“I’m dying,” I thought as I ran. “I haven’t gotten anything done and I’m dying.”

Red flashed in my vision as I vaulted over a broken pillar managing not to fall down at the other side. I wasn’t that much of a gamer, but I sure understood what red in the corners of your vision meant.

And it wasn’t ever good.

It had all started as soon as I had opened the door.

As things had gone so far, I was kinda expecting some music, maybe some time to set up, to get into position, but no, the moment that stone door had opened, I was dragged into the room by a large black mass.

And it scratched and bit on my body as it dragged me over the stone floor.

I waved my arms and legs around blindly in that dark, trying to grab onto something or to push whatever this thing was away from me, and as I flailed, I felt something squish under my fist with a satisfying crunch.

As if reacting to the sound, the mass kind of… released me and pushed away, not for long, but long enough to stand up and begin running away on the opposite direction.

The door had closes behind me, so I began moving along the walls taking as much of the situation as I could.

The room was big, bigger than any I had been before. It looked a lot like a meeting hall in a large hotel, but a hotel that had been abandoned back in the 60’s and that had been absorbed by rot and water. Pillars and large stones laid on the floor, making it difficult to just run, and the only light source was a large skylight in the ceiling and a lot of the same bioluminescent mushrooms I had seen all over the floor.

In the center of the room was a large pile of blue mushroom, like the one I had used as my training buddy before, sending soft blue light all over the place.

And moving behind me, like a wave of black destruction, moved a large… huge… indescribable amount of… almost regular cockroaches.

I say almost because, although each was, indeed, about the size of my foot, they looked like normal cockroaches.

Normal… giant cockroaches.

And they worked all together, as one entity.

“Shit! Fuck!” I yelled, unsure of what to do in this situation. Sure, I could fight a couple foot-soldiers, but it’s not like I could punch my way through thousands of ravenous cockroaches now, could I.

Especially not now that my vision was flashing red after being attacked by them for less than one minute. “I fucking hate roaches!” I said, jumping over a rock and almost tripping on a mushroom.

I had to think of something, and I had to think fast.

I changed directions and moved towards the large pile of mushrooms at the middle of the room. The roaches were fast and relentless, but they didn’t seem to be especially intelligent. If half the mas had moved in the opposite direction it could have trapped me in seconds, but seeing as it hadn’t proved that I still had something it lacked.

One half functioning brain.

I jumped through the mushrooms, trying not to disturb them too much, and went over the hill of rubble and out of the other side. As I had thought they would, the wave of darkness just… crashed through them in its attempt to reach me, sending spores flying everywhere.

I grinned. I reached backwards and grabbed the small oil lamp that hung from my backpack.

I wasn’t sure about here, but back home there had been an accident back when I was little. I had dropped a bag of flour on the kitchen floor trying to help my mom make pancakes, completely filling the room with flour. My mom had been trying to calm me down when the flame of the oven reached the floating flour.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

My mom never recovered her hearing on her right ear, I still have a scar on my left shoulder.

It’s called a dust explosion.

“Fuck you!” I yelled, spinning in place and throwing my now lit oil lamp onto the floating cloud of spores.

The reaction was almost immediate. The flame touched the spores and it expanded quickly, creating a large fireball that exploded outwards from the place of contact. I was pushed back by a surprisingly strong expansive force that sent me rolling backwards onto a half broken pillar.

The air filled with the acrid smell of burning spores, and my ears rang like a broken alarm clock. Flames danced across the room, casting wild shadows that made the mushrooms seem alive.

From the pillar, I could see the result of my impromptu science experiment. The massive wave had been stopped dead in its tracks, and now half of them laid on their backs, steam still coming from them.

The other half had been propelled all over the room, scattering them all over and crushing them against whatever surfaces they had ended up crashing against. “Did I win?” I asked myself as the explosion still rang in my ears.

As if in cue, I heard a faint ding coming from my PDA. I took it out and looked at it.

Congratulations! You have defeated a Level 10 Cockroach Scourge Wave!

+25 Experience.

Level up! Level up!

Achievement: Let there be Light.

“Cockroach Scourge Wave?” I asked. “Wasn’t this supposed to be the Cockroach…” My thoughts were cut short as I heard skittering coming from the now broken skylight. I trembled as I looked up.

“You killed my children…” Whispered the thing slithering into the room.

The thing let go of the ceiling and fell to the floor a few meters in front of me, ironically crushing a few more of the smaller insects with its six feet. “Now… My next children will grow in you…”

Its form was… strange. My brain could kind of identify it as a cockroach, but at the same time, the large, bulging abdomen made it kind of look like one of those pictures you see online of a ant queen.

And worse of all, it pulsated.

“Oh… Come on!” I yelled, dragging myself to my feet. “That was a mid boss!?”

The Queen didn’t even let me take a breath before it lunged at me with its pincers open. The thing was large, huge, about the size of a fucking horse, but it wasn’t too fast, probably because its six legs had to move the weight of that disgusting abdomen it carried around.

I dodged to one side, the Queen’s pincers closing on the concrete pillar I had been resting against, cracking it.

I threw a punch against its unprotected side, but only managed to hurt my own wrist in the process. It’s chitin was harder than anything I had punched, ever.

“Don’t run!”As the creature turned around, setting its compound eyes on me, I was able to clearly see where it had been speaking from. From within the pincers, I could see a very human mouth screaming at me to stop moving.

“Holy shit!” I said, dodging another attack and running towards the back of the bug. “That’s just plain creepy!”

As the Queen struggled to turn around, I took out my stick and stabbed it with all my might on the bulging sack which, to my utter delight, drenched me in transparent liquid and half formed cockroach eggs. I had to give it my all not to puke as the queen screamed in agony.

I ran and jumped, landing on top of the now sagging sack and ran until I stood about halfway in the queen’s body. “Sorry, girl, but I’m taken, can’t really stay with you tonight.”

I raised my left arm, where I had my wooden shield on, and punched with all my might, hitting the chitin not with my hand but with the edge of the shield. Up until now the larger cockroaches had had a weak point in the same place, right in the middle of their thorax, and I was guessing this one would have that too.

It cracked. Not enough to kill it, but enough for it to feel it, as it began to move around trying to push me off of it. But I didn’t let it move me. I grabbed onto the broken carapace as I pummeled the back of the insect’s thorax with my shield, breaking through the chitin as black ichor began to pour out of the open wound.

But as spine-chilling human screams filled the room, the creature wasn’t dying. Before, a punch or a stick had been enough to destroy whatever core kept these things alive, but this one was too large, too thick, there was still something else I had to do to kill it. I repeated the name of the achievement in my mind as I drove my hand into the open wound. “Elbow Deep.”

As I drove my hand onto the squishy interior, I felt something snap inside of me and began to puke uncontrollably. I grabbed onto something and pulled, taking out of the beast a large black crystal.

The Cockroach queen stopped screaming instantly, falling prone onto the ground, immobile.

Ding! I heard coming from my PDA, probably signaling the end of the battle.

“I…” I said, letting myself off of the monster. “I need a shower… or two…”

Every muscle ached, and my wrist throbbed where I’d punched the Queen’s unholy armor. My body was a walking bruise, but I was alive. I looked at my blackened hand, the strange crystal that felt warm in my hand and my overall disgusting clothes as I peeled a roach egg from my drenched t-shirt. “Yeah, maybe three showers…”

Congratulations! You have defeated a Level 1 Cockroach Queen floor Boss!

+35 Experience.

Level up! Level up!

Item: Black Core Crystal

Skills: Cockroach levels up to level 3. Your resilience has grown. +4 points to Constitution. Resistance to most poisons and increased stamina regeneration for 5 minutes after taking a hit.