Nick eyed up his opponent, it was going to be an interesting fight, that was for sure.

The large turtle creature gave him a dirty look. Nick couldn’t say a turtle had ever given him the stink eye before. The monster was a giant spiky turtle, it stood about metre high with 30 centimetre spikes poking out in every direction from its shell. Fitting with the other monsters he’d faced so far, the turtle was a deep black with its shell having a purple haze running through it. It’s glowing red eyes shone out from within its shell, sadly there was no convenient neck for Nick to be aiming for. The beastie looked quite menacing, it’s dark shell and scaled legs making it look like a harbinger of bad intentions.

Now Nick was very unsure of how the heck he was going to fight this thing. How did you beat a creature hiding in a thick shell, especially when the shell is covered in menacing looking spikes?

Thankfully the creature wasn’t fast, it slowly stomped towards him. Which gave Nick plenty of time to try and come up with a plan. He literally walked circles around it as it plodded after him. This wasn’t the exciting fight he had been hoping for, in fact it reminded him a lot of the first fight he’d had in the car park.

Nick decided to try something, the shell had an opening in the front that he assumed hid the turtles head, if the red eyes peering out were anything to go by. He stood still for a bit and let the creature approach him, when it got close enough he tried to get his hand into the opening. The turtle then made a sudden movement, dropping its front legs down and rocking forward. This sent the spiky shell jutting towards Nick, who was now far too close for comfort. Nick barely managed to activate his skill and use the buff to try and move out the way.

He had been caught far too off guard to completely avoid the spikes though, he caught a glancing blow to the shoulder. He was left with a nasty cut.

“You damn stupid shelled scumbag!” Nick was then aware he could activate one of his new skills.

He was able to mentally activate it and yell. “You lumbering creten!”

Nothing visibly happened. Nick wasn’t actually sure what to expect from the skill, an infographic displaying the debuff? Sadly no such thing conveniently popped up. It wasn’t until Nick had scrambled away and the creature continued it’s slow amble towards him that he noticed something. Now he wasn’t certain, but the slow Brute actually looked to be a little bit slower. Oh great, now he’d have to spend even less energy walking away from it.

Nick decided that he really didn’t want to be in this fight for much longer, he wanted a more action packed fight. His next plan was to just flip the damn thing over. Nick ran around to the side of the creature and tried to get his hands under the shell to lift it. Nick, now a bit more knowledgeable about his opponent’s skill set, noticed the creature drop its legs towards him. He took a quick step back and managed to avoid getting prodded by the sharp spikes.

The turtle really was just aiming for death by a thousand pokes. Nick had a new idea but he’d have to make the turtle even slower. Thankfully Nick had a large repository of terrible insults.

“You take slow and steady too far!”

“Even a sleeping hare could out walk you!”

“You shell looks stupid!”

“You spikes are dumb!”

Okay, maybe he wasn’t as good at this as he claimed. Who the hell had ever needed to insult a turtle before? Nick was pioneering new territory here. It was then that Nick realised the turtle didn’t actually seem to get any slower than after the first time it had been slowed. Well, it made sense that Nick didn’t get an incredibly overpowered, infinitely stacking, debuff. It was still kinda lame though.

Nick had to try his plan anyway. He approached the side of the turtle again and as soon as it dropped its legs he activated his buff and skirted around the creature to its other side. The turtle extended these legs up and Nick just offered it a helping hand, pulling the shell up and continuing to lift it. The damn thing was heavy and it took quite the effort to keep pressing against it. Thankfully the creature had provided some of its own momentum to help Nick out.

In no time the creature found itself stranded on it’s back, it’s armoured legs flailing about. Nick didn’t know too much about turtles, let alone nightmare turtles, but he’d spent far too many of his formative years on youtube. He knew that turtles had to use their heads to turn themselves back over. No turtle would be silly enough to expose their heads in a situation like this one, so Nick knew he had free reign. It was time to test his new Brawler passives.

Nick threw a single punch into the exposed underside of the turtle. Once again, nothing obvious. Though if his passive skill did what he thought it did, it was probably the perfect skill for fighting a heavily armoured opponent like this turtle. Nick realised he didn’t actually have a way to tell if his skills were actually doing anything.

Nick tried to not get too bummed out, he still had two passives left. Wait, one of them should already be working. Brawler’s Constitution should be making him more durable, he looked at the nasty gash on shoulder. Holy cow, if he was more durable and the spike still cut that easily through him, the skill must be terrible or the spikes were terribly sharp. Well, Nick still had one more passive skill he could test out.

Nick took a deep breath and started throwing punches into the turtle, a simple combination that he could repeat for ages. Left right, left right, left right. An unending stream of punches rained down onto the turtle. Nick was quite proud of his fitness, he had always been a bit better at endurance stuff than explosive movements. It was on the fourth punch that Nick felt something different, he could feel that his punches were stronger, more powerful. The feeling just grew and grew with each punch after the fourth. Nick also found himself gassing out far quicker than he expected though.

Nick wasn’t one to toot his own horn, too often, but he liked to train hard. He knew that he could throw punches at this pace for a long time, but something was off. The punches were draining more of his energy than he’d expect. It seemed that the skill was draining his energy along with increasing the damage of his punches, a fair trade off he guessed. Nick pushed through and kept punching, he was used to training dog-tired anyway.

Something must have been working because the turtle got frantic, it’s flailing became panicked and it began rocking itself back and forth to try and get itself back on its feet. Nick was beginning to really feel the burn, it had only been a minute or so but Nick was feeling a burn he hadn’t felt in years, not since he’d started training. Suddenly Nick’s punches began to crack the shell and while it felt like the energy being drained from him was increasing, the visible progress energised him. Nick then noticed that there was a dark fluid leaking from the bottom of the shell. Did his internal damage passive scale with the increased damage of his combo passive? That would be a little nuts.

The turtle's struggle grew frantic but then with a final punch the shell cracked open and the turtle stopped moving. Nick saw that the insides of the shell looked like they’d been through a blender, the body of the turtle had been pulverised. Nick felt a little bad, it must have been a terrible way to go.

Nick took a step back and the body began to crumble away into a fine dust, gathering into the shape of a chest in the centre of the room. Nick was suddenly overcome with a tingling feeling, similar to when Maddy healed him. He grinned, a self heal really was the coolest thing. He watched as the wound on his shoulder stopped bleeding and closed over slightly. It wasn’t a full heal but it was still awesome.

Nick sat down for a moment, taking in a deep breath. He hadn’t been this worn out for years. The passive’s damage was awesome, but it’s cost was just as high. It was a pretty wild problem for him, he would have to completely change the way he approached fights. He couldn’t afford to be this tired if he was fighting wave after wave of opponents, so that would mean he couldn’t throw too many combos. It was something he’d have to experiment with moving forward, but overall he was very happy with the ability to actually deal some serious damage now.

Nick checked the chest and found a pair of bracers inside, along with some pills. Nick had noticed that pills seemed to be the general currency around here, which made sense if people constantly had to use them. He’d forgotten to make sure Benny was taking them but he was sure the other kids were taking them, peer pressure would work it’s magic. Nick had to laugh at the thought that he was happy his little brother was being peer pressured into taking drugs. What a strange situation he found himself in. Nick then realised he hadn’t taken any of the pills himself, curious he decided to take a few from the baggy he’d just found.

Unsurprisingly, they didn’t have much of a taste. It was just like taking medicine, though it was only after he’d thrown them in his mouth he realised he didn’t have anything to wash them down with. Taking medicine dry was never a good time.

Nick slid the bracers on, remembering that his lucky skill made whatever loot he found better suited to his needs. He had no idea what effects they had but he was sure that at least having some armour was better than having none. He remembered Sebastian, Tony’s right hand man, was able to identify his wraps. That meant there was likely a class or skill that let people identify items, which was pretty cool. Nick would have to meet one of these people, their services were likely highly sought after.

After resting for a bit Nick was still itching for more fighting, he wanted something that got his adrenaline pumping. So Nick went back out and searched for his next challenge room. He found the next one in no time, this time it was another giant Brute like the one he fought with Gareth.

Nick defeated it much quicker than the last time, he was far more experienced at beating opponents that were at least vaguely humanoid. The giant was just sorely mismatched against Nick. It was too slow to properly defend itself or even fight back. Nick ended up treating the thing as a sparring dummy, testing out his various skills on it. He worked out his internal damage seemed to be related to vibrations, at least that was his working theory. Every punch he landed on the creature would send little tremors through it, Nick was literally shaking up it’s insides. Nick dispatched it quickly and found a sword in the chest, it seemed his luck had it’s limits. Nick had absolutely no use for a sword and was forced to lug it around with him.

Nick decided that he was really well matched up against Brutes, his skill set was pretty effective against them. So those were the only challenge rooms that he aimed for, if he heard lots of scurrying from a door he’d just walk right on by. The doors he was most concerned about were doors that were deathly silent. Joshua had told Nick that those doors would have Tricksters behind them. Nick certainly wasn’t in the mood to deal with some sort of ambush predator.

Nick cleared Brute challenge rooms as he made his way back towards the hub of the 71st floor. He picked up quite the haul of loot for his efforts, he found a chest piece that felt more durable yet more flexible than his current one and another sword. He also found two stickers, one of a flexed bicep and another cartoonish figure of a man running. Nick was presented with a slight dilemma, he wanted to use the stickers but he knew Tony would be expecting something good from him.

As he was walking he decided to just use one of them and give the other to Tony. He walked into a room, dumped his loot against the wall, pulled down his pants and slapped what he assumed was a strength sticker onto his thigh.

It was then he heard a giggle and looked up.

There was a team of people sitting on a sofa, looking at him with his pants around his knees.

“Well, hello folks.” Smooth Nick, very smooth.