The first heliotoma exploded in a spray of acidic goop. This had happened just metres away from Ortho, while he was charging it down, which meant he had only a split second to activate his shield and push all the acid away from him.

The acid splatted over perfectly straight walls, which had patterns of swirling purple and green all over them. Wherever the thick green acid touched purple wall, it bubbled and began to form the next snot-like heliotomas.

Ortho was about two seconds from hurling his shield at Wip, but when he turned and saw Wip drop a green gun, its barrel now facing sideways after warping, Ortho’s face split into a smile. The skin on Wip’s hands had been burned and was now an angry red.

“Mr. Wip, you need to be more careful!” Luci shouted from beside him.

Wip frowned at his hand. “I don’t get it. How came the afto burnt me? I was using it like normal.”

Ortho scoffed at him. “If you can’t figure it out, then I guess I’ll be getting the most kills, huh?”

Floor seven had some messed up rules. Firstly, anything green was acid. Walls, floor, ceiling, your own clothes—didn’t matter. This fact had single-handedly caused the demise of a good number of dungeoneers, particularly those with green eyes. There were no exceptions to the rule.

Secondly, green acid couldn’t melt anything purple. Yeah, it made no sense.

Thirdly, if you covered something green with something purple, the green thing wasn’t acid. In other words, the best way not to die from your own green shirt or green pants was to wear purple clothes over the top. In the case of green eyes, you wore tinted goggles. A lot of people had to die to figure these things out.

And finally, if you put any green liquid on a purple surface, it made a heliotoma.

The consequence of these rules was that colourblind people like him had some difficulty. Ortho himself wasn’t actually colourblind, but when he used his helmet for its enhanced peripheral vision, colours were heavily faded.

The green globs that had splashed onto the walls were beginning to take shape, and Wip was too injured to fight them. Taking advantage of this, Ortho tossed his shield at forming heliotomas, stealing the kills. They were still green, bubbling snots by that point, but after a few flicks of his wrist, they were even less than that.

After popping them, enough of the acid had disintegrated for the walls not to produce anything more. The best part, however, was that the putrid scent that stung his nostrils faded heavily once they were gone.

“Three to me!” Ortho gloated. “Versus, what, one to you?”

“Didn’t you read the information I sent you?” Luci shouted at Wip.

Wip pulled a spear out of his backpack. The spear had a flat tip. Ortho got a whiff of that thing and made some distance.

“You sent me some mail?” Wip shouted. “But Mori never said I got anything.”

“No, on your phone!”

Wip pulled his phone out of his pocket. He squinted at the screen for a few seconds. “It says, ‘N-no s-ser-service.’”

“Why do you have your phone?” Luci wailed. “You were supposed to give it to Ms. Stella.”

Ortho couldn’t help but chuckle. He’d determined to kill more monsters than Wip on this floor and it looked like that challenge was going to be a walk through the Strangled Gardens. Sooner or later, that idiot was going to get himself killed and Ortho would have the last laugh. There was simply no way to keep yourself from dying on this floor if you didn’t prepare yourself for its unique rules.

Three more heliotomas shot out from a gap in the flat purple-green walls and hovered towards the dungeoneers at a rapid pace. The things looked more like balls of green snot with some extra tentacle-things dangling from the bottom. And they smelled like rot and pain. That was the only way Ortho could describe it. His temporary party wasn’t even fifty steps from the path and they were already getting swarmed.

Ortho raised his shield and flowed enma into it, preparing a powerful push to knock them away. The moment they got close, he put everything he could into his shield. The heliotomas were blasted away at full force, splatting into a green section of the wall opposite them in the chamber. That prevented those heliotomas from respawning. Thick green lumps fell and landed on the floor. Those contained the cores. So long as the heliotomas weren’t continuously spawning, collecting cores was easy.

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Rot assaulted Ortho’s nose and was getting more painful, to the point where his eyes stung. Then, from holes in the walls adjacent to the one Ortho and his party were backed up against, a small swarm of heliotomas charged in.

“I should have known you wouldn’t have read it,” Luci muttered. As she spoke, she swung her bag off her shoulder and unzipped the top to reveal glowing, silvery metal. “Okay, listen closely Mr. Wip. I’m going to teach you about this floor’s rules.”

“No need!” Wip shouted. Then he stabbed with his spear. The scent of cut grass covered up everything else.

“Moron!” Ortho shouted. He dropped low to the ground and covered his side with his shield.

The spear’s tip bloomed with green light—of all things, green light! Despite the distance he’d made from Wip, the light was bright enough to burn his skin. Ortho gritted his teeth and flowed enma into every one of his armour pieces, activating a yellow barrier that covered his body like a second skin. The full-body shielding took the brunt of the burn.

The heliotomas that charged him exploded from Wip’s afto. Acid splashed against Ortho’s yellow barrier, quickly turning to steam before it dripped to the floor.

When the green light faded, Ortho peeked out from his shield to observe the carnage. Green blots covered the chamber: the four straight walls, the ceiling, entire the floor! They all bubbled violently. A few of those green bubbles were right at Ortho’s feet. Growling, he picked up his shield and slammed them all with its edge, mushing them into vapour.

In that moment, a sudden realisation pricked him. He spun on the balls of his feet, cursing himself, and bellowed, “Luci!”

Standing where Luci had been was a cocoon woven from glowing, silvery threads. The threads faded slowly and Luci stood there with a panicked expression. Ortho could tell at a glance that she was unharmed, and relief flooded over him.

Luci held her staff up in one hand through a hole in the carry bag’s back. The staff’s head had been freed, revealing a silvery crescent moon dotted with six black stones and two shimmering ones. Ortho realised that that was where the heavy, earthy scent rolling off Luci had come from.

Slowly, she lowered the staff and her eyes fell onto her dress. When she saw the holes that had been burned into it, revealing a purple tank top and shorts beneath, her expression shifted from panic to pure terror.

“No! My dress!” She clutched the material, brought it to her face, and wept into it. “Ms. Stella is going to be so mad.”

“But why did you wear it?” Wip asked.

The taller man walked up to her with his annoying smirk wiped from his face. Wip’s skin had been sizzled, ranging from bubbling red to charred black all over. His clothes were hanging off him in tatters. Thankfully, he was wearing purple underwear—Wip had no idea what the floor’s rules were, so pure dumb luck had saved Ortho’s eyes! That wasn’t enough to soothe Ortho’s boiling rage, however.

Also, Wip didn’t seem all that bothered about being burned crispy. That only further annoyed Ortho.

Luci spun around to meet Wip, her cheeks glistening with tears. “I wore it because I wanted to show Ms. Stella how much I appreciated it. This was a gift from her, after all.”

“But clothes always get destroyed in the dungeon. Sometimes I walk out completely—”

Ortho tossed his shield onto the floor and stormed over to Wip. Enma flowed into his wadis. When Wip saw him approach, he dropped the spear that had caused all of this trouble, its length now twisted and knotted like a rope. Wip’s expression went dark and red electricity coursed along his body.

Prepared for the attack, Ortho flowed enma into his armour. He wasn’t going to let Wip hit him with that debilitating touch like in the dumpster. He flowed a little more into his ankle wadis and shot forward with a flash.

Wip spread his legs to brace himself, but Ortho wasn’t aiming for a tackle or strike. He ducked low to get under Wip’s guard then came up, grabbing the torn collar of Wip’s shirt.

“Are you trying to pick a fight?” Ortho snarled. “Huh? With a warrior of Huhl Hadem?”

Wip stared down at Ortho’s helmet. “I like fighting.”

Ortho clenched his teeth. He flowed every scrap of enma he could muster into his wadis. “And I don’t like you.”

Ortho reared his head back then slammed his helmet directly into Wip’s chest. The force sent the man tumbling across the floor. His backpack, now pocked with holes from the acid, spilled warped aftos everywhere.

Wip came to a stop on a patch of green floor. Steam rose from the ground, the scent of charred flesh stinging Ortho’s nostrils. Ortho didn’t care how injured Wip was. If he wasn’t already a thread’s width from death, Ortho vowed to put him there.

Luci ran up to Ortho and held up her hands in a staying motion. “Please, Mr. Ortho, don’t do this! There are a lot of monsters coming and we need to work together to defeat them. We’re a party, after all.”

Ortho shoved a hand to her face and pushed her aside. “I don’t have a party.”

He flicked his wrist and his shield kicked up off the ground. He caught it with his left hand then placed it back onto the mount on his right forearm.

Luci danced on the spot. Her eyes darted between the globs, which were slowly rising out of the purple floor and walls, and Wip, who was taking his sweet time to get up. The chamber was filling with the heliotomas’ stench, but all Ortho could smell was that confusing mess that came off of Wip.

“No, you don’t understand,” Luci said, panic clear in her voice. “Once Mr. Wip gets it in his head that he wants to fight, there’s no way to hold him back.”

Slowly, Wip raised his head. A dumb smirk covered his face. “I accept your duel!”