Dear Diary,

  When push comes to shove, will you break under the pressure, or will you gamble your last remaining HP on a ridiculous plan that has no business working?

  Annabell Smith…

  Well, she was prone to gambling. Not so much plans.

  ***

  As far as definitions went, the space Annabell found herself in probably qualified as an arena. It had all the necessary ingredients: a circular floor of rusted grates, a faintly ominous atmosphere, and a resident antagonist looming in the shadows.

  It was only missing the seating arrangements and a half-decent snack bar.

  That said, there was an audience—though mostly in the form of hissing, undead rats, their glowing red eyes dotting the pipework crisscrossing the walls. The ceiling was a looming patchwork of concrete slabs and oversized, dripping pipe ends—the sort that, under the right circumstances, one might expect a colorfully dressed plumber to come tumbling out of at any moment.

  Altogether, the setting delivered one message very clear:

  "You're stuck in here with me."

  -yours truly, Grimy Garth

  Garth himself was a creature of the shadows, no taller than four and a half feet (which, in Annabell's eyes, was a perfectly respectable height). Despite his lackluster size, however, the rodent king carried himself with all the pompous certainty of someone who absolutely expected to be taken seriously.

  A mantle of rotten fur and tiny bones dragged at his heels, rustling ominously with every step. Upon his greasy, matted hair, a small, dented crown perched at a precarious angle—less a symbol of power, and more an unfortunate reminder that some things are very difficult to disinfect.

  Annabell eyed him.

  Grimy Garth eyed her back.

  And somewhere in the dark recesses of the Dungeon, the metaphysical equivalent of an announcer cleared its throat.

  The fight was about to begin.

  But not before Grimy Garth had addressed his adoring subjects.

  He raised his clawed hands in the air, let out a guttural “Squeak!” and sent the audience of rats into a frenzied riot. They surged along the damp arena’s perimeter in a blur of red-streaked motion, their chorus of screeches reinforcing an unspoken, yet universally understood rule of these situations:

  Nobody was leaving until this was finished.

  Meanwhile, Annabell’s eyes kept flickering between the scene, the loot bag strung around Garth’s neck, and the large, ominous HP: 1/9 blinking at the corner of her vision.

  “This is a tricky situation, isn’t it, Wallace?” she murmured under Grimy Garth’s increasingly loud squeaks, watching as he basked in the rising cacophony of his rodent subjects.

  Her eyes swept the nametag suspended above his head.

  Grimy Garth (Level 8)

  (Kindly imagine this in big, bold, angry red letters. With skulls. Lots of skulls.

  -Grimy Garth)

  Annabell cracked her knuckles, then her neck, then—by sheer accident—her spine.

  She gave a resolute nod.

  “Tricky for them. They didn’t bring a sufficiently big army to take me on.”

  With a few sweeping motions of her cat-paw gloves, Annabell shifted fluidly between her own interpretation of a Crane and a Mantis stance. Which, in practice, mostly resembled “panicked pigeon” and “slightly drunk fool.”

  It did manage to catch Grimy Garth’s attention, though.

  With a hint of hesitation, the rodent ruler turned from his frenzied subjects to look at her, arms still raised in mid-triumph. It wasn’t the hesitation born from facing a formidable adversary, mind you. Nor was it the cautious wariness due to being up against a desperate lunatic. No, this was the look of a man—well, ratman—who had just realized he was stuck with someone who had long since thrown the script out the window and set fire to the teleprompter.

  Annabell had just let out a rather prolonged “Meow.”

  And while she had his attention, with great dramatic flair, she reached into her hoodie’s pouch and withdrew her most precious possession. A relic of ages past (also known as this last morning, for anyone who cared to keep track of such things). A symbol of power and authority. A weapon of fate itself.

  A single copper coin. Her first and most precious shiny.

  Holding it aloft between finger and thumb, she addressed her foe with all the solemn dignity of a courtly bard who had absolutely no idea what they were talking about:

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “Oh, appropriately-sized rodenth ruler, ith seemth thine subjecth haveth taketh somethingth that isn’th belong to themth,” she declared, in the most Shakespearean impression she could muster.

  Which is to say, not at all.

  Annabell had never read Shakespeare. Nor had she ever addressed royalty. She had, however, watched an inordinate amount of web dramas, absorbed a worrying number of fanfictions, and once gotten into a shouting match with a self-proclaimed duchess in a comment section.

  “I challengeth thou to a coin flippeth for the returnth of mine thingesth.”

  For a moment, Garth simply stared at her.

  “Squee?”

  Roughly translated, this meant: "What the heck-eth are you talking about?"

  Annabell, undeterred, pressed on. “Heads, and thou shall returneth mine thingesth. Tails, and… thou shall still returneth mine thingesth. Because they areth mine.”

  Garth’s whiskers twitched. His little clawed hands went to his hips, and he radiated the precise energy of a merchant being told exposure was a valid form of currency.

  “Squeak,” he huffed.

  Annabell rolled her eyes. “Fine. Tails, and you get to keep it. Stingy bugger.”

  Without further ado—or compliance, for that matter—she catapulted the coin into the air.

  Lesser rats might have flinched, fearing some strange attack was coming, but before any of them could react, the coin arced gracefully, spun like a tiny, well-polished celestial body, and boomeranged neatly back into her palm.

  She flipped it over with great ceremony.

  “And behold,” she proclaimed, holding it up for all to see, “heads!”

  Grimy Garth narrowed his beady eyes. He hissed in a manner that strongly suggested he was saying: “Hey, that’s the Eye of the Nexus,” about the image engraved into the copper coin. “That clearly counts as tails!”

  “Nuh uh,” Annabell said, wiggling her finger at the rodent ruler. “This is obviously heads. Everyone knows that. Now, hand my stuff back.”

  Grimy Garth did, in fact, not return Annabell’s loot.

  Instead, Grimy Garth made a violent gesture, which in any civilized society would have meant “Guards, remove this ruffian!” but here translated to something along the lines of “Murder her immediately.”

  She barely had the time to get out a quiet, “Ah, dung beetles,” as the first wave of their frantic audience peeled off from the swarm, surging towards her in a tide of screeching, undead rat fury.

  Taking a few tentative steps back—because that seemed the natural thing to do—her eyes flickered once left, and then right, but there was nowhere to run. No handy high ground, no conveniently placed chandelier to swing from, and certainly no deus ex machina waiting in the wings.

  Her usual plans wouldn’t work.

  Which meant there was only one logical course of action:

  “Wallace, distract them!” she yelled, yanking out the bulldog plushie and yeeting him straight into the oncoming swarm. “I’ll take on the big guy.”

  For a brief moment—a fleeting, sorrowful instant—it almost seemed as if a single, glistening teardrop rolled from Wallace’s beady, stitched-on eyes as he sailed through the air. Then again, it might also have just been sewer condensation.

  Either way, Annabell was already moving.

  One, two, three bounding pounces, low and fast, closed the space between her and Grimy Garth at a reckless speed that suggested she had either a solid plan or no plan whatsoever. Given the trajectory, it was probably the latter.

  Course-type: Collision.

  If Grimy Garth hadn’t hurriedly scuttled sideways when he did, scholars for years would have speculated about what, exactly, Annabell Smith had been thinking as she cannonballed towards the rodent king at terminal velocity with exactly 1 HP remaining.

  Instead, she now skidded past, boots squealing against the wet metal grates, and before Garth could even raise a claw to summon another wave of his rodent horde—

  She was upon him.

  Trait: Natural Predator Activated

  Cat-Paw Gloves +1 Attack

  Swiping, pouncing, and cackling, somehow, Annabell managed to put Grimy Garth on the retreat.

  Was it the fact that her go-to method of combat—wildly flailing her arms and hoping for the best—was suddenly a great deal more effective now that she had actual claws? Was it the sheer, existential horror of being on the receiving end of a frenzied, laughing maniac with exactly one HP to her name, who hadn’t yet realized that a strong breeze could finish her off?

  Or was it maybe, just maybe, the fact that Grimy Garth was a carefully balanced rat-king summoner-type boss, designed to work in tandem with the intricate, interactive traps that filled the arena—traps that no sane person would ignore in favor of blindly charging straight at him.

  Who would even do such a rude thing?

  (Somewhere, deep in the unseen architecture of the Dungeon, a sorrowful wail could be heard. It was the sound of carefully designed game mechanics being reduced to utter nonsense.)

  Behind Annabell, a ceiling pipe burst open, dumping a groaning pile of zombies into the arena. This was supposed to be a dramatic, escalating event. It was supposed to make Delvers reconsider their approach. It was supposed to say, Ah-ha! You thought you were winning but BEHOLD! Difficulty increase!

  Annabell did not behold.

  To the left, a floor grate flipped over, revealing the snapping, undead crocodiles waiting below—placed there to punish reckless movement, to force participants in this game of death to think strategically about positioning.

  Annabell did not think.

  At the edges of the arena, the frantic rats still ran in circles, waiting for their king’s command to join the battle, to unleash the final, frenzied phase of the encounter.

  Annabell did not allow such commands.

  Perhaps she didn’t even notice them. Or perhaps she did and just didn’t care.

  Either way, she was far too busy tumbling, howling, cackling, and—occasionally—meowing as she tore after a very alarmed rodent king.

  Grimy Garth, despite his primary class being Summoner, was actually a fairly competent close-quarters combatant. He had well-balanced attack patterns, carefully designed openings, and a well-documented set of mechanics meant to provide a challenging yet fair fight for any Delver worth their salt.

  This, of course, meant absolutely nothing in the face of Annabell Smith.

  What, after all, was a boss supposed to do when their opponent jumped when there was no reason to jump? When they rolled across the floor for absolutely no tactical advantage? When they executed a move that, in a more structured world, might have been classified as a “dash-cancel-swipe-slide-double-jump-thunder-dive-suicide-attack”—but only if that world had been designed by someone very, very drunk?

  Worst of all, was that it was somehow working. Thanks to her persistent cartwheeling, pouncing, and other questionable decisions at every opportunity presented, Annabell had somehow—through sheer, unhinged recklessness—earned a respectable number of levels in Mindless Acrobatics.

  She had also, due to the sheer volume of objects she had dropped onto zombies from great heights, gained multiple Bonuses Versus Undead Opponents.

  And well.

  Chaos was her forte.

  Thus, the climactic, cut-throat battle between Annabell Smith and Grimy Garth—the one meant to be a harrowing, multi-phase duel to the death—had, instead, devolved into the deeply undignified sight of a 1 HP Gremlin chasing the rodent king in frantic circles around his own arena, completely ignoring every single story beat that the Dungeon had painstakingly planned.