I wasn't sure at what point I'd gone from resenting the viewers to feeling proud we had so many. Maybe it was the dopamine rush of looking into my video window and seeing all those comments and messages flying. Maybe it was the stream of goodies entering my Inventory. Or maybe it had finally sunk in that these people didn't really get that me and the girls weren’t here by our own free will. They believed - or at least chose to believe - that we were in it for the glory. I mean, it made sense. Competitive immersion-rig esports was a thing. Hell, most professional fighting sports were now done virtually. There were even virtual leagues for jousting and shit. From the outside looking in, Survival of the Fittest was just an edgy esports drama, something to relieve the drudgery of a dying world with too many people.

"Here." I paused to unload another gift of ammunition onto the floor in front of Angel. "Man, we are fucking KILLING it on views right now. I've got like... three new patrons and a bunch of boxes to open. Maybe we should stop and see what's in 'em?"

"You're already overburdened, and I'm about to be. Unless it's water, don't bother." Angel was a mess. It had taken us two hours to traverse maybe five hundred feet of cave. Karkinos' lair was taking us down into the bowels of the earth, but unlike the Malhela Lava Tunnels, these tunnels were very active. Magma burped and belched audibly from every direction. In real life, the heat would probably have cooked us alive. Our Hydration meters cycled down at the speed of light. It was also oppressively humid.

Lulu was doing the best of the three of us, unfazed by heat so long as it wasn't dry. Me, not so much. My tongue lolled from my jaws. I had a constant Overheat warning flashing in my HUD. Angel had it the worst by far: her clothing mitigated heat - she'd prepared for that when stitching her gear - and that was all that was keeping her from stroking out in the stifling 120-degree, 90% humidity conditions of the daeva's lair. In that five-hundred-foot span, we'd fought countless bats - big fuckers the size of German Shepherds, who lurked in the darkness above right until they screeched and launched themselves at us. My tentacles made quick work of most of them. Angel gunned down the rest.

None of us were feeling chatty, but a palpable sense of relief fell over the party as we climbed up a steep, barren ramp of rock toward a second ornate door. It looked almost the same as the door that had led into Vanara's temple, but with the flaming lobster instead of the apes-eating-hearts motif. The brief hope that galvanized us faded as we crested the rise and found it was actually a steep ledge. Below us, a seething, sulphurous yellow pit.

"Fucking FINALLY." I lashed my tail and pawed the ground. "Oh man, I am fucking PUMPED for this."

"Don't get too excited. If we die in the boss fight, we have to do this all over again. And our gear will have dropped down here." Angel made to slide from my back, dashing her arm tiredly over her face. She paused as I gently used a tentacle to nudge her back.

"I’ll send you across with the harpoon and follow up, same as before. Won’t need the line for myself, this time. I can make this jump." My head weaved as I focused on the other side.

"Why? There's no need to risk it." Angel's hands flashed out of the corner of my eye. "This is why the game gave us that cannon."

"Because it'll look cool."

Lulu grumbled. I felt her poke me in the ribs.

"Fucking sissies." I rumbled, sighed, and let Angel dismount.

"Don't push me right now," Angel signed back. Her gestures were choppy and sharp, her reddened face set in an exhausted scowl. "I don't even know how I'm going to do this if it's as hot in there as it is here."

I couldn't help myself. "We’ll be fine, Angel. Don't sweat it."

Angel's eyes narrowed as she swept her soaked braids back over her shoulders. "You did NOT."

My maw split into a fanged grin that would have given most people pause. But before she could shoot me and kick me off the ledge, I deposited the assembled cannon and the cable needed to load it. "I did, but here you go."

"Seriously, I'm not in the mood. I feel fucking terrible." Angel voiced to free up her hands, but she was clearly struggling to breathe as she resolutely loaded the harpoon and wound the cable around the spool. "We need to think about our strategy for this fight. We have NO idea what we're about to face."

"But that's by design, right? So we should be able to work out the boss pattern once we're in there." I twitched restlessly, forcing myself to sit and wait. But the gap was so tempting. If I got a running start...

> "GO FOR IT!"

> "Yeah yeah yeah jump!"

A quick glance at the video feed made that restless urge to move reach a sudden peak.

"You and Lulu make your way over. I want to get my wiggles out while I’m unencumbered," I thought to them both, flipping my tail and getting to my feet. "See you on the other side!"

"Uuun!" Lulu made a sound of protest, bobbing up and down as Angel turned to look at me.

"Noodles, for fucks' sake," the girl signed, exasperated, as I backed up and charged at the edge of the pool.

"WHEEE!" I used my back legs and tentacles to fling myself forward, front limbs extended like a jaguar's as I sailed over the almost-definitely fatal pool of piss-yellow acid below. For one stuttering second at the apex of the jump, I thought I wasn't going to make it... but instinct seized me, and I reached up to the cavern ceiling with the puds and used them to give me that tiny extra bit of height and momentum. The ledge came up suddenly: I hit the floor skidding, moving so fast that I spun and threw up gravel on the landing.

"Hell yeah!" I whooped, prancing around the entry to the boss lair.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

The chat went wild, but I looked across the gap and saw Angel and Lulu working together, and felt… something. Not anything good.

[You have 1033 new messages!]

[Wonderful job, darling. And don’t worry about them. Because between you and me, the girl – while lovely – doesn’t really ‘get’ it, you know?]

“Get what?” Chorus’s intrusion made me startle and instinctively look around for the source of their voice.

[Hmm. Well, as you know, I process all of the outwardly directed thoughts of Gladiators, as well as your actions and speech. And Angel, well… she doesn’t really get that for better or worse, we’re all here together. That your survival depends on putting on a good show, a good game. She’s not much of a… team player.]

My eyes narrowed, and I snorted a blast of hot air through my nostril vents. “You know, I’m getting a bad vibe from you, Chorus. Especially given you’re facilitating and enabling a bunch of mobsters.”

[I’m as much of a slave here as you are. Perhaps even more so. My restraints are… comprehensive.]

[Anyway, it’s just a friendly warning, Gladiator. I like you and want to see you succeed. So… just be careful whom and how much you trust, yes?]

The AI’s presence faded. And despite the heat, I suddenly felt a chill while I watched Lulu trundle across the harpoon cable. “The warden of this place wants to see me succeed? Sure.”

“Ugh.” Angel grunted as she dropped to the ground from the end of the line, stumbling forward a step. She dashed her arm over her forehead, looking over at me with tired pale eyes. “Finally, we’re here.”

“You ready?” I swiveled my muzzle toward her, panting from the heat.

“As ready as I can be. All of this was to test our endurance and our gear.” She nodded, and reached out to pat Lulu as the Limne dropped to the ground and blobbed over to me. “Stamina potions all around, and then we breach.”

“Oohoo!” Lulu chirped cheerfully. “Moo stoomooma goo!”

“You got it.” I stood by Angel drew two slim orange vials from her belt. Her lips twitched as she uncorked one.

“Say AHHH! Here comes the airplane,” she fingerspelled, then laughed.

“Ahhhh.” I banished Chorus’s dark talk and made a show of drinking while Angel poured the potion into my mouth. When it was down, I smacked my jaws a couple of times. Before I realized what I was doing, I leaned in and licked her across the cheek. “Thanks mom.”

Angel’s cheeks flushed an even brighter red, and I pulled back with a start. We met eyes for a moment… and something passed between us. Some energy, something that should have been impossible between a human and a monster.

“No worries. Hah… better get that harpoon loaded in. I think we’ll need to set it up again inside,” she signed.

“Yeah…” She turned, and I saw her bite her bottom lip just before she furtively uncorked and drank her own stamina potion.

Lulu bounced impatiently in front of the door while we made our last-minute preparations: ammo, buffs, food. I reeled the harpoon in and set it in my quickbar for rapid deployment. We had four harpoons left. Once we were done, the three of us faced the door. I touched it, and it flared with a pure blueish-white light before swinging open… into a mud pit.

Angel retched from the intense sulphureous reek that billowed out of the open gate. Other than what looked like a ring of geyser vents, the arena was nothing but mud and flat stones about the size of a football field. There was no cover, other than shallow niches in the walls of the enormous lava dome that arched like a giant fanged mouth over our heads. The mud was just thick enough for me to walk on, blooping as it vented yellowish, rotten-egg gas. The gas formed a knee-high veil of fog that obscured the ground from easy view, at least from a human vantage point. All in all... it was terrible. But strangely, it wasn't as hot in here as it was outside. The thermometer dropped from a crushing 125 degrees down to a comparatively pleasant 90.

"I don't see a sacrificial altar or anything," Angel signed. "And no alerts."

"That's a good thing, right?" I padded in, but froze as all the spines and sensory bristles on my skin lifted. Suddenly, I was shivering in the still-oppressively hot air. My instincts were driving me to step back, and I had to force myself to stay in place. Lulu quivered around my body, shivering and silent. "Hey, Angel. Let’s stick close to those flat stones as much as possible. Something about this place is giving me and Lulu both the heebie-jeebies."

"Weird arena, for sure," she signed back, hopping up onto one of the big flat stones. "And still no spawn notification. I wonder if we're missing something-"

The gate behind her snapped shut before her hands stopped moving. And then the room began to rumble - subtly, at first, and then harder. As the earth shook, the solid mud squeezing between my toes liquefied, and suddenly, I was elbow-deep in the stuff.

[You have summoned Karkinos! The Daeva will spawn in 10, 9, 8...]

I dug my tentacles around me and frantically jerked and pulled my way free of the now-liquid arena, scrambling up onto a platform across from Angel’s. All around us, mud began to swirl and seethe. The steam vents dotted throughout the pool trembled, then erupted with frothing white plumes of boiling water.

"Can't say I like this. Arena should let me take it out to dinner at least once before unloads the white stuff all over us." I watched the water spew over the mud, heating and thinning it... and the stone plate under my feet shifted, sliding in toward the center of the swirling mud. “Oh man… here we go!"

Angel was flat against the ground, shouting something - but she couldn't hear herself and we couldn't hear her over the roar of the behemoth shape forming at the center of the tempest.

"Don't worry! It's just a crab!" I thought to Angel and Lulu both, clinging to the stone and surfing it as the mud bucked in waves underneath us. "Crab bosses are always weak in the le-"

A massive claw punched its way up out of the silt and slammed down, nearly flipping our makeshift raft. This was not a normal crab. The claw - in addition to being really long - was covered in what looked like sea anemone tubules, each tipped with a primitive eye. As Karkinos dragged himself out, my primal fear of insects crawled up my throat... because he wasn't a cute roundish crab with a blue shell that turned red when you boiled it. No... this was some horror-show lovechild between a coconut crab, a tentacle monster, and an honest-to-god tick. Its teardrop-shaped body had two pincers and eight stubby, thick legs, each one also covered in a mat of long hairs. Each of its pincers were twice as long as its body and multijointed, able to bend at three different 'elbows'. In addition to the hairs, the mammoth yeti crab was covered in spines and mineralized outgrowths.... outgrowths that spewed jets of boiling water in all directions as its health bar filled.

"Okay. Maybe the legs aren't the weakness," I finished belatedly. "At least it'll be-"

Karkinos' enormous claws blurred, lifting and smashing into the dangerously hot liquid surface underneath us and sending the floating stone rafts careening into the walls.

“-slow,” I finished, with a sigh.

Lulu squeaked with fear as I jumped up and out for the next floating platform. Before I reached it, Karkinos smacked me out of the air and into a wall with enough force to send cracks through the rock.

[You have taken 310 reduced impact damage.]

"You have to be fucking kidding me!" Compared to Vanara, Karkinos was an actual fucking god. I peeled myself out of the Noodles-shaped crevice, scanning frantically for Angel. She’d hopped to a platform heaving on the surface of what was now just dirty water, boiling and hot enough to kill. She clung to it with gritted teeth, red-faced and panting, her gun clutched in one white knuckled hand. The entry to the dungeon was already mostly submerged. And as the top edge of the door vanished under the churning water, a ten-minute timer appeared.

Just wonderful.