Audrey dropped from the ceiling like a woodsman’s trap, vines snaring the gnoll’s neck. The beast let out a muted yelp as the thorns in her tightening vines dug in and my summon bit into the side of his head, her teeth too shallow to reach anything vital.

But Audrey’s vines didn’t tighten fast enough, and I saw him turn his head, trying to bark out a panicked warning.

flared in my mind as I ran towards him, firing off an image of thorny vines shoving their way into his mouth the moment he opened it, imbuing as much fear and panic into the image as I could muster.

The gnoll’s eyes widened, and his mouth snapped shut. He strained to reach the sword leaning against the wall first, but the vine snapped him back. A grunt emitted from his still closed mouth.

There was an overwhelming stench of piss and liquor as I passed a dozen discarded bottles.

He held out his furred, three-fingered hands defensively as I closed ground.

What’s the target? Need to kill him quickly, quietly. Heart’s too iffy. Audrey’s vines are covering his neck.

I reached him, letting my momentum carry me forward as I drove the dagger towards his chest below the rib-cage and upward. I knew from the brief glimpse at his anatomy from that he was vaguely human-esque, so I was hoping to tear through something similar to a diaphragm, damaging his ability to call for help.

He caught my arms in a vice-grip, wrenching from side-to-side, trying to get the knife. My wrists burned in agony as I held tight and, with a burst of strength, the gnoll flung me into the side-wall. I tucked my head, absorbing most of the impact with my shoulder, my left arm immediately going numb.

A warning pinged through my mind, and I bent backward at the torso as a monstrously strong blow smashed into the stone where my head had been only moments ago.

I grabbed his leg under one arm and stabbed downward at his thigh twice, leaving deep gouges, aiming for the gnoll equivalent of a femoral artery. He snarled in pain, rearing up, using his trapped leg and the vines around his neck as leverage, and slammed the heel of his other foot into my stomach, dislodging Audrey from the roof and knocking us away from each other in the process.

A single thought went through my stunned mind as I slid to the floor. If they’re all this tough, this doesn’t bode well.

With the vines anchoring her to the roof freed up, Audrey doubled down, wrapping more layers around the gnoll’s neck and compressing. He was flat on his stomach now, army-crawling towards the sword, his eyes bulging monstrously. He was only a few seconds away from his goal.

With the wind knocked out of me, it took an enormous amount of effort to retrieve the crossbow out of my inventory. Praying it wouldn’t backfire, I cast probability spiral on my bow and shot a bolt point-blank into his side. The arrow struck at an odd angle and hit something with a dull crack. He let out a gurgling sound and laid still.

Then started to move again.

I scrambled to take another shot with my crossbow, but the grip slipped out of my fingers, falling ineffectually to the ground. Shit. Shit. Shit. I didn’t have time for this. His meaty hand was inches from the sword.

I reached out with Probability Spiral, and just as he was about to close his fingers on the blade, the hilt slipped down the wall and the weapon tumbled out of his reach.

The gnoll punched the ground in frustration, trying to stand.

At the end of my rope, I forced my way through his mental defenses once more.

I layered intrusive thought after intrusive thought, until I found one that had a strong reaction.

”You’re trying so hard. Wouldn’t it be easier to just give up?”

I felt his mind reject the notion a bit too emphatically. A desire to live, to protect the pack, to lead.

To lead?

It was a struggle to keep the connection open, but I managed it somehow. ”You’re a leader, and yet, you’re alone. No one is covering your back. It’s because you don’t trust them. Even now, as you’re fighting for your life, they’re probably planning how to overthrow you and take your place. None of them are loyal. None of them care.”

It was less of a cold read, more of a frigid stab in the dark. I was extrapolating a lot from the positioning and the fact that he had strayed far from the camp to relieve himself, along with a smattering of knowledge of how brutal real-world hyenas were. Still, he stopped moving towards the sword, shaking his head.

Audrey coiled tighter around his neck.

”That wound on your leg isn’t going to tend itself. What do you think happens when you return to the clan, wounded and bleeding?”

He turned around unsteadily and took a single step towards me, his yellowed teeth barred.

Then, like a rotted tree, he tilted forward, hitting the stone ground muzzle first, head tilted to the side, one sightless eye staring towards me.

It took a long time to catch my breath.

/////

I wondered how far above me he was to warrant that sort of reward. In the process, I had to remind myself that the system not caring if I died was not the same as actively trying to kill me. Slowly, the panic faded. This was an adaptive dungeon. And while some parts of it simply leveled as the User did, it was in many ways tailored to me.

Theoretically, I could do this.

And it probably locked me in here because it wanted me to finish the floor. I wasn’t confident why that was what it wanted, but it was the best I could come up with. Because if the elevator was available, I might have left.

The fight with the gnoll had disturbed me. Something made it different from the encounters on the previous floor. Maybe it was because he had far more physical commonality with a human than a hungry, vine ridden plant did. Or because I saw glimpses of his mind that weren’t exactly alien. Or possibly just because after the fight, I was beginning to form a rudimentary grasp on the design of my class, and realized it held implications I didn’t like.

If the option to leave was available, I’d be seriously considering it. I needed to think. Retreat, sell the shit I didn’t need, find a cleaner, less dangerous way to level and perhaps, eventually come back. The dungeon would adapt to my level, but having more options and abilities would still make this relatively easier.

The cackle of gnolls were still lounging around the campfire. I’d positioned myself on the second level of the ruined defensive wall and observed them from above. There was a human hostage tied with rope next to a bubbling cauldron. A man with short-cropped dark hair stuck to his forehead, and an overly pronounced nose. It was such an obvious set-up, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. Unless the leaderboard was directly lying—not impossible, but unlikely—I was the only human to ever set foot in the dungeon. It was either incentive to get me to rush in, or some other play I hadn’t thought of.

Two of the stronger looking gnolls were sparing a few feet away from the fire. A third in a headdress oversaw them, waving an over-sized—and not particularly practical—ceremonial staff.

I watched the sparring. Despite their savage appearance, the fighting was not all tooth and claw. The bouts seemed to devolve towards that from time to time, but when they did, Headdress would scold them in a series of guttural barks, and they’d return to the more structured combat. It was similar to Judo, focused initially on turning the opponent’s weight against them. Where it differed from Judo was the brutal, no-holds-barred follow-up when the opponent was finally unbalanced.

It was chilling to watch.

If the gnoll that I killed was the pack-leader, he’d likely held the same level of martial prowess, if not more. If I hadn’t gotten the drop on him—or attacked as aggressively as I had with Audrey there to knock him off balance the entire time, that would have been it for me.

Maybe it was my title, or the sheer number of near-death experiences I’d been through lately, but that idea didn’t shake me the way it once had. Instead, I saw it as little more than a problem to be solved.

One-handed was leveling at a decent rate, but it wasn’t turning into martial prowess. I was just more comfortable using a knife than I had been before. But I needed something more. Without even looking at the stats, I went straight to the feats screen. Now that the system let me read more of the descriptions, there was really no excuse to not get creative.

And after some searching, I found the solution.