Juji the dingo was hungry. She had always been hungry. Ever since...since what? Always.

She watched from the shadows, studying the other dingos while occasionally licking at a wound on her leg. They scuffled and snarled viciously at one another, jockeying for the few scraps of food available. And there was food—the last remaining scraps of a dead dingo—but none of them could snatch a bite without half a dozen others setting upon them immediately.

They’d been at it for as long as she could remember. Not all the same dingos; some came, some went. Once in a great while, when the tension grew too great, there would be a great flurry of brutality and bloodshed. One or two would die, and only then would a few be able to eat. The strongest. She had seen it happen three times now.

Juji knew nothing but this single cave. She hungered to leave, to explore. To find game. Hunt! But she couldn’t. She didn’t understand. The exit was open, but any time she tried to walk through it, she found herself turned back around, walking the other way.

So she watched, like many others. Her stomach growled at her, demanding food. But Juji was even weaker than the other dingos. Smaller. She couldn’t compete. The one time she had tried, another dingo had scored a vicious bite on her leg almost immediately. She licked the wound again.

But maybe she had a chance here. She could sense that something was about to happen. One of the bigger dingos had been getting more aggressive, taking bigger risks to try to get a mouthful of meat.

It went in for a bite.

Snarls rang out, and a dingo on either side of the greedy one attacked it. It immediately abandoned its attempt at getting food, attacking the dog on its right in a surprise attack and catching it in the throat with its jaws.

The one on the left joined forces with the original aggressive dog, mercilessly seizing the chance to create a new food source. It was joined by several others, and together they tore the poor dingo apart.

Juji’s hopes for a meal died; only one dingo had perished here. Apart from the strongest and most aggressive dingos putting on the show, there were dozens like her waiting at a distance for a chance to sneak in for a morsel. There simply wasn’t enough to go around, and Juji was at the bottom of the pecking order.

She rested her chin on her paws, hopes of food dashed for probably several more hours at least. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could last.

Something made her ears perk up. A high-pitched noise. Juji looked around curiously, trying to pinpoint where it had come from. Many other dingos had noticed as well. They were looking around just as curiously as Juji. Most of them. A few were whining, as if afraid. They shrank away from the noise, faint and pitiful as it was.

There it was again. Something was crying out, wailing. It sounded weak.

Like prey.

Juji climbed to her feet, keeping her weight off the injured leg, and began trotting over to the source of the noise. It was the far opposite side of the room. She had to find a path around boulders and spires of rock.

Oh. This place. She came to a halt, hesitating as she looked at the darkened archway. The sound issued again, a now much louder mewling, crying noise. It was definitely coming from inside.

There was a reason Juji had chosen to wait for food on the other side of the cavern; the smell here was putrid. Like rotten death combined with the foulest scat. But there was something living in there, right? She thought she caught a whiff of something appetizing mixed in with the stench. Something young, and defenseless. Her stomach rumbled. A part of her wanted to investigate, but some instinct made her hesitate.

Juji looked around herself. Her fellow dingos shared her indecision.

One was brave, though. Or especially hungry. Juji looked on as it cautiously approached the darkened archway.

The high-pitched crying beckoned.

It was impossible to see very far past the opening. The shadowy space within seemed to swallow light. As soon as the dingo crossed the threshold, its body was lost in the shadow. Juji waited tensely with the rest of the dingos, waiting to see what would happen.

After several tense seconds of silence, there was a sudden flurry of scuffling. The crying had stopped. Juji cocked her head to the side.

A crunching sound.

Then a wet sound.

Was the dingo eating? The rest of the dingos were still hesitating, but Juji knew that this was her moment, before the rest of them swarmed the kill. Ignoring the horrible stench, Juji limped forward as quickly as she could. She heard the patter of feet behind her, and began to feel despair. They would overtake her! She limped faster.

Inside the enclosed space, the smell was worse than ever. It was practically an assault on her nostrils. But the thread of something sweet and delicious was still there, and she followed it. She couldn’t see, guided only by her nose.

She bumped into something. It was wet. Bloody. Salivating, Juji quickly bit into the still-warm flesh. Food!

But then—to her left, a whimper. To her right, a squeal. They were both quickly silenced, followed immediately by a loud crunching sound, and then a splatter of wetness that sprayed Juji. Something was in here! Something big, big enough to kill a dingo in a blink. She heard more yowls and whimpers of pain.

But the food! Juji desperately tore off a final piece as she backed away, whining in terror at whatever unseen monster lurked in this horrible place.

She burst out into the light, her hard-won prize clenched between her teeth.

But her fellow dingos were waiting for her.

Several of them had wisely waited outside to see how things played out. Juji tried to escape with her small hunk of flesh, but they were on her before she could take two steps, biting at the food in her mouth, snapping at her when she wouldn’t let go.

Finally, the meat tore, leaving her with only a small piece of it. But it was something. She hurried off while the other dingos fought over the larger piece they had stolen from her. She was glancing over her shoulder to make sure that none of them followed her when she finally saw it.

The monster.

The front half of its fleshy body emerged from the shadowy archway. It was enormous, towering over the dingos. The creature was very flat-faced, lacking any snout to speak of, with a disproportionately large head compared to its body. With surprising speed, it snatched up a nearby dingo with one of its huge, flexible paws, then immediately used that same paw to dash an unfortunate dingo against a nearby spire of rock. It landed in a lifeless heap at its base. The last two dingos frantically scurried away, escaping with their lives.

The creature bit the dingo in its paw in half, chewing lazily. It stuffed the other half in its mouth before moving over to the limp form of the second dingo, fully exposing itself in so doing.

The creature was quite odd to Juji’s dingo sensibilities. It completely lacked hair but for a collection of wispy strands on the top of its head, and an odd, squishy covering was in place over its hindquarters. In another bizarre twist, the creature walked on the joints of its rear legs rather than its paws. The scooting gait looked somewhat ungainly, for which Juji could only be grateful.

It devoured the second dingo, then sat back on its haunches before turning its head to look at Juji.

Juji, who had been backing away slowly in hopes of remaining unnoticed, froze. She was held immobile by those big, round eyes.

The monster opened its mouth, showing teeth.

“Ba ba ba ba ba,” it said, waving its forelegs up and down inexplicably. The noise of its cry vibrated throughout the entire cavern.

Juji fled.

The last skeleroo fell to the ground with a satisfying clatter.

-

Rank Up! You are now a level 7 (Elite) Scholar.

-

Time to head back, I guess.

Before he did, though, Milo checked for new skills. There was one new one, same as last time:

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Personal Library: You may hold up to 100 books in an invisible dimensional bookshelf which is always with you. Active, 1 mana per book moved from or placed into bookshelf.

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It was a cool skill. He could imagine using it in conjunction with Fetch Book to hold all sorts of specialty tomes that he could pick and choose from depending on what sort of monster he was fighting.

However, Milo didn’t plan on sticking with the Scholar class long term, so to him it was nothing more than a proof of concept that bags of holding were probably a thing on this world...which was awesome!

After finally investing his first stat point into his mana pool and bringing the total up to 20, he began backtracking to the cave, which was where he’d left Backlebutt. This little trip had been his idea.

It had started with Milo telling Backlebutt that his basic plan was to trigger the boss fight with both of them present before taking Backlebutt to safety. He figured he could then pound the boss into submission from a distance.

According to Backlebutt, that strategy was a non-starter; boss encounters in the Descent didn’t just let people flee as they saw fit. It would be a ring match, essentially, not ending until one party was down permanently. It was then that Milo had expressed concern that his mana pool was only 10 deep, which Backlebutt was not happy about. Neither was Milo, knowing what he did now.

Milo’s regen build was all well and good when he could flit off to safety any time he liked, but it wasn’t going to do him a lot of good when he was trapped in a cavern with a powerful boss.

Fortunately, he had been close enough to another level that all he had to do was head to one of the spots where the tunnels had forked and explore the new direction. After just a few fights, he’d gotten the last hundred or so XP that he’d needed.

The travel was time-consuming, though. Backlebutt said he could use some more sleep still, so it worked out; apparently he’d only just gotten back to sleep after killing the zombodiles before being rudely awaked by Milo. He’d felt bad about that.

Backlebutt was still unwilling to divulge his level to Milo, but he had revealed that he did indeed get a level from killing the zombodiles. He said he’d gotten a new skill which should be able to help him survive the coming encounter, though he’d been vague about what that actually was. He liked his class secrets, that one.

Milo made it back to the cave with no issues, then guiltily reawakened a bleary-eyed Backlebutt.

“It’s time,” he said. Backlebutt grunted in response.

Rather than split all of their supplies once more into two bags, Milo simply left everything in the system-provided bag he’d been using. Backlebutt wasn’t walking any better yet.

Milo activated Fetch Book to get them down off the cliff. He could technically carry them both at once, but a brief test showed the skill felt sluggish when he did that. Plus, flight was much less steady without something to hold besides a small square seat. He did it one at a time, setting a leery Backlebutt down at the far side of the river before bringing the textbook and binder back for his own journey.

After that it was a long, slow walk to the boss chamber.

Once Milo had them both set on the far side of the snake pit, Backlebutt piped up with a question.

“You’re sure you don’t have any better ideas about what we might be facing? These creatures are from your land, after all. The boss lore should be as well. You can think of nothing but this...Crocodile Dundee?”

“Well, there were a lot of dingos in the boss room. And there was a well-known event involving a dingo where I’m from. But it wouldn’t really make any sense for a boss fight.”

“What was the event?”

“I guess a dingo ate somebody’s baby?”