“I don’t believe you truly understand how hard it is to earn a good living in Spinworld. Without a card, you are nothing. With a card, you have many paths make something of your life. Your collection of cards gives you a path to riches. You could climb dungeon towers, sell weapons, sell arrows, build houses, guard the town, hunt titans, the list goes on. Riches will flow to you, Max. I am only asking for the opportunity to assist you in that journey. Please. It’s the only way I can repay my friends from when they sold their cards to free me. Please,” Bisrat said. It looked like she was going to cry.

Max held up his hands, “Whoa, whoa. I never said no. Sure, you can join our party. I won’t promise long term, but you can hang out with us for now. I was going to ask you for directions to the first layer anyway. Now you can show us the way yourself.”

Bisrat slumped in relief. “Thank you, thank you. You won’t regret this, I promise you. I will be a valuable asset. We are going to make a lot of money together.”

“I’m sure we will. That’s not my main priority though. I came to Spinworld to find my brother. He came here a few years ago. I’m sure searching for him won’t always be profitable.”

Bisrat tilted her head slightly. “You realize the chances of him still being alive are low, right?”

“Yes. I’m still going to try though.”

Bisrat bowed again and said, “Then I will come with you for a time. Trust me. I can help you make money no matter what we are doing.”

Max shrugged. “Sounds good. I’ll listen to your advice for as long as it makes sense for us to stick together.”

“Speaking of which, I have some suggestions about how we handle the next six rooms. The monsters may change a bit, but the rooms stay the same.”

Max nodded and she gave them an overview of the next six rooms and the boss of the first floor. She gave them way more information about monster weaknesses and successful strategies she had seen from the other team.

When she was done, Lily spoke up. “Wait, if you knew all this, how come you didn’t tell us before?”

She smoothed the quills on her head and said, “Two reasons. First off, I wasn’t sure if the dungeon had changed or not. Secondly, now I am part of your party. Of course I will try harder now.”

Lily shook her head and pouted. She wanted to say something, but couldn’t get anything out.

Max assumed he knew what she was thinking. Maybe if Bisrat had given them the full rundown earlier, she wouldn’t have gotten injured. But Lily couldn’t really complain because Bisrat had told them some things, and Lily was mostly to blame for her injuries because she panicked when the wraith fish got too close.

He decided to redirect the conversation. “Bisrat. Now that you’re on the team, I was wondering if you could help me out with feedstock for my Citadel cards. They all need mana neutral matter and I haven’t been able to use anything in a dungeon.”

“Interesting. I don’t think I’ve heard of that restriction before. I don’t know many people with a Citadel deck though, so maybe it’s common. Anyway, the reason you can’t use the dungeon props is because everything has a persistent self repair spell. Even if you thoroughly destroy all the furniture inside, it will be back to the way it was the next time you enter.”

“I figured it was something like that. Do you have anything mana-neutral I can use?”

She laughed and gestured to her body. “Does it look like I have anything extra? I need everything I’m wearing and I’m not lucky enough to have a storage device like you.”

Max’s eyes were drawn to her curves when she said that. He blinked and turned away. He was seriously starting to wonder if she had a beauty card or something like that. He cleared his throat and said, “Alright. I do have some stuff in my bag, but the only thing I can part with is our food supplies. We have two weeks of food. How long do you think it’ll take to get somewhere we can buy food on the first layer?”

“Five days at most. I made the journey here in three days,” Bisrat said confidently.

Max sighed in relief. That meant he could use a few days worth of food and still be safe. And the more magic weapons he could make, the safer they would be.

He pulled out a block of hardtack and got to work. He was never going to eat the bread bricks in the first place. The dense rations made excellent feedstock for three new weapons.

A half an hour later, they got going again. The timer on Gus’ transformation pressed them onward like a deadline.

Gus opened the door and jumped back, having learned from the earlier ambush. This time there weren’t any surprises, just a room full of floating fish and spiky carpets. More of them than before, but nothing new.

Bisrat took the lead and killed half of them from a distance. When the remaining monsters got close, she slid back and the rest of the team killed the remainder. It was easier than the last room with that small tactics change.

The next two rooms were just as easy and they breezed through. Blade traps made an appearance in these rooms, but with Bisrat there to point them out, they were easy to avoid.

Bisrat warned them that the tenth room was different. It was full of metal urchins. Almost a dozen of them lay around the room like shiny carpets. They slowly undulated around each other, randomly moving around the room.

Max waved to Yang, who was standing on his right. She grunted in frustration and lowered her camo. She summoned her little crab friend and sent him inside.

Crabby skittered into the room and tapped the closest monster and then raced back to its master. The metal urchin fibrated its spikes, sending out a thrum through the floor and alerting all the monsters.

With a grunt, Gus slammed the hammer down onto the floor, sending vibrations through the room. The monsters took notice right away, their quills standing on edge. They raced for the door, bunching up together as they did.

Once he saw they were coming, Gus slid off to the right and held up his hammer. Max was already on the left side. Directly in front of the door was a heavy table, blue wood banded with silvery metal. They had it on its side, blocking the way forward with only a small gap to the sides.

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The lead monster raced forward through the doorway and slowed to a stop. It didn’t have eyes, but it had some way of sensing the world around it.

Max and Gus slammed their hammers down, driving the spike on the end into the metal urchin. They had it pinned to the floor. Once it was trapped, Bisrat poked her head over the top of the upended table and flung a knife into the nerve center in the middle of the monster. It died immediately.

The next monster crawled over the dead one, uncaring about the first one’s plight. Max and Gus pulled back and stabbed forward again. Once this one was held tight, Bisrat took careful aim and punctured its brain.

They repeated the tactic again and again until there were five bodies piled up in front of the door. The mound of metal and flesh was getting tall and unstable.

Max took a step back and yelled, “Phase two.”

More monsters climbed over the corpses, unceasing bloodlust driving them forward. They started questing around, looking for a way through the doorway. Gus waited until two of them were piled up on top of each other. Then he swung his war hammer down, activating the enchantment at the last moment.

The blue super strike slammed into the top monster and kept going. It pulped both monsters and shattered most of the quills below that.

Gus stepped back and Max stepped forward. He repeated the same trick, waited for a few monsters to build up, then pulverized them with his hammer’s magic.

That left two monsters, intelligent enough to not rush to their deaths. Death found them anyway. Lily killed one with her drop bear, and James sent a hail of glass shards at the other.

Max stood there in mute surprise. That had worked so well. He wasn’t even breathing hard. It took them longer to recover Bisrat’s knives than it did to kill all twelve monsters.

“Thanks, Bisrat. You were right, you are a valuable member of our party,” Max said with a smile.

She wiggled her chitin tail happily and then straightened up. “Don’t thank me yet. We still have to survive the next room.”

The eleventh room was full of tight corridors. Bisrat said it was the hardest room, even worse than the boss. The blue wooden walls snaked around the room like a miniature maze. As soon as they grew close to one of the monsters inside, they attacked.

Phase fish came at them through the walls.

Monsters appeared on their left and their right, trying for a pincer attack. Gus and Max were ready for it, each of them using their spikes on the attackers as soon as they phased back into reality.

They weren’t ready for the third one to appear while they were dealing with the first two.

A phase fish came through the walls above them. It sliced into Gus' head, flaying open his skin. If his troll skull wasn’t so strong, he would have been dead from the single blow.

Gus fell to his knees with a bellow of pain. The fish he had been fighting was still alive and gave him a slice across his forearms. He cried out again and rolled away from both fish.

Glass shards and knives filled the air, killing the two attackers. A blue summons appeared, but the mushroomantis was too late to do anything.

Blood poured from Gus’ wounds, staining the blue wood a burgundy brown. As they watched, his wounds stitched themselves back together. Blood slowed down, skin reknit, and the wounds disappeared without a scar.

Lily swore and said, “Sorry I was late. You can’t see them coming. It gives you no time-”

James interrupted her with a shout. “Behind us!”

He spun and dropped to the floor as two more fish phased through the walls. Lily fell to the floor without turning, then rolled away before hopping back up.

Bisrat’s physiology didn’t let her turn quickly so she was caught unawares. The phase fish slashed her. The strike sparked off of her back plate and cut through her metal woven armor. She cried out and fell to the floor, clutching her arm. Blue blood poured from her green skin.

Max knew he couldn’t get to her in time so he threw his war hammer, activating the spell as he did. The hammer flew end over end down the corridor. The fish phased out of reality and the handle of the weapon passed through it. The spell did not. The blue field of magic splattered half of the monster across the walls. The other half fell on top of Bisrat.

While he was saving their Paj teammate, Yang was saving James and Lily. She sliced up the four foot long fish with her short sword. Monster sashimi fell to the ground a moment later.

Max slid to Bisrat’s side and said, “How bad is it?”

“I’ll be fine. Wouldn’t say no to some healing paste though.”

“We don’t have any of that, but I can bandage you up. Can you take off the sleeve?”

“Yes.” She winced in pain. “Maybe you should do it.” Bisrat said and motioned with her chin. “Lift the shoulder piece and unclip the connector. It should slide off then.”

Max carefully removed her woven metal sleeve and slid it off. Bisrat whined in pain but held herself still. The cut was long, but not too deep. He pulled out his first aid kit and cleaned and bandaged the wound. He made a mental note to buy more bandages.

He made a mental note to buy quality armor too. Their party had received dozens of wounds since they arrived in Spinworld. It was only luck that none of them were fatal. He couldn’t wait to get some real protection.

“Thank you, Max. My blood warms for you.”

Max turned to find her face inches from her own. Her symmetrical face held an ethereal beauty from up close. The translation magic let him know she was showing her heartfelt thanks, but he couldn’t help but find her statement strangely alluring.

He cleared his throat. “No problem. It wasn’t too bad. You should be fine in a few days.”

“Likely sooner. I expect to be fine by morning. Come, let us finish this wretched maze.”

Max nodded and stood. He held out a hand to help her up, but it was unneeded. Her thick tail weighed more than her upper body so she simply bent backwards at the waist to ‘stand up’.

“Good eye, James,” Lily said. “If you hadn’t seen them coming, we might have died. And double thanks to Yang for actually killing the monster.”

“I only wish I had seen them coming sooner. I could have killed both given time.” Yang said. “Well spotted, James.”

James ducked his head in thanks.

Gus grunted and pointed to James and then his ears. When no one understood what he meant, he did it again.

“Are you saying I heard the monsters coming?” James asked.

Gus pointed at him and did a thumbs up.

“Heard or saw, whatever. Just keep watch so we can stay alive,” Max said.

Gus grunted in frustration. He threw up his hands and pointed forward.

“Yeah, let’s get going,” Max said.

He swapped out his hammer for a charged one and they crept forward again. The blue walls felt like they were closing in on them. The room had a claustrophobic feeling. Unlike the previous rooms, the lighting flickered every so often. They were plunged into pitch blackness every so often.

“To your left!” James said. A few seconds later, he yelled, “Two more to your right!”

Gus dealt with the one on the left and Max took one on the right. Yang sliced up the final attacker, but it took her a bit of dancing to finally kill it. Max looked at his friend, but didn’t say anything.

They moved around the bodies and kept going. James warned them of a few more attacks before they reached the end of the room. The door to the final room of the first floor was in sight.

By then, Max was very unsettled. He was breathing hard and he could hear his heartbeat in his ears. Once he was sure no more monsters were attacking, he turned to James.

“You have it, don’t you?” Max said. You have the Listen card, don’t you? He shouted in his head.

James flinched back. That was all the confirmation Max needed.