

We all eventually decided that Naomi’s plan had been really stupid - even if she had killed the worm-drake, then what? You’re stuck in a tunnel with the body blocking the entrance. She said that she’d have cut her way through, although we all knew, now, that that would have taken at least another day. And if it hadn’t worked, she would have just been eaten, with nowhere to run.

So we came up with another plan.

The first step was to get one of those big limpet things. We probably could have just cut it off of the wall with Naomi’s magic, but that would have meant we couldn’t use it again until the next day, which wouldn’t be ideal. Instead, I burned it off. It only took a few nails before the slimy appendages of the creature released, recoiling back into its shell in pain. It even made a little high-pitched squealing sound, though it wasn’t very loud. Just sounded like air escaping from a little hole.

That done, we set up. All of us except for Cadoc lined up at the top of the narrow passage we had gone down when we had first entered the worm-pit-cave. I had my slingshot drawn, Amaia had more javelins, and Naomi held her staff at the ready. Cadoc, meanwhile, had carried off the limpet. He was the bait, and I don’t think anyone was surprised when he volunteered for that job. Which was great, because he was the one with the least ability to attack at range.

So we just waited, the sound of slithering masses filtering up from the mouth of the passage. I was sweating, afraid of what would happen if this didn’t work, even though we had a back-up plan. If all else failed, we could flee into the target room behind us. The doors should close, and not open until we hit the target. We could wait, and hopefully the worm-drake would leave before we opened it again. Though we’d be really low on food by then. Probably out completely.

Just when I was about to ask aloud what was taking Cadoc so long, I caught the sound of his voice echoing in the distance. He was yelling like a madman. The sound came closer - as did the sound of something massive dragging its weight around.

Cadoc came into view, a large shell held above his head, running and shouting wordless shouts. And, just as planned, a worm-drake was behind him, entering the pass a few seconds after Cadoc did.

I started to laugh, both because Cadoc looked ridiculous, and because the plan was going well, so far.

And then a second worm-drake entered the passage.