Milo crept past the corner of the dimly lit tunnel, peering around carefully. Empty.

It had been only a few minutes since he’d left Backlebutt back at the cave, and he hadn’t found any enemies yet.

He was still gnawing on their recent conversation in his head; he’d left on somewhat uncertain terms with the man.

Backlebutt had seemed pretty convinced that it would be possible for him to exit the Descent at the same entrance where Milo had—as long as they were together. He had also informed Milo that the rewards for moving on to the next floor could be permanent stat boosts. Maybe small ones for the first level, but still. Permanent.

Everything Milo knew said that you didn’t pass those up. You just didn’t. So, he was holding out hope that one of the rewards for Backlebutt would be a health potion. Backlebutt didn’t seem to think that was particularly likely; from the intel he was going off of, level rewards tended to be power-ups, or occasionally weapons or other useful equipment, but not consumables.

Milo was hoping Backlebutt was wrong. So was Backlebutt, to be fair, but the real source of tension between them now was that Milo hadn’t made any promises about what he would do if Backlebutt wasn’t offered some method of recovery.

He felt bad about that. He really did. And when it came right down to it, it probably made sense to pull out and come back with a full group. That had been another suggestion of Backlebutt’s; the next floors were supposed to be significantly harder.

However. Milo was being influenced by a head full of stories about people who had faced impossible odds and come out the other side as OP badasses. Those people didn’t back down from opportunities to gain strength, even if there was great risk.

But that’s stupid. 99% of the time, that’s not what would actually happen. There’s a reason we read about those people in stories rather than try to be those people; by all rights, they should die practically every other chapter. Following their example would be near-suicidal.

Even telling himself that, it was extremely hard to ignore the gut feeling that he should be throwing himself heedlessly into the crucible of battle—figuratively speaking, of course. No matter what, he would still proceed cautiously and do his best to cheat whenever possible.

But...I don’t need to risk my life and get stronger. Not really. I don’t have to save the world from a deranged god or alien invaders or some dark overlord. My back isn’t against the wall. Why shouldn’t I just go do something less dangerous as soon as I get the opportunity?

It was logical.

But.

There was something in him that rebelled at failing to live up to the expectations that had built up in his head.

Milo proceeded down the tunnels, conflicted.

He ran into his first group of enemies after a few more minutes. They were a mix of cassowaries and skeleroos that he was able to handle fairly easily, since he knew what to expect from each monster type by now. He simply took out as many as he could (starting with the very annoying cassowaries) before retreating on his binder when any of them drew near. They followed him relentlessly, but as soon as he’d built up enough distance he would stop and beat the snot out of them with his medical textbook.

After finishing the last one, Milo waited while his mana recovered back up to eight before continuing onward.

Over the next hour or so, he dispatched three more groups of enemies and a couple of loners. With the exception of a single random zombodile, they were all cassowaries and roos. The zombodile wasn’t too hard for him to handle, but it was by far his least favorite encounter. All of the other kills had been relatively hygienic, but smashing the large zombified crocodile head had disgusting, gory consequences for the wool blanket covering his weapon. He had no way to clean it, and he didn’t even want to touch it anymore. Partly it was just the revulsion, but also...zombie. He wound up gingerly holding it by the short tail of the rope that was wrapped around the blanket whenever he had to carry the book.

That was, until he had to retreat again to kite enemies, at which point he simply sucked it up and held on to the disgusting package to steady his flight. He was a bit less squeamish after that, but he still wasn’t pleased with the situation. It smelled, too.

He finally encountered another enemy type. It was a pit full of snakes with no way around, which made it impossible to proceed forward...unless you could fly.

They seemed like fairly normal, boring brown snakes. He killed one experimentally with his textbook, crushing its head with a pinpoint strike.

-

Congratulations! You have slain a level 1 Underland Taipan. Due to sufficient level disparity, you receive no XP.

-

Yup. Just boring snakes, not even good for experience at level 6. He could imagine some groups really struggling here unless they had some kind of AOE spells. Maybe an earth mage would be able to build a bridge or something. Milo simply flew over the top of the wriggling pit, bypassing the trial.

It wasn’t long before he encountered another new enemy, however: dingos.

That was it. Nothing special about them. Just wild Australian dogs. The System simply called them ‘Dingos’. It was a little strange, actually; every single other monster Milo had fought had had some quirk that differentiated it from the real thing back on Earth. He’d expected some kind of a special ability, but after cautiously approaching his first battle against a pack of three of them, ready to flee at the slightest hint of anything out of the ordinary, it had turned out to be a relatively simple and anticlimactic fight. And they’d only been level 3, which was strange. So far, the monsters he’d met had slowly crept up in level, snakes excluded.

It seemed...fishy.

After that first group, he kept on, encountering more and more of the dingos. They went down pretty easily with a few drubbings from Milo’s hefty textbook. There was a lot of very dog-like yelping involved, which made him feel a little guilty. It certainly wasn’t enough to make him stop, especially considering that the only real alternative was to lie down and let them tear him apart—but it did make things that much more unpleasant.

Finally, after eliminating five packs of the monsters, Milo spotted an archway in the distance that looked like it let out into another large cavern. He made his way over to it, peering out into the space.

It was magically lit, like the previous two had been, though this one seemed a fair bit darker than those. The terrain was very uneven, with lots of craggy, interesting features. It honestly reminded Milo a great deal of that elephant graveyard scene in the animated Lion King movie. It had a few stalagmites scattered around the room, unlike the first cavern that had been chock full of them. There were a lot of stalactites, though. They hung menacingly, high above.

Those weren’t the main things that caught his attention, however. It was the dingos.

Lots and lots of dingos. Living dingos fighting over the remains of dead dingos. Many simply lounged about. Bones were everywhere, adding to the elephant graveyard vibe. The dogs generally looked to be in poor health, many of them emaciated and snarling at each other over scraps of their fallen fellows.

No wonder. There can’t be a lot to eat down here. Really, this ecosystem makes zero sense. No plants, no animals that eat the plants that the dingos can eat. There’s no way this place can support large numbers of big predators.

Actually, the same should hold for the cassowaries; what was there around for them to eat? The zombodiles and skeleroos got a pass, since clearly they shouldn’t have normal diets. But in general, there just wasn’t food down here; the whole thing must just be magically supported.

In short, Milo was backtracking on his previous conclusion about the reason for the dingos’ desperate circumstances. Something was up.

Milo didn’t know what that was, but he had his guard up as he slowly stepped forward to get a better view of the whole cavern. But he was stopped.

-

You must have all living party members with you to engage the final encounter.

-

Oh. Boss fight! But what is it? Just a horde of starving dingos? Or is Evil Crocodile Dundee hiding in there somewhere?

Milo hung around for a few minutes, hoping he would get a better idea of what he would be up against. He thought he saw another opening in one one of the far wall faces, but it was shadowy and his line of sight was obscured by terrain features like boulders and stalagmites, so he couldn’t tell for sure if it even was an opening. He certainly couldn’t make anything out inside.

He also tried to send his book in there ahead of him, maybe take out some of the dingos in advance of the fight, but the book was stymied by the system just as Milo had been. It was like there was an invisible wall there.

Disappointed, he decided to head back and consult with Backlebutt about what he wanted to do. The man hadn’t mentioned anything about what to expect for boss fights yet.

It took significantly less time to make the return trip. There were no enemies to worry about other than the snakes. There hadn’t even been any branching paths from the cavern where he’d left Backlebutt, so there was nowhere for wandering enemies to come from to potentially repopulate the tunnel. It was nice for Milo’s peace of mind.

Roughly three hours after he’d left the zombodile cavern, Milo was already back. He looked expectantly over at the cave, seeking Backlebutt. He couldn’t quite see the man, but he could definitely hear him. Snoring. Had he gone straight back to sleep after Milo had left?

Milo flew over, looking down as he flew over for the zombodiles. They were gone! Backlebutt must have been able to kill them after all.

That boded well. He said he’d been close to leveling up, and after dispatching six of the creatures there was no way he hadn’t; they’d been worth 50 XP apiece for Milo, and he was pretty sure he was a higher level than Backlebutt. He didn’t know for certain, since all Milo’d gotten when he had asked for the man’s level was an affronted look. Apparently asking a man’s level wasn’t done.

“Backlebutt,” he said. No response. He tried once more, louder, before kicking him gently, which worked better. The man snorted awake.

“I found the end,” Milo said once Backlebutt looked lucid enough. “We have to be there together. Also, we need to have a discussion about what happens after. If, you know, we live.”