Furry bodies scurried at full speed down the tunnel, chittering and scratching along the stones. The first rats smashed into the barricade, and then the gore began. Gunshots blasted out and stopped the dire rats from breaching the gap. Blood poured from the holes in the grate as the beasts killed and gnashed their way through each other. Those that made it through to the opening were met with a round from Jesse or Darla. I stood just to the side, waiting for one of the bastards to break free.

The shrieks of the dire rats grew feverish in pitch as they climbed over the bodies of the fallen, only to be dragged back down by others as they raced for the top. But there was no exit for them. They slaughtered themselves in foaming fury. Slowly, the screeching of the dying faded, and the gunshots grew infrequent. And I held my hammer and waited. All too quickly, the pile of squirming bodies grew still.

This was an unusual feeling. I was almost disappointed that I didn’t get to do anything. When did I become so bloodthirsty? Why did I want to put myself in harm's way? Although, against these buggers, there wasn’t much chance of getting hurt. Again, I suspected Harmony was messing with my brain somehow. The System already had access.

I scowled to myself as I started to loosen the rock around the grating. I carefully pulled it free as carnage dripped down and bodies splattered to the floor.

“Koko did good, didn’t she?” Noah asked.

“She did good,” John said while patting Koko’s head. “I think she’s smarter than we give her credit for.”

“Koko,” I said, “if you're smart enough to pull rats, you’re smart enough to quit trying to sniff my man parts.”

Koko whimpered with a sad dog face.

Having freed the metal from the floor, I pushed the grating into the pile of bodies like a plow. I leaned my shoulder down and strained. Slowly the corpses of the dire rats began to part, and I cleared us a path through the mangled remains. Several times I nearly fell on my face. My boots were either sticking or slipping in the foul remains. I’d need to burn them when I got back home. And my clothes. And possibly shave my head.

A few hundred feet past the pile of rat death, we came to a large open room. It was about the size of a gymnasium and reminded me of the boss room in the other direction, minus the garbage throne. Instead, debris was spread about the room or floated in the inch of water that coated the floor.

“Let’s do a quick look and see if there is anything,” I said. “Noah, stay here with Koko and keep an eye out for anything dangerous. So nothing sneaks up and surprises us.

“Okay, daddy,” Noah said with a mock salute.

I didn’t want him to go in because he was just wearing regular sneakers. The rest of us had one kind of boot or another. Boots were typically more on the waterproof side. And we all know the number one rule of survival; keep your feet dry.

“Darla, you take the left,” I said. “I’ll take the right, and John, go up the middle.”

They nodded in return as we stepped down gingerly into the putrid liquid. I did my best not to splash as I walked. Still, the rancid water splashed up onto my pant legs. There were all sorts of strange odds and ends in this room. Rotten and partially gnawed fruits floated on the water beside prophylactics. Chucks of finished wood poked up from the bottom at odd angles. A doll head laid face down in a pile of rat turds. A broken golf club and more. So it went on until I heard John call for us.

“Hey,” John said, “I think I found something.”

“What is it?” I asked as I headed to the middle of the room as quickly as I dared.

“Looks like some kind of box,” John answered. “Undamaged.”

Darla and I arrived beside John at the same time. And he wasn’t joking. It was a remarkably pristine-looking wooden box. The brass hinges and latch shined as if it was factory new. John reached down to open it when Darla stopped him.

“Think it’s a trap?” Darla asked.

Eve took this moment to appear. Her virtual image plopped down on top of the box. She gave a wide grin and patted the container. “It's not a trap. This is a loot box. They frequently appear in dungeons and have reward items or puzzle pieces.”

“Definitely a trap then. John said.

“Trap,” I said.

“Trap,” Darla repeated

We all three backed up. I took the claw of my hammer and stretched out as far as I could before flipping up the lid. Eve’s image shuttered as the cover passed through her. My breath sucked in, and my eyes clenched. But, much to our surprise, we didn’t die. I caught John and Dara unclenching their eyes. We all cautiously leaned forward and looked into the open box. It was a friggin lever.

“I told you it wasn’t a trap,” Eve said. Her eye was doing that twitching thing again. “And, I bet that fits the mechanism you found earlier.”

Eve was probably right. I hated it when she was right. John grabbed the lever, and we headed back to the tunnel. I placed my hand on Noah’s shoulder. “Anything come this way?” I asked.

“No, nothing out there,” Noah answered.

“Good job keeping watch,” I said with a smile. The boy was doing me proud again. “We found a lever. Ee-vee-ee thinks we can use it to turn on the lights. Let's head back and try it.”

“Why do you keep calling her that?” Darla asked.

“When it comes to my A.I.,” I responded, “I refuse to engage in personification. Our relationship is completely non-consensual. If Harmony had a human resources department, they’d be drowning in complaints.”

“It's my job to help you ensure the species' survival!” Eve screeched.

“Species survival?” I snarked. “Like I’m some kind of zoo stud, out to repopulate the species from the brink of extinction?”

“*Squelch* you,” Eve yelled. “You know that’s not what I meant! And you’re no stud!”

“Mute,” I replied

“Oh,” was all Darla said after watching our exchange.

“Why does she make that strange noise when she gets mad?” Asked Noah.

“It's so she doesn’t say bad words,” I answered.

As we walked back, John stopped at the gating and pulled it into his storage. “I’m betting we can do that trick of yours again. It would be handy to have them.”

“That’s a good idea,” I said and gave John a slap on the shoulder.

We were back at the green electrical junction box a few minutes later. I took the lever from my inventory and slid it into the slot. The level clicked into place, and I pulled it down. The machinery hummed, and the industrial lights blinked on one by one. The tunnel lit up with a soft white glow. This sewer was even less pleasant than I expected.

We walked back down to what Eve assumed was the boss room. The huge door still stood there, unmoving. There goes one worry. We took turns looking through the clear glass window, which still looked like a porthole.

Even with the lights turned on, the inside of the room was dark. Almost black with the mass of unsightly dire rats. They splashed and climbed over each other, trying to escape the inch-deep water. Hundreds of them, far more than we had seen before. In the middle, there arose a pile of filth. Broken chairs, rotten food, bones, stained scraps of cloth, and more kinds of ick formed a pile in the middle of the room. The rats were clinging and climing the dry sides of the heap. Atop the stack, a ratman sat like a king while its subjects tried to crawl higher. Its clawed hands were remarkably humanlike and held a long spear. Every time one of the dire rats climbed a little too high, the ratman used the but of the spear to knock it back down onto the pile. Its red eyes were glued to the porthole all the while.

It studied me as I studied it. As I wondered what to do, a loud clang of metal nearly made me add my water to the sewage stream.

“What the?” I yelled as I spun around.

John was about to drop another of the steel grates.

“What?” He looked sheepish. “I thought we’d be doing the same thing?”

“Yes,” I answered, “but you nearly scared the poop out of me.”

“Ha ha ha, dad said poop!” Noah said.

Darla was leaning up against the door as we set things up. “Too bad,” she said, “if the wires were a little lower, I’m sure those rats would chew on them.”

“Okay?” I mustered while sinking the first grate into the stone floor.

“Well, wouldn’t it electrocute the thing?” Darla asked.

“Oh yea,” John interjected, “like that cat in the Christmas movie! Heh, that would be funny.

I stood and placed my hand on the wall. Feeling the vibrations of my ideal pulse out. “You know, I can almost feel the lights against the walls.” My face turned funny. For a moment and my eyebrow cocked to the side. “Actually, I can feel the screws holding them in.”

“But can you do that in the boss’s room?” Asked John.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “Be quiet for a moment.”

I leaned against the wall. Then leaned my face against the cool stone and closed my eyes. I sensed the waves pulsing out from me, reverberating deep through the earth. A low and dirty hum. I could hear it. I could feel it. My thoughts melted into it, and I saw darkness. Then I fell into the void. Specks and chunks of imperfections flew past me. First in gray, but slowly growing in color. I pondered if they were different kinds of rocks or minerals. Some looked like veins of ore like I’d seen on documentaries. I wanted to see and feel more around me, but I was drowning. My lungs were held tight and burned within my chest. Stars of oxygen deprivation flashed across my mind as I fought against the void and pushed to the surface. Everything was starting to blur. There was no up, but I was desperate for the surface. I wondered about my own death. About Noah and Michael, leaving them behind in this strange world. Then the surface rippled like a tsunami as I finally broke free.

I sucked in breaths with ragged gulps. Then darkness retook me. My every heartbeat shook my head like a drum and blared like a foghorn during the worst hangover ever. Noah was shaking me.

“Daddy, daddy, are you okay, daddy?” Noah cried.

I rolled onto my side and retched.

“Here, drink this,” Darla said as she poured something into my mouth. The flavor was blue like Tuesday. I choked at first but managed to swallow the second half. Instantly my eyes started to regain their focus.

“Noah,” I said, “I’m okay. Please stop shaking me. The boy was crying and suddenly glomped onto my stomach. Darla stood up and loomed over me in her blood stained scrubs. The pale green light rested upon her like a horror movie.

“You’re lucky you had Eve,” Darla said. “We didn’t know what to do when you collapsed. But she let us know you were in a mana crash and what potion to give you. You’d used up so much of your mana you were burning into your health. You gave Noah a really big scare.” The guilt was palpable like she was trying to roll it on with a saturated paintbrush. But I didn’t know what I was feeling guilty about. I wasn’t sure what had happened.

I slid my back against the wall until I sat vaguely upright. “Ee-vee-ee,” I whispered hoarsely, “what did I just do? Oh, and unmute.”

“Well, that was stupid,” Eve replied from somewhere nearby. “And lucky. Seems you’re one of those people who fails up. So while you were burning up all your mana playing with your ideal, you managed to raise it to the next tier and unlock the ideal of metal. Totally bypassing the normal progression of earth, ore, then metal. Honestly, you are super lucky you didn’t have a stroke. You need to be more mindful of your mana!”

“Wait, my ideal uses mana?” I asked.

“Duh,” Eve replied. “It takes mental energy. So, of course, it uses mana!”

“And you could have died,” Darla added.

“You also totally wrecked the boss room,” John said while peering through the porthole with his flashlight.

“Which is something you shouldn’t have been able to do,” Eve said. “It’s a boss room. It is sealed!”

“Information that would have been helpful sooner!” I replied.

“Impossible or not,” John said, “you totally screwed that room’s couch.”

“Watch your language,” I said.

“Uncle John,” Noah asked, “did you say a bad word?”

“No,” John replied, “just something rude. I’m sorry. I was just really impressed with how much damage your dad did to the room. The entire wall is collapsed.”

“I want to see!” Noah said, finally letting me go.

“Sorry,” John replied, “but the lights are all out now. It's really hard to see anything.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Get this bro,” John replied, “as soon as the wall collapsed, the rats swarmed over it. Then one of them must have bit into the wires because, boom! The who place went up like a lightning storm. I went up two levels!”

“I think we got almost all of them,” Dara said. “I can’t see anything moving except for the boss.”

“Well,” I said, “at least that is good news. Give me a little bit to finish recovering, and then I’m going to mutilate him.”

The pounding in my head steadily lessened, and finally, I could stand up. I was getting progressively pissed off at all of this. And the poorly timed news. There was just so much unknown, so many little hidden rules. The hell with the rules. Just let me do what I want and stay out of my way.

The more I felt the anger building inside me, the clearer my head became. I stretched to my full high and looked at the door to the boss room. The determination solidified with a mentally uplifted middle finger.

“John,” I said, “light up the room when I open the door. I’m going to take out the boss.”

“Joseph, no,” Eve said. “You’re not strong enough.”

“I’m not strong enough?” I bellowed. Stones in the sewer wall shattered with a slam of my hammer. “I’m not strong enough? I am what, level 56, and strongest person on the planet, and somehow I’m not strong enough?”

Rage rolled off me in a frenzy, but the pink-haired A.I. floated up to my face. “Idiot, you really don’t get it, do you?” Eve replied hotly.

“Shut your useless mouth,” I replied with gritted teeth. “And John, light up the room.”

I kicked the boss’s door open and strode into the darkened room. My head was held high as my boots splashed into the sickly muck. I walked with purpose. My bound hammer hung loosely in my hand, nearly dragging the water. The closest wall had been blasted out, and chunks of rock littered the area. I strode through the mess, stepping over stones and the countless dire rat corpses.

John’s light fell upon the throne of filth. The dark gray ratman, almost as tall as a person, stood and thumped his spear onto the pile. Two standard dire rats I had overlooked lept from the royal court of trash and ran at me. Their claws splashed in the putrid water as they charged. I didn’t slow down. I swung as the first dire rat lept at me, which detonated in a red mist of bone and guts. I brought the hammer back like a pendulum and the second rat exploded. And then I was standing at the base of the trash heap.

The ratman and I stared at each other as my boots sunk into the filth. Step after soggy step, I climbed the pile. The ratman roared in a strange animalistic guttural noise and thrust the butt of it down at me. I saw it coming and grabbed at it with my off hand. I pulled down on the spear, and the ratman stumbled lower as I stepped up. It tried to spin the spear down on me, but I met it with my hammer.

I slid my bound hammer down the spear shaft and latched onto the ratman’s arm between the claw and the demolition beak. With an evil grin, I twisted my hand like I was breaking a two-by-four, and I felt the ratman’s arm shatter. It turned and writhed as it tried to escape. The spear fell from its limp hand.

Then the pain hit me. Searing like fire, in my belly and up into my ribs. I looked down. The ratman’s good had was plunged into my side, all the way to its wrist. It pulled its hand back out with a disgusting slurp. My breath caught in my throat, and I fell backward. But my grip on my hammer hadn’t lessened, and the ratman fell with me.

My back splashed into the muck, and my head hit hard enough to see stars. Pain swelled in me. I tried to cough, but I couldn’t. I felt my own mortality, but instead of fear, rage festered inside me. I wasn’t about to bitch about the unfairness. But I was fully set against the lies and the deceit about how the System works. Eve told me I was the strongest in the world. If I couldn’t kill this stupid ratman, what chance did humanity have of surviving this?

My anger refused to let me die in this disgusting place. Shakes racked my body as I tried to cough again. I raged against the pain and my supposed regeneration. But as I focused on the wound in my side, I felt something flowing into it. As my mind locked down on this strange feeling, I felt things starting to snap into place. A rib I didn’t know was shattered had suddenly reattached. Something else crunched inside me, and my breath was sucked back into my lungs.

As I opened my eyes, the ratman loomed over me. Its functional hand griped its spear, ready to plunge into my chest. But Koko was there and ripping into its leg. The ratman changed the spear’s target, but its head jerked back in a red puff before it could strike Koko. It collapsed limply to the ground as the smell of gunpowder tickled my nose.

I sat up slowly, trying not to wince at the ache on my side. Koko was still chewing on the dead creature. John was at the doorway lowering his Mossberg Patriot rifle. Darla was behind him, holding Noah back. The boy was trying to run to me again.

“I’m,” I tried to say but ended up coughing up blood. I wiped my face and continued. “I’m okay, Noah.”

“You really okay, Joseph?” John asked, worry evident in his voice.

“Yeah. That sucked. But I’ll live.” I cracked open a health potion and slurped down its syrupy goodness. As I stood and checked my side, my flesh was still knitting itself back together. The hole was scabbed over, and my shirt and pants were drenched in blood. I kicked at the ratman corpse as I walked back over to the rest of the group. Noah glomped onto me again.

“Yes, I need to quit doing that,” I said. But really, internally, I was still frustrated. “So what do we do now?”

“You finish recovering. Then we loot and get out of here. A door appeared on the far side of the room when the boss went down.” John said with a point of his chin to the wall.

I’m mostly recovered,” I said. “But it will take a while for my underwear to dry.”