By this point in the fight, Chris had put his earbuds in to help block out the lady groown-up’s shrieks. I had resorted to just screaming over the thing, it kinda worked. Fighting in a hallway with a halberd sucked ass, so I switched to my bowie knife. Lizanne gave it to me for my birthday a couple years back. I started to feel a little sentimental, but I channeled that feeling into anger and activated my [Rage].

[Rage] - Barbarian Job Ability

Cost: 10 SP

Cooldown: 1 Minute

Gain 10 stacks of Rage. Lose 1 stack of Rage every 2 seconds. Gain one stack of Rage every time you deal or receive damage. For each stack of Rage:

* +2% Damage

* -0.5% Damage received

* +0.1% Movement and Attack Speed

* -0.2 Intelligence and Wisdom (-10 Max)

I used my halberd to launch myself into the groown-up, trying to knock it off balance. Instead, she caught me and slammed me into the ceiling. Chris took the opening and rapidly punched her in the stomach, causing small flowers to bloom where she was struck.

The groown-up started to bring me down onto her knee, trying to break my back, but before she connected, Chris plucked a handful of flowers. They erupted and the groown-up recoiled in pain and threw me onto the ground with an aching thud. I slowly crawled back to my foot, at least I was keeping my rage stacks up. Chris was busy taking pot shots, dodging in and out of the grown-up’s range. The flowers were doing steady damage, but we would be here for an hour at this rate.

My train of thought was interrupted by a sickening squelch from the room that Shelby had been thrown into. I made eye contact with Chris and shook my head. He grimaced and turned his attention to the groown-up. We were on either side of it, and it wasn’t certain what to do.

Chris kicked it in the knee, and it swung both it's arms at him. He danced out of the way while I shuffled toward the groown-up and thrust my knife into its back. It howled and I stabbed it again and again, letting my anger take control. My knife cleaved through the groown-up’s flesh, enhanced by each stack of rage I accumulated. At some point, I became dimly aware that I was no longer gaining stacks. By the time I came down enough to form coherent thoughts, I was covered in cerulean blood, as were the walls of the hallway. The groown-up was in ribbons on the floor. Chris had left me to go help Evan and Shelby. Something thudded against the wall of the room they were in. I figured I should go check it out.

Evan, who was covered in blood, had been sobbing behind Chris, who was now in a heap on the ground. He was also covered in blood, as was the room. Shelby's body was pulled into two at the waist. I winced at the sight, but didn't feel anything more than fleeting pity and the anger I was growing more and more accustomed to over the past few hours. Maybe I'll take time to feel sad later.

The male groown-up was mid-stalk when I limped into the room. It snapped its head toward me and wiped its mouth with the back of its hand, smearing Shelby’s, or Evan’s, or maybe Chris’s blood all over its face. I leaned against the wall and braced as the grown-up swiped with its claws. With a grunt, I caught its claws and, not really thinking about it, chomped the fuck down on its hand. The groown-up let out a choking scream and tried to wrestle its hand out of my mouth. I only bit down harder.

“Mallory, what the fuck?” Chris said, somewhere behind me. I snarled at him. He seemed to get the memo, spin-kicking the groown-up’s skull. Evan contributed nothing, he was still crying. The groown-up flailed its other arm at Chris, who dodged out of the way. He took a black-bladed knife out of his inventory and ducked closer to the groown-up, stabbing it in the side Jesus-style. The groown-up ripped its hand out of my mouth, but not before I tore a chunk of flesh off with my teeth. It back-handed me before I could react and sent me halfway across the room.

With both arms free, the groown-up slapped Chris on either side of the head, discombobulating him. Dazed, Chris fell onto his ass, a sad face appeared below the half-empty health bar floating over him. I crawled over to him and my hands and knees, but the groown-up was already prepping to stomp on Chris's body.

“Noooooooo!!!” Evan wailed and leapt onto the groown-up's back, sending both of them tumbling down onto Chris. I pounced onto the dog pile and slit the groown-up’s throat. It gurgled and spasmed, Chris and Evan groaned in disgust as cerulean blood mixed with the red human blood on their bodies. For a while there, we just laid in a slowly growing pool of groown-up guts, catching our breaths.

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“Evan… what happened?” Chris asked.

“I was out of mana. That fucking thing was gonna kill me. Shelby got in the way.”

Chris laughed, kinda, one of those mirthless laughs where you just push air out of your nose. “Sounds like him… what now?” He asked quickly, not letting the thought linger.

Evan made a disapproving face, “I guess we gotta find a new party leader.” They both looked at me.

“Don’t you guys have a friend to mourn?” I asked.

“Fuck you, don’t you have a girlfriend to mourn?” Chris said.

“Fuck you,” I said.

“That’s what I thought,” he said.

“So what? The plan is to bury our feelings and get on with it?” Evan asked.

“Aren’t you the one who suggested it?” Chris asked.

“Fuck, whatever. Let’s go.” Evan said and left the nursery of death.

I was still getting used to only having one foot. One of the goons on floor 2 mangled it with its mouth. Turns out they can all unfurl their bodies/jaws like the headhunter. We tried healing it with a potion, but all it did was close the wound. Chris and Evan had to help me up the staircase. I felt like a liability. I tightened my grip on the knife Lizanne got me.

The fifth floor shouldn’t have been standing, from an architectural standpoint. All of the internal walls were removed, leaving a wide open space with zones of furniture where the rooms once were. The entire home had been transformed into a nest; all of the beds had been pushed together into what looked like the living room, on top of them was a giant, wrinkly, impossibly fat baby, it looked about ten feet tall. Its mouth was covered in a chunky yellow substance, and the whole place stunk like piss and butane. Two more groown-ups were tending to it, one was wiping its face and the other gathering blankets. The baby grabbed the grown-up closest to it, the one wiping, and bit its top half off. Shortly after swallowing, it burped up some more yellow chunks. The other groown-up seemed blissfully unaware of its friend's death.

The stairs had led into a walk-in closet in the master bedroom, at least, that's what I assumed based off of the conspicuous ring of clothes on the ground around us. We had lucked out, we were about as far from the giant baby as we could have been.

Evan hastily drank a mana potion as the grown-up noticed us and hauled ass toward us. He started charging up one of his spells while I looked back at Chris.

“Hey, hold me,” I said.

“What?” He asked, but complied, putting his hands on my hips. I equipped my halberd right as the groown-up ran into range. Chris helped brace me as I shoved the point of the halberd through the groown-up’s body. Together, we tilted the handle downward and let gravity push the groown-up further into the blade. Evan finished it off with Spark Shot to the head.

“Ow, fuck!” Evan’s spell had traveled through the corpse and down my metal weapon to zap my hands. I dropped my halberd, which clattered loudly on the floor. At the same moment, the giant baby started bawling. The sheer volume generated enough pressure to knock us all down. Evan’s health plummeted and an “x”ed-out ear popped up over his head.

Evan unleashed a barrage of Spark Shots at the baby, dealing a bit of damage and shutting its cries up for a second. Chris jumped to his feet while I grabbed my halberd and slowly crawled to mine. He charged toward the baby, throwing a dark knife along the way. It landed in the baby’s arm and a red funnel appeared briefly over the Level 10 Goonby’s health bar before quickly snapping over to Chris’s. He paused in his tracks and his health quickly drained down to empty, his body drying into a husk.

Evan screamed in terror as the baby resumed its wailing. I stood there, paralyzed as I was forced to accept what the little voice in the back of my head had been telling me since I woke up: I was going to die today.

A feeling of peace started to wash out of me. I looked at the fear in Evan’s face; that stopped the peaceful feeling right in its tracks. I activated my [Rage].

The damage I was taking from the baby’s scream made my Rage stacks skyrocket and my hobbling soon turned into a frenzied scramble. By the time I reached the goonby and stabbed it with my halberd, my Rage stacks gave me enough strength to kill it in one hit. I had a small sliver of health left, but I was alive. The same couldn’t be said for Evan. The volume of the baby’s scream had turned his brain into mush.

Almost immediately after the baby died, the floor beneath me rumbled violently, tossing Chris, Evan, and the groown-up’s corpses around, as the structure I was in collapsed into a single house. I looked around, jarred, and saw a glowing, gold chest in the middle of the room. I didn’t even bother opening it.