Perfect, Mina thought, smiling through gritted teeth as the Perfect Predator began to lift her from beneath the other two dead creatures with its tail. This is, ow, just what I need. I have to see them to aim properly.

It was hard to think straight with an object stabbing her through the gut.

She blinked back tears and tried her best to ignore the pain of her entire body’s weight being lifted via the object that had impaled her through the stomach.

Don’t cry, Mina. Don’t you cry. You won’t be able to see them. Pain is just weakness leaving the—oh, it hurts so darned much…

The two dead monsters that lay on top of her tumbled to the side as the black bug creature raised Mina up on its tail. As the chitinous black shapes fell away, she found herself finally able to see the creature that had stabbed her.

Mina felt very weak and a bit faint, but she exercised her willpower in this moment to carefully control all the movements of her body. She kept her head slightly lowered and her eyes narrowed, trying to give the impression that she had already passed out. She forced herself to keep her wand hand at her side, still holding the Alder Wood Wand firmly but letting her arm hang almost limp. She wanted to look as helpless as possible to the creatures.

She would only get one chance at this.

As the creature slowly elevated Mina, she saw that the other surviving monster had positioned itself behind the one that was killing her. It paced back and forth restlessly, looking as if it wanted to be the one doing the slaughtering but had lost a coin toss.

Good. That positioning works…

The monster lifted her up to its head height and pulled her closer to its face. Mina saw the gigantic black head up in much tighter proximity than she would have ever wanted to. She got an excellent look at the strange, almost humanoid jaws and teeth—except that these teeth were silver and held in hard, jet-black jaws. She saw the beast’s hungry maw begin to drip with saliva. She could not see a nose or even nostrils anywhere on the head, but she could have sworn the creature sniffed her.

Somehow, Mina had the distinct feeling that it could smell her fear and her pain—and they gave this creature pleasure.

She did not allow herself to be overcome by those feelings. Even as the monster pulled her closer to its face, she kept one eye on the area behind it, tracking where the other Perfect Predator was pacing, waiting for her ideal moment to strike.

Then the mouth just in front of her face opened.

Inches away from the open maw, Mina saw a strange, hard, tongue-like appendage within the mouth. It was leveled at her head. Instinct, or a dimly recalled chunk of Carol’s exposition, told her that this was the creature’s preferred killing implement.

The pacing monster behind the one holding her turned its body and began to move back toward the space just behind the one holding her.

Mina seized her moment.

Tilting her fist slightly to point her wand, she fired a last magic lightning bolt.

At such close range, there was no chance of dodging it for the creature that had been preparing to kill her.

The monster that held her on its tail gushed blood and looked unsteady, ready to topple over on top of her. The tail that lifted her suddenly spasmed, and then she found herself thrown violently backward in the monster’s apparent death throes. She tried to keep her presence of mind even as she was thrust helplessly backward through the air.

Did I hit the other one?

Her vision was slightly blurry as she raised her head to look, but she saw it. The second and final monster seemed to be dying. It twitched and writhed in its position directly behind the first one, in what she hoped were its last gasp movements.

That was the last look she got at the creature while they were both still alive.

Mina’s body slammed into a wall, and she groaned with pain as the impact agitated her injuries. As she landed in a seated position against the wall, she pulled the end of the long tail out of her wound. Most of it had been ejected by the dying predator’s spasm, which made her task slightly easier. Still, immediately after, blood and another mucus-like substance that she guessed was stomach acid gushed from the opening in her abdomen.

Mina’s fingers relaxed, and the wand dropped from her fist to her side. She felt like passing out. She wanted to vomit, and she felt an impulse to cover her mouth with her left hand. She could have cried.

Instead of doing any of those things, she immediately pivoted from offense to using Laying on Hands. She couldn’t rest until she made sure that she would actually wake up again. There was no one else here to heal her.

I may have bit off a little more than I could chew, she thought. I need much better defenses…

Adrenaline kept her body functional and her mind racing despite the big hole in her stomach. But she could feel it beginning to fade. At the same time, sensation that had been suppressed while she was facing imminent death was coming back throughout her body.

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“So glad I can heal,” she muttered to herself as she worked, her teeth chattering. She felt suddenly very cold. Part of that was undoubtedly the hole the stab wound had left in the Perfect Skinsuit. The air in the room was cool against her exposed skin.

But she knew most of it was the blood loss. She felt her legs soaked in her own bodily fluids as they flowed toward the bottom of the suit. Human bodies, she knew, had a limit to how much blood they could lose and live.

“Stomach wounds kill people slowly,” she said aloud, again talking to no one. “You won’t die as long as you don’t lose focus.”

Her hands maintained their green glow. She still had enough Mana to do this. Probably.

“Come on, come on, come on…”

The glow flickered for a moment—almost looked like it might go out—but she focused her mind, and it steadied again.

After a minute of this, the wound from her stomach began to feel just a bit less painful.

Then Mina felt her vision starting to go blurry in the middle and dark at the edges. She blinked it away, but it came back a few seconds later.

“Fine, I don’t need to see to heal…” Her words came out in a mumble that trailed off to nothing. She realized a little bit of drool was leaking from the edges of her lips. Her eyes couldn’t see it, but she felt it on her chin.

“That’s embarrassing, can’t let James see that…” Her voice was very quiet now.

Stay focused, she admonished herself.

Mina thought the flesh around the hole in her stomach was starting to close up. She felt a sensation of extreme weakness, and she heard a female voice shouting. “Mina! Mina! Wake up!”

I can barely hear you. You sound so far away.

Then she knew no more.

—

James jammed his flaming hand into the green ogre’s chest and pulled out its beating heart.

The monster crumpled to its knees and let out a low groan.

“Urgh…” The ogre reached toward him, as if it could take the heart back and place it inside the chest cavity again to fix the damage. Maybe it could. James did not yet know the limits of healing in this world. He suspected that it was almost limitless—except death. Once the soul had left this plane of existence, that could not be overcome.

But he held the heart just out of the dying creature’s reach anyway, his fiery hand slowly cooking the meat.

As the ogre’s eyes went completely, James took his first bite of its heart.

He really needed to start carrying salt and pepper in his magic satchel.

As he was munching on his snack, his alerts from the fighting started to hit.

[You killed Green-Skin Ogre Lv. 29! You gained 1700 exp!]

[...]

[Sufficient experience accrued. Proficient Silk Fabrication leveled up!]

[Sufficient experience accrued. Basic Elemental Magic: Gravity leveled up!]

[Sufficient experience accrued. Predator’s Strike leveled up!]

[Predator in Human Skin leveled up!]

“Oh, hey, I got a Class level and a bunch of Skill levels this time!” James muttered happily around a mouthful of semi-cooked muscle. He raised his voice slightly. “You noble ogres did not die in vain!” He chuckled and shook his head.

[Evolver Human leveled up!]

I’m a really sick person, huh? Yelling at corpses. I’ve been missing this me time.

As he bit into another hunk of ogre flesh, he got a final alert.

[Sufficient experience accrued. Omnivore leveled up!]

I guess I should get ready to go down to the final level.

James looked down the stairway that his last victim had been rushing toward when he found it. Two ogres had actually managed to escape down that darkened tunnel, running toward the final level. James did not know whether the final creatures down there would welcome their new visitors or tear them limb from limb, but he thought it was likely that whatever lived in the lowest level of the Dungeon would now have some idea that he was coming.

Not ideal.

“At least it wasn’t because I played with my food too much,” he said quietly.

James had tried to run after the ogres as soon as they started to flee from him, but he had been slowed by the ogre he had almost forgotten about—the one that had gotten itself tangled up in his web most thoroughly when the ogres were trying to push through it.

That ogre, despite being weighed down by gravity magic and bound tightly in silken webbing, had managed to reach out and grab hold of James’s foot, apparently deciding to selflessly draw the enemy’s attention so that its brethren could escape.

James quickly gave it the heroic death that it wished for, but by the time he turned back, the ogres were almost in the stairwell. He had only caught the slowest one, and that was thanks to the tunnel only having room for single-file movement by the ogres.

The remaining two ogres managed to get out of James’s line of sight before he dispatched the unlucky one, so James spent the next twenty minutes Pillaging the bodies and eating ogre meat. There was no sense in rushing after the ogres. They already knew he was probably coming after them, so it was better if he let them wait a while and begin to wonder if he might have left instead. Keep them guessing.

I wonder if Mina is going on to the last level, or if she’s quitting, James thought.

If Mina decided to call it quits, he would probably be ready to go, too. This level had featured slightly higher level monsters, and more of them, than the previous level. If the final level represented a similar escalation, it could take James some time to clear it. He wouldn’t want to keep Mina waiting while he played around down here.

“Hey, Carol, how’s Mina doing?” James asked loudly.

There was silence.

“Carol, are you there?” James said. “Can you hear me?”

He was almost ready to try his Otherworldly Shriek and see if that got the Dungeon Core’s attention, though he doubted it would work—or simply rush back out of the Dungeon the way he had come in. If something was wrong with Carol, he would definitely want to check on Mina to make sure she wasn’t affected by whatever was up with the Dungeon Core.

But Carol finally answered him.

“Sorry for the delay, James,” she said. “I was just checking in on Mina. She’s, um, successfully beaten the second level. She’s alive and in one piece.” She chuckled nervously.

James didn’t need magic rings to tell that the Dungeon Core was trying, rather poorly, to hide something from him.

“Carol, what aren’t you telling me?” he asked.