Subconsciously, I’d expected to be transferred into a featureless gray room like the one where I’d started my race. Instead we were released underneath a small glassy dome on a white circle in the center of a sprawling cavern.

The cavern was partitioned unnaturally, with patches of different colors leading to tunnels out from the main chamber. Each section contained, at most, a single type of monster, with the exception of an area bathed in red-tinted light and filled with spacedogs, rams, and pavemimics.

I could see exits glimmering on the far side of some of the paths, but others curved, hiding the end from view.

Transfer complete. To continue in this Maffiyir, all contestants must pass this mandatory trial. The rules are as follows:

* To win, pass through any portal.

* The opponents in each section will remain in their own section and not threaten you outside of it, unless you attack or affect them in some way.

* After the barrier drops, there will be a 75-second grace period. After this period, the central area is open to any opponent. The central area will expand over time.

The barrier will drop in 75 seconds. Be ready!

“What’s the plan?” Kurt asked. “I’m thinking we clear out a path to one exit first, and then we have someplace to retreat to if we anger something we can’t handle.”

“That makes sense.” I spun slowly in place. “We start with the red path, I think. Whether there’s a portal around the corner or not, we can kill those monsters quickly. That’ll give us a safe zone to stand in while we figure out what to do next.”

“I’m guessing the yellow area isn’t as safe as it looks?” Kurt asked.

I glanced over, my infrared vision already toggled on. “Definitely not. There’s something alive in those bushes.”

“Figures. Assholes!” Kurt kicked the glassy dome that separated us from the rest of the room. “Hopefully this area doesn’t expand too quickly. One last thing: are you sure you don’t want me to just open the gates blocking the dark green tunnel?”

I turned. The three paths behind us appeared empty of monsters. Instead, one had blades jutting from its walls, floor, and ceiling like the world’s most emo geode. A second was completely filled with water for an indeterminate distance, curving up before I could see the end. The third was fairly short, but blocked off by a series of gates of varying material.

Before I could respond, the glass dome vanished.

“Give it a shot,” I said. “Quick. I’ll start fighting in the red area. If it’s trivial, keep going and let me know. If not, stop and come join me. Don’t take long. If monsters are going to rush into this center area, I don’t want them to cut us off from each other.”

“Got it.” Kurt turned, putting his hands on the bars of the first fence while I spun to start dispatching the easiest monsters. I’d killed dozens of rams and spacedogs by now. I knew their weak spots, and both monsters were blessedly predictable. Once you had the strategy for fighting them down, killing them was routine, almost relaxing.

I’d just taken down my first of each when Kurt dashed back across the central area.

“No good?”

He shook his head. “I got the first gate open, but it was harder than it should have been. I think the lock machinery extends into the bars of the gate, maybe even into the walls. I think I have enough juice to get them all open, but I wouldn’t be much good afterward. If you’re serious about wanting to gather data-”

“I am.”

“Then that seems like a mistake.”

I nodded, turning back to the monsters. Kurt cleared his throat. “Do you even want me to do anything here? Or should I demonstrate my excellent management capabilities by staying out of the way while you get work done?”

I hesitated, considering. “Honestly? I can handle the spacedogs and rams more easily without help, as long as they keep coming one at a time. If you want to jump in and help me cut up the pavemimics, that would be great.”

“‘If I want to?’”

“Well, I’m strong enough now to keep a single pavemimic from crushing me, and the monsters on this path are really spread out. There’s no risk of getting grabbed by multiples, so I can take them out solo, but it’ll be faster with help.”

Kurt snorted and got a pair of knives ready.

We cut through the tunnel fairly swiftly, in spite of its length. It held 24 monsters spaced about fifteen feet apart. There was a portal at the end, and I placed some sample corpses near the exit before we returned to the middle. If we had to get out of here in a hurry, I’d try to grab the pile as I left.

Kurt was waiting for me near the center, staring at the edge of white light. Already, a strange smooth-skinned deer creature with a buglike face was standing in the middle, along with a small faceless monster that made me think of an origami crab or spider. The white area of infinite danger was getting larger, but rather than expanding evenly, new tiny areas of white light, each about the size of a quarter, were popping into being around the edge.

“The radius of the central area has gotten about five feet bigger, but it’s not perfectly even,” Kurt said. “I can’t tell if the little circles are getting more frequent, or larger, either. If they’re not, the rate of radial growth might slow down as it has to cover more area.”

“Assuming it doesn’t slow down?”

Kurt frowned. “I should have stolen Byron’s watch. I really don’t know how long it took us to clear that first tunnel. Five minutes? Ten? However long it was, I feel like we’ve got about four times that before we can’t come back into the central chamber.”

“Best to get started, then,” I said. “I don’t think we need to clear out the entirety of the other paths; the monsters don’t seem to aggro from too far away in here. Hopefully we can just pull one or two of each.”

“Fine,” Kurt said. He pulled a lugnut from his stockpile and used his Missile ability to send it straight through the neck of a placid wostrich in the next lane. He’d continued to focus on utility and support abilities, declaring himself our quartermaster and weaponsmith. These abilities synergized well with each other, but each also had more-than-minimum synergy with his Missile, leaving it at over 250% and granting him a range-sensing bonus that was particularly handy given that he was still blind in one eye. He’d gotten tons of opportunities to practice, so his accuracy had gotten pretty good. Against a stationary target with a weak spot as large and obvious as a wostrich’s neck? He took it down in one shot.

“Nice,” I said.

“Can’t let you do everything.” His response was grumpy, but I saw him stand a little straighter.

I rubbed my hands together. “The two of us should avoid fighting the slimes, and I don’t see any hellbats. You ready to fight something new?”

“Not if it’s that big fucker in the orange area,” Kurt said promptly. “I’m willing to help you fight anything else in here, but we’re leaving that asshole alone.”

The orange area was the shortest of all the tunnels, guarded only by a single monster… but that monster was as massive as everything else in this cavern combined.

It hunched in the tunnel, nearly brushing the ceiling, over ten feet in height. It was covered in fur and bony plates, but its anatomy reminded me of a praying mantis, with long folding limbs that ended in wicked-looking blades.

“Yeah, we should leave that one for last,” I said.

“Nope. Don’t mess with it. At all,” Kurt said. “We can tangle with the deer, the… hexcrabs, even your weird fuckers hiding in bushes, but not that one. It could kill either of us in one swipe.”

“We’ll probably have to fight it eventually.”

“Yeah, but we’ll be stronger then. Probably we’ll have the whole team with us. It’s too risky. I’m vetoing.”

I grunted, a noncommittal noise that could have meant anything. Kurt didn’t use his veto often, and I respected it… in the office. He wasn’t in charge here. “The deer-thing first, then? You hit it with a Missile, and I’ll get ready to intercept.”

“Fine.” Kurt said. His lugnut winged across the cavern, crashing into the creature’s wide head, but not taking it down. It opened its mandibles with a reedy noise somewhere in between a birdcall and a horse’s neigh and turned toward us. It didn’t charge. Instead it rocked back on its haunches and launched itself through the air.

For once, my spear-tipped staff was absolutely the right weapon. My speed was enough to dart into the path of the monster, shoving Kurt out of the way. I set one end of the spear against the ground and crouched.

Gosh, I hope it can’t change direction midair, I thought belatedly. It doesn’t look like it ought to be able to, but-

The monster crashed down, my pointed staff piercing through its chest. Unfortunately, the lack of a crossbar on my weapon meant the monster slid all the way down the shaft, one foot hitting me in the head and other in the shoulder, right before the main mass of the monster smashed me to the floor.

Somehow, my spear had missed the heart, or maybe this thing didn’t have one. I let go of my spear, pushing the monster up and off me as I tried to get free, getting kicked a few more times as I did so. Kurt yanked a meat cleaver off the hook on his belt and ran forward, putting all his weight into a chop against the side of its neck, narrowly avoiding a chomp from the insectile mandibles.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Blood sprayed from the wound, coating me, as the monster finally fell.

I scrubbed at my mouth with my clean sleeve. “Thanks for the backup. We should take this thing back to the portal before we pull anything else. If we can chop it up and find out where its vital organs are, that’ll be clutch.”

Kurt nodded slowly. “Yeah, I really thought it would die from your spear, but it seemed almost fine. It got in a few good hits on you before I took it down. Sure you want to keep going?”

I took the time to activate Healing Touch on myself. “Yeah. I’m not doing badly: just bruises. My regeneration was already taking care of it.”

“I’d just rather have more backup. That thing shouldn’t have been able to jump that far.”

“That’s what we’re here to find out about. Monsters normally evaporate when killed. These stay. That’s kind of unfortunate in some ways, but it’s still a big opportunity.”

“Kind of unfortunate? Oh, because the mess doesn’t disappear?”

I grimaced. “Yeah. This blood is ridiculously sticky. If it didn’t smell like rotten meat, I’d think I’d been sprayed with honey.”

Kurt made a face, then looked to the side. “So, what next? Crabs or the guys in the bushes?”

“Maybe a hellbat, since we know it’ll be easy.” I pointed upward. Before I’d scrambled off the ground, I’d noticed two more paths, both extending upward through the ceiling. “And one of those floating jellyfish things, if you don’t mind taking it down at range.”

“What? There’s shit above us?!” I couldn’t blame him for being freaked out by the surprise. If the situation had been different, not noticing the monsters could have killed us. “Those fuckers…”

The hellbat died easily enough, but its corpse fell on the ledge above, out of reach. Even my strongest jump wasn’t enough to reach the ceiling paths. Disappointed, we left the floating monsters alone.

The armored crab monster, though only slightly bigger than the spacedogs, gave us a hard time. Kurt peppered it with Missiles as it approached, but they bounced off its carapace like raindrops. I placed myself in its path, ready to stab downward with all my strength the second the monster entered the red zone.

I expected that the monster’s hard shell would damage the copper point on my spear. What I didn’t expect was for the tip to flatten entirely, with almost no visible damage to the back of the monster. The crab didn’t even slow.

Unlike other monsters, this little crab didn’t respect the threat of my weapon. It didn’t halt or try to avoid me. It just continued forward, pistoning one of its pointed legs through my left foot, and another through my ankle.

Kurt came up behind me, a sharp kick dislodging the monster from my leg and knocking it back a few feet. My leg, too damaged to hold me up anymore, buckled, and I tipped forward as the monster ran toward me once more. The pain was incredible, but I had just enough presence of mind to push off with my right leg, turning my fall into a tackle, praying the monster couldn’t repeat its actions.

For once, luck was on my side. It could move its legs upward, but without any real force. Whatever powered its foot-piercing stab seemed limited to downward motion. In fact, the legs I lay atop didn’t seem to be able to shift my weight. The two legs not covered by my torso jackhammered wildly but ineffectually, digging a furrow in the rocky floor of the cavern.

I tried grabbing one of the free legs and bending it backward, but the crab’s joints were absurdly flexible; I couldn’t get them to lock up. I didn’t make any progress trying to snap the thinner segment, either.

The spiderhair cracks from my initial jab with my spear were the only visible damage I’d done to this thing, so I wrangled a knife from my belt and slammed it down into that same spot. After two strikes, there was a tiny divot in the middle of the cracks, but the blade snapped off my knife.

“Get clear!” Kurt said. “I’ll try to hit that spot with Missiles.”

I shook my head, too winded to respond. If I rolled off the crab, my body would be at ground level, easy prey for its forceful footsteps. My foot and leg were in agony, but I could already feel my regeneration encouraging the wounds to scab over. I’d be okay, eventually.

As long as I stayed on this crab until it died.

Narrowing my eyes at the spot where I’d broken two weapons, I clenched my fist. Time to put my reinforced bones to the test.

I punched it.

Over. And over. And over.

After three hits, I saw the fractures starting to grow. I stopped counting long before I broke through and was able to pulverize the softer tissue within. The crab’s frantic scrabbling came to a blessed halt.

The skin had been worn away completely from my knuckles, and my hands were covered in the purplish-blue of serious bruising… but my bones were intact.

It took multiple Healing Touches to get myself back into shape, enough that I felt a little tired afterward.

“I need another touch-up on my spearpoint,” I told Kurt. It was a favor he’d gotten used to doing for me, the soft metal deforming any time I hit a monster’s bone. “I’ve healed myself up, so you can pull the stealth monster when you’re done.”

“You sure? That thing hurt you bad, Vince. You were screaming your head off. Not to mention, we’re both getting tired. And we’ve used up more than half our time. The white area in the middle is huge now.”

Even as Kurt complained, his eyes focused on the “empty” yellow lane covered in bushes and the copper on my spear flowed back into a more lethal shape.

“It’ll be fine. I doubt it’s going to be as tough as that tank crab, and we already know I can see it with my infrared vision. I’ve been faster than every monster by quite a bit. You’re really going to tell me you’re worried about challenging on an ambush monster from out of ambush range? I can take it.”

“If you can’t, I’m leaving your ass,” Kurt said.

“You don’t mean that,” I said, blowing him off.

Kurt glared at me. “Maybe not, but I should.”

“You’ll be singing a different tune when these monsters are everywhere and we know all their secrets.”

Kurt grumbled, but sent a Missile into the bush. Lacking my augmented vision, he missed the monster itself, but apparently shaking the bush it was hiding in was enough to make it angry. A thin dark shape slithered toward us, too fast to see clearly. When it got within ten feet, it launched itself through the air toward Kurt’s stomach.

It was fast, but I was ready… and it wasn’t as fast as me. A downward blow from my staff knocked it to the floor, then a quick followup stomp pinned it. It took me a few stabs to finish it off as it thrashed and dodged from side to side, but I got there. Only when it finally stilled did I get a good look at it: a strange, fat snake, with a head that was almost a fifth the length of its five-foot body, with massive jaws like a crocodile’s.

“Jesus! That’s like something from my nightmares.” Kurt was staring at the monster, face pale. “We knew it was coming, and that fucker still almost got me.”

I patted his shoulder. “We’re in the southwest! Fewer bushes, and the few that are toughing it out are pretty scraggly. It’ll be hard for these guys to hide.”

He shuddered. “At least we’re done now.”

I didn’t respond to this directly. “Let me get you loaded up. Let’s see… we’ll drape this guy across your shoulders. You can carry the deer thing, and I can set the crab on top. Maybe I can rest the pavemimic on there too.”

Kurt let me lead him toward the exit, but frowned as I piled on monster after monster. “Why am I on the hook for all this? What are you going to carry?”

“Oh, I’ll grab the ram and the spacedog on my way out the door,” I said breezily. “You wait here.”

“What? Fucking hell, Vince! I said no! You leave that fucker alone!”

“Yeah, but you’re not the boss here. Don’t follow! I’m faster than you.”

“Damnit, Vince!” Kurt yelled, but he didn’t follow me away from the portal.

I understood why Kurt was freaked out. I really did. A shin-high crab had fucked me up pretty good, and the snake and deer monsters had both had nasty surprises. The odds that this horrific thing could do something nasty were basically 100%.

The thing was, I was certain that Kurt was wrong.

Yes, I was weaker now than I would be, and I didn’t have my friends’ support, but I had something now we’d literally never had before when fighting monsters: a surefire way to retreat. If I left this horror alone, then we’d have no idea what we were doing the first time we fought one. We’d have to try to come up with a plan mid-combat, while under attack. Communication would be hard and coordination even harder.

That said, I’m not as crazy as my friends think. I wasn’t going to try to fight this thing head-on: I just wanted to upset it from as far away as possible. As soon as I saw it moving, I’d run. It should be relatively safe, and at least we’d have an idea of its speed the next time we faced it.

I pulled one of the knives from my belt and narrowed my eyes at the enormous furry mantis-monster. Focusing, I threw my knife across the room, aiming for center of mass.

The knife went far too high, ricocheting off the ceiling. It was hard to keep adjusting to my constantly-changing strength. It fell, handle-first, onto the giant monster’s head.

A roar shook the entire cavern, and for a moment, I thought the ground had literally tilted beneath me. As I threw out my hands to catch myself, the piercing pain in my ears made the truth apparent: my eardrums had just burst, and my inner ear was severely fucked up.

My disorientation made what I was seeing hard to parse, but the fact that the giant monster was moving toward me was obvious.

Healing Touch. Healing Touch!

An application of ability restored my sense of balance, and I realized the monster was charging, over halfway to me.

I wasted a moment worrying that the rest of the monsters in the cave would be attacking as well, but oddly, they weren’t. The giant monster was close - too close - and I took off at a sprint, dodging a strike from the unwinding bladelike arm.

If that thing screams again, I’m toast, I thought. I’m faster, but if I fall again, it’ll get me. Wait! I should just keep using Healing Touch until I’m clear. I should have enough energy for that, I think, and maybe the damage won’t have enough time to settle in.

I made it into the narrow cave mouth leading to the portal Kurt and I had cleared just as the monster screeched again. It hurt, but my strategy worked! I lost my balance for less than a quarter-second, and was able to correct my momentum before I fell.

I risked a glance back over my shoulder as I rounded the corner in the tunnel, hoping the monster wouldn’t be able to follow into the narrow space. No such luck: I could see it behind me, scuttling forward, limbs held close to its body.

Kurt was nowhere to be seen. Good. He’d gone through like I’d suggested.

There was no time to grab both the corpses I said I’d take. I dove into a roll, just barely managing to snag the ram’s leg as I tumbled through the portal.