There was no announcement which meant just bringing the Minotaur to its knees didn’t mean the system considered this the end of the battle. It was clear what we had to do. The idea left a bad taste in my mouth. Before us, the half-human beast was howling at its restraint, still tugging at their locked arms. I requested Jye to dart in and add a few Loads to their legs when they could to ensure our approach to put the Minotaur out of its misery would pose no further risk. The giant had yet to complete the action when I heard the hiss of an ability being activated and turned to look at the others.

Frowning, I glanced to Axel who was grinning triumphantly down at the Minotaur, perhaps considering ways in which he could deliver the final blow. Obviously he hadn’t heard the sound. This was just another thing I would talk to the others about when we were finally all back together. The list was growing long now. And I really was jumping the gun by thinking we would all survive. But there was a weird sort of confidence growing inside me. Perhaps we were really doing it.

Still, the source of the ability being activated worried me. Was it Wren healing herself? Tam fighting the mimic? The both of them would have to face whatever they were doing alone.

“So, what’s the go?” I asked, knowing none of us were equipped to deal large amounts of damage to a single target and that all of us had to be low on stamina and mana. Knowing that Gigi regenerated half xir stamina in the same amount of time it took for me to restore 4 points of mine meant that maybe Jye and Axel would get theirs back quicker as well. Lucky them.

I’d also prefer to not stand around and slowly cripple another “living” being.

“Target practice?” Jye suggested, stepping behind the creature carefully to do as I’d previously asked. They did not need to bend down to lay nervous hands on the Minotaur’s hooves.

I really had to stop extending idea generation to the redhead.

Pinching at the bridge of my nose, I said, “No, Jye. We’re not using a living creature as target practice.”

“It should have a weak spot,” Gigi supplied.

I glanced over to xem, my brows furrowing in thought. Xir words hadn’t been censored which meant what xe was saying had to be common knowledge. I mean, yes, in games bosses tended to have weaknesses that glowed red for players to attack. There was nothing so obvious about the Minotaur.

The familiar hiss sounded as Jye applied a Load each onto the beast’s hoofed feet. It wasn’t as much as I’d like, but it was better than nothing. We’d stay clear of the Minotaur’s legs, just in case. In reaction, the creature let out an inhuman growl, tossing its head about in protest. It looked like little had changed, but it did seem more panicked. The fear on its half-bull face did make me feel a little nauseous. If we were going by mythology, the Minotaur was half-human. What we were doing would be akin to an execution, or at least 50% of one.

“How do we find it?” Axel asked.

He had begun circling the beast, taking a wide berth, his blue eyes narrowed in scrutiny.

“Wish Tam would lend us a hand,” I muttered under my breath.

She’d been the one to see the gem in the crystal wall that had triggered the trap. If there was anyone on our team capable of spotting any type of weakness, red glow or not, it would’ve been her. Too bad she was such a poor sportsman. She was probably skulking about somewhere nearby waiting for a chance to kill-steal. Typical Tam. And then our next bet was Wren who’d identified the trap soon after. And she was a no go.

Why were the rest of us so goddamn blind?

“Huh,” came Jye’s voice as they stepped back from the legs of the Minotaur.

“What is it?”

“On the back of this dude’s neck. There’s like… I don’t know how to describe it.”

Curious, the three of us made our way to check it out.

Sure enough, after Jye pointed it out to our poor eyesight, on the back of the Minotaur’s neck was a singular discoloration. It could’ve just been a pigmentation issue with the creature’s skin, but the shape was perfectly circular. The marker rested directly above the first protruding notch of the creature’s spine. Smaller than a fingernail, on the Minotaur that was taller than when Axel had stood on Jye’s shoulders, it was practically the scale of a stray freckle.

“How’d you see that?”

Smiling with embarrassment, Jye said, “I was admiring its delts and traps.”

I didn’t say anything, though my gaze did slide over the creature’s muscles. It was well-built.

“Monsterfucker,” Axel said, and not in a way that sounded like an insult. Like a casual remark. One might be able to say, “redhead,” in the same way and it’d be a simple fact about Jye.

“That looks like the weak spot,” Gigi commented, nodding sagely, completely ignoring Axel for the better.

Following suit, I replied, “I mean, yeah. The spine of any vertebrate is a weakness. We got all our nerves in there. Angel pasta and all that.”

This earned me a confused look from the rest of the party. Lost wasn’t as popular, I guess. The doctor’s line about his botched surgery had sat with me since I’d heard it. The imagery was genuinely horrifically awful and visceral. Nerves spilling out of a spine like angel pasta.

Suppressing a shudder, I said, “You might as well say the head is a weak spot. That’s just how bodies work.”

“We can test it,” Axel said, drawing his sword.

“Wait a sec.”

The blond paused and raised an eyebrow at me. I was trying to imagine the rewards of this fight. Axel and Gigi had performed well initially, followed by Jye and me, but killing the Minotaur like this wasn’t entertaining. It was… boring. It could affect the experience and credits we might receive after we finished the job. (I was struggling to think of killing the Minotaur as a task we had to complete, but that was the only way I was able to continue thinking about this.) It was still safer to strike down the creature like this, even if it didn’t reward us well. That was a price I was willing to pay. The others may not be so forgiving once I told them, though. Oh well.

I shook my head, giving Axel permission to continue.

The three of us watched as Axel hopped up onto the Minotaur’s calf to get higher. His blade rose in the air, and he took a moment to line up his swing, practising the movement. Beneath him, the creature squirmed, body writhing, almost like it was attempting to buck Axel off. It roared in anger, its voice echoing about the hall. All this made the blond’s job that much more difficult. Finally, satisfied with the alignment, Axel brought his sword down, so quickly that I wasn’t sure I hadn’t blinked.

The resulting screech of pain stemming from the Minotaur was answer enough, its limbs attempting to flail, but since they were locked, its body trembled violently.

Unlike the rest of Axel’s cuts, which had barely gotten through the creature’s skin, the one near the “weak spot” had scored directly through, revealing pink flesh and bone, blood seeping from the injury. Axel hadn’t managed to hit it directly in the centre, instead just cutting through the bottom edge of the circle. It was a small target and the Minotaur had been thrashing around, so the slight miscalculation was understandable.

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“You suck,” Jye said and meant it.

Gigi’s almost invisible silver brows met at the centre of xir temple.

“It has lost much health. Perhaps a third?”

I felt my mouth drop open. “In one hit?”

“This is based on my experience, but, yes.”

Storing Gigi’s words in the back of my head for the future, as what exactly had xe fought before that could be compared to the Minotaur, I signalled for Axel to give it another try. Fuck whatever rewards we’d get. We were so close to clearing the Dungeon.

Once again, the blond struggled to line up another hit, planting his legs into the calf muscle of the Minotaur for a steadier stance. He waited a bit, lifted his blade, and then swung down.

Another ear splitting shriek cut through the air.

“Only a third or so remaining,” Gigi commented.

I glanced down at the Minotaur, its body now defeatedly slumped forward. Only the bending of its frame seemed to be keeping it up. That was… good? I was torn on whether to feel bad about this or not. Unlike the people we’d killed, the Minotaur was almost definitely a construct of the Dungeon. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t real to an extent. It didn’t know that it was some sort of programmed NPC. That it was created to be murdered.

Rather I felt more pity than guilt.

“Can you surrender?” I asked the creature, peering into its semi-human face.

Its black eyes fluttered open, staring directly back at me. There was some intelligence there. Maybe something closer to the intellectual level of an elephant or octopus. Perhaps I could get through.

“Surrender,” I suggested. “Give up. We don’t have to kill you.”

Its mouth opened, and it mangled out the words: “Can… not.”

“You can’t surrender?” I queried, their meaning striking a previously unthought-of horror into me. It wasn’t the right time to consider the theory, but that didn’t mean it sat well within me.

Weakly, it shook its head. Its black eyes watered, tears beading.

“Kill… me,” it pleaded. Its voice was croaky, probably from never being used for anything but screaming, but I could hear the desperation.

We were practically torturing it, killing it like this. It was the best we could do though. And we could grant it release, if that’s what it truly wanted.

“As you wish,” I said, nodding to Axel for the final blow.

He raised his sword up.

Met my gaze.

And swung down.

Third time was the charm. The blade cleaved through the Minotaur’s spine, splitting the two sections of vertebrae completely apart. Threads of its spinal cord dangled outside, thin and white. Axel jumped back as the creature’s body fell forward completely, all tension and muscle control now outside of its ability, its arms and legs still locked to the floor.

“Now we can get Wren,” Jye said, excitedly.

But no notification had sounded.

Grimly, Gigi said, “It’s still alive. Barely.”

Axel made a move to finalise his kill, but I held up a hand. Swallowing back the bile creeping up my throat, I crept up, wondering if I should be the one to do the last blow. Axel and Jye had already claimed a life in their pursuit of clearing the Dungeon. This one should be on me. As I stepped in to deliver the coup de grace, boots on the ground approaching echoed down the hall.

It was Tam, in her human form. Of course she would turn up at the end of the battle.

“If I saw the kill, I should go for it, right?”

I sighed. Well, maybe I didn’t need this on my conscience after all.

“Sure,” I said, retreating, strangely relieved. The Minotaur’s expression as it’d pleaded to be killed was still heavy in my mind.

Pulling a blade from her inventory, Tam took a similar stance to Axel upon the Minotaur’s legs and brought her knife up. She held it there, towering over the barely alive creature, aiming. The ability activation I’d heard before must’ve been Tam returning to human form. That had to have meant she’d dealt with the mimic. But… if she had, regardless on if she’d killed them, we would’ve–

“Idiots,” came not-Tam’s comment, as her blade plunged into the neck of the Minotaur, intentionally missing the weak spot.

Oh, fuck.

~Dungeon Challenge Boss defeated. Dungeon Clear Available.~

I finally understood the difference between the notifications and announcements. Announcements were for everyone relevant to hear. Notifications were specifically for yourself. Which meant everyone else in Just Friends had to have heard it.

That we’d been kill-stealed.

The body of the Minotaur evaporated, leaving a single object in its wake. Not-Tam bent to pick it up. A satisfied grin grew over her face. I didn’t have a chance to note what it was before she popped it into her inventory.

“My gosh, that’s a lot of credits,” she said.

Axel immediately rushed forward, sword drawn, having figured out exactly how we’d been played. She laughed at him, plucked something from her pocket in the time he closed the distance, and pelted it at the floor. It exploded in a puff of smoke, clouding us in darkness. A smoke-fucking-bomb? How in the hell had she–

Jye shouted, “I can’t see!”

“I have no mana or stamina to defend,” Gigi informed us.

Other than pure melee, our teams had expended all our skills.

Through our voices, we found each other in the smokiness, our backs pressed against each other. The only one unaccounted for was Axel since he’d been the closest to Not-Tam before our vision had been compromised. I heard the activation of an ability, the hiss slicing through the panicked tension between the three of us. Who knew what else the mimic had in both their metaphorical and literal pocket?

A hand reached into view, grabbing my arm, causing me to start.

“It’s just me,” said Axel.

I stared at him for a moment, taking in his expression, his appearance, and his stature. By all accounts it was him.

Another hand grabbed onto my left arm.

“That’s not me.”

There were two Axels standing to either side of me, shrouded in the smoke.

Behind me, Gigi and Jye were poised, waiting for my response. They obviously didn’t know one Axel from another. Just like them, anyone else might have been momentarily blindsided. But they’d picked the worst person to imitate the appearance of, especially for me. I’d known Axel better than myself once, and while I was still trying to get that back, this wasn’t even a question. And given their close proximity, any further exchange of dialogue would forfeit either my life or Axel’s.

In both their free hands, they held a sword, and I knew the real Axel would be able to react in time.

A second had barely passed since the introduction of the second Axel. How did things always end up like this?

I swung my arms around Left-Axel and his arms, pulling him tight to my body, gripping my hands together behind his back. In the same moment, I heard the clatter of him being disarmed by Gigi and Jye, as Right-Axel brought his blade up to Left-Axel’s neck, nicking into their skin.

“Who’s the idiot now?” Right-Axel said.

“Still you guys,” came another voice from in front of me, the cloud of smoke beginning to dissipate.

The physical flesh under my hold disintegrated, my arms falling into empty space as Left-Axel disappeared entirely. Behind real Axel was someone I didn’t recognise at all. They were petite and small-framed, blonde, and probably in their late teens. It was their expression that sent shivers up my spine. It was pure malice. I could tell that the blade in their hand would be used to kill without a second’s thought or guilt.

I saw their weapon shift. No one else would have time to react. Especially since Axel’s back was to the real mimic and not whatever shadow clone they’d summoned.

Previously Left-Axel had been between Axel and I, but now it was just us standing face to face, the gap of human still between us. It was kind of apt that was the case. Somehow literally and metaphorically that made perfect sense. Axel was hurt, had been hurt since his battle with the Minotaur. He was probably sitting just above quarter health. The final blow on the Minotaur had missed its weak point but still claimed its life. The mimic was much stronger than they looked. If Axel took a hit from them, he’d likely die. I met my friend’s gaze and smiled. His blue eyes widened, as if understanding what I was planning.

Somehow he always knew.

As the mimic began their attack, hoping to get a strike on Axel’s back, I repeated almost the same action as I had with Left-Axel. I flung my arms round him, clamping, but this time I spun, taking Axel’s place, and hoping I’d been right about something I’d long since been thinking about.

The sword ate into my spine, with a force so violent and sudden that the pain that followed was not a surprise. In the corner of my mind, I saw my health plummet. It was my entire health bar. A part of me was satisfied that I’d been right. Axel would’ve died.

But instead I guess I would.