Micah grabbed the wrong sack, but it was too late. He huffed and puffed and jogged away with a bundle of body parts squishing around in his arms, the slime still feasting behind him.

Just getting this one had been dangerous. If it had noticed him— But it wasn’t like he had anything better to do. He was stuck in a pit, those holes the only way out, and he couldn’t sit still and watch it eat everything.

A patch of chainmail slipped off his arm and he almost fell as he fumbled to catch it. He put a hand on the ground to steady himself, hugged the sack tighter, took a deep breath, and pushed off.

Stupid.

It really looked broken. He wondered if this would even be repairable. Would he need new armor? He was growing anyway, but still.

He definitely couldn’t just watch it eat everything. He would need every little bit of loot he could get.

The moment he walked past the pillar to the wall, flames enveloped his head. He shrieked and fell back, hiding behind the sack, then turned around to hide the sack behind him. His ring warmed up and it felt like there were many little feet pitter-pattering all over him.

Someone with a manlier voice than him shouted and Micah cleared his throat and adjusted his own to be lower.

Just as suddenly as the flames appeared, they cut off. Ryan had jumped from the wall and rammed the spear through the Kobold that had attacked him. There had been one after all.

He planted his boots on its shoulder and waist and smacked it into the ground. Its head cracked against the stone and it lay still. It burst as he walked it off, one hand already fumbling at his belt. He pulled a potion off and said, “Micah—”

“You’re so cool.”

He paused mid-sentence, mouth working but no words coming out until he asked, “What?”

Micah glanced back to judge the distance he must have jumped to do that. “You’re the coolest person I know.”

Ryan seemed to shake the confusion off and stormed over. “Are you injured?”

“I fell.”

“Drink this. It’s— It’s fine if it’s Tower potion, right?”

Micah frowned at the bottle. “This better not be the fourth-floor—”

“Drink,” he repeated.

Micah rolled his eyes and did as he was told. Ryan took the sack to free up his hands and only then answered. “And no, it’s the one we found yesterday. I’m not an idiot.”

He nodded in agreement, felt the warm potion fill his stomach, and paused, a weird feeling bubbling up his throat.

“At least, not a complete one. And what the hell is that?” he asked, looking over his head.

“Slimy the small slime,” Micah mumbled and raised a hand before he could ask any more questions. His headache was bad enough. “One moment.” He stumbled behind the nearest pillar and threw up.

It didn’t feel good. Or taste good. Or smell— The smell made him want to do it all over again. He swallowed and looked straight up, as if that would help keep it down.

Ryan recoiled. “Shit. I thought it would be fine—”

“It is fine,” Micah said, “I just hit my head. Sorry about the smell. One second.” He leaned his back against the pillar, held the healing potion up like he was at a spa, and took a deep breath.

The potion’s essence filled his lungs. He could feel it in their light-made shadows just as he could the storm of essences he had to clean out every time. Clean, maintain, prevent. He held his nose and pushed like he was trying to pop his ears.

The lungs delivered air to the brain, Micah had learned in school, so why not essences?

Answer: Because it didn’t feel very nice. The essence came out of his lungs like a wrung cloth and Micah groaned and scrunched up his face, “Mm, that smarts.”

The moment he could think semi-straight again, he realized what a monumentally stupid idea that had been. He couldn’t just shove weird essences he didn’t understand into his brain in the hopes they would help.

But they had …?

Ryan tried to snatch the bottle away and Micah turned his back on him to hide it. He took a step forward, halfway into the puddle, and said, “I’m fine.”

“I don’t think you are. And I don’t think you should be experimenting with potions when you’re like this. We need to leave.”

Micah nodded and knocked the bottle back. He took a long gulp of healing. Not too much. Just enough to get some of it in his circulation. It would spread throughout his body and heal all the minor aches evenly— Well, not exactly evenly. The body had its own way of prioritizing things, its metabolism, and that was in no way adjusted for ideal healing potion use.

It liked to co-opt things.

Potions had to be adjusted the other way around, he’d learned, the main reason why people had stopped making them that way ages ago. Too much work when Tower potions worked just as fine.

He wiped his mouth and handed the bottle back. “Okay, now I’m fine. I’m mostly sure I don’t actually have any injuries, I’m just battered.”

“Battered is an injury,” Ryan said, “and you don’t know for sure.”

“And I don’t know for sure,” Micah agreed. It wasn’t like he had a Skill that would tell him. Only an idiot would insist otherwise. He was trying not to be one. “I am sure, though, that I don’t want to leave. Because that thing”—he pointed—”ate, like, a fourth or fifth of our entire loot. And I want revenge.”

He clutched a hand into a fist. Stupid freaking gluttonous slime. Micah couldn’t believe he’d thought it was cute.

“Are you drunk? How are we going to beat that thing? It’s a giant fire slime and we’re [Fighters].”

Micah leaned past the pillar and squinted. The slime in question was busy trying to tiptoe its way through the mess of crystals to get at the last few fire ones without touching the others, like a child picking its way to the good bits at dinner. That could be useful. Why was it going after them, though, if there were perfectly fine piles of mined rocks underneath all of the exits?

It wobbled for a bit and strained to push a round flap out of its side like a crude tongue that rolled a crystal closer until it could eat it. So it had struggles changing its form?

He slipped his slingshot out, took aim, and frowned at Ryan. “You can help me climb up one of those walls if this goes wrong, right?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Oh, good.”

Micah shot at it. The metal ball punched through and tore cubic wounds. A single wisp of smoke shot out, but the wounds immediately reknit themselves and closed. It hadn’t even noticed him.

“Huh.”

“Told you so.”

A monster with regeneration, the Skill every climber hoped to get someday. Just what they needed.

“There’s no way you knew that thing could regenerate.”

"I—"

“Ryan!” Alex shouted, one hand on the side of the tunnel above them. He searched the chamber until he noticed them right under his nose and called, “Oh, good. You’re fine. What happened?”

Ryan briefly caught him up, missing a few of the things he didn’t know yet, and threw the sack up. They handed the Kobold’s staff, crystal, and belongings up afterward.

“Shit,” Alex cursed as he took them. It actually sounded like he was cursing for once and described exactly how Micah felt. “How much? A fifth or fourth? Is there anything else you can recover?”

“Yeah,” Micah started at the same time as Ryan said, “No.”

They looked at each other.

He pointed. “That thing’s dangerous. We don’t know what it can do. We should stay far away from it. It could squeeze through those tunnels like a flash flood for all we know.”

Micah gave him a derisive look. It’d been a tiny little baby slime just a few moments ago.

“You’re right,” Alex said, running a hand past his face. “We should cut our losses and move on. As long as we still have marbles, we can just do this all over again. The plan is still sound.”

Micah felt a spark of pride at that, but no, he had to interrupt Ryan when he asked the other guy to help him climb up.

“No.”

“No?” Alex asked.

Ryan sighed. “Micah wants to fight it.”

“Micah wants revenge,” Micah corrected him. “And you’re both wrong. We can fight that thing.”

“Fight what?” Kyle asked as he stumbled to a stop, visibly out of breath. His eyes widened the moment he saw the fire blue shape hulking around in the background. It had run out of crystals and was slowly moving around the center, squeezing its way past the inner side of the pillars.

He could hear the other two approaching behind them as they yelled down questions or Brent’s voice said, My stuff!

“You said it was regenerating,” Alex said as if that won the entire argument. If it was, they couldn’t kill it. The usual answer to regeneration was fire, after all.

“I’m not entirely sure it is,” Micah said. “It was the size of an alleyball when I first saw it. It only grew to that size after it ate all the fire crystals we had in there.” He showed them with his hands.

“So?” Kyle asked. He was the only one who wasn’t catching on. Alex and Ryan looked thoughtful. He could see their thoughts meeting him halfway.

“So it’s stopped eating,” Micah told him. “It isn’t headed for the piles. It’s headed for us.”

Ryan nearly jumped and glanced back, but quickly frowned. “It’s not headed toward us? See, it’s going right.”

“It just doesn’t want to touch the crystals in the middle,” Micah told him. “It can’t decide what it eats, only what it spits out.”

“There are other crystals down there,” Alex said. “If we hurt it, it will just eat those and heal up. And that thing’s three meters tall. That’s a lot of damage to deal. Ask yourself, is this worth it?”

Over his shoulder, Jason stumbled into view.

Micah gave his question an honest chance and found the answer was the same as it had been.

“It’s not like we have much else to do today,” Kyle said. “Regardless of if we leave it alone or if we spend half an hour hacking it to pieces, we have to head back to make camp soon.”

“Assuming it doesn’t melt your axe—”

Micah shook his head. They still had the wrong idea. “I don’t want to hack it to pieces,” he called up. “I want to feed it. Until it pops.”

Kyle’s face twitched. He looked like he thought Micah was joking, but he wasn’t. He was dead serious.

Summoned monster, unmade, or anything else—spellscript, pattern, potion—every container had its limits.

“That’s the sunken cost fallacy,” Alex said. “We’re not feeding it more of our loot just to kill it without knowing if there is a reward.”

This was a room with almost a dozen railroad tracks leading to it from all directions, Micah would be surprised if there wasn’t a reward.

“We don’t have to,” he said. “There are tons of more rock piles around here. And the rest of our loot we can collect.”

“You assume that will be enough. You’ll assume that it will work. What if this new type of monster can grow indefinitely?”

“On the third floor?”

“Micah—” Ryan started, but he was already getting his bottle of stamina potion from his belt.

His head was pounding. His entire body felt bruised. He was tired of having to discuss every little decision with five people when there was no point. Even without Kyle’s argument, which settled the entire debate, why not do this?

There was merit in the attempt.

He took a swig, picked up one of the rocks from the pile, and chucked it at the beast trying to squirm its way toward them in ever-more-frustrated attempts to reshape itself.

The rock bounced off its gelatinous shell. The moment one of its exposed fire veins touched its skin, it was sucked inside. The veins dissolved even as the slime shifted it to another location to spit back out.

It couldn’t not eat fire essence, he realized. There! That was good to know.

Bad was how that throw had put it over the edge. The hulking mass of fire blue suddenly stood still and began to tremble.

“Guys—” Kyle warned them.

Uh oh.

Ryan grabbed his arm and pulled him away, shouting, “Ward!”

“Back, back!” Alex called and cast the spell, sealing the tunnel above them with a screen of light.

They hid behind the pillar just as the slime erupted. A ring of flames pulsed into the cavern, head high, and broke on the stone, walls, and wards protecting them. Micah was resigned to the flames for these days, but the force still surprised him. It pushed all the pesky little crystals that had been keeping the slime at bay to the far edges of the cavern.

Swarms of chitin essence erupted like egg sacs from cracked crystals and burned up in the flames. Many others were damaged. He called out, “No!”

The floor was clear, then, and he glimpsed the blue goo move toward them at twice the pace.

Alex hopped out of the tunnel while his spell dissolved around him and called, “If nothing else, we have to get our crystals!” He ran off in the other direction and started to scoop them off the ground.

The others looked lost. A lack of communication. But Micah had more urgent things to discuss.

Ryan looked ready to rush to action. He turned his hand around to clasp his wrist and said, “Alex was right. The stone piles may not be enough to kill it. And we can’t use all of our crystals to finish the job.”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

It took him a moment to catch on. Then he glanced at the exits surrounding them in a ring and said, “Micah—”

“Please, Ryan. You could do it. I bet you could.”

He himself couldn’t.

The guy scowled and began to undo the clasps on his wrist as he led him away. The slime reached the pillar and was squeezing past. He took his oil-colored shield off and handed it over. They had treated it against flames before coming here, but it was a little larger than Micah was used to.

“You remember where Chariot hit the ground?”

He nodded.

“Keep an eye out for me. Be safe.” That said, he turned and ran. He met the wall at an angle like a high jumper and a few steps brought him to the nearest exit. He used a hand to grip the barricade and pull himself inside, then slipped into the darkness and was gone.

“You, too,” Micah mumbled.

He took one look at the slime and ran to his teammates, sticking as close to the wall as he could to stay away from it. He got there just in time to see Jason fire a shot. “Don’t hurt it!”

“Well, what the hell else are we supposed to be doing?” Brent asked. He’d arrived last with their stuff in tow. It was no wonder he was out of the loop.

“We’re doing damage control,” Micah told him. “I screwed up and lost a fifth of our loot, but we can recover the rest. First priority is making sure the situation doesn’t get worse, second is collecting all of the crystals that survived, third killing that thing by throwing the mined rocks around the room at it.”

He held one of them up from the pile for show and glanced back. The slime was only a few yards away now, looming overhead. It cast a blue shadow over him as the light passed through its body.

He spoke quickly, forcing the instructions out in a manner of seconds, “One person protect our stuff from reinforcements, one collect crystals with Alex, and one throw rocks at it with me to distract it. Try and clear route to give me room, okay? Go!”

He scooped another arm full and ran the other way. He doubted the slime could flood the tunnels like a flash flood, but he didn’t know if that meant it couldn’t travel through them at all. He had to lure it away from his teammates.

“Hey! Over here!” he called and threw rocks at the giant beast three meters tall and six wide. They bounced off until a vein touched its skin and were sucked inside.

It turned and spat one of the rocks back at him—steaming hot.

Micah ducked behind his shield and dropped half the pile in surprise. That had been close. Not fast, he just hadn't been expecting it.

He glanced back to see what his teammates were doing just as Kyle cleaved a long slash into the beast’s side.

“Don’t freaking hurt it!” he called again.

“Just testing something!” he called back and ran before it could turn its attention on him. One bad touch and it would drag them into its body, which was basically a giant pile of viscous fire.

But if Micah was right, and it was only healing because it had eaten, every single wound they made would require that many more crystals to overfeed it in the end. They wanted it to be as healthy as they could.

He continued to chuck rocks as he led it into the center of the room and ducked when it spat them back out, grateful for Ryan’s shield to protect him. He just hoped the other guy would be fine without it.

Between pillars, Alex scooped up crystals into a sack with perfect efficiency, one eye on the slime in case he had to defend himself. Brent joined him in the other direction. In the end, Jason was the only one who had nothing to do but protect their things. He stood in the mouth of the tunnel, an arm against the side, and watched them fight with longing on his face.

Sorry, Micah thought, his heart aching.

But then a steaming hot stone shot past his head, he wove to the side, and had to focus on the fight.

He reached the center and had nowhere else to go. Kyle threw rocks, but its attention was on him. That just gave it ammunition to spit as it took up a third of the central space on its own.

What to do? He couldn’t harm it. He couldn’t feed it. He was out of rocks. He ducked between two pillars to the nearest pile and almost ran into Brent, then scrambled right and ran to the next one.

He could almost feel the slime catch up behind him by its radiant heat. He scooped up more ammunition and the warm blue shadow that fell over him told him he needed to leave.

Kyle’s warning to everyone to take cover told him he needed to do it now. A glance back and he knew why.

The beast was struggling to squeeze through the pillars, and that frustration made it tremble.

He had seen how many crystals they had lost with the last pulse, but beyond that, they were scattered. Only Alex had a ward and shield. Would the pillars be enough to protect the others from the flames?

“Where the hell is Ryan?” Kyle asked.

Micah did something stupid. He dropped his things, ran toward the monster, and slapped it.

There, that was what you wanted, right? To get close enough to him that it could eat him.

His allies shouted something, but he didn't listen. Sure enough, the gelatinous surface began to suck his fingers in. His glove went up in flames and his fire resistance ring enveloped him in a hug he was all too familiar with, now. He almost relished it. Like meeting an old friend.

He thought he could count the number of feet. Seventeen?

He felt like he was reaching into boiling water, the beast stopped trembling, and he slipped his hand out of the glove and ran. He wanted to smile, but couldn't. Had that been worth however many crystals he had saved? He didn’t know, but it was his mess to clean up.

He ducked around the pillar and through the next pair to run beside it, shaking the heat out of his hand on the way, and calling out loud.

The beast turned to him and thankfully started to follow instead of trembling again, the glove turning to a charred husk inside it.

Micah frowned. It felt weird to be inside the Tower without a glove on. The last time had been this morning when they had bathed. Just one glove missing and he felt as naked as he had then.

“Your glove,” Kyle even called.

“I know, right?” Micah called back with a smile. A stone smacked into his back and he stumbled onto one knee.

Mm, he should not have turned his back on the slime for that long. He stumbled to the center of the room, took another quick sip of stamina potion with his free hand and wiped his mouth.

The slime followed him. It was like a child. They couldn’t let it get too frustrated or it would flood the room in fire, it spat anything they threw at it right back at them, and only ate one type of food.

Micah bent down to pick one up and threw another rock, grit digging into his bare grip, then dodged the one it spat from Kyle’s last throw.

“No, seriously, where’s Ryan?” the guy called.

Micah looked around in anticipation and began to panic. Where was he, himself? He couldn’t see Jason. He didn’t know which exit the guy had taken again. He ran in circles away from the slime and tried to figure out until—

“INCOMING!” a voice bellowed from somewhere and he threw himself toward the nearest pillar, curling up behind the shield to protect himself.

The racing minecart broke past the barricade with the sound of cracking stone and crashed into the ground a few steps from the slime, a few steps away from Micah. Shrapnel shot at it and tore wounds, but that was fine because the mined contents they found in every other minecart also shot into it at the same time. It ate a whole wagon full of crystalline veins at once.

They dissolved and the beast swelled.

Ryan’s smile was infectious as he heaved in the opening of the tunnel, one arm against the wall to steady himself. “Perfect!” he called. “Great job luring it there, Micah! Again?”

Great. The one time he got praised by Ryan and he hadn’t even done anything. It had been blind luck. But Micah smiled anyway and nodded. Even if he didn’t hit, it would deliver rocks to them and Kyle was burning through the piles like wildfire.

Ryan hopped down from the exit and ran toward the next, the other guy looking dumbfounded as he passed. This time, he threw his spear in first and needed both hands to pull himself up.

“Wait, we could be doing that?” Jason called.

Micah swiveled around. Before he could say anything, the tall guy had already run off up the hill, leaving their belongings alone.

“Alex?” he called.

“On it! Watch out!”

Watch—? Micah glanced back. Oh.

The slime had stopped moving a few steps off from him and started trembling instead, the storm of stone chunks it had been forced to eat swirling around inside, all rearranging themselves to loom above in a line so it could spit them out.

At once.

He scrambled away and around the pillar, but the first rock knocked into his shoulder. He spun and raised Ryan’s shield to hunker down. The rocks slammed into the wood and cracked. Half a dozen more followed as he braced against them and broke off splinters of oiled wood.

So much for not making things worse. If this had been a normal shield, it would have been the second one he had ruined in one day. Thankfully, he could just regrow it once they got back.

Brent wrenched him behind the pillar and he breathed at him in thanks, unable to actually say the words. He was out of breath again already. Hot stones smacked into the ground beside them and scattered toward the wall.

The moment it stopped, they ducked around to look and were met with a squishing sound.

The slime was jumping.

Not high or far. It jumped like a rabbit casually moved, but it was over three meters tall and burning, so the effect was a little more frightening. Worse, because it was jumping at them. Licks of fire burning in a trail wherever it went, just like the blue Salamander had.

“In a second, go that way,” Micah hissed at Brent.

“I can tag you out—”

He was already running and threw his last rock at the slime to get its attention. It worked.

He almost twisted his ankle on the stone shrapnel and limped behind the next pillar. When he glanced around, he spotted Kyle heave an entire load of rocks at it with a makeshift sling made out of a loot sack.

Those did the trick.

The slime hopped and hit the ground like it had twisted its ankle itself. It lay low for a moment and its mass bulged outward. A tear formed along its side and burst, pushing out a spew of blue and red smoke. It pooled on the ground and dispersed.

The slime tried to regenerate but even as the bleeding stopped, the scar remained. Its vessel had a patch, now. If they just fed it enough, it would get another, and another, and eventually, it would pop.

“Ha!” Micah called out with a smile and spun until he spotted Alex. He was climbing up toward their gear. “I told you so!”

“I didn’t say it wouldn’t work!” he called back. “Just that it might not be worth the effort!”

“What effort?” Micah asked. “We’re not going to use the mined rocks. And I can do this all d—”

“Stranya!” Kyle bellowed.

Blue, warm shadow. The slime was looming over him next to the pillar and stretching up.

He hadn’t seen it do that before but the gesture seemed instinctually familiar, like something taking a deep—

He threw himself the other way and a flood of flames filled the space he had been a moment ago.

Fire breath. It could do that, too.

Micah ran around the pillar like a child around a tree and almost into it, a gelatinous wall wrapped halfway around the pillar. He scrambled to a stop and pushed off the stone to head the other way.

The slime pulled back and hopped after him with, squishing against the ground and leaving a burning trail of crackling flames.

Kyle was still doing his job with brutal efficiency. He'd burnt through multiple piles of stones already, but that meant Micah had to weave to dodge the stones being shot at him. One tore on his armor on its way past.

He was limping anyway, old wounds acting up, but he winced at the thought of it being damaged even more. Maybe he should have tagged out with Brent after all. He would definitely need help soon, because he didn’t know if he could continue to run straight from that thing for long.

Maybe if he could weave through the pillars— But no, that would just make it pulse again and they still hadn’t collected all of the crystals. He spotted Brent searching the piles for the handful of ones inside. There was a scattered handful here and there, Jason was missing, and Alex defending their things.

This would be a nightmare to report. If not the others, Micah would definitely get points deducted for this mess.

He stumbled to the next pillar and braced himself against it to catch his breath for a moment. Behind him, the slime got closer and closer. He could hear it coming. He would have to use the pillars to slow it down after all. He had no other choice.

Just as he was about to step around, the third minecart flew between them and crashed into the ground, scattering its contents into the room, including a Kobold for whatever reason.

The monster tumbled across the ground like a ragdoll to the other end of the inner circle and burst into smoke.

Micah praised Ryan’s name, because the minecart shooting past had stopped the slime in its tracks for a second.

But then a second Kobold flew out of the hole and landed on its side. It sunk into the blue and tried to grab on to anything to pull itself back out, flailed, and went up in flames. Smoke shot up as it burst and the crystal dissolved inside, adding to the mass.

Okay, that had been cool. Micah wouldn’t have thought Ryan would do something like that.

But he hadn’t.

“Ha!” Jason called as he stepped up. “Take thaa … I missed?!” He must have meant the minecart. He definitely hadn't missed with the Kobold.

“Jason!” Micah called. “Don’t run off! We need your help!”

“I’m, uhm, kind of busy,” he said as he climbed down. “There are Kobolds headed our way.”

“I know,” Alex called across the room, his gruff voice telling them he was dealing with them already.

Oh, great, Micah thought as he stumbled away and searched. Easily a dozen tunnels led to the chamber and if each one filled with monsters—

A pair of Firescale Kobolds appeared in one of the tunnels, crowding next to each other to see into the room. The moment they spotted them, they fed flames in their hands. Red crystals were clenched in fists or hung at their hips. If only they could use those, this would go so much quicker. One fire crystal was probably worth half a dozen of the rocks Kyle threw.

Micah swatted one of those aside when the slime spat at him and stumbled to the right to avoid another as it followed.

Jason climbed up to another exit and stabbed a Kobold standing above him, then disappeared inside. Its red crystals tumbled to the pile below, not so far from his reach.

No, Micah thought. It was his mistake, it was his job to bring the monster down without any more sacrifices. Besides, doing it like this made it that much harder and he wasn’t above a little challenge.

He just had to find a better way to deal with it.

“Brent!” Alex grunted somewhere. “We could really use some of your food right about now!”

A [Fireball] smacked into the ground right in front of Micah and he agreed with that statement. He eyed the pair of Kobolds targeting him, the blue slime in the corner of his vision, and frowned.

He changed course to the left and picked up a handful of the rocks Jason had delivered and threw. C’mon, c’mon, he thought, waiting. He had to make sure the slime would follow him and not Kyle.

A few more steps to the left—

It was almost on him when twin [Firebolts] smacked into it from behind and it shrunk together—

—then expanded.

Micah’s expression switched from a mischievous grin to slack-jawed surprise. He had just put it between him and the Kobolds for cover, because of course a giant fire slime would be resistant to fire, but if—

Another [Firebolt] nicked its side and a wound tore open on the opposite end, at the same height. Smoke puffed out like a small waterfall and it healed itself, but the scar remained.

It could also absorb fire, he realized.

“It can also absorb fire!” he called out in excitement, though the others must have seen. “Guys, it can—” He broke off.

The slime was trembling.

Why? He was right there. It shouldn’t have felt frustrated. Unless—

The next volley from Kyle’s makeshift sling hit its side and was absorbed, but the slime didn’t stop shaking. It rapidly rearranged the rocks inside itself and Micah took cover behind his shield.

Nothing hit him.

It shot indiscriminately at anything it could see, Kobolds and teammates alike. And there was his answer. He hadn’t known just how wounded it was. Like all most monsters, it was lashing out in desperation.

Alex hopped from the mouth of his tunnel and sought cover behind one of the pillars. The Kobold he had been fighting went down as two steaming stones smacked into it and burst.

He slipped his glove halfway off and stepped forward. So much for sunken cost, he thought as he slapped the beast again. Because it was still trembling. Kyle called a warning despite him.

This should do the trick.

He tried to pull his hand back out and stumbled. Blue goo slipped inside to touch his hand and held him in place. It was pulling him in much faster than it had before, into the boiling innards. His ring kicked into effect, but it still hadn’t stopped trembling. It was almost shaking, now.

He dug both feet into the ground, held his arm with the other, and tried to pull, but he was losing ground.

“Help!” he called and switched for his knife. He tried to cut out the section he was stuck in, but couldn’t quite manage.

Someone wrapped an arm around him and started pulling, and Micah thought it was Ryan for a moment, but he wasn’t here.

Alex must have realized it was useless. He shoved a hand right into the beast next to him and said, “[Shape Water].” Flames picked up around them as it formed its ring of flames and burned into their sleeves.

“What—” Micah started. He was just stuck in it now all the same. Run, he wanted to tell him.

Alex shook his head and said, “[Shape Fire],” instead. That did the trick. The slime let go. Their hands slipped free and they threw themselves around, holding their shields back at the incoming pulse as they rushed toward the pillars.

In the corner of his eye, Micah saw a glimmer of something black and heard a crash through the barricade.

Ryan wouldn’t stuff a Kobold in a minecart, he thought when he spotted his friend. He would just ride it.

The guy ducked out from the inside as the cart flew and jumped at the last moment, feet briefly sailing on the sides. It crashed onto the slime, breaking the tip of its flame cloak. He saw the flames and stabbed his spear down on the last moment instead of sailing to the ground.

His boots sank into the blue when he pulled himself up and a yellow sheen sprung up around him from the rain jacket. It wouldn’t be long before he sunk entirely, like the Kobold had. Could it protect him from even that?

“It eats fire!” Micah bellowed.

Ryan’s eyes went wide, he gripped his spear with both hands, and shoved it further in. With a smile, he mouthed, Eat this.

Flames flooded into the beast from the inside and it stopped shaking. It began to wobble outward instead like sinking dough. The ring of flames around it dispersed, but Alex dragged him further anyway, calling a warning to everyone else wherever they were.

Micah was busy looking back with a smile as he saw his friend continue to pour fire in through his spear, He really is the coolest person I know.

They ducked behind a pillar just as the slime burst.

Red and blue smoke flooded the chamber floor to ceiling and every tunnel connecting to it. It was hotter than a sauna, heat accumulated from scores of fire crystals eaten.

Something wet smacked into the ground next to them, and the pillar above, and the wall. And when Micah glanced down, he saw a glowing blue blob like a molten crystal lying there.

The smoke robbed his vision away. He held his breath with a hand over his face, but as he leaned against the warm stone and listened, he could hear dozens of those same splats everywhere else.

Their reward. He knew there had to be one.

Ryan yelped in surprise when he fell, making him smile, and he winced when the crash of his minecart sounded right after.

“I’m okay!” he called.

The moment he could breathe again, Micah laughed.

They’d won.