My good friend was dead, and I had killed him. My partner who’d saved my life lay on the ground with my fist halfway through his midsection. It was a stirring scene, enough to bring a tear to your eye. Not my eye, mind you. It’s just a turn of phrase, a saying, an idiom, even.

I really wished I could have kept the grind going for longer, but I had power to obtain and traps to set. Between the weird behavior of my good friend Crawfish and the generous donations from my would-be assailants, I could set up something of a safety net for myself. I still had no idea how long things took without using the sun, but it seemed like the crustacean spent a good amount of time chewing on that corpse. Like, a lot of time.

If that was consistent with the rest of the crabs, then all I had to do was set up a little crumb trail of dead bodies to protect myself. That should be easy enough.

I dragged the corpses through the tunnel two at a time, depositing them at the mouth of the next cavern I would call Compass Cave on account of the four cardinal directions present within. Then I noticed something a little weird while I was pulling the third and fourth bodies to position.

“Uuugggh.”

I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but something was slightly different about this particular corpse. Maybe it was the way he was pouring out blood or his smooshed in face.

“Hnnng.”

Or maybe he was just shockingly vocal for a dead man. Well, that left me with something of a moral dilemma. Is it ok to kill an unconscious prisoner that you were intending to feed to crabs and never confirmed was actually out to murder you in the first place?

To be fair, there were only three oversized crabs left in the room, but I basically had three and a half bodies. My good buddy Crawfish really did a number on the first one while I was giving him the old royal rumble.

“Straight.”

I crushed the groaning man’s skull and felt nothing. That was probably a bad sign all things considered, but he and his life were worthless or so I thought. Evidently, the magical powers that were bestowed upon us by effort and murder disagreed, because now that I could pay more attention, this guy gave experience. A lot of experience. Somehow, random attempted murderer number four gave nearly as much as one of these crabs would. No wonder they wanted me dead so bad.

I went back to dragging the corpses right after a quick check told me what I needed to know.

Wrestling: 11

As soon as I got out of here, I needed to get another class. Much as I’d like to go the slow and steady route for peak power, that just wouldn’t cut it. Not with crazy murderers out there and gods that needed to die in a few years. If the previous pattern held, then I’d still be able to get an advanced class at my next selection, even if it wasn’t a punching one. It really was annoying that I couldn’t track the progression of anything the crystal gave me, but I could still become a wrestler. That would be cool too.

With a pile of corpses at the southern entrance to Compass Cave, I decided to give the place a closer look. Evidently, I was something of a prophet.

In the center of the cave, guarded by comparatively smaller crabs that I’d previously overlooked, was a large crystal. The clear rock was probably up to my shoulder in height and seemed to be slightly embedded in the stone floor, helping it blend in just a little bit when I wasn’t looking closely, which was a common affliction for me.

“I bet I know what that is.”

Now it was all making sense. Places like this were normally valuable on a first clear because of the rare loot, not just the levels. Maybe the alliance would pay a hefty price for something like this, making it incredibly desirable to the average stabilizer out there, but for me it meant independence. No more having to go get scammed just to get a service that should have been baked into my menus anyway. No more having to put up with the way those animals looked at me, no, sneered whenever I came into the building. I could leave this shithole, or I could just stay in my gym or wherever else I wanted. The world would be my oyster. I just had to get through… seven crabs.

Yea, that’s doable.

I started with the east coast, walking along the wall towards the nice looking crustacean I’d name Boston. It didn’t take long before I had his attention, so I turned and sprinted into my old cave. Had his aggro range been the same as my last victim, he would have caught me in a fight. Fortunately, my theory was correct, and the giant crab turned around after having chased me the equivalent distance of its original range.

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Running after it, I found him right where I expected, catching a light snack. Seeing that he needed to be taught some manners, I introduced Boston to my favorite game. I called it cave wrestling, and it went something like this. I wrestled him to the ground and hit him until it stopped being one sided. Then I’d get up, take some steps back, and do it again.

It was fun for the whole family, just ask those guys on the ground. They couldn’t even contain their excitement, little bits of it visibly leaking out of their skulls or torsos.

Boston didn’t survive my assault for long, so I moved further west next time. Stretching my memory as hard as I could, the best name I could come up for this guy was Cambodia. Some movie I’d watched talked about cheap lobsters out there, so it would have to do. Besides, I didn’t expect this one to last all that long either.

I turned out to be correct. Who knew how easy it was to kill things that didn’t fight back? Me. I did. It was great.

Last but not least was my northern friend whom I called Maine. He lived up to his name, coming up to nearly my shoulder in height while getting close to twenty feet long. The big man on campus seemed to like his position, and refused to engage with me unless I got closer than I was comfortable with. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure if I could suplex the giant crustacean, but I was willing to try. Annoyingly, Maine didn’t feel like making it easy.

Worse was the location of the creature. The crystal was in the center of the Compass Cave and definitely within his aggro range, but so were the smaller crabs. Maybe I’d be able to make use of this situation if god had been nice enough to give me magic, but my only options were my fists.

I just got an idea. Running back to my little corpse trap, I searched their bodies excitedly before finding what I was looking for. Each of them had a longbow and a quiver of arrows. I’d never been a hunter of any kind in my old life, but my hand eye coordination was pretty good these days. Combined with my high strength, I could pull the bowstring taught with very little effort, making it even easier.

Still, my first dozen shots went wildly off course. It wasn’t until after many tries that I definitely not-on-accident hit a crab I wasn’t aiming at, getting the attention of all four.

These things would have terrified me back on Earth, but here they were just mundane. A crab that’s three feet long with pincers over a foot long? Pathetic. Come back after your growth spurt, kids.

Honestly, the weirdest part was that they didn’t look at all like their neighbors. They still had the bluish gray coloring to blend in with the cave, but they otherwise just looked like big ole crabs, many legs, oval shell, claws, the whole nine yards. I’d almost have believed that someone just dropped them in here for fun, just to confuse people who expected consistency. It was also the first time I’d seen different types of monsters in the same dungeon, so I tried to be alert.

Tried and failed. These things were slow. It was agony waiting for them to crawl their way over to me, but I stuck it out somehow. I just couldn’t afford to get impatient with Maine hanging out in the distance, waiting for an opportunity to throw his weight around.

The first of the not-so-giant crabs approached, skittering across the rock floor in an attempt to get me in its large claw. I dodged to the side and punted it before doing the same to the other three. With them over by the wall and far from my northern buddy, I chased after them with destruction on my mind.

I’d yet to get a kicking class but would most certainly gain something for wrestling. Perhaps I just needed to use my legs more, and I was determined to test that theory. I used my leg to bait out an attack from the first crab to recover, which left the creature wide open. A powerful stomp crushed it to paste as the next one charged in. It fell for the same trick, but I tried a heel kick this time. The result was unchanged, but doing a Pele kick on the third wasn’t quite as successful. The crab shells were incredibly effective armor unless it was pressed on both sides. The only reason why I’d killed any of these crustaceans was they had nowhere to go. I’d smooshed them between me and the rock floor. Launching the little crab into the wall was as ineffective as throwing the bigger crabs had been, but it bought me time for the fourth. This time, I tried a move to kick it up into the air like a ball, then grabbed it, and kneed it repeatedly until it cracked in half. I gave the fourth crab the same treatment, hoping that I’d get another class option from it. The little buggers even gave some experience along with the catharsis of destroying something with your bare hands. Talk about a win-win.

Now it was just me and Maine, no holds barred. Worried that it might just destroy the crystal, I didn’t approach it from the direct south. I was also more than a little afraid of the giant crustacean’s speed, given how much faster the big ones were compared to their smaller cousins. That being the case, I was really hoping to aggro it from far away and then kite back to the tunnel, hopefully making use of its weird priority system to get one more free kill.

I stood close to the southwest wall, bow in hand. It took an entire quiver full of arrows before I really started to realize how bad I was at this. Sure it was far away, like really far, but it was also huge! I was actually unable to hit the broadside of a barn with how ass I was with the damn weapon.

Frustrated, I found some rocks near the wall that seemed good enough for the job and swapped to throwing. That came naturally to me, my improved strength and awareness giving me all the guidance I needed to land a hit after just a couple tries. Fair enough, I’m just a strength build. I could live with that.

Maine came charging towards me, way faster than anything I’d ever seen before. The difference between it and its comrades was not small, barely giving me time to turn and make it into the tunnel not fifty feet away before it managed to reach me. As soon as I did, it began to turn but not all the way around. Instead of the slow turn that the other crabs did when they were in the tunnels, Maine acted like he was a car. He just curved his run, turning east and running in a circle until he got back to his patrol point. There was no way I was getting a free kill here.

“Shit.”

I actually had to fight that thing, and it was way tougher, faster, and stronger than me.

“I need to get to that crystal.”