Giving me the new dagger was a bad idea.

Not only did it grant my ego a considerable boost — a dangerous pastime — but it also made me want to use it.

Sure, sure. ‘You’re not a member of Cavern, you’re not a fighter.’ You can say that seven ways from Sunday, but I simply do not care. Call it inspiration or pettiness or whatever you’d like — I wanted to be strong, and to summit that mountain, I would fight.

All the Damage Dealers and Tanks rushed past me with speed far surpassing anything I was capable of, but it didn’t matter.

There were more than enough injured people to go round, and soon enough I had a Cavern engineer’s arm slung round my shoulders as he hobbled with me to safety. His left leg was swollen, and he thought it may be broken, so I handed him off to a Support medic who was working overtime to get people into escaping condition.

“There’re more in the next room that got caught up in the first swell of monsters. Can you get to them?” asked the healer.

In my gallantry, I nodded furiously and ran through the narrow gap between men and monsters into the next room. The people here were desperate, and the group closest to me had ahold of metal pipes or were throwing priceless jewels at the monsters.

The jewels were both a good idea, and a terrible one. On one hand, the monsters paused their attacks for a moment to eat them, but on the other, the gems super-charged their various turrets and tentacles and other tidbits, resulting in a room full of slimy super-soldiers.

I wasn’t cut out for this, the engineers weren’t cut out for this, perhaps even Michelin Man would struggle getting through this mess.

I prayed to Rendar, and went in.

The first projectile to land near me threw a raccoon-sized hunk of dirt directly into my chest, which immediately knocked me flat.

{Armored Body : Level Up! Current Level: 2}

Thank you, Navigator.

I got up to see a Cavern collector and a GTA scientist on their knees in a crevice, wide-eyed and not-so-bushy-tailed. They’d ‘OHhh!’-ed at me when I went down, but now cheered with uneasy anticipation as though they expected to see me plucked into the air and eaten in the next few seconds.

An Orbiter’s tentacle lashed out at my arm, and I flinched, swinging my dagger and lopping off a sizable portion of the tentacle like a hot knife through, well, tentacles.

{One-Handed Attacks : Level Up! Current Level: 1}

The levels were really rolling in now. Having an affinity for everything was great.

I should be getting myself into near-fatal dungeon-related accidents more often!

I reached the man and woman and was nearly taken out by the man flailing his pole. It looked like he’d ripped it from the insides of a machine he was operating.

“I’m Marcus! I’m with the GTA and I’m going to help you get out of—”

BANG!

A Stink-Legger blasted into close range, narrowly missing our heads. Shale and dirt-stalactites plummeted down at us, knocking the pole from the man’s hand. The woman shouted at me.

“We get the picture! Just get us the fuck to safety!”

“Yes, ma’am!”

The pair hobbled behind me, and we stuck close to the wall, watching out for any stray monsters who took an interest in us.

We had almost made it back to safety when a Stink-Legger and an Orbiter flopped their way into our path. Both were supercharged with powdered gems, and the gas emanating from them would’ve made Agent Orange seem like bug spray.

The Orbiter lashed out and I jumped over the tentacle, proud of my cat-like reflexes.

It wasn’t aiming for me.

I heard the snap of its tentacle locking onto someone’s skin, and the man I’d been ‘protecting’ was dragged past me too quickly for me to grab his arm. The woman shouted again, but it was unintelligible.

[Blade Throw]

[Headshot]

I tossed the black dagger first, then shook Adam’s from its scabbard and threw it, too. [Headshot] only kicked in for the first dagger — these blasted cooldowns — and the Orbiter with the man in its grasp popped.

Literally popped.

It turns out that the Orbiter’s weak point is right in the middle of its stomach. I heard that squids had their brains in weird places, and apparently the same could be said of Orbiters, because when the dagger whizzed its way into the soft flesh there, phew, we were in business.

Unfortunately, Adam’s dagger fell about five-feet short of the Stink-Legger. The lady I was protecting was not impressed, and she let me know by screeching directly in my ear.

Dang entitled government employees.

We stood in front of the supercharged spider as it swiveled its cannon to face us. I grabbed the GTA woman by the arm and we ran forward, latching onto the engineer’s collar and ripping him to his feet. Both fought to get away from me, convinced I was sending them to a grisly ending at the hands of a Stink-Legger.

“When I say go, you both need to dive to the right and hit the deck, okay?” I shouted.

Two nods. Wild eyes, frightened eyes.

The Stink-Legger steadied its rear legs, and I heard the whirling of its internal machinery spinning, my fate being decided by lifeless gears and cogs.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

When I couldn’t handle the tension any longer, I yelled.

“GO!”

I shoved them off, sending the GTA lady sprawling in the dirt and the engineer on top of her. The Stink-Legger fired, and I leapt forward onto my stomach, directly underneath its body.

Just a little further.

I crawled forward on all fours, yelping each time a pointed metal leg pierced the ground only inches from my more valuable body parts.

I had one shot.

[Venta]

I held both hands up, stretching so that I was almost touching the monster. Heat blossomed from my fingers and hands, erupting under the Stink-Legger like a gas burner under a pot. It seized up, tightening its legs around me, forming my own monstrosity of a cage. [Venta] petered out, and I was left with a very upset monster and its molten underside dripping down at me.

{Flame Magic : Level Up! Current Level: 5}

{Special Skill : [Flame Barrage] discovered}

Fuck it, no time like the present.

[Flame Barrage]

I didn’t know how this skill would perform, but I wasn’t disappointed. Small fireballs gathered in the root of my palms, and when they were the size of a large orange, they shot off wherever I pointed them.

I sent a few into the holes I’d melted through with [Venta], thankful that the skill was controllable unlike its unruly predecessor, and the monster sprung into the air like a cartoon character sitting on a campfire.

I rolled out of my cage while it was airborne, then bolted. My two burdens had made it out of the cavern, and were standing in relative safety, urging me forward with beckoning waves.

I was so close to safety, so goddamn close.

Then a cold, metal leg punctured my thigh.

{Puncture Proof : Level Up! Current Level: 1}

Too little, too late, Navigator.

Obviously, I stopped. I fell forward, and the Stink-Legger released its grip on me, tearing backwards through my leg.

I screamed out. The pain made my previous bullet wounds feel like pinpricks, and I immediately felt darkness crowd in on my vision as I fought for consciousness.

Calm Mind, Calm Mind, come on. Do something!

The bone would be shattered, and with my luck I’d have a femoral artery cut just to spice things up.

The engineer started forward, but the GTA lady pulled him back. It was a wise choice, a good one, and I was glad it was me who drew the short straw.

So much for the GTA, so much for becoming powerful...

[OBLITERATE!]

Michelin Man skidded to a stop in the dust, throwing up a plume of sand. His shield released a brilliant beam of pure white energy, lighting the cavern like an atom bomb exploding. He braced, two arms supporting his shield as his legs dug into the ground. The power from the skill pushed him backwards, building up sand until the ruts he created were knee deep.

I shoved my head in the sand, shielding my eyes from the pervasive light. I could hear the energy flowing around me like standing in a room of microwaves, and when it died out, Michelin Man fell forward into the earth beside me, panting.

The Stink-Legger, along with the rest of the monsters in the room and probably the next few after that, were gone. Literally obliterated.

We both lay there, stunned and immobile. The skill must’ve taken everything he had, because the only movement coming from the raid leader was the rise and fall of his chest, and the occasional twitching of his eyes under closed eyelids.

Pairs and trios of survivors wandered out of the room, dazed and confused. How he’d directed the skill to not injure them I did not know.

“Over here!” a voice called.

Stretchers landed in the dirt beside us, and Michelin Man opened his eyes. They glistened with relief, and for a moment my pain went away as I choked up a little, relieved to be safe from the monsters.

Wait, nope, that’s a healing spell doing that. No sentimentality here.

The Healer’s hands brushed over my bloodied thigh like icy water on a scorching summer day. I felt my bones knitting together and the flesh closing over with a slight ‘tssopp’, then a man’s pimply face replaced my view of the cavern roof.

“Don’t walk on it for a few hours. It’s all healed but will still be weak.”

I gave a timid thumbs up before I was placed down in a row of the injured, the Gate looming above us.

I looked around as best I could, but the stretcher cocooned my neck and shoulders in place. On doctor’s orders, I didn’t want to move too much, but I needed to find Adam. He had looked awful when I’d last seen him, and although he was just my manager at work, he was getting pretty close to my first friend here.

“Ullo there, monster hunter!”

I looked up, and speaking of the devil, Adam stood above me. It was not a flattering angle.

“Hi. What happened? You looked, well, pretty fucked up.” I asked.

“They’re trying to work that out right now. The current theory is that a Scout got lazy and decloaked too early before leaving a room nearby, and that dragged the monsters into our group. Either that, or a collector ventured a bit too far and grabbed a gem too close to some monsters. Wouldn’t put money on that second one though — if you want to spend your career near monsters, you become a Hunter, not a collector.”

“Jeez. One mistake, huh?”

“Yep. How’d you end up in that?”

He nudged the stretcher with his foot, and I swayed a little.

“Saving a Cavern engineer and a GTA lady. Didn’t do it as smoothly as you, though. It looked like you were a one-man army!”

He laughed.

“Should’ve seen me fifteen minutes ago — wasn’t so pretty. I’ve just come back from the Healers, plus I’ve got some handy Health skills that you seem to lack. [Regeneration], for one.”

Another GTA employee came over and the two hoisted me up and carried me out of the Gate. It was heavenly to return to the sun, and slightly comical to see the shock on the faces of the support crew still outside the Gate.

As you might expect from a ‘Gate-tastrophe’ — Adam’s wording, not mine — we were required to hang around for a long time so that we could provide our individual reports on what happened. The interviewers skimmed over me, probably given my inexperience, but they were enthralled by Adam’s recount of the action and noted it down over pages and pages of detail.

The Gate closed once the last of the wounded had been transported out. As expected, Michelin Man came out last, though he was up and about already, the only evidence of his prior paralysis being a slight drag in his step.

He caught my gaze, deposited his weaponry with the support crew, then walked over.

“Aha! The finest Hunter in the GTA, as I’m told. Your name?”

We shook hands.

“I’m not sure about finest. Perhaps luckiest? I’m Marcus.”

“Well, thank you for all you did today, Marcus. And you too, Adam. I was a little disappointed when I heard that Pen was palming me off to you guys, but now I’m very, very glad.”

Adam beamed at the praise, and I thought he might ask Michelin Man to write down his comments so he could show Pen.

Oh my god, I’m still calling him Michelin Man.

“I’m sorry, I forgot to ask before. What was your name? I must’ve missed it.”

“That’s okay! I’m Daniel, Cavern’s B-Team Raid Leader. Although after today, I might be bumped down, who knows?”

Oof. Nothing he could do, but still gotta pay the price.

“Well thank you for saving me before, that skill was unbelievable. And the Cavern engineer made it out okay? I’m guessing that’s who told you about my exploits.”

“He did! Yep, he was gushing about you. Said you were the weakest person he’d ever seen be so brave.”

“Oh.”

“Bit harsh, I agree! That’s why I thought you deserved something to make you a little less weak.”

Oh snap. OH SNAP!

Daniel unclipped something from behind his back and presented me with the jet-black dagger from the boss fight. He must’ve gone back and discovered it buried in the sand.

“She’s all yours.”

I took it from his hands like Gollum receiving the One Ring.

All. Mine.