The hobgoblin whirled to face him, a growl tickling the base of its throat—

Zane chucked a spear at its head. He’d picked it up from the two goblins just then. He figured he could make good use of them.

The hobgoblin reacted like anyone would react when a spear was thrown at their head. It ducked.

Then the other spear slipped neatly into its belly. Distract it with a shot up high, then strike down low. He was feeling pretty good about his little trick.

Until he looked up, just in time for the hobgoblin spear to crack him so hard the shaft snapped into showering splinters. He went reeling, gasping.

So his guess was unfortunately right. The hobgoblin was much stronger than him.

He wobbled back, trying to get his bearings. The hobgoblin wrenched the little spear out of its gut, but the head was still lodged inside. Snarling, it tossed the shaft. Then it came for him shrieking, fists flying.

Something was bleeding on Zane's face, his nose, his lips, both. He licked his lips, tasted his own blood, and grinned a bloody grin.

He clocked it hard in the ear and slapped it up with a hook. Then he took a claw to the gut and fist up the face.

Warning! Health under 75%

That fast?

He’d love to go punch for punch with this thing. Sadly, it'd probably kill him. When the thing punched him, his head rattled like a gong; it was still buzzing.

So the next time it swung, he dove for its legs. They bowled over each other. It slapped chicken wing elbows at Zane’s head; he felt its spittle searing his eyes. Then it devolved into a catfight, slapping, crawling, punching, awkwardly flailing. Neither of them could get to their feet. When one tried scrambling up, the other dragged it down, and they were tearing at each other again.

The problem was, it seemed to be doing a much better job of it. Zane's eyes were swelling shut; his torso felt like a block of wood, just one rigid stretch of burning pain. His head felt woozy, far too light—

Warning! Health under 50%

It bit at him. Oh, is that what we’re doing? So he bit back, latched onto a flap of ear, and jerked his head like a bulldog gnawing a bone. The hobgoblin howled—with one last jerk Zane tore it clean off, and grinned. Then, as the hobgoblin clutched at its bleeding ear he jammed a thumb into its eye. It howled louder, cringing, turning away from him.

He got his arms around its throat and firmed a chokehold.

It gagged, it slapped at his head, left bloody marks streaking down his face, but he wouldn't let go. He was grinning like a madman now; he just had to hold this; he had it locked tight. Just a little longer, and there'd be no more blood going to the thing's brain. It tried clawing at his arms, but they were locked too tight. It tried elbowing him in the ribs, but when Zane was this hot pain lost all meaning. He started to laugh.

Warning! Health under 25%

Then the hobgoblin bent over, like a football player preparing to sprint. Zane saw the giant boulder not twenty feet away.

Ah, fuck.

The hobgoblin ran for it. It probably thought Zane would let go. Any sane person would, when their skull was rushing at a shelf of stone.

But Zane was enjoying himself far too much, and he could feel the hobgoblin flagging, could feel it stumbling, its slaps weakening, getting desperate. He didn't even consider it. Instead, he held on tighter, closed his eyes, and told his body, Whatever happens, don't you fucking dare let go—

His face struck the rock, and all went black.

***

When he woke up, he was pleasantly surprised to find he was not dead. Instead, the hobgoblin was gone, and there was a box in his face.

Level up!

Essence Level 3->4

He blinked at the stone and saw a little crack where his face had struck it. So apparently it worked. His body hadn’t let go. Neat. Sadly the battle fervor was past, and he was cooled now; he couldn’t properly enjoy his victory. Ah, well. It was fun while it lasted.

Shading his eyes, he looked up. The sun was hardly past midday. And there were plenty of red dots still left on his mini map…

He didn't consider himself a very complicated person. After today, it was clearer than ever—he was happy when he was fighting, he was unhappy when he wasn't. So he picked out the nearest red dot, and made himself happy.

By sundown, he'd leveled up four more times. He wasn't sure how many goblins that was, maybe a dozen? There was a hobgoblin in the mix, too. That one was level 7, and it had given him a good tussle. For that he was grateful.

Now he was calm again, and the stars were dotting the sky. He found a secluded spot in a nearby grove, an alcove hidden beneath a tangle of vines. There, he settled down and thought.

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It was remarkable how easily he lost track of time in this place. He was starting to think it wasn't a hallucination or a dream. In some ways, it felt more real than reality. He certainly felt more alive in here than he ever had out there.

Even after hours, nothing had changed. This illusion, if it was an illusion, was still going. It didn’t matter, really—bottom line, he was here now, and he had to deal with it. How long could he expect to be here? Another week? A month, even?

He couldn’t be the only one in here, could he? He'd been so caught up in his hunting he hadn't really sat down to think about it, not until now. There were quite a few notifications he'd just skipped past, especially in the beginning. If he just thought back to them, would they—

Planet: Earth, codename TXL8491, has been successfully integrated into the Celestial Imperium. Planetary Grade: E.

Terraforming Complete.

Dungeon Creation Complete.

Dungeons Generated: 114,183.

Safe Zones Generated: 0.

Area Covered: 196.94/ 196.94 million square miles.

That was the one. Most of it still made no sense, but he thought about that "dungeons generated" line and the area covered. When he looked up at the night sky, it was the same. He was just about in the same spot, only everything had changed around him—had been terraformed into a dungeon. Apparently, the rest of Earth had been changed too, or so the boxes said. They hadn't been wrong so far…

So what did it mean for him?

He found he didn’t much care.

He was always a loner—it was why he chose wrestling over sports like football. Talking to people exhausted him; he wasn't really close to many in real life. The closest thing he had to a friend was Daryl, a security guard at the warehouse, and even then, they communicated exclusively in passing nods. He had more luck with a few online friends he gamed with, but he only knew most of them by username. That was pretty much it. As for family… he hadn't spoken to his ass of a brother in years, nor did he want to. And his parents had passed years ago.

Which was all to say, he was pretty much alone. No one counted on him. He was free to do as he liked.

He leaned back on a bed of soft mosses and stared up at the stars. If he was honest, if he had a choice, he didn’t want to go back. He wanted to stay here and fight his heart out—fight until something big finally ate him. Sounded like a fun way to go.

He went to sleep smiling.

***

Next morning he did some poking around, and discovered he could pull up his stats just thinking about them, the same way he pulled up the mini map.

Zane Walker

Class: Warrior (I)

Spirit Tool: N/A

Titles: N/A

Laws: N/A

Essence Level 8

Stats:

Vitality: 6.5

Regeneration: 1.7

Strength: 6.3

Dexterity: 2.4

Speed: 2.0

There was something strangely pleasant about watching those little numbers tick up and up. He usually found it hard to take pleasure in things most people liked. He was indifferent to most foods. He never cried at TV, movies, or books, and the only games he like were fighting games. That and chess, weirdly.

In any case, this scratched an itch he didn't know he had.

He also deeply enjoyed what his body could do now. His strength had gotten obscene. He could probably rip a tree clean off the ground, roots and all, if he wished. When he ran his body felt weightless. And his limbs—he’d never realized how poor his hand-eye coordination was before. Now his punches and kicks went exactly where he wanted them to go, and his balance was catlike. Once a hobgoblin had thrown kicked him off a hill, and he’d righted himself mid-air, caught a nearby branch, and launched himself right back. It all felt effortless.

And his body was a tank now. When those little level 2 or 3 goblins hacked at him with their spears, they barely left scratches; they’d be lucky to draw blood. His skin didn’t feel any less soft to the touch. But he was changing at a shocking rate. And he loved it.

He loved fighting for its own sake, but it was a lot more fun when you were stronger.

***

He’d started out near the southern edge of the Forest, but he was steadily getting deeper in. The leaves were quickly thickening, and so were the vines—sometimes he mistook them for pythons. The tree-trunks started to look like roman columns, but badly twisted, barely holding up the canopy roof which glowed a soft purple. It was so thick now hardly any natural light got through. This stretch was stranded in perpetual twilight.

Then he saw something odd on his mini-map—a bunch of red dots clustered around a yellow one. Had he stumbled upon a bunch of bathing goblins, or something?

His mini map felt like cheating. With it, he could gauge where they were headed and flank them, getting a read on them before he descended. He was perched on the upper branches of a tree when he sighted the pack.

As for the yellow dot... but there was this odd tree—its leaves were scarlet and yellow, and when the wind blew past they seemed a burning bonfire. The trunk was silver, glistening softly. But what caught Zane’s eye were the dots of silver marked out starkly against the red leaves.

Were those apples?

Going by game logic, maybe yellow marked a treasure of some kind? It would make sense. Red was things that’d hurt him, yellow was things that’d help.

There was only one way to know for sure. He’d have to try a silver apple and see.

As far as he could tell, the goblins were mostly mindless. They let their hobgoblin leader tell them what to do. The goblins were mostly Level 4 or 5; the hobgoblin, a Level 7.

He wished they were higher leveled, but he supposed they’d have to do.

He walked up front-on. He let them get a good long look at him. Please. Please, give me a fight!

They tried, to be sure. The hobgoblin scored a mean gash that ripped him from shoulder to hip. That was all it could get off before he smashed its face in. The rest of the goblins were a bore; he almost didn’t even bother disposing of them, but they kept poking him, which annoyed him. So out they went.

He sighed. The deeper he got, the stronger the goblins, it seemed—but clearly he wasn’t deep enough.

First, though, the tree. He walked up to it and squinted at the Fruit.

Moon Fruit (F)

Sacred treasure of the Emerald Forest Goblins, jealously guarded. The Moon Tree’s leaves gather essence from the moon for a full cycle, and concentrate them in Fruit. A delicacy enjoyed twice per year by the Hobgoblin Chieftain and his lieutenants.

Fascinating—he was starting to get a sense for what ‘essence’ was. It was the stuff Monsters dissolved into when they died, but it was more than that. A kind of energy. Sometimes he could feel it gently coursing through him, the way he could feel his blood subtly pulsing through him if he paid enough attention. So far he hadn’t found a way to tap into it, but just having it gave him levels, it seemed—and with levels came power-ups.

Was that right, though? When he leveled up he felt this warm tingling sensation, the same feeling when a beaten monster’s essence flowed into him—like his essence was suffusing his body. Was it instead the essence that caused his powers to go up, where the game system was just a ledger? That didn’t seem quite right, either…

This ‘essence’ was magical, true. But it felt natural, like air. He had the odd sense this game system wasn’t natural. Like it was grafted onto reality; like it shepherded reality.

“Eh.” He didn’t care enough to keep thinking about it. He picked a Moon Fruit from a nearby branch. Its skin was smooth and cool to the touch, like metal.

If he guessed right… he raised it to his lips, and bit.