Mina entered the third tunnel from the left, and she immediately felt the air shift as she stepped inside.

It became instantly more humid and warmer, and for a moment, she questioned her decision to wear her Mages’ robes.

She shook her head. She was glad she was not burdened with heavy armor like James, but she felt certain she would be glad of whatever minimal protection the robe offered. Unlike her husband, she did not have nine lives.

Mina drew her Alder Wood Wand and held it firmly at her side, ready to cast more forcefully and more quickly than she ever had in a combat situation before.

“So, any type of monster in particular you were hoping to fight, Mina?” Carol’s voice asked through the walls.

“Oh, no, I guess I’m just looking to get stronger in general,” Mina said a little nervously. “I don’t suppose you have ideas based on my performance on previous visits?”

“Well, I have a couple of options you can face,” Carol said. “You did well against ethereal enemies before. Do you want to try more physical enemies this time?”

Mina nodded at once. That was her problem. Physical weakness. She needed to be able to beat physically stronger enemies. That was what she had to train for. She had yet to meet anyone who was definitely magically stronger than her. It was possible that some of the spellcasters she’d met—Alice, Zora, Mitzi, or more than one of them—might be more powerful, but somehow, she doubted she would lose a face to face struggle with sheer magical power to any of them.

Alice’s powers were very specific and seemed like they would provide her little protection against offensive magical attacks. Zora’s powers created minions more than helping her defend herself directly. And Mitzi did not seem to have gone through Class Evolution yet, so Mina should theoretically have the advantage there too.

But none of that would mean anything if whoever she was fighting simply got in close and punched her in the face.

“All right,” Carol continued. “More physical enemies, check. Are you afraid of bugs?”

“Um, no,” Mina lied. “I’m fine. Bugs sound great!”

Face your fears, she told herself. You’ll get stronger and braver. Kill two birds with one stone.

She pictured giant cockroaches and shuddered slightly despite herself.

“You’ve got it, then. I have just the thing. I don’t know if you like old scary movies, but if you do, you’re in for a treat!” Carol sounded excited.

“Um, all right,” Mina said, swallowing. It would be all right. She would make certain of that. She could face whatever was waiting at the end of these stairs.

“Do you want to know more about the challenge ahead?” Carol asked.

Mina sighed. “Yes, please.”

Carol began to explain, with many references to the plot of some old science fiction movies that Mina had never seen. The explanation was not exactly helpful, though. Carol was far more interested in discussing theories about the origins of the movie monsters and different installments in the franchise than she was in explaining strengths, weaknesses, and general attributes of the creatures.

Mina just got a vague idea that the monsters were scary bugs that could rip humans apart but should also be vulnerable to almost any attack that could injure a human. They were not vulnerable to cold or acid, but bullets and explosives should do as much harm as they would to anything else.

I guess Carol was very well suited to becoming a Dungeon Core, Mina thought. The world of pop culture has given her a lot of ideas for monsters…

She barely noticed as the climate in the tunnel changed again with her continued descent, growing cooler and drier this time.

Mina reached the bottom of the tunnel and found herself looking into a strange space. She scoped out the room before she entered. The walls were all a sterile pure white color, and they appeared to be made out of a space-age material.

“Where did you get…”

She had started to ask how Carol acquired what appeared to be either very strong and fancy plastic or painted white metal, but the question was pointless. This was a fantastical setting pulled straight from science fiction. Carol apparently had all the resources she needed running the Dungeon with so many and such frequent guests.

Mina instead studied the details of the setting, looking for any clues that would help her survive. There was a ladder in the middle of the room, a hard white material like almost everything else. There were seats, arranged in a ring around the ladder. The room itself seemed to be circular, and it faced out into a long, slightly darker hallway that shifted the setting’s aesthetic from pure white and lifeless to mechanical, a bit like a boiler room.

The scene did remind Mina of something from science fiction.

A long time ago, she and James had seen a showing of “2001: A Space Odyssey” in their local independent theater. This room showed a similar aesthetic. She couldn’t remember if there had been anything like the boiler room hallway in that movie, but it would make sense if there had been.

Carol did say that the setting was theoretically space…

She had made sure to add that Mina did not need to worry about the vacuum of space, though.

The Witch paused a moment, then shook her head. It was time to stop worrying and learn to love these life or death situations as her husband did.

She pasted a smile on her face and stepped through the portal.

Instantly, something moved at the corner of her vision.

Mina turned, and she saw something tiny on the ground quickly scuttle out of her field of vision. The thing was so fast and stood so low to the ground that she did not get a very good look at it. She only had an idea that it was an invertebrate of some sort—something she would have thrown a shoe at in the pre-System days.

That probably would not suffice now.

It hid behind the circle of chairs, she thought. It’s smaller than I would have imagined from Carol’s description…

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

She stepped further into the room and made a long loop around the circular space, keeping her back to a wall at all times, so the creepy crawly thing could not sneak up on her even if it managed to move across her field of vision somehow without her noticing.

As she rounded a corner, she saw a human lying on the ground. The strange invertebrate thing was there, too.

It lay on the man’s face, its legs seemingly clasped tightly around his head.

Either this was a really creepy movie, or Carol has a very messed up imagination…

Mina’s first instinct was to kneel down and try to rescue the man, but she hesitated to do that for several obvious reasons.

First, this was probably not a real human being. If it were a fellow Dungeon-goer, Carol would have noted that there was someone already in the Dungeon. She had mentioned that the easy and medium mode Dungeon levels were occupied, but not this one. So, ninety percent or higher chance, this was not a real person.

Second, the monster was clearly not dead. It was alive and dangerous.

Third, the creature was sitting perched in front of her, calmly waiting, not skittering in the other direction. Ergo, it did not perceive her as a threat. Most things in nature were more afraid of you than you were of them. But not this thing. There was likely a reason for that.

Fourth, she could see the man’s chest still rising and falling gently. He was breathing. For whatever reason, this thing did not appear to be attacking him directly. If she put herself within the bug’s striking distance, it might not be so gentle with her—or it might turn more aggressive to the human whose face it perched on, though Mina did not believe it was a real person.

What would James do? Mina thought.

Of course, she knew the answer immediately. He would solve the problem in the simplest way possible and not waste too much time deliberating.

Mina quickly poured Mana into the wand, charged a fireball, and launched it straight at the invertebrate thing.

The fireball struck and exploded, blowing the monster and most of the human’s head apart.

Chunks of bug landed as far as a few feet away from the explosion site, but happily nowhere near Mina, who had remained standing back against the furthest wall that she could see the creature from. She winced at the sight and smell of the chunks of insect—the body was filled with an ugly yellow mucus, and the chunks gave off an acrid smell like the aftermath of pepper spray. She was glad she had remained distant from the zone of impact—especially as the floor began to dissolve where the bug’s mucus had touched it.

Mina took an involuntary step back before the alerts struck her.

Did Carol mention the acid blood? Mina wondered. I would think I would have remembered that. I feel like she just told me I would want to keep the enemies at a distance—for reasons that seem obvious now.

[You killed Perfect Parasite Lv. 10! You gained 120 exp!]

[You killed Fake Human Lv. 1! You gained 10 exp!]

Well, I’m glad he wasn’t real, she thought. And glad the thing is dead. Now where’s the rest of the level?

It was strange to think of this bug hunt as a physical challenge, but she supposed that if the bugs could move fairly quickly, it was at least a good test of her Agility. In the confined space, she would need to be fast to kill them and evade the acid blood.

Seeing how the floor had partially dissolved, and she could see the next floor beneath it—the next level?—she circled back the way she had come to make her way toward the more industrial-looking part of the setting.

Mina kept her eyes peeled for more of the little bugs or any signs of movement as she went, and she raised the hand that was not holding the wand to cover her mouth. Clearly, the first room had shown her how this Dungeon’s monsters attacked, and it was an ambush aimed at the face, probably using that acidic blood substance.

She would rather take acid to her hand than to her face, since the former could always be healed, and the latter would almost surely be fatal in a combat situation.

She stepped to the threshold that separated the initial room from the boiler room-like hallway and then advanced into that second space, lined with pipes, lights, and valves that she could not guess the purpose of.

Mina gingerly moved her hand close to the pipes on one side of the wall to make certain that she could walk with her back to it safely, without burning herself. The pipes all felt cold, so she turned her back and pressed herself up against them. She had just begun inching her way slowly down the hallway when she heard a strange noise from behind her.

She turned to the room she had entered from, and she saw the corpse of the Fake Human whose head she had blown up.

The body was dead, if it had ever been alive in any sense, but somehow, it was still moving.

It took her a moment to pin down exactly what it was that was in motion.

When she saw it, her heart skipped a beat.

The dead man’s chest was still rising and falling—only now it was moving far more violently than it had when the Fake Human was alive.

What the…?

The ribs rose up and down repeatedly, frantically, as if something was trying to tear its way through their center—and then something did!

A small shape burst through the rib cage, and Mina let loose a small scream.

“What the hell?!”

She fired a burst of flame from the wand, but it missed. She fired another blast, but the little creature hopped out of the way. It was nimbler than the first one had been. Before she could fire another shot, it scurried away and escaped into one of the holes that the first monster’s blood had made.

Mina rushed in to look down the hole after it.

Crap! What the heck are these things?

Carol’s explanation had been scattered and had focused far too much on the plot of these old science fiction movies, which was hard to follow for someone who had never seen them.

Mina did not even feel that she adequately understood how to kill these things.

No, that’s not right, she reminded herself. I already killed one. She smiled grimly. I know that fire will do the trick, whereas cold temperatures will not. And I know that these creatures are predators.

Mina considered the problem she faced. Finding the monster that had fled from her. Blowing it away with fire. A simple problem in a sense. The hard parts were finding the creature or allowing it to find her and not being surprised by it.

She began immediately working on her plan.

When she had thought it through, she returned to near the entrance of the level and sat down with her back to the tunnel she had come in by. She began casting water magic, and she conjured a larger amount of water than anything she had created before.

Seeing how sneaky and small the creatures were, she intended to make it impossible for her to be surprise attacked.

Mina finished casting, and a giant pool of water that half filled the room appeared—and moved according to her Will.

She used almost half of it to seal up the only doorway that led further into the Dungeon, spread another large chunk over the area of the floor that had dissolved because of the first creature’s corrosive blood, and then distributed the rest of the water to cover every exposed inch of wall and ceiling in the room.

Then Mina closed her fist, and the water turned solid. In an instant, every surface of the room was covered in ice—except one area. She had left one small opening in the part of the floor that had been spattered with acid blood. A little hole, just barely large enough for the creature she had seen, that she could watch.

If these bugs were predators, the monster would come for the one living organism that remained in its habitat sooner or later. She could wait a while.

It would think the hole in her defenses was an accident.

Mina shifted her position so that she had a direct line of sight on the hole, she sat, and she waited.