“Seal the door, Paz!” Nicola said, tossing empty potion bottles aside.

“It won’t budge,” he answered. “I think it’s broken!”

“You mean, you broke it?!”

“Those blame games of yours won't help us beat the chimeras!”

I opened my inventory and scoured with frantic eyes through the item slots.

The weapon I required was nowhere to be found. I must have placed it in a random slot without thinking . . . but, hadn’t I retrieved stuff from my inventory in the past without needing to scroll through the items?

Combat chains, I screamed and thrust my hand into the pocket dimension.

The Chains of the Combat Ape fell into my grasp.

“Paz!” I said, attaching a knife to one end of the chains. “Catch!”

He snatched the weapon out of the air and blinked in confusion.

I slipped a second knife into the opposite end and revealed my intention by running to one side of the door. Paz did the same over on his side, and we pressed the Chain Nail into the walls, forming a tripwire that hovered near the ground.

The Sea Locust Chicken Chimeras tumbled over it.

“Nicola!”

A [Bloom of Crimson Desire] erupted just inside the doorway.

A few of the chimeras met instant demise at the hands of the spell. Others ran headlong into it, tripping over the sturdy tentacles and the trap we had set.

I flared [Fear Aura] and set about butchering chimeras from out of [Stealth]. Paz did the same on his side of the room, dancing with his half-pike.

I’d always been fascinated with mantis shrimps—a fascination that had lessened somewhat after my first encounter with their chimeric cousins. However, nothing about the current swarm could be looked upon with appreciation.

They surged forward in an unending tide of lobster-red, spilling over the floor. For each one I killed, two more rose to replace it. The chimeras soon became their biggest enemies, as their hazardous rush through the obstructed doorway meant subsequent attackers couldn’t proceed safely into the room.

They toppled over each other, end over end, and offered themselves as easy pickings on a platter. Nicola’s tentacles also put in the work, brutalizing all the monsters that stepped into its zone.

Were it not for the pain in my arms and the sweat in my eyes, I would have swollen with pride at what we had accomplished. We had created a perfect death corridor within seconds, using our wits and thinking on our feet.

Sadly, our best effort was far from seamless. The chimeras proved tenacious enough to score hits of their own. By the time my weapon arm finished its final stroke, I stood in bloodied clothes with multiple gashes littered across my form.

The item room looked even worse. Corpses filled every nook and cranny, leaving blood, chitin, entrails, and the occasional discarded head strewn across the floor.

“Level 18 now,” Paz said with pride. “That was a lot of experience.”

It was. All of the chimeras had ranked between levels 14 and 17. Not enough to bring me to the next level, but after two days of fighting, I felt pretty close.

Nicola sniffed at the blood that painted her cuirass. “Gross. Please, tell me this isn't as bad as it smells. I think I’m going to gag!”

Paz mumbled under his breath. “At least, we know now that body fluids are definitely not your kink.”

I tossed Nicola a towel, saving a spare for myself. When I was done cleaning, I turned to my teammates. “Say, you don't think we killed the pack leader during that slugfest, do you?”

Nicola frowned. “Wait, what?”

As if in answer, the giant tentacles dissipated at that moment, revealing a large shape just outside the doorway. Bloodshot eyes peered into the room at us, set in a scarred rooster face.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Alpha Sea Lotus Chicken Chimera LVL 20.

I just had to jinx it.

Paz yelled a few choice words in alarm, but I couldn’t hear it over the screaming in my head. The alpha chimera raised its large legs over the tripwire and stepped into the mess of corpses we had made. The pleops on its tail end grated noisily against the floor—a promise of death and worse to come.

Nicola’s [Summon Tentacle] rose to engage it. The Chimera unfurled its limbs and bifurcated the tentacle with a single swing.

Paz charged at the monster.

I followed suit, flaring my aura to match his own. Without any communication, we hacked at its legs, approaching from different angles.

The alpha chimera shrieked and tried to clobber me with its arms. Another tentacle intercepted the blow. I retaliated even more viciously, sinking my dagger into the soft region between plates of carapace. It bounced off health armor.

A tremendous punch from the chimera distorted the air above my head. Spillover damage from the sonic boom punted me aside even though I succeeded in avoiding the blow.

My vision spun.

Oh no . . .

I raised my dagger in a blind parry and felt a heavy weight glance off my blade. The beak of the chimera. Paz struck it across the face before it could attack again, and ugh . . . had I suffered a concussion?

I slipped into the cover of the shadows, hoping the corresponding boost in [Fear Aura]’s potency would help it take root.

You have afflicted Alpha Sea Locust Chicken Chimera with [Dismay]!

Nice.

With [Dismay] active, the murder shrimp became a little less formidable. We attacked relentlessly until, with the loss of its health meter, Paz sawed four legs off its side with a single blow.

The large beast swayed drunkenly and fell onto the tip of my waiting dagger.

I angled my blade with a flourish and dug through its beak and into its head.

You have participated in the killing of Alpha Sea Locust Chicken Chimera.

You have leveled up! You are now level 19.

Visit your status screen to assign your free stat points.

“I did it,” Nicola huffed. “Level 20. Heralds, it feels so good.”

“Level 19,” I announced. “We’re getting closer to Silver.”

Long minutes passed as we recovered our breath.

“Loot these bastards,” I said. “Before they start to stink.”

“Too late for that, eh?” Paz unfastened the chains and handed them to me. “Nice weapons. You should use them more often.”

“Nah. I’m better with a knife. I can’t fight as well with these, and I haven’t figured out how to integrate them into my build.”

“What’s there to figure? Your knives go at the ends of the chains. And, they work well at short or medium range, depending on your foe. You just need to practice.”

The image of the Primal Dread Monkey using its chains as bludgeons flashed in my mind’s eye. I wasn’t getting to that level of expertise anytime soon, but I could also admit that I’d wrecked shit the few times the chains had come out to play.

Nicola looted the last of the enemies. The chimeras vanished in waves of dust, leaving monster cores and rooster teeth of the common variety. “What a bummer. We didn't get a single Greater item for all our effort.”

“We’d find another item room,” I said. “Plus, we got a ton of free XP out of this. That has to take the cake.”

“Free?” Nicola said, pointing at her ruined cuirass. “You call this free?”

“Free enough.”

Paz crouched beside the alpha chimera.

“What’s wrong, big man?” I asked.

“A few things.” He nodded at the corpse. “See that? Those are fresh wounds on its back. Wounds we did not inflict.”

I peered at the corpse. A trio of long gashes decorated the carapace, each a full inch deep. Neither Paz nor I could hit hard enough to dent the armor, low-leveled as we were. “Maybe there was infighting among the horde?”

“Maybe,” Paz grunted. “But, what are the chances that the chickens spawned right beside us.”

“You don’t mean—”

“I don’t know what I mean. The monsters crossed paths with us by way of pure chance. But, what if they didn’t? What if they’d entered this corridor in the first place because they were being chased . . .”

“Or chasing after someone else.” The sounds of my heartbeat reached my ears. “They did seem agitated, and it would explain why the alpha kept egging the horde.” I looted the monster and received the regular items. “We should leave. This place’s starting to give me the creeps.”

“What?” Nicola said. “I just reached level 20! I need to meditate to unlock a new technique.”

“Come on,” Paz said, ushering her out of the room. “You can do that elsewhere.”

“It won’t take long, damn you!”

“However long it takes is more than enough.”

We reentered the corridor. The Labyrinth had adopted an eerie silence now that it wasn’t saturated with the mad clucking of chimeras.

I consulted [Map] and selected a direction—the same one that the horde had been running toward. If they had been chasing after an opponent, we would end up behind the latter. And, if they had not . . . well, we couldn’t leave the area soon enough.

Paz gripped my shoulder after we’d walked a few paces. “Trouble. Someone’s standing behind us.”

I turned around and felt my legs threaten to collapse.

A short figure stood off in the distance, shadowed by ambient lighting. Large horns protruded from the top of their head. The horns lent a malevolent aura to their physique—a perfect picture of a demon loosed straight from hell.

The figure took a few heavy steps toward our group. A special kind of dungeon boss, maybe?

Mist issued out of my nostrils, accompanied by a steep drop in temperature.

That was no dungeon boss. That was a human decked in heavy armor.

“Byron!” I hissed, right as the demonic figure broke out into a run.