Life was so simple right now, it could make me cry. Run, wrestle, punch, repeat. I would even let the Crawfish get a couple of tail slaps at me while holding him down to train my resilience. Whenever my health approached one thousand, I just dismounted early. It was the picture of efficiency.

Crawfish came charging at me as I sprinted down the tunnel, hoping to train my agility at the same time. That one was probably unlikely given the short distances, but I really was running all out so maybe I’d get lucky. That wasn’t in the cards for me, though.

The cave system that I’d been in so far was pretty simple, just two big open areas connected by a slightly winding tunnel. Originally, I’d thought that the slight curve to the pathways was what allowed me to fight these crabs one at a time, but that was before I’d figured out the whole aggro range thing. Now, I was thankful for the slight turns for that very reason. As I continued to sprint forward, keeping my eye out for the bundle of crab legs I used to mark Crawfish’s turnaround point, I saw movement. People, armed with bows.

Uh oh.

I was many things, but quiet wasn’t one of them. Fortunately for me, the giant crab barreling down the tunnel behind me was even louder. They hadn’t expected me to come into sight so soon, so everyone was a little surprised. For each person present, that meant coming to a halt. For me, that also meant a rapidly approaching crab.

“Shit!”

I jumped at the wall, knowing I was about to hurt myself but accepting the consequences. I used my arms to cushion the blow as arrows rained on the rampaging crustacean. Honestly, his would-be assassins seemed a little slow considering how quick they’d been before. Maybe their skills were ambush focused, and they sucked in a straight up fight.

I could work with that.

I was right on Crawfish’s tail, knowing that I could get into retreat distance from the monster if I needed to. They didn’t know about the aggro radius but ran away all the same when their attacks failed. There were four guys wearing leather armor and holding bows with one guy further in the back that had a shield and spear. With my trusty friend Mr. Crawfish helping me out, I was feeling pretty confident in my abilities. It seemed like he would ignore me for the time being, prioritizing the enemies that had actively attacked him instead. Unsurprisingly, I also wanted to focus down the ones who attacked me.

Even though the people up ahead seemed to be ranged classes, they were slow. Not by much, maybe as fast as the bees had been, but the lack of flight made them embarrassing by comparison. Crawfish caught up to them easily, forcing the group into an awkward melee just a dozen feet from the turn around point.

I needed to get in there as well. It was possible, if unlikely, that they weren’t the people who’d been attacking me outside, but they clearly weren’t equipped for these caves. In fact, my high awareness could even see the fog on their breath despite a complete lack of warm clothes. I could get away with that kind of behavior, but these people were clearly feeling the cold.

Now it made sense. These people were slow because they were freezing. If they escaped, they’d go back to camping outside of the portal and kill me as soon as I left. Maybe I could outlast them, well I definitely could. But should I? What if they escaped the crab attack, left, and then came back with warm clothes? Maybe I would out speed them, but maybe I wouldn’t. No matter what though, I’d never outnumber them. If a big enough mob came for me, then I’d die. If these people were higher level than me, I might die even in a fair fight. That seemed like a bad deal for me.

I sprinted past Crawfish as he chewed on the big man’s shield, and none of them were expecting me. I made a beeline for their back line, running in a serpentine to avoid the arrows. They were sloppy, slow to react, and caught off guard. The only arrow that came close to hitting me was when I was just feet in front of one of my assailants, but the nerves and cold slowed him down. The shaft sailed past my ear much louder than I’d expected as I gave him a greeting of my own.

“Straight.”

I didn’t know how tough they would be and couldn’t afford to hold back. Maybe that was an excuse. Maybe my conscience would rear its ugly in a few hours if I was lucky enough to survive this encounter. Either way, it didn’t matter right now.

My fist flew directly into the man’s head, his leather helmet doing nothing to stop the force. I might as well have stuck him with a sledgehammer as his skull caved in from the blow, causing an eye to pop out and bone to stick to my hand. Part of me expected to feel revulsion at the sight, to be disgusted by what I’d done. Instead I felt searing pain as an arrow dug into my left shoulder, reminding me that I had more work to do.

The big man was still distracted by my best friend, stabbing non stop in an attempt to free himself from the crustacean and assist his companions. Judging by the way Crawfish was bleeding, he might even succeed in time. I needed to be done by then.

Sprinting in serpentine once more, I approached the second archer, but this time they were prepared. This guy dropped his bow and pulled out two short swords while the other two held their arrows, waiting for an opening. This wouldn’t work. If I kept on course, I’d take a shot in either eye and be dead on the spot. Instead, I ran up to and past the man, straight towards the archer behind him. He hastily fired his arrow, but a panic shot was easy enough to dodge, especially at close range. My awareness practically screamed where the arrow would go based on the positioning of the bow. Hell, it was high enough that I could almost watch the man’s fingers let go of the bowstring. Idly, I wondered if I could dodge bullets now, but I could think about that later. I stepped past the man, barely slowing down at all to give him a slight greeting.

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“Jab.”

I passed him on my left, giving his face a hearty welcome from my fist. This one didn’t kill outright, but it did rock his head back dangerously. Maybe it was a killing blow after all. It also convinced the last ranged attacker to take his shot, barely missing as I kept moving. I heard the man drop to the ground behind me as I closed in on my last opponent. The man with the short swords would probably get his bow back out quickly, so I needed to be fast.

Putting every last ounce of strength that I could into my legs, I reached the man before he could knock the arrow. Instead, he gripped it like a dagger and held his bow like a club, trying to fend me off with the latter while setting himself up for a killing blow with the former. Sadly for him, I was pretty confident with my resilience and doubted his strength, so I just jabbed both the bow and his face back to back. Based on the sound, I cracked both of them.

I turned as quickly as I could, but an arrow still caught in my side. Between that and going for a jab while an arrow was lodged in my shoulder, my health was beginning to get dangerous. Fortunately, the big man had lost his dual with Mr. Crawfish. He was retreating, shield entirely abandoned as my crustacean friend chased him towards the freedom line. Surprisingly, the large man was faster than the crab even with the biting cold, letting me know that I would definitely not be his equal outside of this place. That was good to know.

Another arrow came flying towards me and I punched it on reflex, feeling something tugging at the back of my mind. The jab wasn’t quite as powerful or fast as what my skill could produce, but I knew that something had happened. The muscle memory from all those thousands of punches had ingrained itself into my mind, letting a portion of the skill exist even without speaking the words. That was probably how activating skills worked for people that didn’t have the ability to set shortcuts and change their settings.

Something to keep in mind for the future. For now, I was too amused by the fact that these arrows punched straight into my body but deflected harmlessly off my fists. That was both encouraging and very interesting.

Then the big man reached the end of Crawfish’s aggro radius, snapping the crustacean’s attention to the lone sniper. Based on the lack of other movement, I’d either killed or knocked out all the others and the big man clearly lost his motivation after tussling with my shelled friend. Sadly, I hadn’t laid a hand on Crawfish and the pecking order seemed to be in full effect.

“No! Wait!”

Shouts of despair filled the air as he tried to run and beg, but monsters didn’t listen to that kind of thing. Or if they did, it was more encouraging than not.

The large melee man was long gone by the time I crossed the line of safety, but Crawfish didn’t retreat. Instead, he just stuck around, eating the corpses. Right. How could I forget about that?

I had no idea how all these huge monsters could just sit around all day and not starve to death, but whatever magic the dungeon used to sustain them didn’t replace their base instincts. They still very much wanted to eat the dead.

This left me with something of a challenge. I could wait for him to finish eating all these would be assassins, but how long would that take? Would the big guy come back for round two while I waited? I knew that, as I was now, I’d lose that fight for sure. If he was watching me even a little bit, then he’d know that too. Shield or no shield, I couldn’t hold these crabs back for a second, but he pushed Crawfish back for a long time. Probably. Time management wasn’t exactly my best skill.

So I needed to get stronger and that couldn’t wait.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Crawfish. The time has come for me to say goodbye. We didn’t know each other for long, and maybe our relationship was a little one sided, but you’ll always live on in my heart.”

Having given the best goodbye I could think of to the monster currently devouring human corpses that I’d inadvertently fed it, I sprinted across the threshold, suplexing it. A couple punches later, I jumped off and retreated back to the line, gasping in pain.

I’d totally forgotten about these arrows sticking out of me. No amount of stat points in awareness would save me from tunnel vision, apparently, so I cautiously looked at my health before doing anything else. Thankfully, it was hovering around five hundred, which was probably plenty.

I yanked out the one in my shoulder first, grunting in pain as I did. Then I watched my health decline from the bleeding for a little while, listening to the sweet sounds of a corpse being consumed. That was a little surprising.

Apparently, the instinct to eat was stronger than whatever compelled the creature to return to its post. That would be incredibly helpful, considering the fresh supply of corpses I’d just obtained.

I frowned, staring at my health which stopped decreasing right around four hundred. Yanking out the arrow in my side with yet another grunt, I considered myself seriously. Here I was, impassively watching a giant crustacean eating someone who I’d killed under the assumption that they wanted me dead. If I looked at it from an outsider’s perspective, that didn’t seem like the most stable behavior in the world.

“Hey, Mr. Crawfish,” I called out to my busy friend, sitting on the ground with my back to the wall. “I need a second opinion. Am I crazy or something?”

I wish I could say that my adrenaline was pumping from the previous fight, but it honestly wasn’t. As far as my battles in this world went, killing these people had been pretty run of the mill. The bees, that first crab, hell even the little bugs in the flesh cave had been more dangerous in terms of percentage health lost. Really, this was the most straightforward engagement I’d had with a new enemy simply because I knew what they could do ahead of time.

Oh you have a bow? Well, guess I need to dodge some arrows. Is that a spear in your hands or are you just happy to see me?

It was all so simple: hit and don’t get hit. With the monsters, it was more complicated. Unless I figured out how to break their coding, I guess, but this was a new development. Obviously, I’d feel different if I had to fight the big shield and spear guy, but then I’d just be dead.

I thought about it for a while and gave my big friend some time to answer, but he was too preoccupied with his meal.

“Nah, it’s fine. I’m fine. Probably.”

At the very least, there wasn’t much point worrying about it now. My health had stopped dropping, and I had a crab to kill.