Dillard jogged down the hallway on silent feet. Through her many escape attempts, she had long learned how to move through the depths of Severin’s dungeon without making a sound. Many days and nights had been spent running through the halls and corridors dodging the arch-mage’s patrols. Many a room had been broken into. Many a lock had been picked. Many a troll had fallen to her ambushes.

She enjoyed killing. It was a pleasure.

But now was not the time for pleasure. Now was the time for escape. This last adventurer she had met, this Calista, had been far too competent. True, she had been stupid enough to let Dillard stab her, but then again, every adventurer who had ever set Dillard free - and they all did - had been stupid in that way. No, this Calista stood a good chance of defeating Severin and that meant this was possibly Dillard’s last chance at escaping.

Dillard knew the rules. She had overheard her captor explaining them to one of his summoned playthings one night after she had escaped and sneaked into his bed chamber. The egomaniac seemed to like talking to his playthings. He seemed to like talking to A.I women like they were real, like they were really listening like he had interesting things to say.

As Dillard hid in the closet, she overheard Severin say how he had been contacted by someone on ‘the other side’ who knew how to affect a consciousness transfer. He had said this other person was going to hook him up. That his consciousness would be downloaded into the game where he would live forever as an all powerful archmage. He said a lot of people were going to have this happen. That hundreds, maybe thousands were going over to the new world. He, however, was the only one who would be keeping all of his power, his level, his items, his dungeon, his army. Everyone else was going to be reset to level one.

That day, Dillard had no idea about escaping. Didn’t know it was possible. Severin had kept her in his dungeons for a long, long time. He had trapped her consciousness, she knew that. He had possibly trapped her real world body as well.

However, that night of her first escape, she had sneaked into his bed chamber with a knife she had stolen from one of the guards, hid in his closet, and waited there to kill him. However, what she got instead was something much more important. Much more. Something that meant freedom. Something that meant power. Because what she heard next was the most important thing of all.

As they were getting undressed, Severin had told his succubi plaything when the download was happening and how it was supposed to go down. He had been chosen to join the new world not only as a player but as the proud owner of a ‘Challenger’ account, which meant he was going to be a big star. He would be given the very same character he had now, with the very same powers, the very same level, and the very same horde of monsters at his disposal. And to top it all off, his exploits were going to be broadcast to the entire Universe.

All he had to do was walk through the back door.

So Dillard had stopped trying to escape and instead, started searching for that back door. Every breakout she had staged had been an effort toward that end.

She didn’t like it in the real world and the real world didn’t like her. That was what she played Sable Unlimited. In Sable Unlimited, she could be anything she wanted. She could be smart. She could be fast. She could be strong. She could be beautiful and she could be powerful.

In the real world, Dillard had a mattress on the floor in a three-room apartment. She lived with her aunt who sold her to the men and women who came by. In the real world, Dillard lived from day to day wondering why she had ever been brought into this world. That’s why, Dillard suspected, someone had come by and bought her for good and placed her in this dungeon.

It hadn’t taken her long to figure out what had happened when she found she couldn’t log out. She figured this Severin figure had come by her aunt’s apartment while she had been logged in, paid her aunt, and then taken her away. That was what she figured had happened. For a while, Dillard had wondered if there were any more like her trapped down inside this terrible place. Then she had heard Severin talking about the download and that had consumed her.

And now it was time to escape. For good.

She was somewhere on the first level now. The door had to be here somewhere.

Boot steps. She heard them rambling down the hallway. A small troop of the trolls, from the sounds of them. She hid at the corner with her knife at her side. When the first troll rounded the corner, Dillard grabbed him by the helm and opened his throat. Then, before the first troll had hit the ground, she stabbed the second troll through the eye. The third and final troll looked at her in surprise and tried to draw his sword, but she tackled him just as his hands were wrapping around the hilt. Together, they fell to the floor in a mass of violence. Dillard used her weight to push the hapless soldier to the stone, pinned his arms with her legs, and then stabbed him repeatedly through the chest until he breathed no more. When she was satisfied the last troll was finally dead, she searched their corpses, took their coin, and moved on.

She was close now, she could feel it. Somewhere on this level, she would find the door that matched with the little silver key she had stored in her pocket. Then it would be that long tunnel home. She had been that far before. She just had to remember where it all was.

It was a secret way. The back door that Severin had built into this place long ago. The only place in the entire dungeon that didn’t shift or move. The problem was that while the position of the first door itself was static, the dungeon around it was not. So while the door stayed in the same physical spot, the dungeon shifted around it and so a different room connected to it every time.

Voices now. Two of them. Trolls. The trolls. The two who had led her to the door the first time.

“You know, I’ve been thinking about what you were saying about ‘the waifus’ and all that.”

“Yeah? And?”

“And I was thinking …”

“A dangerous business.”

“… I was thinking about how a lot of anime enjoyers like the overly attached girlfriend. The whole what’s-the-name-for-it?”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“A Yandere.”

“A what?”

“A Yandere.”

“A Yanda-what?”

“I’m not saying it again.”

“Okay, a Yanda-what. I was thinking about how you said they use the trope in different types of anime and how sometimes they’re the villain and sometimes they’re the protagonist’s girlfriend and how sometimes they’re just some side character with a mental illness.”

“Yes. Mostly a kinda antagonistic comic relief, if you will. I, personally, don’t care for the Yandere, but I’m not one to judge the wants and needs of others who peruse the art form.”

“Right. Because having some weird stalker girl is only just a way of making an anime protagonist more interesting because he’s almost always some awkward guy who had no idea how to act around women and so having some weirdly hot female mental patient chase them around presents a sort of ironic twist to their otherwise boring lives.”

“I thought you said you didn’t watch the stuff.”

“I don’t.”

Smith and Smithey. She wasn’t sure what it was about the two trolls Severin employed to patrol his dungeon, but the two dullards had captured Dillard more than once, mostly through sheer dumb luck. So it was that she had learned to steer clear of actually confronting the two troll guardsmen and instead used them as guides. They knew their way around the shifting underground maze better than anyone, and so it was that the last time she had followed them, they had led her straight to the back door.

Leaving the dead bodies of the three murdered trolls, Dillard slipped back around the corner and found the nearest open doorway. Leaving it open just a hair, she waited.

“Oi! Lookit here!” the voice of Smith echoed.

“Oh great. Just great. How did they die,” Smithey drolled.

Bootsteps as the two guardsmen approached the corpses.

“Ach!” Smith cried. “Stab wounds. Look alive mate, that homicidal little waif must still be about.”

“Dillard,” Smithey sighed. “Last thing we need.”

She could hear the heavy lumbering of Smith as he nervously shifted back and forth, searching for her. “I swear, if we weren’t getting off shift, I’d make my way right down … I’d say … about thirty paces to the right.”

“Good thing we’re off shift. I don’t feel like working that hard tonight.”

“Aye, we’ve done plenty already.”

“Makes me think we might not have even seen these dead bodies,” Smithey said.

“Might be that you tell it true. They look to me to be pretty fresh as it is,” Smith agreed.

“I’m thinking they’re so fresh that they were alive and well when we last saw them.”

“Agreed.”

Finally, the two morons were moving. Dillard waited until she was certain the two guardsmen were well down the next hallway before she stepped out. Knife in hand, she fell in behind them, following the echoes of their bootsteps. They led her past the summoning chamber, past the kobold barracks, up a stairway, and down another hallway, until finally, she entered a long and wide corridor with torches and flowing tapestries along the walls.

Through the torchlight, Dillard could see the great hallway curved as it descended. Ahead of her, two shadows – one tall and thin, the other broad and hulking – were sauntering their way downward. She kept to the right, moving silently along the wall so as to stay out of the torchlight. Minutes later, she heard the two trolls come to a stop.

“She said it’s supposed to be around here somewhere, didn’t she?” Smith asked.

Smithey’s reply was sarcastic, “I have to do everything, don’t I.”

“I’ve had about enough of your lip for one night.”

“I’ve had enough of your lip for two.”

“Two of you mother.”

Dillard waited as the two trolls scuffled in a mock fight until finally, Smithey said, “Okay, okay. You win. It’s right there.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“I thought you said you didn’t know where it was.”

“I didn’t. I said ‘That’s what I thought’ because you’re a pussy-ass bitch.”

Smithey then mumbled something and then there was another scuffle.

That’s it, Dillard thought. I’m killing them on my way out.

When finally the scuffle ended, the two trolls were panting for a long while. Then, finally, someone pressed something along the wall and this was followed by the sound of stone moving. Dillard waited as the bootsteps echoed and then disappeared.

Quickly, Dillard scurried from where she was hiding to where she had last heard the trolls. Searching the wall, she found a small hole in the mortar between the bricks. It didn’t look like a keyhole, but had seen it before. Taking the small, silver key from her pocket, she pressed it into the hole and turned.

And was rewarded by a hidden doorway.

As the stone portal closed behind her, she blinked hard as her eyes adjusted to the dark. This was the hard part. This was where things got interesting. Ahead, she could hear the voices of the two dullards still talking about anime. She quickened her pace.

Jogging now, her feet silent against the stone, Dillard could hear the voices growing closer and closer. She was almost on them. She came to a corner. They were right there. Neither of them could hear her, they were talking too loud. She readied her blade.

Accelerating to a sprint, she leapt around the corner, wall jumped, and brought her blade down in a lethal stab … and hit nothing but air.

The trolls were gone.

Fine, she thought. It doesn’t matter. I’m free anyhow.

She dusted herself off, sheathed her knife in her belt, and continued down the hallway. Up she traveled now. A stairway here, an incline there, a winding corridor next. Then sound. An explosion. Shouts. Cries of pain and fury. Fire, flame, blades clashing.

Up a final stairway, she came to a high catwalk that led her over a great cavern. Below, she could see a lake of fire and lava laid out below. The dragon was fighting furiously against a robed figure high above everything else while down below a pitched battle between the trolls and two small figures was playing out on a great slab of stone.

I know just what to do here, she thought as she opened her inventory. She had only taken a few things. The knife she had was not the blade she had taken from the torture chamber. She had left that in the treasure room after she had stabbed her foolish savior, Calista. No, what she had was an assassin’s blade. Tipped with everlasting poison with magical bonuses against armor. Then there were the keys, one of which she had used, and the other with the blue gemstone that she hoped would open the final door. Then there were her provisions. She had stolen those from the kitchen and stored them in her pack. And finally, there was the green gemstone she had taken off the Delver.

Selecting the gemstone from her inventory, she held it to the light for a moment. She knew this catwalk could not be seen from below. Then, looking down, she stopped to savor the moment. Below, she could see the dragon lying wounded and dying next to a black building. She could see a man in blue robes lying near the serpent. She could see Severin floating above them, gloating no doubt. Then she spotted the Delver, climbing up atop the black building. They have no idea. Dillard relished this. She would kill them all.

A bolt of lightning shot out and bounced off Severin. A half-second later, the Delver jumped off the building and collided with the floating form of the arch-mage. Dramatic. Dillard smiled. How fitting. Almost casually, she tossed the green gemstone off the catwalk and watched its gleaming form fall into the lava below. They won’t even know what killed them.

She took off at a run, sprinting across the catwalk and up the next stairway. Explosions and the thunder of rocks falling and breaking apart followed in her wake. The ground shook beneath her feet as she bounded up the stairs. Then, a door. It was black obsidian. Selecting the gold key with the blue gemstone from her inventory, she pressed it into the keyhole and turned. The doorway rumbled, shook, and then opened.

Beyond, she saw an open field of grass and the bright light of the sun.