“What the hell?” I said. I banged on the wooden door.

“Hey,” I called. “Is there anybody in there?”

The two level 2 goblins seemed to give up on waiting for the bulldozer to negotiate the tight turn, and they hopped off and started jogging toward me. They were unarmored, but both wielded what appeared to be wooden sticks with a pineapple on the end of it. They’d catch up in a minute. Next to me, Donut started to growl and hiss.

From behind the door I heard the rattling of chains and turning of locks. The door cracked open, only pulling open part way. A single chain remained, keeping the door from opening further.

A bearded, rat-like creature appeared in the doorway. I could barely make out his features, but he was about a head shorter than me. So taller than the goblins, but not by much.

“Whaddya want?” the voice said. “You mobs ain’t allowed in here. You know that!”

“Hey, this is a tutorial guild, right? The thing said I was supposed to go in here.”

The eye widened as it looked at me.

“You’re… you’re a crawler? Wait.” The rat creature stepped back as if to get a better look at me. “You are! By his left tit, we opened up and I didn’t even notice! I must have slept through the announcement. Nobody tells old Mordecai anything! There used to be a newsletter. It was delivered every few cycles, reliable as can be. But then it just stopped. Budget cuts, I’m guessing. They’re always cutting corners. I thought we weren’t opening for another two years!”

“Hey, let me in!” I interrupted. I turned to face the two goblins who jogged to a stop. One moved to my left, the other moving to cut off my retreat.

“Open the damn door,” I cried.

One of the goblins said something to the rat man behind the door, whose name appeared to be Mordecai. I couldn’t understand the goblin language. It was grunts and squeaks. Mordecai responded in the goblin language. They both laughed.

“Sorry, crawler. You took too long,” Mordecai said through the chained door. “I can’t open up if there are mobs directly outside. Rules are rules.”

“I took too long,” I said. I moved to a fighting stance. One of the goblins feinted, swinging at me with his club. The pineapple at the end of the club fell off when he swung it, and it hit the ground with a splat. The goblin cursed and kicked it away. I took a step back. Donut stood between my legs, hissing and spitting.

“At least tell me how to open my loot boxes.”

Mordecai was silent for a moment, as if he was contemplating on whether or not tell me.

“It’s in the Awards and Boxes tab of your inventory menu,” the rat man said. “But you can’t access it yet, kid.”

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“How do I get access to the inventory menu, then?”

The second goblin—the one who still had a pineapple on the end of his stick—swung at me, missing by a wide margin. Up close, the goblins looked much like they did in movies and videogames. Short, green, mostly bald with pointed ears, angular faces, sharp teeth. I briefly wondered on that. It seemed the aliens or whatever who were this to us knew a whole lot about earth mythology and lore.

Far behind him, the murder dozer had finally backed up properly and had straightened out. It rumbled down the hallway toward us.

“Yeah, you gotta complete the tutorial.”

The pineapple goblin swung at me again. I waited until the club passed the apex of its arc, and stepped in. I hit the goblin square in the nose with a jab and then a left hook to its right temple. It crumpled to the ground in a heap. A bar appeared over the creature’s head the moment I hit it. A health bar, I realized. It hadn’t appeared until it took damage. The bar went down more than halfway, turning from green to red. The goblin had more than half of its life drained.

I’d clocked it pretty good, but not that good. It was like I’d just punched a ten-year-old.

The second goblin looked at his friend, open-mouthed then turned and ran back toward the dozer.

My fists ached. I hadn’t been in an actual, physical fight in years. Most of my time as a coast guardsman was aboard a cutter as an MK—a technician. I was never involved, face-to-face with any sort of real law enforcement. That said, most people I encountered who’d never been in the service didn’t realize that we trained as much as we did. People thought of us as glorified lifeguards. They had no idea how much we trained in hand-to-hand combat.

“How the hell do I do that if you don’t open the door!” I yelled as I kicked the downed goblin in the ribs. I felt a satisfying crunch. “Can’t you just let me have access now?”

“It doesn’t work that way, kid.” Mordecai said. “We can’t just have untrained crawlers wandering around the dungeon, you know. Besides, you can’t open boxes unless you’re in a safe zone. And unless you’re a complete idiot, you can probably guess you’re not in a safe zone right now.”

The goblin’s health bar had moved deeper into the red, but he wasn’t dead yet. A distant part of me seemed horrified that I was planning on killing this thing. Despite his weapon, he was incredibly easy to hurt. But one glance up at the bulldozer, which had stopped to pick up the second goblin, relieved me of any potential regret. I put my hands on either side of the unconscious goblin’s head, and I smashed down on the stones. I smashed down again and again until the health bar completely drained away.

“Hey, hey!” Mordecai yelled. “Hey, stop!”

“Whose side are you on anyway?” I said, whirling on the creature.

But then I realized the rat wasn’t talking to me. “You can’t come in here!” he was saying, his back now turned.

Donut. He was talking to goddamned cat. She had decided she’d had enough of this hallway and wandered into the guild through the cracked door.

A whole wall of New Achievement notifications appeared along with a couple other, new notifications, but instead of autoplaying like they did before, they appeared as little messages in the upper left of my screen. I sensed I could mentally click on them, but not now. The AI or whatever the hell was running this circus seemed to know that right now was not an opportune time to cover up half my line of sight with game bullshit. Not with the real danger barreling down on me.

“Open the fucking door!” I cried.

“Kid, get your creature!” Mordecai said, turning toward me, a strange hint of panic in the rat’s voice. “I’ll get in trouble if they find out I let a crawler sneak in against the rules.”

“Open the door,” I repeated. “Look. It’s clear, but it won’t be in about five seconds. Let me in!”

The door slammed, the last chain rustled, and then it opened all the way. I rushed inside just as the murder dozer barreled by, rolling directly over the bloody corpse of their friend. The brakes screamed, but the dozer continued its forward momentum, sliding on the body as it smeared down the hallway. The two goblins turned and met my eyes as I flipped them both off. They squealed in rage as I slammed the door.