I didn’t like the look of these things at all. I realized I was a lot more anxious about the little round nuggets than anything else I’d encountered so far because they were the first non-humanoid enemies I’d had to face. Unless you counted my general bewilderment of this whole new ordeal of being trapped in a nightmare world. Then they were the second.

“They are low level, but they swarm–apparently,” Stinky said.

“Great!” I shouted. “Good to know that they’re just going to overwhelm us–not kill us outright.”

That was when the mob of monsters advanced. They leaped forward, springing along like flesh-eating volleyballs. My pulse quickened.

“They hop!” I cried in a horrified bellow.

Why is that somehow worse than anything else?

The eggs came at us en masse, and I was finally able to wrest the object from my waistband. But something was off– it felt too light. I looked down at my hands, confused, but then realized I was holding the paper party hat from Fiesta de Bathwater that I’d forgotten to get rid of. Something about the absurdity of it made me want to wear it.

Am I brain-damaged?

“Fuck it,” I said and stretched it back over my dome, and grabbed the actual weapon. I raised the haladie in my right fist and shifted the party hat to keep it on straight with my left. I must have triggered something, though, because suddenly there was a whoosh inside my head and a notification popped up.

Equipped Enchanted Festival Cap

Enchanted Festival Cap

Rarity: ???

Item Class: ???

Durability: ???

Weight: ???

Bonuses:

Slimy

This is an item created by a god out of poor-quality materials. That’s okay, though, because it works as intended! Grants SLIMY!

Are you kidding me? Slimy?! What kind of description is that?

It was annoying, but I didn’t have time to think about that right now. I was boiling again like I was sweating through my layer of not-very-protective clothing.

The first wave of possessed roe reached us then. Dagger maws open, they sprang their attack, chittering the whole time like demonic parakeets. Roaring, I slashed down with the haladie as the first one got within range. I watched the blade sing through its flesh, tearing open a gash nearly as wide as its mouth as I punched with my left fist. I connected hard, and the creature screeched, pus-colored blood–or maybe it was pus–streaming out as it bounced right off of my fucking fist with a rubbery-sounding PING. The egg shot off of my knuckles like an actual dodgeball, smashing against the cavern wall dozens of feet away.

“Fuck ye–”

WHAM!

I reeled as another of the creatures collided with my face, sending me back-pedaling a few steps and disorienting me. It had bounced away from the strike, looking equally as confused as I was as it sailed through the air and landed back in the pool of water. A third creature was bounding after me now, shrieking angrily as it shot forward, baring its monstrous mandibles. I stuck my haladie out like a spear, timing it perfectly as the roe struck right at the point and… SLIRK! It stopped moving as the eight-inch blade pierced it right between its googly, red eyes. I had to whip the weapon a little to dislodge the creature, but it flew right off and landed on the stone floor with a wet plop.

I’m fucking doing it, I thought, scanning for my next enemy. I’m kicking their gumball asses!

“Let’s fucking go!” I shouted.

A trio of the egg creatures barreled down on me from the right, and I slid out of the way as they launched. I stepped on the discarded club I’d seen earlier and almost toppled over. I grimaced at its quality but decided it might do for handling three of these suckers at once. I placed the haladie in my teeth and scooped up the stick. Then I cocked it over my shoulder like a baseball bat. The eggs bounced at me, and I gripped the handle tightly with both hands. Then I swung for the fences.

CRACK!

The club snapped in two before I even connected with the beasts. Apparently, movement was enough to shatter the pathetic excuse for a weapon into uselessness. The top half went spinning away into the distance, so I just hucked the handle at the monsters, but all three hit me at once. I staggered.

Congratulations! You have gained a new Skill!

Two-Handed Weapons (F-Rank Level 1)

Well, at least I have that going for me. I should have put those goddamned gloves on.

I noticed that, much like in Fawn’s tent, when I was in the thick of some oh-shit, the notifications tended to minimize immediately. Thankfully my obviously shitty luck hadn’t morphed that particular aspect of this world.

“Zeol, you son of a bitch!” I yelled and darted away again as the eggs bounced toward me again.

BAM!

I hit the ground hard, smacking the side of my head against the stone and seeing stars. I glanced up through my daze and saw I’d tripped over Berg the Body’s stupid fucking legs.

“Berg, you dick!” I screamed in rage and struggled to stand. That was when the trio got me, smashing into my side and back with all their force.

Fuck, fuck, fuck! They’re gonna eat me!

I slashed at the air blindly, trying to protect my face from their huge teeth, all the while getting dribbled like a basketball at pee-wee practice. It hurt, but in a ‘bashing, smashing’ kind of way. They weren’t biting me. I was drenched with sweat now, the ground slick with my body’s lubrication, and it was starting to look like snot or drool. But I didn’t care–I had to get up. I couldn’t quite reach them with the haladie, as they were striking me entirely at random, and with each hit, my body slammed back against the ground, throwing off my swings.

Critical Damage Incurred!

Multiplication bonus x 3!

“Arggh! God motherfucking shit!” I bellowed.

They didn't hurt too much, but I had a feeling part of their charm was wearing you down with the ball-busting maneuvers. Fortunately, I had a treasure trove of extra HP thanks to Zeol’s magical Scooby Snack, and these little ho-vums hadn’t even scratched the surface. I tried to roll away as I felt two of them bounce up, trying to smash me beneath their springy bodies. As I did, I bumped into Berg’s corpse. I watched as the downward trajectory of one of the returning eggs shifted, and rather than landing on me again, it smashed directly into the smooth metal of the dead man’s helmet.

PING!

The possessed roe was suddenly flying in a high arc, clearing nearly fifty feet upward as it soared through the air and smashed against one of the dungeon’s pillars.

Even my thick skull was making connections right then and there. Still pummeled by two eggs, I crawled forward until I was right next to Berg’s shrunken skull. I wrenched the helmet up and heard a crack as I snapped the dead bastard’s fragile neck bone, and my motion sent his skull flying into the dim light beyond the glow of the dungeon’s archway. I dropped my fist into the well of the helmet, reared back, and threw a wild haymaker as gravity returned the roes to me.

PWA-PING!

I hit one, sweeping it right into the other, and was just able to catch their looks of terror as they spiraled away from me into the distance.

“YES!” I cheered. “Fuck you, eggs! Fuck you!”

Congratulations! You have gained a new Skill!

Improvised Weapons (F-Rank Level 1)

I clambered up and, now armed with my new metallic boxing glove, sought out my next opponent. Two more egg-boys struck, one going for the direct hit, the other disappearing to my left. I smacked the first with my helmet-fist, sending him off on his merry journey into the distance. I wheeled, haladie out, looking for the second one, and caught another mouthful of roe as it bopped me in the gob. I stumbled but put my duke up as it tried to do that again.

“Not today, eggs Bene-bitch!”

It hit me in the face again.

Shit! They were too hard to predict as their bodies were so featureless, I couldn’t see which direction they were actually going to move in. I’d need a higher Insight or Detect Creature’s Bullshit or something. Five more eggs came bounding toward me, and I hissed out a breath. I couldn’t tell if these were new ones or returning members of Camp Helmet Punch. I heard the splashing sound that indicated more of these fuckers were emerging from the pool.

Where the hell are these guys coming from?!

I punched, stabbed, and even kicked a little, dispersing the crowd before me. After blocking another attack, I also gained the Improvised Shield Skill, which was fucking awesome. I was surprised none of them had used their oversized chompers yet to take a bite out of me. What was the point of all them teeth if you weren’t going to use them?

Then, I caught sight of Stinky and realized why.

The matau soldier was struggling. There were a bunch of bloody-yellow carcasses around him that he’d clearly been able to stab into kingdom come, but that wasn’t the issue. The problem was that he had five or six of the possessed roes stuck to his body, weighing him down and seemingly causing a whole mess of pain. Another dozen surrounded him, leaping in his general direction. Stinky roared in agony, still attempting to strike out at the beasts with his dagger, but I could see he was losing steam.

Uh-oh. That’s not good.

I watched as another egg sprang out of the water, spotted Stinky, and ping-ponged its happy ass right toward him. It bounced high and landed directly on his right forearm. It stuck like an adhesive. Now that it was nestled, I saw it open its wide mouth and bite.

Stinky cried out, trying to shake the beast off of him, but it was fused there solidly, digging into his skin with its fangs like a lamprey eel. The matau looked over at me, his grimace losing its deep scowl as I could see fear flooding into his face.

It dawned on me. They were sticking to Stinky, but not to me. They didn’t bite unless they were attached to the body. I hadn’t stopped sweating, but this didn’t seem like normal perspiration…

Rather than a lightbulb going off over my head, this was a goddamned one-thousand-watt flood lamp.

“I’m SLIMY!” I shouted. I would have kissed Zeol on his open wooden mouth if, you know, he hadn’t been the entire reason I was currently here–or at least I suspected very strongly.

There’d been a bunch of notifications that had been minimized during this encounter. Still, I caught one as it flashed up before banishing itself to its waiting badge:

Congratulations! You’ve raised a Skill!

Insight has advanced to F-Rank Level 7!

“Good for you, orc!” Stinky yelled. He slashed at another egg and killed it, but it was quickly replaced by one of its siblings. The matau released a tremendous howl of pain as it latched on to him. It seemed like more and more of the creatures were gathering around the artist formerly known as Akiva, having decided he was an easier target than me and wanting to introduce him to the inner workings of their digestive systems.

Seeing his odds, I concluded that it would be a lot easier for me to get away while they were distracted. Considering I had the Traveler’s Cloak--and my now insanely high sneak--I could probably slip away pretty quickly and hide until these things stopped paying attention to me.

But, seeing the look of fear in his normally angry eyes, no matter how insufferably exhausting he was, I knew I had to try to even the odds. I sighed.

I’m definitely going to regret having this moment of weakness.

I raced forward, my steps light, and snuck up behind one of the stragglers facing away from me.

It doesn’t even know I’m here.

Score one for stealthy shenanigans! Not that they’d serve me super well in the larger situation, but, hey: every little bit helps.

PING!

I punted that fucking egg like I was aiming for a field goal that owed me money.

Then I got to work. I found that skirting along the outside, I could crunch, kick or stab these sticky little assholes without them noticing before it was too late. My high stealth was coming in clutch. I picked off a few of the pack before one of the eggs in the carton cluster got wise to me. It turned and released its godawful peal, which alerted several others in the vicinity.

It’s clobbering time!

I smashed the nearest monster with ole reliable and jammed my double-bladed death dealer into the top of another. The horde descended on me, and I smiled, having thought of a brilliant one-liner. I crouched forward, goading one of the eggs into leaping at my lowered form. Then I sprang up with my helmet fist just as it started to fall toward me.

PING!

“Sunnyside UPPERCUT!” I bellowed as the creature flew off.

Hell yeah! I’m a fucking superhero now! This is the best day of my life!

I thought that, abstractly, in all of existence, the one unifying feature all humanity shared was the idea that everyone dreamed of one day whooping someone’s ass while firing off a witty comeback. This was my moment.

Five roe surrounded me, noisily attempting to attack, and I barked out a laugh.

“I like my eggs scrambled, thanks!” I tried to say, but instead, it came out as:

“I like–OOF!” As one of the cholesterol-laden dummies directed a rattling blow to my chest.

Fuck it. I had my fifteen minutes of wit. Time to stop screwing around!

PING! PING! SLIRK! PING!

I cleaved and punched through the mass of chittering orbs, making my way toward Stinky. My limbs were slick with…slime, I guess, but it didn’t slow me down. I was an egg-punting, body-stabbing, ball-battering engine, and I wasn’t stopping ‘til I made it to the station.

There were around fifty roe on the platform now, and every so often, another group would leap from the pond.

I’ve gotta figure out how to get rid of them! This is insane! I felt like I’d fallen into the Toy Story claw machine.

I finally reached Stinky, who now looked like the world’s grossest grape bunch. I could still see his face, but his body was completely submerged in the pinkish mass. So I started jabbing and smashing all over again, trying to get them off of him.

“Why the hell aren’t they attacking you?!” Stinky screamed through the space between two roe attached to his chest. Another egg bounced off my head at that moment, and I stumbled. Fortunately, I was holding on to one of the creatures connected to my Fruit of the Loom friend here, and I maintained my balance.

“Clearly they are!” I yelled back. “Just shut up for a second. I’m trying to help you!”

“They’re biting the piss out of me, orc!” He yelled. “And taking pieces of flesh with them when they go! It’s fucking–ARGGH!”

I’d just ripped one of them off a spot on his arm.

“I’m doing my best!” I said. “But this isn’t easy!”

“What the hell is on your damned head?!” Stinky screamed.

“Is now really the time to ask me about my fashion choices?!”

The party hat was my single greatest ally right now, and I wasn’t taking notes on my outfit considering how well it was keeping me aloft in this confrontation.

Respect the drip, Stinky.

But thinking about it gave me an idea.

It was a fucking terrible one, so I hoped it worked.

I had seen an episode of Baywatch as a kid. You know, the show about hard-bodied supermodels who had taken jobs as lifeguards on tourist beaches instead of becoming actors or trophy spouses? There was a scene where one of the characters–David Hasselhoff, maybe– was rescuing a woman in turbulent waters and was forced to use the rescuee’s body as a shield against obstacles and felt all bad about it afterward or whatever. The idea was that the person doing the saving had to stay unhurt because they had the best chance of survival, and sacrificing their own safety would doom them both.

Well, in the brilliant strategy I was about to enact, I would do the exact opposite of that.

I punched the egg clinging onto the top of Stinky’s head, sending it flying away with some of his flesh in its clenched jaws. I shook the helmet off of my hand, stuffed my haladie between my teeth, and grabbed the festival cap from my noggin. Then I stretched it over Stinky’s temporarily-bare head and leaped backward.

It only took a moment for it to take effect. The eggs began to release with loud, wet suction sounds, tumbling from his body like a cascade of rubbery pearls. That was enough to free him, and Stinky immediately started slicing a path for himself.

I was on the ground, so I rolled, ripping my weapon out of my mouth and stabbing up as one of the possessed roe bounced down on me. I speared it and whipped it away from me to reclaim my haladie from its body and shot to my feet.

Stinky was near me now, screaming ferociously as he cut down everything that got near him. Anything that got by his attacks bounced off, but that didn’t seem to be slowing him down much at the moment. He looked goddamn hysterical wearing the vibrant paper cone on his head, especially in combination with his rough-and-tumble drake armor. I had to imagine I had looked even more ridiculous based on my general size and race.

I could see that everywhere Stinky’s flesh was exposed, he had large gashes, bite marks, or missing patches of flesh. He looked like the underside of a mushroom.

Ew.

One of the creatures finally got by my own defenses, crashing against me, and I felt intense pain as it latched onto my arm.

“FUCK!” I screamed and stabbed the creature through its face. It released and fell, but most of these stupid monsters were now realizing that whoever didn’t have the party hat was fair game for a bit of ‘bounce and bite’ and started advancing on me.

“We’ve gotta close and lock the chest!” Stinky screamed, starting to sprint back toward the pillars.

“What?!”

“The fucking chest!” He shouted as he raced past me. “It’s what’s controlling the flow of these bastards!”

I remembered the heavy thunk when he’d turned the key in the crate and felt stupid for not realizing it sooner.

It has to be some sort of mechanism designed to release the eggs at those intervals. But can it be shut off now that it’s been activated?

Guess we were going to learn tonight.

I spotted Berg’s helmet not far from where I was and dove toward it as several eggs shot after me. I snatched it up and placed it back on my fist, standing tall before the monsters.

“Time to kick start season two of Bouncy Bitch Beatdown,” I exclaimed, brandishing my weapons.

“What?!” Stinky called from about thirty feet away.

“Shit!” I shouted, punching one of the roe and racing forward. “I should have said ‘Supermarket Sweepkick!’”

“What the fuck are you talking about?!” Stinky demanded. He was currently trying to deal with a new cluster of eggs barring his arrival to the chest.

“Ugh, nothing!” I shouted back, wrenching my blade out of the body of another monster. They weren’t hard to dispatch, and usually, one good stab rendered them deader than the visiting room at an old folks home. Their real danger was how numerous they were–as Stinky had indicated before the fight began. I slowly made my way through their ranks to get back to the treasure box. Still, each time I sent one flying or killed them, it was like they were immediately replaced by another equally-as-annoying duplicate.

I made an opening and went for it, but my heart dropped as I felt one hit me from behind and tuck into my obviously tasty back meat. Before I could shout my disapproval, a second and then a third joined in on the fun.

This was not the foursome I asked Santa for!

I couldn’t do anything about the ones clinging to my sirloin area, but my health had still barely been touched. So I made a break for it, galloping directly toward Stinky. Together we were able to cut down or send flying most of the eggs blocking our path to the chest, but when we reached it, several more hit me from the rear and I stumbled forward. I winced as more teeth joined the pincher parade on my orc flesh.

Stinky reached the box first and ran around the back to close the lid. Apparently, it was much heavier this go-around, as he couldn’t seem to get it to budge more than a few inches.

I was preparing to help when another egg hit me in the back of the arm and I released a growl of anger and pain.

“I’m getting fucking sick and tired of dealing with this bullshit!” I shouted, whirling so that my back was to the chest. I froze.

“Uh, Stinky,” I said, looking back the way we’d just come. The matau was still busying himself with trying to lift the chest’s open lid, so I couldn’t see him from where I was.

“What?!” He shouted. “I’m trying to… oh.”

He’d noticed.

I gulped as I stared out at the landscape before us. From the edge of the pond and stretching almost to where we were now was a sea of hopping forms. There were at least a hundred possessed roe skipping toward us now that they had a single point to target. Other than a few outliers, most of this massive horde was only about fifty feet from us. It was a very bleak sight.

“Usually, in times like these, people say, ‘it’s been nice knowing you,’” I stated, not dragging my eyes away from the scene. “But it hasn’t been. Since the moment I met you, Stinky, shit has straight-up sucked.”

“Won’t get any arguments from me, orc,” Stinky said, but his voice sounded resigned like he was squaring off against a sure defeat.

“Let’s face it,” I said. “Even if we shut this thing off, we’d still have to kill all these guys.”

Stinky spat on the ground.

“My fucking Stamina is low, I’m covered in wounds, and I don’t have much strength left in me to keep fighting.”

Strength…

My breath caught in my throat. Berg’s Strength potion! He’d mentioned it in the note, and maybe Stinky could use it to close the lid?

I turned to ask the soldier about the bottle he’d grabbed, but that’s when I saw something. At first, I thought it might be a symbol of a nobleman's house emblazoned on the outside of the chest next to the locking mechanism. Then I noticed the mushroom cloud.

Is that…?

The little emblem shifted, rotating to the right, and I zeroed in on the key still in the lock.

My Sabotage Ability! It was trying to give me a hint! If that was the case, then this likely wasn’t the doom I’d thought it was. Unless I utterly misunderstood the Ability’s purpose.

Here goes nothing!

Without another word, I crouched low and grabbed the handle of the key. Turning left would lock the chest and potentially freeze up whatever was below the water pooping out these vicious monsters. However, when I tried to turn it back while it was open?

I tried.

It didn’t budge.

I looked back at the Sabotage emblem, which was fading, and shrugged. Then I cranked it to the right even further than it already was. There was a little resistance, but it wasn’t the same unyielding barrier that turning left had offered. A split second later, it moved, and I dropped it into place. There was another resounding thunk like before, except now I also heard–or rather felt– a low rumble beneath my feet.

“Orc!” Stinky screamed, looking up at me from his position. “What did you do?”

“Silly shit!” I shouted as the rumble became a roar, filling the entire cavern with its tremendous volume.

The eggs came to an abrupt stop as the entire place began to shake beneath our feet. Suddenly, the pool far in the distance started to bubble as though it were boiling. It gurgled loudly, and the noise combined with the reverberation of the cave created a soundscape of true, abject chaos. A symphony of destruction, if you will. However, I didn’t have time to think about Megadeth at the moment. Shit was getting wild.

To my horror, more eggs began to pop out of the water at a rapid rate, far outpacing the previous installments. What was worse is they were spitting from the pool at a more incredible velocity as well, arcing upward of thirty or forty feet. Some of them crashed amongst their brethren with reckless abandon, scattering the crowd of possessed roe like bowling pins. Others fired out of the water and hit the walls of the cavern, ricocheting like bullets in an action movie–except these missiles made the ridiculous, rubbery PING as they smacked against the rock.

“I think I broke their mommy!” I yelled, dodging as one of the egg monsters flew directly at me from the pool.

“You’ve killed us, you fucking idiot!” Stinky roared.

The water beneath the bridge began to swell, and at first, I couldn’t tell what was happening. A massive white-pink form began to rise up from beneath the roiling surface, and I couldn’t find the necessary mechanism in my body to take a breath. It looked like a giant version of the roe was trying to wrench its way out of the pool!

“Oh fu–” I started to yell, but I was struck in the chest by another egg that had rebounded. It hit me with enough force to knock me backward, and I fell hard. However, to my surprise, I sprang back up almost instantly. Realization hit me. The biting bastards still gnawing into my back had acted like a trampoline, launching me to my feet with their elasticity.

The form in the water was visible now, and to my shock, I saw that it was not a mother egg come to join her babies. It was a gigantic mass of the possessed roe. Apparently, whatever I’d done had kicked their production into overdrive. So much so that they had all been released–or whatever–at once. Now they were jammed into the exit, unable to go anywhere like some humongous rat king made of sticky pearls.

It was still big, though, and even the section squeezing out of the opening had grown taller than the level of the bridge. As it continued to rise like a disgusting, infected bun in the oven, some pieces broke away, firing off with enough inertia to crack the sections of the wall they hit.

Effin’ hell. We absolutely cannot get hit by those!

I stared at the chaos unfurling before my eyes. Eggs were everywhere. They covered the entire platform. Some were still shooting around like pinballs, and the quickly-engorging dog pile of them was probably going to make matters much, much worse in short order. What was the point of all of this cataclysmic bullshit? Everything I’d done so far, the items I’d collected that I hadn’t even gotten to use yet. All for what? To end up as mutant egg food?

I glanced up at the looming pillars with woeful desire.

If only we could get to higher ground, we might be able to wait this thing out–

“Gah!”

One of the nasty little sluts on my back had bitten into me so hard I’d lost my train of thought.

You fucking bouncy mother…

Then I froze.

Oh, no.

I’d just thought of something stupid. Something so moronic, so void of anything resembling intelligence that it could have starred in a reality TV show.

I spun, thrusting my open hand at Stinky.

“Give me the potion!”

“What?!”

I slammed my fist on the lip of the open chest. There wasn’t any time for this!

“Give me the fucking potion you got from the corpse!”

I thought for a second.

“And the party hat! Gimme the potion and the party hat!”

“Why?!” Stinky bellowed, his voice almost impossible to hear over the terrible loudness my actions had caused.

“I have a fucking plan! NOW GIMME THE GODDAMN PARTY HAT!”

Stinky seemed to think there was no point in arguing any further, which was a bad sign as to what he felt our odds were, but I didn’t care. I was going to do something. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen? We die? Partner, we were already going to be chum food if we just sat there.

He tossed me the bottle and the hat. I quickly put the paper cone in place on my head and Analyzed the potion.

??? Potion of Titanic Strength

Rarity: ???

Item Class: ???

Durability: ???

Weight: .09 lbs

Effect: ???

Well, shit.

That didn’t help me much, but at least I knew it was titanic strength. Which meant I would be at least as strong as an ocean liner. I began to sweat slime again, so I removed the helmet from my hand and shoved the haladie into my waistband. The roes on my body released with suction-y pops as the sound of their bouncy brothers drew close behind me. I tossed the dented helm to Stinky, who caught it with a puzzled look.

“Put it on,” I said, before quickly adding, “and get your dagger ready. Don’t ask questions.”

I didn’t wait for him. I bit the cork out and spit it into the air, slugging the contents down. It was disgusting beyond belief, and I slightly choked but finished it. The effect came online almost instantly as I saw the notification.

Buff: Titanic Strength

You temporarily gain the Strength score of a Titan for one minute. Time to show the world how earth-shatteringly powerful you are for sixty seconds–the perfect amount of time to impress that special someone in the bedroom.

Strength Score: 200 (Temporary) for [65 seconds] (+8% effectiveness with [First Perk] Adventurous Tastes)

“Aw, yeah, motherfucker!”

Now, this was a goddamn potion! The feeling was pure euphoria. It was like I’d just mainlined a gallon of super heroin directly into the orgasm center of my brain. However, I didn’t have time to bask in the feeling of effervescent joy because I had an absolutely one-hundred-percent dipshit maneuver to carry out.

Stinky was just sliding the helmet on when he looked up and saw me stuffing my gigantic orc hands into the luxurious gloves I’d pulled out of my pockets. He looked like he wanted to say something snarky, but I didn’t give him the opportunity. I was too fancy for his words now.

Instead, I leaned down and grabbed the chest in both hands, and heaved. Even with my apparently modified strength, I realized the chest was sealed to the fucking ground and took a moment to dislodge. Still, it exploded upward in a shower of wood and rocks when it did. I hefted it in my arms as Stinky reeled back, shielding himself with his limbs. I caught his glance at that, and I winked at him. Then I turned back to the onslaught of possessed roe, and with a deep breath, launched the ultra-heavy box right into their midst like a bowling ball.

Those in the immediate path of the chest exploded on contact, the force too great for even their bouncy skin to repel. The eggs on the sidelines soared away, striking the walls and rebounding off them, most of them splattering. The chest skidded and rolled through their ranks, cleaving a path through like a hot machete in a butter forest.

I looked back at my companion. Stinky was trembling at the sight of me, my ferocious strength apparently too much to bear witness to.

“A-are you going to f-fight all of them?” Stinky managed to ask.

“No,” I said. “There’s not enough time. I have something else in mind.”

It was true; I’d briefly considered the option of total evisceration. But there was a fuckton of these eggy skanks, and I didn’t think my strength would last long enough to get to them all.

“What is it?” Stinky breathed.

“You’re going to hate it,” I said. “Let’s hope you qualify as a weapon.”

“What the hell do you–”

He didn’t get a chance to finish. I quickly grabbed him around the legs and snatched him up into the air. I’d checked the status of the gloves when I had put them on again. Sure enough, after picking up the Two-Handed Weapons Skill when I was hilariously destroying the wooden club, I now had one charge available for the gauntlets’ benefit. Now I just had to hope it would work with an improvised two-hander.

Only one way to find out.

I accessed the gloves’ Ability as Stinky screamed for his life and watched as his entire body flashed with a bright, golden light. It had worked. He would be completely invulnerable for the next minute and a half.

“Hell yeah!” I roared.

Now for phase two.

“Hold on to your butt, Stinky!” I boomed and began charging toward the swath I’d forged through the horde of roe, swinging the matau as I did. My companion’s wails were the soundtrack to my carnage as I barreled into the fray.

PWA-PING!

The first row of eggs flew in every direction as I scattered them with Stinky’s body like a scythe.

Then I caught sight of the straining, undulating egg tumor in the pool, and I couldn’t help it–goddammit, my brain summoned up a song unbidden.

My mom used to play Simon and Garfunkel constantly when I was little, and it was one of the strongest memories I had of her. The moment I saw the stone walkway with the turbulent display beneath it, the bizarre sequence of events transpiring forced my mind to vomit up “Bridge Over Troubled Water” with perfect clarity.

Author’s Note: At this time, if you’d like to be dope as hell, it would be appropriate to play “Bridge Over Troubled Water” by Simon and Garfunkel for this scene.

The potion had seemed to give me perfect clarity in how to wield this newfound strength, and it was almost as though everything had slowed down as I moved.

I swung hard, shredding the lines of egg monsters every which way with my man-weapon. Then I switched sides and swung again, clearing the creatures hopping up and down on the other side of the path. I was hitting them hard enough that none of them could stick to Stinky, and I was entirely invulnerable to them as long as I was wearing my happy little party cone.

“I’m going to kill you!” Stinky screeched, and I couldn’t tell if he was referring to me or the eggs. Probably me. He had his dagger out and was slicing the beasts as he flashed through them like a bewildered razor.

However, I hadn’t gained much ground doing things this way--as fun as it was--and I was on a very serious time crunch. So, silently apologizing to my unwilling weapon, I decided to mix it up. Still moving along the path, I began to rotate. I saw Stinky’s expression change to one I could only describe as “extreme terror and regret” as I approached a full spin, swatting the eggs away in a wide circle as I did.

PWA-PWA-PING-PI-PING PWA-PING PING PING

I spun, and I spun, being careful to move down the path of least resistance all the while. I was like a methed-out gorilla playing with its favorite ragdoll and leaving a path of destruction in my wake that could have been considered a war crime. Notifications stacked unendingly in my vision as I whirled, but because I was in active combat, they thoughtfully minimized so that I could continue my tornadic murder spree.

I’d remembered something from the dance class Aunt Ella had forced me to attend when I was eight:

If you’re spinning, use the spot technique.

So, with each violent, egg-demolishing rotation, I would snap my head to the bridge at the turnaround point to keep my orientation and prevent myself from becoming dizzy. I drew closer and closer to the pool and the pulsating quagmire of egg bodies as Art Garfunkel’s tenor reached an invading fever pitch in my mind.

We finally reached the end of the army of possessed roe, and now it was on to the third and final phase of my brain-dead plan. I stopped moving forward and spun in place, shifting my weight to gain more and more momentum before performing the riskiest part of this operation: I jumped.

I’d expected a bit of a boost from both the Titanic Strength Potion and Stinky’s inertia to gain enough height to land on the roe king, but I had miscalculated slightly. As I pushed off from the ground, I realized that without being firmly rooted by my enhanced legs, my body still had the same–whaddya call it… mass. I was, therefore, subject to the whim of the volition with which my screaming flesh-maul was moving. This meant that rather than the extra fifteen or so feet I’d planned for, Stinky and I fired through the air and blazed past my original benchmark–heading directly for the ceiling of the cavern at whatever the speed a Titan can toss something. So, extremely fast. Not a problem, right?

Wrong.

There was the additional complication of the fact that as I’d released, I’d accidentally let go of one of Stinky’s legs for a moment, which instantly dissolved the invulnerability effect he was under. If that hadn’t happened, things wouldn’t be so dire. With my mountain of extra health, I could… maybe survive the crash, but Stinky would almost definitely become matau-goo.

There were mere seconds before impact, and I didn’t know what else to do except–

Wait!

I opened my menu fast as hell.

Please let this be a new day! Please let this be a new day!

There it was.

Yes! Thank fuck!

I found what I was looking for and didn’t even think about it. I pulled the roaring Stinky into my arms. I curled my body around him as I mentally slammed on Zeol’s Falling Star a fraction of a second before we collided with the rock.

KABOOM!

My back hit the stone with tremendous force, and I heard the foundation of rock explode behind me, gigantic fissures opening up in the flesh of the ceiling. I hadn’t felt a thing.

It worked! It goddamn WORKED!

Stinky wasn’t screaming anymore, but he was breathing, so I had to assume he was alright. I hung like that for a moment before gravity took over, and we plummeted again, but I didn’t care.

I was alive–for the moment–and that was worth celebrating.

“Liiiike a briiiiiidge over troooooubled waateeer!” I bellowed, my baritone reverberating off the walls as I fell toward the mass below, the song’s crescendo popping back into my head. I was losing my goddamned marbles.

I’d left my menu open and watched in real-time as my Luck–which had been at negative four–ticked all the way up to a positive eleven.

The implications of that were still a bit mysterious to me. Still, I couldn’t believe that I’d performed all those acts under such disadvantageous odds. Now that my fortune was slightly higher than the average person’s, it seemed like the perfect time to do some crazy shit. I didn’t know what was about to go down, but I’d been operating under a deficit for my entire life. Even a slight bump to my luck was basically the equivalent of karma on steroids for me.

But, what was I going to do about my companion? Much like with the cavern roof, I would likely be fine in a game of chicken with natural downward forces, but Stinky would probably not fare as well. He was unconscious from the impact and badly injured from our lovers’ quarrel with the roe. It was a fucking miracle he’d survived the collision with the cave wall at all, and there was no way he’d make it through the next leg of this trip unscathed. So, completely out of sensical ideas and trusting in--what I imagined--was the rest of my thin tether to providence: I lofted Stinky upward, arresting his momentum as we fell.

“I wiiiill eaaaaase your–”

I struck the pile of eggs, taking the full force of the impact. It blasted a massive chunk out of my HP, but I was still in the beefed-up quadrant.

Just as I suspected: I bounced. This had been my original plan before the whole ceiling incident. I could tell immediately that I was going to be moving at a clip. I caught Stinky by the leg again as his path–very fortunately–intersected my arc, and the two of us zoomed through the cavern, high above the still furious and baffled possessed roe toward my intended target all along: the top of the pillars.

I hadn’t actually expected to get this far. But I had figured that if I was going to go out, I would go out with style. Everything that had happened to me so far was a highly-unlikely series of failing upward. Lady Luck had to have been visiting the toilet during this whole ordeal because there’s no way I would have gotten away with any of that if she’d been watching.

Then, of course, the metaphorical wind shifted as soon as I thought that: the Titanic Strength Potion wore off.

No! Shit! What the fuck, man?!

I felt like I’d just been kicked in the brain by a PCP hangover. Everything got awful all at once as my mega-strength disappeared from my nervous system, taking a sinkhole down to bye-bye town. Worse yet was that now that I was back to average might, keeping my carry-on luggage with me on this flight was going to become next to impossible. I started to lose my grip on Stinky’s boot, and he sagged as I tried to keep him airborne with me. I adjusted my grasp, but the movement threw us off course, and suddenly, we were careening too far left. We were going to blast right between the two pillars and likely smash right into the archway of the dungeon.

We were just about to pass the threshold of the pillars when Stinky slipped out of my grasp.

Shit.

I didn’t even have time to react; I just watched his dumb, slumbering body slip away, his face a perfect picture of calm. Fortunately, that was when something super weird and fucked up happened.

As I moved through the space between the two gigantic plinths, the archway ahead flashed bright, and everything froze in place. Me, Stinky, the few possessed roe I could see far below, everything ground to a halt as if time had just stopped working. It was silent. I couldn’t even hear any of the ear-molesting noises from the horror cave.

The shit is this, now? Some additional fucking complication that’s gonna fry my fanny?

A notification cropped up in my field of vision. This wasn’t like the usual variety, though. This one looked like a stone tablet with letters scratched into it with a dull knife. Charming. Green light sifted from somewhere deep within the text, giving me a really terrible feeling about what was about to happen.

WELCOME TRAVELER

YOU HAVE ENTERED THE BOUNDARY OF THE GATEWAY TO THE FORBIDDEN CRYPT OF THE DREADNAUGHT LORD.

IT HAS BEEN LONG SINCE WE HAVE HAD A VISIT.

We? Uh-oh. Serious ‘80s supernatural horror movie vibes.

TO ENTER THE FORBIDDEN CRYPT REQUIRES [ 2 ] EMERALD ESPER NODES. DO YOU PETITION ACCESS TO OUR DEPTHS?

I was stunned into silence.

This was the purpose of the Esper Nodes? To open fucking dungeons?! The reason Fawn had tried to kill me?

I was too shocked and enraged to do much at all except let my mind spiral.

Just how valuable are these things? I can’t believe they’re worth killing some poor, unsuspecting orc over! Why would someone want to come to a place like this? Are dungeons like this world’s equivalent of Beanie Babies?

I didn’t get it. But I’d obtained them from the greloks and another from one of the Redmark soldiers. Why didn't people just farm the Espers themselves? Surely I wasn’t the only one in the world that had them? That wouldn’t make sense, but I also wouldn’t have been surprised if there was some bullshit rule around it that somehow only existed to grind my gooch.

But, what was even worse was how fucking pointless everything I’d done had been. I mean, I’d just disassembled an entire cave full of springy homicide-eggs with the genius of my powerful strategic mind in order to save my life–when I could have just walked between the two fucking pillars the whole time and avoided the entire fiasco?

Focus, I thought. It didn’t matter right now. I had a choice to make.

But first, because I was born difficult, I wanted to try something.

“Uh, hi,” I said to the–uh–dungeon. “Loon, here. First-time dungeon whisperer, long-time shithead. I’m not sure if you can hear me or are even able to–”

WE CAN HEAR YOU.

Goddamn, that was unsettling.

“Uh, good,” I said. “I have a question for you, O Great and Powerful Forbidden Crypt. Is it just me who is allowed in, or can my buddy come inside as well?”

I cast a glance to Stinky, who was still caked in every possible type of grossness while suspended in unconscious bliss high above the ground.

ALL WHO REST BEFORE THE ARCHWAY WILL BE GRANTED PASSAGE WITHIN OUR WOMB.

Ew. I thought. Womb? That is so not cash money.

The prospect of having to share my VIP backstage pass filled me with a lot of anger and panic.

“So… everything in this cavern?”

ONLY THOSE WHO REST IN THE VALLEY BETWEEN THE ARCHWAY AND THE ESPER MONOLITHS WILL BE PERMITTED ADMISSION.

Ah, alright. I relaxed a little. That made things slightly less complicated. There’d be no sense in surviving everything I just had if the entire carton of eggs would be coming along for the ride. It might get kinda cramped and sticky.

I looked down at the five roe that had wandered beyond the barrier themselves.

We can take those chumps, no problem.

I was hesitant to enter the Crypt, but it was also likely the only way to save Stinky and myself as I didn’t have a single trick left up my sleeve to play. The message repopulated.

DO YOU PETITION ACCESS TO OUR DEPTHS?

With a sigh, I nodded.

“...sure,” I said. “I would like to access the dungeon.”

The moment the words left my mouth, I felt a yank from within me. It didn’t hurt, but it did startle me and was slightly uncomfortable–like stifling a sneeze, but like, in my soul. Two green orbs burst from my chest and separated in front of me, one flying over my right shoulder behind me, the other over my left.

I craned my neck and watched as they each homed in one of the statues, buzzing directly toward the stone birds before slipping right into the space in their talons. I’d thought they had been burglarized, but they were just waiting to grab some Esper boob.

Both stone birds’ eyes flashed with green light, and the same happened to the archway.

OFFERING ACCEPTED.

[8] TRAVELERS NOW ENTERING THE FORBIDDEN CRYPT OF THE DREADNAUGHT LORD.

ENJOY YOUR STAY.

Eight?

With the five eggs plus Stinky and I, that was only seven. Who the fuck was the remaining person?

But I didn’t get a chance to ask.

With another green flash, I was no longer hovering in the air with my metaphorical thumb up my metaphorical butt. I was standing in the dark. Strangely, my Dark Vision didn’t activate, and something about that led me to believe that my sight was being magically obscured. This was a fact that I did not like at all. I couldn’t see anything, and hardly any of my other senses were picking up on anything, save my sense of impending dread. Oh, I guess I could also tell it was uncomfortably warm wherever I was. Not more than that, though.

“Hello?” I asked.

There was no answer.

I stood in silent darkness for what felt like an eternity. It was like waiting for death.

Then, after a long moment, the lights came on. Actually, it was more like something that emitted light was made corporeal, and it was as though a veil had been lifted. All at once, the room was even hotter than before and I was now overwhelmed by the intensity of my new environment. Burning red light swarmed me, and I held up an arm to shield myself from its direct force. The air was hot and wet, like being inside the mouth of a gigantic dog.

Stinky came into view, lying unconscious near me. His skin was still raw and fissured from the roe’s vindictive teeth, but fortunately, he looked stable. We were facing a blank stone wall that looked like the other side of the door inside the archway. I turned around.

Big mistake.

We were standing on a rocky platform high above another cavern. It spilled out ahead of me, so large that the one we’d just escaped could have been this cave’s broom closet. Multiple other platforms dotted the landscape beyond, and tall rocky formations reminding me of China's stone forests–I think my science teacher, Mrs. Vaugn, had called them ‘karsts’– lived everywhere within.

The yawning brimstone doom before me set my tusks on edge. How in the hot lava hell was I going to navigate this area?

I reluctantly opened the message I had minimized hours ago and reread it with a groan.

[Faith Quest] Into The Dungeon

Accept?

Yes / No

Somehow I feel as though this is precisely what Zeol imagined. What a slimy son of a slut.

But a new sense of purpose rose in my chest. I was too fucking stubborn and annoying to just settle for whatever anyone had in store for me, and that filled me with a calmness I’d rarely felt in my life. If I had to be in here, I was gonna earn some blasted rewards, goddammit. That was for damn sure. I looked back over to my comatose compadre on the ground and shook my head.

When I get out of here, I’m going to rip that mist-humping god apart and eat him like cheesy bread.

I hit yes.