“Yes, yes, you did great,” Slate said irritably. “Well done and all that. You’re a healer. An ungeared healer with one ability and no soul stones. You can queue and you’ll get your whole party killed and then where will I be? Stuck in that bar for another ten million years. You have any idea how high my tab is? Argos isn’t going to keep extending me credit forever. You twerps need to listen to my advice if we ever want to get off this rock.”

They were ignoring him. Rick still felt the rush from the healer trial. He could do this. Sure, gear would help, but how was he going to get gear without running a trial?

An icon was flashing in his vision. He pulled it up.

[You have earned a new ability!] His skill tree unfolded. There, in the same quadrant as his Force Wave, was a new grouping. The bottom image in the group was lit up. He focused on it.

[Protection. Protects your target from damage equal to 50% of your health. Recharge: 5 seconds. Duration: 8 seconds]

“I got a shield!” He shared the information with the group.

Daniel smiled. "There you go then. Good to go." He turned to Rick expectantly. "Go ahead, put us in the dungeon queue."

Gambit cracked his knuckles. “I’m bored standing around here. Let’s do it.”

“Ugh,” Slate groaned. “Well, fine. I’ll show you how. You’re not going to get to the top of the queue any time this week anyway.”

Rick opened the party interface. Under a submenu called 'group quests,' a menu opened up, similar to the quest board. There were a lot of options. Slate walked him through it. "You can sort by difficulty and level requirements. If you select the lowest few, you can actually get into more than one queue at a time. Then it'll pop up with 'complete my party' options since you have three already.”

Rick found the “Looking for More” option. [Complete your group?] He selected that they needed a tank - shield icon -- and a damage dealer – sword icon. The healer icon was a green plant. It had already appeared next to his own name. Both Gambit and Daniel were registered by the system as damage dealers.

"Once you have your roles selected and the dungeons you want highlighted, just choose ‘accept.’”

Rick nodded. “Okay." He selected all four dungeons appropriate to their level, hoping to get to visit the Butterfly Garden Vista one. That sounded nice.

Slate rubbed his top two hands together. "Alright, let's talk about where you're going to go level --"

He was interrupted by a large system pop-up. [Your dungeon is ready. Hit 'accept' to be placed into the Catacombs of Flesh and Bile.]

Daniel gave a triumphant cry.

"That was fast," Gambit commented.

Rick was staring at the name. "I'm not sure we should—"

Daniel vanished.

"Oh shit. Don't do it, you're not ready. I don't want to wait another million years," Slate wailed. "You'll die, and I'll have to—" His voice cut off as Rick clicked 'accept.'

The encampment faded around him, and the world turned black, lit only by flickering green lights. Rick's eyes took an instant to focus. Then, glowing crystals embedded in the walls swam into focus. He had appeared in a cavern that stretched off in both directions.

Daniel and Gambit appeared next to Rick a moment later. Daniel was standing nearby, looking around apprehensively at the darkness.

"Now what do we—" Daniel was interrupted by a pop-up announcement.

[Boss fight started!]

A deep, rumbling voice echoed through the cavern. "Fools! Now you have come into my lair. Prepare to face the ultimate power of Zargo-Wan the Necromancer."

[Phase two started!] popped up on the screen even as the first message vanished.

There was a bar in the upper corner of Rick’s screen that looked like a health bar, but it was rapidly emptying out, like a loading bar going in reverse. It was labeled “Zargo-Wan”. Multiple status icons hovered over the bar, appearing and disappearing too quickly for him to register.

Gambit had his spear up and was spinning around in all directions. "I don't see a boss!” he yelled. “Where’s the fight?”

"Enough!" the deep voice shouted just as the bar turned yellow. A pop-up appeared saying [Phase three!]

There was an explosion of light off to Rick's left. He spun. Gambit started trotting across the cavern towards it, weaving between pillars of rock, and Rick followed. The bar on the screen dwindled.

“Insolent fools!" the voice shouted.

The next popup appeared. [Phase four!]

And then the health bar was empty.

[Victory!]

There was a long, drawn-out rattling cry. The stone floor trembled as if something heavy had fallen on it.

A party chat message appeared: Arthax, you're crazy man! You're going to get us all killed! I couldn’t even get to that boss.

Even before the message faded, an announcement appeared. [Boltar the Brave (tank) has left the party.]

"Shit.” Rick called ahead to Gambit, "We’ve got no tank."

"I don't think we'll need one." Gambit sounded amused.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Rick and Gambit rounded a large boulder, Daniel close behind. They stepped into a wide-open space where the floor was smooth, the boulders and stalagmites helpfully forming a boundary around the area. Flickering torches lined the perimeter of the circle. A large, dead form lay slumped in the middle of the ring.

Rick and Gambit skidded to a halt almost at the same instant. Daniel came jogging up behind an instant later. "What is it? What's going on?"

"It was a boss," Gambit said. “And we missed the fight.”

They strode forward but Gambit touched the boss corpse first. When Rick touched it, the loot table was empty [Looted by Arthax the Indomitable (master looter)].

“Who the hell is Arthax the Indomitable?” Gambit demanded.

There was a flicker of movement beyond the dark shape. Someone in a long, dark cloak was headed for the edge of the cavern. “Him, I bet,” Rick said. “Come on.” He took off after the figure.

"I don't understand," Daniel yelled from behind as he raced to catch up with the other two. "What's going on?"

"It's difficult to explain," Rick shouted back.

"Not that difficult," Gambit called. Neither one of them slowed down. "We joined into a dungeon already in progress. Somebody just killed that boss insanely fast. Either I don't understand the balance of this system, or they're way too high a level for this dungeon."

They slowed as they reached the edge of the cavern. In the wall of stone was an archway, smoothly cut. Rick stopped and glanced through. "It looks clear."

Gambit charged through.

"What are we doing?" Daniel asked as he skidded to a stop next to Rick. Rick ducked into the tunnel, and Daniel followed a moment later. "We could run straight into something too strong for us."

Rick trotted down the corridor next to Daniel. The walls were fitted stone, and the whole place felt damp. "Someone up there just killed that boss in about eight seconds. He's way higher level and probably way better geared than us, and he's going to tear through this place in no time at all."

"How do you know that?”

Gambit called back, “Did you see the fight phase announcement? Those aren't supposed to take a half a second. In a boss fight, things change. You get him halfway down and suddenly he starts using different abilities, or it changes the battleground. There's all kinds of different ways game designers spice things up. But the phases aren't supposed to be that quick. A boss isn't supposed to die that fast. And we hadn't even arrived yet. That means one, or maybe two, people killed that thing in record time."

"That still doesn't explain why we have to chase after them," Daniel puffed

"They're going to tear through the rest of this place, and if we can't get a hit on a boss before they kill it, we don't get any loot. Or XP." That was a guess on Rick's part based on his experience with game mechanics.

"Isn't this dangerous?" Daniel asked.

From slightly ahead, Gambit's chuckle echoed back down the corridor. “Very dangerous."

The corridor ended at another archway. Gambit had already stopped and was peering through when Rick and Daniel arrived.

Gambit motioned to them to stop. "I hear something inside. I think there's adds." They stood still for a moment, listening.

"I think I heard something from the right," Daniel said, but Gambit had already taken off running. The next room turned out to be a wider tunnel, big enough for a four-lane freeway, running roughly straight. The walls were rough, with a natural look, though the floor was flat. More of the glowing crystals protruded from the walls and cast a faint blue light about the place, lighting up a half-dozen scattered bodies. Gambit passed them without slowing.

"Looks like we're going the right way," Rick called back to Daniel. The broken bodies had far too many hairy legs, scrunched up like dead spiders.

Something in the shadows near the wall of the tunnel moved.

"Look out!" Daniel called as he lifted his bow.

"Wait!" Rick shouted, but it was too late.

The string twanged and the arrow flew. Something in the darkness gave a shriek and skittered towards them. [Level 6 spider] hung over its head. Its health was 12.

The three of them shouldn't have had too much difficulty killing it, but Rick was concerned about its friends joining in.

"Hurry up!" Gambit called from farther down the corridor. "Stop playing with that spider. We can't lose sight of Arthax."

Rick threw a force wave at the spider and turned to run. Daniel followed him up the wide corridor. They passed three more dead spiders before the tunnel turned abruptly and ended at a stone block wall.

A large ornate doorway faced them. Its two iron-banded wooden doors had been knocked off their hinges and lay tumbled to the ground. They were still smoking.

[Boss fight started!]

"Come on!" Gambit called and the three of them tore through the doorway together. The room beyond blazed with light, a circular chamber with a ceiling so high it was lost in the gloom. The chamber sloped steeply inward. In the center, dozens of feet below them, rose a dais. A pair of shapes faced off on the dais, one fifteen feet tall, the other shrouded in darkness.

"Fools! You have entered the lair of Grellathon! You will not come out alive."

[Grellathon the Mad]’s health bar appeared on their screen and immediately started plummeting.

"Get in! We have to tag it!" Rick and Gambit charged forward. The floor sloped down in long steps that would have taken three strides each had they been walking. Instead, they bounded down at a breakneck pace.

Gambit was pulling ahead. Rick tried to target the boss with a Force Wave, but it was too far away.

The center of the dais bore slab-like tables, covered in body parts. The boss himself was a thin man, abnormally tall, wearing long dark robes stained with blood. The whole place just screamed necromancer.

An arrow whistled past Rick and made it most of the way to the boss before clattering harmlessly to the floor. The boss's health was already halfway down and still plummeting.

[Phase Two!] popped up.

The steps ended and Rick reached the foot of the dais. The system let him target his Force Wave. He sent one ripping towards the boss. If it did any damage, he couldn’t tell.

The cloaked figure they had been chasing was hosing it down with arrows that blazed with a dozen spell effects, ice and fire and poison, all soaring so fast it looked like a jet of water. There was something else on the dais, dodging around the boss and slashing at it. It was a long-necked bird, almost as tall as a man.

Oh great, a hunter. No wonder he was an antisocial piece of shit. Jens had been a hunter, and he’d been the most arrogant on Team Technique, which was saying a lot.

Rick bounded up onto the dais just to the left of the cloaked figure. The swirling darkness cascading off his shoulders made it hard to make anything out, except for the nameplate, [Arthax the Indomitable].

Over on the left of Rick’s interface were their three health bars, and then Arthax’s bar stretching halfway across his screen. At a guess, the strange hunter must have over 400 health.

They’d been right. Whoever this was massively overgeared the dungeon.

"Stay out of the way, noobs," the stranger called as Rick targeted another Force Wave. He was pretty sure this one connected but as fast as the boss's health bar was going down he couldn't be sure.

"Fools! Witness my-“

[Phase Three!]

The announcement came, interrupting the boss's next monologue. His bar was already in the red and he had just enough time to shout, "Your bones will serve-

*Thud*

The skeletal man fell in a crumpled heap. Bones rattled out of his cloak and scattered in all directions.

[Victory!]

Phase three had lasted barely a second. The hunter in the swirling cloak stepped forward. He barely glanced at the body before muttering, "Damn!" He glanced over his shoulder at Rick. "You can have what's left if you can keep up, but don't –"

Arthax raised his bow and fired almost directly at Rick's face. He flinched as the blazing blue arrow shot over his shoulder and skewered the spider that had followed them into the boss’s room. “And don’t pull any adds!”

The hunter's minion, a tall bird with the incongruous nameplate of [Oscar], hissed at Rick and then both of them turned and stalked away.

Daniel reached the corpse of the necromancer first. "Hey, there's gear on this body!" The corpse flickered and the robe vanished. The bones rattled to the ground and scattered across the floor, now freed of anything to contain them.

"Anything good?"

Daniel stared off into space with a vacant expression, no doubt sorting through his inventory. "Let me see."

Gambit had gone past the dais and was already heading for the far side of the chamber. "Do that while you move, or we're going to lose our carry."

Daniel looked around. "Carry what?”

Rick sighed.