We each got a Bronze Boss and a few random achievement boxes, but the loot from the room itself was surprisingly decent. There was a complete set of kitchen knives, so all of us were well armed. There was also a sharpening steel, various pan lids that could serve as small shields, a cast-iron frying pan that I thought might be useful as a club, and a large bottle of olive oil that I grabbed in case of some vague possible future in which I needed to make a slippery trap. The jar of red pepper flakes came along for similar reasons—maybe it could become ersatz mace to blow in an enemy's eyes.

The grandma herself had dropped no loot aside from a sheet of paper. When I tried to pick it up, my hand went right through it but my minimap expanded and detail filled in for a mile in every direction. Suddenly I could see corridors that we hadn't mapped yet, three Krazy Kittehs that we had missed during our hunting, two saferooms with Bopca in them (Ho and Enba), and four tutorial guilds. All of the tutorial guilds had Bannon in them which led me to believe that there was some sort of teleportation shenaningans involved. Eva and Gene likewise touched it and got the updates.

We finished looting and went back to the tutorial guild so Eva could squeeze more information out of Bannon; Gene shrugged and followed along instead of demanding that we go to his game guide. Bannon was doing one-armed pushups when we arrived, using his right hand with his left hand behind his back. He looked up as we entered, pushed up hard enough to bounce himself into the air and back to his feet, where he dusted off his hands with a canine smile.

"Not dead yet? Huh. Good job, girls. And you found a guy to play with. Cool. I'm Bannon."

"Gene."

"Oh, the taciturn type. Yeah, bet that gets the ladies revved up, am I right?"

Gene laughed. "I do okay."

"Hello to you too, puppy," Eva said, physically stepping into the two men's eye line. It was less helpful than she might have thought since both of them could look right over her head. "Are you going to be a good puppy and give us the full information this time or are you going to half-ass it again?"

Bannon raised an eyebrow. "Puppy?"

She gave him a sharp smile. "You call us 'girl' so I was assuming you enjoyed diminutives."

He laughed a harsh and dismissive bark. "I'm a hundred times your age, I survived eleven floors of this place, and I've literally kept more crawlers alive than you've had breakfasts. Accomplish a tenth of that and you can call me puppy. Now sit down, all of you. Let's talk about the stairways, the social system, and Benefactors."

Gene gestured in courtly fashion for me to go first. Eva sat on the couch and I sat next to her. Gene dropped in next to me where there wasn't enough room so he was half on top of me. I scooted over, forcing Eva to shift down in turn. She glared at Gene but turned back to Bannon without saying anything.

"Okay, puppy. Let's hear it."

We talked for thirty stressful minutes and then went back out. We relocated to the next neighborhood over and killed insectoid centaurs instead of cats, and then we found a saferoom and slept. Gene mentioned that the bedrooms were chilly and the blankets were thin and did I want to join him so we could both sleep warm? I went into my own room and locked the door.

The recap show was the only variance in our lives for the five days we spent on the first level. Once every 30 hours it played on the screens of every saferoom. It was a slick modern sports commentor mixed with a documentary for the TikTok generation: A montage of short, punchy clips playing under emotion-driving music and flashy graphics, all of which were designed to keep the space-viewer's attention from wandering to their space-phone or whatever it was that aliens did when they weren't watching humans die.

Watching humans die was most of the recap. That and the few stand-outs among the surviving crawlers. There was a wall-running, backflipping young girl in a sports jersey with two rottweilers. There was a group of 150 African men who had come into the dungeon with automatic weapons but were not-so-slowly running out of ammunition. There was an older woman who had somehow brought several dozen goats into the dungeon. One of them had transformed into an intelligent biped who screamed a lot, a second had transformed into a fanged monstrosity with black flames crackling from its body, and the rest were still normal. Those stand-out crawlers were successfully carving their way through everything they faced. The rest of the recap was dedicated to people being eaten by carnivorous plants, or stung to death by wasps the size of a pony, or being crushed by falling rocks, or or or...

There was one part of the recap show that gave me hope. Her name was Hekla, she wore Valkyrie armor, wielded a crossbow, and she was Eva's psychiatrist before the dungeon. Seeing her made me think that maybe my entire life had not been erased, that maybe some of my family or friends had made it into the dungeon. She was never onscreen for more than a dozen seconds but I treasured those seconds almost as much as Eva did.

And then we all put those thoughts aside and killed things so that we could level up while we looked for the stairwell to the next level.

We found it on our third day. It wasn't guarded, as Bannon had promised it wouldn't be on this level, so we were able to note its location and then keep grinding; the AI had announced that going down more than six hours in advance would simply have us put in stasis until the level collapsed, so there was no point in going early.

Gene continued to hit on me, clearly thinking that he would 'wear me down' and that eventually I would realize how great he was. It made my skin crawl but his strength was a real asset to the team so I put up with it.

By the time we went down the stairs Gene was at level 10, Eva had made it to 9, and I was at 5. I tried to make a 'nine to five, what a way to make a living' joke; Eva actually snorted in amusement before becoming serious again.

o-o-o-o

Views: 97,054

Followers: 1,571

Favorites: 0

Those were my numbers as of the second day out of six that we had on the second floor. I couldn't help but check them several times an hour. Bannon had been very clear: Our long-term survival depended on those numbers more than any other factor. Those who got lots of views and followers would get loot boxes from their fans, often containing better loot than would be found in a normal box. Those who got lots and lots of views might get a Benefactor, who could send boxes with truly impressive gear. Things that would never be found in the dungeon. There were only three opportunities for Benefactors to choose a crawler, one on the fourth, fifth, and sixth floors. Most Benefactors would only sponsor a handful of crawlers—Benefactor contracts were expensive, enough to be the province only of major star nations, major megacorporations, or the few million richest individuals in a multi-galaxy empire whose population could only be counted using scientific notation. Put those things together and it meant that if you didn't have a solid following by the start of the third floor, you were unlikely to get a Benefactor.

Upon hearing that, I immediately wrote off the idea that I was going to get one, or even a fan box. It was with grimly satisfied disappointment that I found myself correct based on the numbers. Bannon's estimate was that a top-rank crawler would have had something like a hundred billion views by this point, along with several hundred million followers, of whom a few tens of millions would have devoted one of their few 'favorite' slots to the crawler. The median crawler would likely be at 1-10% of that.

I was too embarrassed to tell Eva my numbers, so I simply said 'Not as good as yours', which was true. She had several million views, fifty thousand followers, and ten thousand favorites. We were doomed, as Bannon was glad to tell us immediately after revealing my numbers to Eva. He suggested that we 'be more interesting' but waved us off when Eva demanded specific suggestions on how to do that.

We did everything we could think of—loudly sang songs, bantered and insulted the monsters during combat, and talked in mysterious plans while keeping most of the discussion to the chat system which Bannon had assured us was private from the viewers. Eva even tried playing up a 'psychotic murderer' persona. She would kill something and then hack and stab at its corpse while giggling madly and splashing the blood everywhere. She gave up late on the second day; it wasn't making much difference and she was tired of having blood in her hair.

And then, as though Fate itself had lent a hand, we met Hekla.

o-o-o-o

"Crawlers ahead," Eva said, her voice tense.

I checked my minimap and saw that she was right; there were three blue dots at the edge of the map. There were a dozen red X's around them. When I mentally clicked on an X it said Lootable Corpse. Lunar Nyearth. Level 8. Killed by Crawler Hekla.

"Let's scout them before we approach," Gene said. "Remember what the guides told us about hunters."

I frowned in thought. "'Hekla'? Eva, is that—"

Eva was suddenly in motion, pushing her trident back into her inventory so it didn't interfere as she jogged down the hall with her torch upraised. "Hekla!" she shouted. "Hekla, is that you?!"

She broke into a full sprint after a half dozen meters, rapidly leaving me and Gene behind and taking the torch with her.

"Damnit," Gene growled under his breath. He pulled a torch out of his inventory and lit it. "You okay?"

"I'm fine, but we need to catch up to her." I started jogging quickly down the corridor.

"Yeah, just be careful," he said, matching my stride with an effort that secretly pleased me. "We don't know if these guys are killers."

I said nothing and picked up the pace, rapidly closing the gap with Eva who had exhausted herself in the sprint and needed to slow down a lot.

She and I came around the corner together, Gene a few meters behind, to find a tall blonde woman looking at us down the length of a cocked crossbow. Two other women pressed themselves against the wall behind her.

"Hold it!" shouted the blonde. "Stay right there!"

We both froze.

"Hekla?" Eva asked. "It's me. Eva."

Hekla jerked in surprise. The crossbow disappeared back into her inventory and her face lit up. "Eva!" She jogged towards us and Eva ran to meet her, leaping for her like a Titanic passenger for a life ring.

"Hi there," Hekla said, chuckling and folding her arms around Eva. "It's good to see you too, honey." She patted Eva's back, but her eyes were on me. "Hello. I'm Hekla."

"Hi," I said, feeling awkward. Eva had talked a great deal to me about Hekla, her wonderful psychiatrist. Apparently, Eva had talked not at all to Hekla about me. "I'm Katia."

"Hello." She gently pried Eva off of herself and pushed her to arm's length. "Seems like you've had an adventure," she said, smiling at her patient. "Doing okay?"

Eva nodded. "It's been hard. I did what you said—stay busy, stay focused. I've been hunting constantly, trying to keep my mind off things, but it gets so noisy. And I ran out of my meds."

Hekla nodded and patted her shoulder. "Well, we're together now. You'll have people around to help you. Introduce me properly."

"Huh? Oh, right. Hekla, this is Katia. She's a professor at work. Katia, this is Hekla. I've mentioned her before."

I stepped forward with my hand extended. "It's a pleasure to meet you. Eva has told me a great deal about you."

Hekla laughed and took my hand. She had a grip stronger than many men I'd met. "Whatever she said, I have alibis for all of it."

I smiled, amused. "It was all good." I gestured vaguely behind us. "Eva and I came in about fifteen minutes before the dungeon closed. Like she said, we've been hunting together almost constantly."

"Good. That's the only way to stay alive in here."

"Gene Meyer," Gene said, nodding and tucking his thumbs in his belt instead of extending his hand. "I've been looking after these two." He looked at the women behind Hekla, then back to her. "Seems like you three could use some help too."

Hekla considered that but before she could say anything Eva broke in.

"You've been doing better than just surviving. We've seen you on the recap. You're amazing."

"Thank you," Hekla said, smiling. "Let me introduce you to the others." She gestured to the two women against the wall. "Come on, ladies, don't be shy. Eva was also one of my patients."

The two met us halfway. "Eva, Katia, this is Sigrid Eglisdottir and her sister Rakel."

"Hello," Sigrid said. Rakel gave us a nod and a shy smile but didn't speak.

"Hi," I replied, also smiling. Sigrid was a Nordic stereotype: tall with long blonde hair that she wore in a thick braid. Rakel was a few centimeters shorter, more delicate, and had her hair in a pixie cut. She stayed slightly behind and to the side of her sister as though guarding her back.

"Sigrid and I had just finished a session and Rakel was picking her up," Hekla explained. "Fortunately, I had walked her out of the building because I was meeting my husband for coffee. Everything disappeared, we got the announcement, and one of the stairwells opened up where the coffee shop used to be, just a hundred meters away. Naturally, the four of us went in."

Naturally. Hekla seemed like a decisive, courageous person. A dangerous environment to test herself against was probably right up her alley. More so than mine, certainly. Was the mental toughness innate or a result of better self-understanding from her psychiatric training?

Eva looked over Hekla's shoulder. "Where is...?" She trailed off, the answer hitting her halfway through the question.

"Ingólfur didn't make it," Hekla said, her voice level.

"Great to meet you all," Gene said, clearly impatient. "Let's party up and get moving. There's monsters to kill."

"We just entered this neighborhood from the north," Hekla said. "Are there other types of these Nyearth things?" She gestured towards the corpses on the ground where she had been standing. They were six-legged, about two-thirds the size of a labrador retriever, with two pairs of (now fading) luminescent wings. The thorax was covered in leathery brown skin that ran a gradient to a silver color by the stinger at the back.

"Yes," Eva said eagerly. "We've seen Solar ones and Stellar ones. The Solar ones are twice the size of that one, yellow at the back, and have antennae that can emit a blinding flash. The Stellar ones are larger still, almost the size of a pony. We only saw one and we retreated from it."

"Excellent!" Hekla said, smiling broadly and conjuring her crossbow to her hand. "Where was it? It sounds like it'll be worth plenty of XP. Oh, here."

Hekla Olafsdottir has invited you to join Brynhild's Daughters! Accept? Y/N

I clicked Yes and became part of Hekla's party.