The ball pit was behind us.

  Theoretically.

  In practice, I was still finding confetti in some places. I chose not to investigate why. Some things were better left unexamined.

  "Right," I said, brushing the last of the static electricity off my pink sash. "Where to next."

  Mira flew up beside me, wings beating steadily in the mall's flickering fluorescent air. "We have the compass," she said, with the tone of someone recommending a dental procedure.

  "We have the compass," I agreed.

  The Ancient Compass had been sitting in my inventory since the Archives. I hadn't used it yet because using it felt like asking Hell hey, where haven't I been? And Hell had a way of answering that question with real enthusiasm.

  I pulled it out.

  Bronze, or something like bronze. The needle was a sliver of bone. I'd briefly wondered whose, then decided not to pursue that line of inquiry. The moment I held it up, the needle spun twice and locked onto a direction with a small, satisfied click, like it had been waiting for this exact moment for quite some time.

  It was pointing deeper into the mall.

  Away from the food court. Away from the vending machines. Away from the area the dungeon notification had labeled Kevin's Lair (formerly Macy's stockroom), which was still presumably our actual objective.

  "That's a different direction than the main quest," Mira said.

  "Yeah."

  "Completely different direction."

  "Yeah."

  "Should we..."

  "Absolutely," I said, and started walking toward it.

  Mira made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a wingbeat.

  The compass led us past a shuttered Hot Topic, through a stretch of mall corridor where all the ceiling tiles had collapsed into a neat pile in the center of the walkway (as if even the architecture here had given up and just sat down), and around a corner that the mall's floor map hadn't mentioned.

  Beyond the corner was a wing.

  Old wing, judging by the carpet. The rest of the mall had linoleum, but here someone had installed thick carpet that was probably burgundy once and was now the color of a regret. The storefronts here were different too. No chain names, no recognizable logos. Just dark glass and handwritten signs that said things like CLOSED FOR REASONS and DO NOT ENTER (PLEASE).

  The ceiling was lower. The fluorescent lights had given up entirely, replaced by something that could only be described as ambient gloom with structural integrity.

  "I don't like this wing," the hare announced.

  "You don't like anything," I said.

  "I liked the food court."

  Kitten Cowboy trotted ahead of us, tail low, ears forward. The small cat moved with the careful, deliberate attention of something that had done reconnaissance before and was doing it again now, checking doorways and corners before committing to any direction. Occasionally it would stop, sit, and look back at me with its round golden eyes.

  "What is it seeing?" Mira asked.

  "I don't know," I said. "But it keeps looking back, so either it's making sure we're following or it's concerned."

  "PEW," said Kitten Cowboy, which could have meant either.

  The compass pulled us toward a pair of double doors at the far end of the wing. These were different from the storefront doors: heavier, floor to ceiling, with push bars and small rectangular windows set at eye level. A sign above them read MAINTENANCE ACCESS – AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY, and below that, in someone's handwriting with a marker that had been running out of ink: seriously though.

  The maintenance corridor beyond was narrow and lit by the same blue light I recognized from safe rooms, except here it came from pipes running along the ceiling, pulsing gently like something with a very slow heartbeat.

  It opened into a room.

  Circular room. High ceiling. The walls were raw concrete, broken up by what appeared to be storage shelves bolted directly into the stone. The shelves were empty, and had clearly been empty for a long time, judging by the dust and the way the empty space seemed to lean toward you.

  In the center was a loading dock platform, the kind you'd use for forklifts, except instead of a forklift bay there was a large round drain set into the floor.

  Next to the drain: a shopping cart.

  Just a regular shopping cart, the kind with one wheel that would never cooperate. Lying on its side. For no apparent reason.

  "Hm," I said.

  The compass needle swung hard to point directly at the drain and stayed there, vibrating slightly with what I chose to interpret as excitement.

  "That's a drain," Mira said.

  "Yes."

  "You're going to want to look in the drain."

  "Yep."

  "Daniel."

  I opened my mouth to reply, but Survivor's Instinct cut me off.

  Not urgently. Just a tap on the shoulder, the equivalent of a friend leaning over in a quiet room and saying hey, don't look now, but.

  I looked now.

  The thing was on the shelves.

  It hadn't been there a moment ago. Or it had, and the concrete color of its skin had made it invisible against the concrete walls, and now something had shifted and I could see it clearly: crouched on the third shelf from the bottom, knees near its ears, all of its too many arms folded against itself in a way that shouldn't have fit the available space.

  It was small. Maybe three feet tall. Its skin was the exact gray of the walls. Not similar, not approximately, but the exact gray, like it had been made from the room. Its eyes were enormous in a way that suggested a creature that spent most of its time in places where there was no light at all. Those eyes were fixed on me with an expression that translated clearly across any species barrier: I have been watching you for several minutes and I have now decided to make this your problem.

  It had a bandolier across its chest. The loops held small, dark objects. Not stones. Something denser. More deliberate.

  It also had more arms than felt necessary. The exact count was difficult to establish because they moved independently and occasionally in directions that arms weren't supposed to move.

  VAULT SCUTTLER

  Level: 11 | Type: Ambush Predator

  THREAT ASSESSMENT: Moderate-High

  NOTES: Highly territorial. Guards locations of interest. Excellent surface mimicry. Projectile-based attacks. CAUTION: Will test targets before full engagement. Do not mistake patience for hesitation.

  "It's been on those shelves the whole time," Mira said, very quietly.

  "Probably," I said, equally quietly.

  One of the Scuttler's extra arms rose slowly and pointed at me with complete deliberateness, like it was a professor indicating a diagram that supported its thesis. Then it threw something directly at my face.

  I'd been watching the arm. The throw was fast, faster than the windup suggested, but I'd been watching. I moved my head to the right and felt the projectile pass my ear, close enough that I heard it. It hit the concrete wall behind me and left a mark.

  As in a dent. In concrete.

  The Scuttler dropped from the shelf.

  It landed with a sound that was unexpectedly wet for something that appeared to be made of hard material, and hit the concrete floor in a low crouch, arms spread, and then it moved. It crossed the room in a series of irregular lurches that made it extremely difficult to track because each movement arrived at a different angle than the last, like it had briefly stopped caring about the concept of a straight line.

  "Everyone scatter!" I said.

  The hare had already scattered. Specifically, behind the toppled shopping cart, which it was using as a bunker.

  Kitten Cowboy didn't scatter. Kitten Cowboy went completely still.

  It had been doing this more often lately: the complete stillness, the sharp focus, the two seconds of frozen attention before firing. Like a hunting dog mixed with a chess player. The Scuttler, mid-jump, noticed the stillness and stopped. Some deep instinct warned it that something is about to shoot me.

  The revolver fired.

  The round hit the Scuttler in the shoulder and it flew sideways into the concrete wall with a crunch that echoed. Not a little. Significantly. It slid down and landed in a heap.

  Then it got up.

  "Oh, of course," Mira said.

  It got up slower. One of the extra arms was angled wrong. But it was up, and it was angry in a way that came through even in a face that had almost no features to be angry with, and it was reaching for its bandolier again.

  It threw two projectiles at once, one at me, one at Kitten Cowboy.

  The world didn't slow down.

  That was the part my companions got wrong about Delayed Reaction. There was nothing cinematic about it. No bullet-time. No sudden clarity. What actually happened was two full seconds of me standing there like an idiot while my brain processed everything it had just seen, logging trajectories, angles, and speeds with the frantic efficiency of a system that knew it was behind schedule. I could move during those two seconds, but my body was busy waiting for instructions.

  Two seconds.

  Then it kicked in.

  My body moved before I'd consciously decided to move it, carrying out instructions my brain had already filed. I dropped, grabbed the metal handle of the toppled shopping cart (the hare shrieked as the cart shifted) and swung it up and to the right. The projectile hit the wire basket with a bang that rang through the room like a struck bell and bounced off into the ceiling.

  Mira intercepted the second one with her shield spell and immediately pulled back, hissing.

  "I'm fine," she said quickly.

  The shopping cart was still in my hands. It was heavy in the way that only objects with one broken wheel are heavy: uncooperative, slightly tilted, and determined to make everything harder. I looked at the Scuttler. The Scuttler looked at me.

  I threw the shopping cart.

  I swung it in a wide arc and released. It tumbled through the air with a sound like someone shaking a bag of silverware. It hit the Scuttler directly and knocked it into the shelving unit. The unit came off the wall with a crash that filled the whole room, and the Scuttler went down under two hundred pounds of empty metal shelving.

  "POCKET SAND!" I shouted.

  I had made a decision, before this fight started, that I was going to use Pocket Sand. I had made it a deliberate, pre-planned intention. I had thought about it specifically and said to myself: use the sand. And then the fight had started and I had stood there for two seconds, processed everything wrong, thrown a shopping cart, and now I was shouting it belatedly at a creature that was already partially buried under shelving.

  The debris hit anyway, catching the Scuttler directly in those enormous eyes as it tried to push the shelving off itself.

  It stopped moving.

  It made a noise—not quite pain, but something close to a scream.

  "NOW," I said.

  I sprinted forward, brick still in hand. The Scuttler was blinded, swiping wildly with its extra arms. I ducked under the first swing, felt the rush of air as it passed overhead, and brought the brick down hard on one of its functional arms.

  The impact jarred through my wrist. The arm buckled.

  I didn't stop. The Scuttler was off-balance, trying to clear its eyes with one arm while the others flailed defensively. I pivoted, keeping low, and swung again—this time at its center of mass.

  The brick connected. The creature staggered back.

  Kitten Cowboy had repositioned during the chaos, moving to the optimal angle with the quiet efficiency of a professional who had been waiting for exactly this moment. The small cat lined up the shot. The full stillness. The absolute attention.

  The revolver fired once.

  The round hit center mass. The Scuttler went backward into the wall and slid down.

  It didn't get up.

  Or, it pushed itself upright on its arms, but stayed low. The enormous eyes blinked rapidly. One of the extra arms was completely non-functional. The bandolier was still there, but the creature's posture had changed entirely. Less active threat, more the posture of something making a very fast practical evaluation.

  I picked up the brick again, held it in a way that communicated readiness, and looked at the Scuttler.

  "We done?" I said.

  The Scuttler looked at the brick. At Kitten Cowboy, who had not holstered the revolver and showed no intention of doing so. At me, breathing hard but still standing.

  Slowly, one by one, its arms went flat against the floor. Then it shimmered and faded into nothing.

  I exhaled.

  ENCOUNTER COMPLETE

  VAULT SCUTTLER: Neutralized (Non-lethal)

  EXPERIENCE GAINED: 180 XP

  DELAYED REACTION QUEST PROGRESS: 6/10

  POCKET SAND QUEST PROGRESS: 4/10

  MALL SURVIVAL RATING INCREASED: C- → C+

  The hare had appeared from behind the cart, ears twitching nervously. "What does that even mean?" it asked. "Mall Survival Rating? Is that like... a grade?"

  "I think it's showing how safe the dungeon considers us," I said, looking at where the notification had appeared. "Like, we went from C- to C+. That's progress."

  "Progress toward what?" Mira asked, landing on my shoulder. "A B-? An A? What happens when we get an A+, do we graduate from mall hell?"

  "Maybe it's tracking how well we're handling the dungeon," I said. "Like a performance metric. The better we do, the higher the rating."

  "Or," the hare suggested darkly, "it's measuring how long we'll survive before something kills us."

  There was a pause.

  "I prefer my interpretation," I said.

  "Of course you do," Mira muttered. "You also thought throwing a shopping cart was a good tactical decision."

  "It worked," I pointed out.

  "That doesn't make it good."

  Kitten Cowboy holstered one revolver and used a tiny paw to gesture at the air where the notification had been, then made a questioning "pew?" sound.

  "I think the kitten wants to know if a higher rating means better loot," I translated, possibly incorrectly.

  "Or safer rooms," Mira said. "Though considering we're in a dungeon that's literally a dead mall, I'm not holding my breath for 'safe.'"

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  "Remember what the entry text said?" I asked. "This place was made by whoever wrote . Same person who described the inhabitants and gave us that whole PowerPoint presentation introduction."

  "The one with the Comic Sans," the hare said, shuddering.

  "Right. So maybe the Mall Survival Rating is just another one of their... creative touches. Like how they described Karen as a mini-boss or called it 'The Abandoned Mall of Mild Inconvenience.'"

  "'Mild Inconvenience,'" Mira repeated flatly. "We just fought something that threw concrete-denting projectiles at us."

  "To be fair," I said, "we won. So maybe from the dungeon's perspective, it was mild."

  "I hate that logic," Mira said. "But I can't actually argue with it."

  "Okay," I said, stepping back from the drain. There was nothing in there and no way to get inside. "Strategy."

  "Oh, now we're doing strategy," Mira said.

  "We've always done strategy," I said. "Now, there are two creature types we haven't dealt with yet: Bargain Bin Golems and Expired Food Court Spirits."

  "We fought the mannequins already," the hare said, with the tone of someone for whom this was not a pleasant memory.

  "We fought the mannequins. We accidentally fought the ball pit dragon. We fought the Vault Scuttler." I held up the compass, let it spin, watched it settle. Not pointing toward Kevin's Lair yet. Pointing somewhere in the mall's interior, toward the older retail wing. "So that's where we're going next."

  "We're hunting them?" Mira asked.

  "We're clearing the dungeon," I said. "That's the job. If we leave things alive behind us and then hit a wall somewhere, we'll have to backtrack through everything we skipped."

  The hare considered this. "THAT'S ACTUALLY REASONABLE."

  "Thank you."

  "I'm surprised. Genuinely."

  "You're welcome."

  Kitten Cowboy was already walking toward the corridor entrance, tail low, ears forward, with the kind of confidence that suggested it had either planned this entire encounter three steps ahead or was just really committed to looking cool. Possibly both.

  We followed.

  We heard them before we saw them.

  The sound was a slow, grinding shuffle—like something very heavy being dragged across linoleum—punctuated by an occasional crash of merchandise falling off shelves. It was coming from the far end of the mall's retail wing, past a cluster of storefronts with their gates down and their windows dark, from a wide-open anchor store at the corridor's end.

  The sign above the entrance read CLEARANCE KINGDOM in letters that had partially fallen off, leaving it reading CLEAR NC KING OM. Which, honestly, still tracked.

  Through the entrance, the store was enormous—warehouse-scale. The fluorescent lights were somehow worse than the rest of the mall, flickering in longer, slower pulses that created a strobe effect. Everything looked like it was moving in stop-motion. My head ached. The floor was covered in merchandise: overflowing bins, tipped display racks, piles of unsold goods that looked like they'd been accumulating for decades. Keychains. Novelty mugs. Phone cases for models no longer manufactured. Decorative throw pillows. An inexplicable number of wicker baskets.

  And in the middle of it, moving with slow and terrible purpose, were the Golems.

  There were three of them.

  Each one was roughly the shape and size of a refrigerator walking upright on two legs, except instead of appliance casing, they were made of stuff. Merchandise, fused together into a walking form. T-shirts wound around what might have been a structural frame of bent clothing racks. Keychains hanging off every surface, jangling softly with each step. Novelty coffee mugs embedded into the surface like scales. One of them had what appeared to be a waffle iron for a fist.

  BARGAIN BIN GOLEM (x3)

  Level: 15-16 | Type: Animated Construct

  THREAT ASSESSMENT: Moderate

  NOTES: Slow movement but high impact damage. Partially resistant to physical attacks. WEAKNESS: Complaints. Don't ask us to explain that one.

  I read the weakness twice.

  "Complaints," I said.

  "That's what it says," Mira confirmed.

  "As in... verbal complaints? At them?"

  "Apparently."

  The hare looked up at me, ears twitching with anticipation. "I HAVE A LOT OF COMPLAINTS."

  "This might actually be your moment," I said.

  The closest Golem turned in our direction. Its face—if it had one—was a cluster of fused novelty mugs arranged in roughly the configuration where a face would go, and the two mugs at the center each had a slogan on them that was partially obscured by melted plastic but still legible enough. One said WORLD'S GREATEST. The other said BOSS.

  The Golem stepped forward.

  It was slow. Each step landed with enough force to rattle the shelves nearby and send a fresh cascade of merchandise sliding to the floor. The waffle-iron fist came up in what I was reading as a threatening gesture.

  The other two had noticed us now. They were turning, grinding slowly around.

  The hare stepped forward, positioning itself directly in front of the lead Golem. There was something different in its posture—ears up, chest out, the kind of stance that suggested this was what it had been training for its entire life.

  "Hare," I said. "You're up."

  The hare took a breath.

  "THIS STORE HAS AN ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE LAYOUT. THE SIGHT LINES ARE POOR AND THE BINS ARE IMPOSSIBLE TO NAVIGATE."

  The nearest Golem stopped mid-step.

  "Oh, that's actually working." Mira said softly.

  The hare didn't need encouragement. It was already building momentum.

  "THE LIGHTING IS ABYSMAL. THESE FLUORESCENT FIXTURES ARE CLEARLY FAILING. THE AMBIANCE IS HOSTILE TO CUSTOMERS."

  The first Golem had started vibrating slightly. Something in its construction was resonating with the critique. Merchandise shifted on its surface.

  I moved while the hare held their attention, crossing the store floor in a wide arc, picking up a heavy display rack that had already been knocked on its side. Solid steel. Good weight. I hefted it, two-handed, like a battering ram.

  The first Golem was still vibrating, completely locked in place by the hare's verbal assault.

  I ran at it and hit it as hard as I could.

  The impact was enormous—the kind that goes up through your hands and into your shoulders and rings through your whole body and makes you immediately respect physics. But the Golem also went sideways, crashing into a bin of novelty keychains that exploded on contact and rained small metal trinkets across the floor in every direction.

  Merchandise fell off its surface. Not a lot, but some. A visible dent in its construction where the rack had connected.

  "Mira, the second one!"

  Mira was already moving, coming in fast from above. She dove at the second Golem's head section, using her talons to rip merchandise loose—a cluster of keychains tore free, then a fused t-shirt, exposing the structural frame underneath. The Golem reached up to swipe at her and missed. She was already gone by the time the swing completed, circling back for another pass.

  A notification flickered into existence in front of me, hovering in the air with that particular quality of system text that made it impossible to ignore.

  PARTY MEMBER SKILL UNLOCK

  Mira Ashveil has learned: TALON SLASH

  Type: Active Combat Skill

  Effect: Mira can execute a slashing attack with her talons, dealing moderate damage with increased critical hit chance against vulnerable targets.

  I blinked at the notification, then looked over at Mira, who had paused mid-flight and was staring at her own version of the notification with an expression that was equal parts surprise and contemplation.

  She flexed her talons experimentally, watching the way they caught the flickering light. "I suppose tearing merchandise off those Golems counted as combat experience."

  "Apparently enough to unlock something new." I dismissed my notification. "Congratulations on the weaponized bird feet."

  "Thank you," Mira said, with the tone of someone who wasn't entirely sure how to feel about their body parts being formally recognized as weapons.

  The hare looked up at her with what might have been concern. "DOES THIS MEAN YOU'RE GOING TO START SLASHING THINGS MORE OFTEN?"

  "Only when I feel like it," Mira assured it. "I prefer casting spells. We need to find spellbooks."

  Kitten Cowboy had positioned on top of a shelving unit at the far end of the store, which gave it elevation and a clear angle on the third Golem. The Dramatic Standoff began. Two seconds of perfect stillness. The third Golem turned toward the movement and stopped when it registered the aim—that same ancient circuit that the Vault Scuttler had triggered, the one that says that thing is going to fire.

  The revolver fired.

  Critical hit. The third Golem's upper section caved inward. Merchandise sprayed outward from the impact point. It swayed, but didn't fall.

  The hare circled around the first Golem, which was struggling to stand, and launched into its next wave of criticism with the precision of a tactical strike.

  "FURTHERMORE, THE RETURN POLICY IS INCOMPREHENSIBLE. WHAT DO YOU MEAN STORE CREDIT ONLY? THIS IS CONSUMER ABUSE."

  The first Golem, still on the floor where I'd knocked it, was shaking continuously now. Merchandise kept sliding off its surface, as if the sustained criticism was physically loosening its structure.

  I brought the display rack down on it again. And again.

  On the third hit, the structural integrity of the thing gave out entirely—the clothing rack frame that had been holding it together buckled, and the whole mass of merchandise collapsed like a badly assembled pile of stuff, which was exactly what it was.

  BARGAIN BIN GOLEM #1: DEFEATED

  The hare didn't pause. It turned immediately to face the second Golem, which had tracked back toward Mira and was making slow, grinding progress in her direction.

  "ALSO, THE MUSIC IN THIS STORE. IT'S THE SAME LOOP OVER AND OVER. WHOEVER CHOSE THIS PLAYLIST CLEARLY HAS NO REGARD FOR EMPLOYEE OR CUSTOMER MENTAL HEALTH."

  The second Golem stopped moving for about two full seconds.

  "Here," I said, and threw the display rack like a javelin.

  It hit the Golem in the torso and stuck there—the bent end catching in the merchandise—and suddenly the Golem had a steel pole protruding from its chest like an extremely inconvenient problem. Its movement was compromised. It couldn't raise its right arm past shoulder height without the pole catching on something.

  The hare moved closer, circling the immobilized Golem with the confidence of something that had finally found its purpose.

  "AND THE PRICES. DON'T GET ME STARTED ON THE PRICES. THESE MARKDOWNS ARE DECEPTIVE. THE ORIGINAL PRICES WERE CLEARLY INFLATED."

  The second Golem's vibrations intensified. More merchandise fell.

  I saw my chance. The second Golem was in trouble—stuff was falling off it from the hare's complaints, and the metal pole stuck through its chest was making it hard to move. I grabbed the pole with both hands and pushed, using it like a lever to tip the whole thing over. The Golem leaned to one side, tried to stay upright, but couldn't. It crashed sideways into a pile of decorative pillows, which was probably the best way a Golem like this could fall.

  BARGAIN BIN GOLEM #2: DEFEATED

  The third Golem was still standing. Kitten Cowboy's critical hit had done significant damage, but the construct kept moving, its attention fixed on the cat on the shelf.

  The hare positioned itself directly in the third Golem's path, standing small but resolute in front of the shambling construct.

  "AND FURTHERMORE," the hare said, voice rising with righteous indignation, "THAT PRODUCT IS CLEARLY MISLABELED. THIS IS FALSE ADVERTISING. THE STATED FEATURES DO NOT MATCH THE ACTUAL PRODUCT. THIS VIOLATES CONSUMER PROTECTION LAWS IN MULTIPLE JURISDICTIONS."

  The third Golem stopped dead. The mention of consumer protection laws had hit something fundamental in its construction. It began to shake violently.

  Kitten Cowboy fired again.

  Second critical hit. The Golem came apart.

  BARGAIN BIN GOLEM #3: DEFEATED

  ENCOUNTER COMPLETE

  EXPERIENCE GAINED: 220 XP

  MALL SURVIVAL RATING INCREASED: C+ → B-

  The store was a mess. Merchandise everywhere. Three collapsed piles of fused consumer goods lying in the wreckage of their own existence. The hare sat in the middle of it all, ears slightly flattened, looking like it had just had a religious experience.

  "That," it said, "was the most validating thing that has ever happened to me."

  "You just defeated three monsters!" I said, petting its head.

  "YES. I WAS GLORIOUS!"

  "You should feel good about that," Mira said.

  "I DO. I FEEL EXTREMELY GOOD ABOUT THAT."

  I checked the compass. It had swung slightly, updating direction now that we'd cleared this section. Still not pointing at Kevin's Lair. Pointing further in, toward the food court area we'd come through on arrival.

  Right. The Food Court Spirits were next.

  The food court had smelled bad when we'd first arrived, but what we were walking into now was different. This wasn't just the ambient decay of an abandoned building. This was specific. A smell with intention. Greasy, sweet, vaguely sulfuric—and underneath it all, something that registered in the back of your nose as a warning.

  The hare had stopped several paces back and was pressing both paws over its nose. "IT'S SO BAD."

  Kitten Cowboy's nose was twitching. The small cat did not look pleased.

  The food court, when we could see it through the haze, was different from when we'd passed through before. Then it had been abandoned. Now it was inhabited—though in the loosest possible sense of that word.

  They floated.

  There were five of them. Each one was different in shape but they all shared the same quality of translucence and the same greenish-brown tinge that suggested food left somewhere warm for too long. They drifted between the tables slowly, occasionally passing through the closed storefronts without slowing, occasionally clustering together and then separating again.

  EXPIRED FOOD COURT SPIRIT (x5)

  Level: 16-17 | Type: Haunting/Corruptive

  THREAT ASSESSMENT: Moderate-High

  NOTES: Physical attacks have reduced effectiveness. Contact inflicts FOOD POISONING (nausea, reduced Agility, Strength, duration varies). Vulnerable to: Light, high temperatures, Kitten Cowboy (???). Do not inhale near contact zone.

  "Vulnerable to Kitten Cowboy with three question marks?" Mira said, reading over my shoulder.

  "It doesn't know why either," I said.

  Kitten Cowboy made a small sound. Unholstered the revolver.

  "So Kitten leads, we support," I said.

  "And we don't let them touch us," Mira added.

  "I DON'T HAVE A GOOD RELATIONSHIP WITH NAUSEA," the hare confirmed.

  "Does anyone?"

  "I HAVE AN ESPECIALLY BAD ONE."

  I looked around the food court. The Spirits hadn't noticed us yet, or if they had, they were doing a very good impression of things that hadn't noticed anything. They continued their slow, aimless drift between the tables.

  I needed to think about this differently. The Golems had been straightforward—hit them until they fell down, use the specific weakness to soften them up. But these things were spectral. Physical contact was dangerous. Kitten Cowboy was the primary damage dealer, which meant keeping everyone else clear and giving the cat room to work.

  I studied the tables. Food court tables are bolted to the floor, but these hadn't been maintained. Some had come partially free. A few had tipped over entirely. The trays left behind were stacked against the wall—a pile of orange and brown plastic several feet tall.

  I picked up a tray.

  "What are you doing?" Mira asked.

  "Covering angles," I said. "If I can't hit them directly, I can make it harder for them to hit us. Create barriers. Push them toward Kitten."

  I moved into the food court along the wall, staying as far from the Spirits as the space allowed. The smell got worse immediately. My eyes started watering. I held my breath as much as I could, which in a space this size was not a sustainable long-term strategy but bought me time to get into position.

  Kitten Cowboy had moved to a table in the center of the food court—jumped up on top of it, two legs, standing upright, the revolver held in both paws. The nearest Spirit registered this. Its drift changed direction slightly, orienting toward the cat.

  The Standoff began.

  Two seconds.

  The Spirit floated forward, something in its translucent form shifting, darkening.

  The revolver fired.

  The spectral round hit the Spirit and went in, like hitting something that was real enough to take damage. The Spirit contracted sharply, its shape distorting, and then expanded outward in a pulse of greenish light that smelled like everything bad all at once.

  "DOWN!" Mira shouted.

  I dropped behind an overturned table. The pulse washed over it, and I felt it—a wave of ambient wrongness that tried to get into my lungs and my stomach simultaneously. My Endurance stat was doing something useful for once; I felt the debuff attempt to take hold and fail, mostly. A mild version. My Agility dropped by one point.

  "Food poisoning smoke," I announced, standing back up. "I'm partially resistant thanks to my Endurance."

  "MINE WAS NOT PARTIAL," the hare said, from under a table. "I AM EXPERIENCING FULL FOOD POISONING."

  "You need to stay back," I said.

  "ALREADY DOING THAT. AHEAD OF YOU."

  The damaged Spirit had reformed slightly—these things didn't die cleanly, they contracted and expanded and slowly wore down. Kitten Cowboy was tracking it, continuing to fire while waiting for the cooldown on Dramatic Standoff. The other four Spirits had all turned and were now moving toward the center of the food court with slightly more purpose than before.

  Four Spirits, and two of us effectively functional in close range.

  I grabbed a stack of trays and started throwing them. Not at the Spirits. Near them. Between them and Mira, who had positioned herself near the ceiling for better angle. Each tray that sailed through a Spirit did essentially nothing—they were spectral, the tray just passed through—but the movement, the noise, the disruption, made them track the projectile for a moment. A moment where they weren't moving toward us. A moment where Kitten Cowboy had a clear angle.

  The cat fired again. And again. Working through the Spirits methodically, the spectral rounds doing real damage each time, the Standoff critical hit landing on whichever target presented the clearest opportunity.

  I was running interference. Trays, a metal chair I'd wrenched free of its corroded base, a large plastic signboard that said TODAY'S SPECIAL (the special itself had long since expired, which felt thematically appropriate). I moved around the edges of the food court, shouting, throwing things, making noise—keeping the Spirits' attention distributed rather than concentrated, making sure no more than one at a time had clear line on Kitten Cowboy.

  One of them came directly at me. I'd moved into a gap I shouldn't have. The Spirit was faster than the others, more responsive, and it had tracked around the table I was using as cover without me noticing.

  Delayed Reaction didn't help here—by the time the two seconds finished processing, I'd already moved on instinct, stumbling backward, and the Spirit had passed close enough that I felt the cold wrong of it against my left arm.

  The food poisoning debuff hit full-strength.

  It was not pleasant. My stomach lurched, my Agility dropped significantly, my Strength flagged. The world tilted slightly in a way that had nothing to do with the physical world and everything to do with my body deciding that it wanted very badly to be horizontal right now.

  "Fuuuuck—I'm gonna throw up…" I managed to say, grabbing onto a table edge to stay upright.

  "How bad?" Mira called from above.

  "I'm still functional," I said—which was technically true if I didn't move too fast. "Keep going."

  The last one came for Kitten Cowboy directly. The cat let it come. Waited. The Standoff began, the Spirit three feet away and closing—

  The revolver fired.

  The Spirit hit the spectral round at point blank range and came apart in a flash of sickly green light that faded fast, like someone had turned off a neon sign that had been on too long.

  EXPIRED FOOD COURT SPIRIT: DEFEATED

  ENCOUNTER COMPLETE

  EXPERIENCE GAINED: 195 XP

  MALL SURVIVAL RATING INCREASED: B- → A-

  FOOD POISONING DEBUFF: 1/4 party members (Daniel Keres). Duration: 8 minutes.

  I was still leaning on the table.

  The hare emerged from under its table, looked at me, looked at the space where the Spirits had been, then at the general state of the food court, which now had trays and a chair and a decorative signboard scattered across it in a pattern that said a fight happened here.

  "ARE YOU OKAY?" it asked.

  "Yeah," I said. "I just need to throw up."

  "IT'S NOT GOOD."

  "No. It's really not."

  I turned away from the table, found a corner behind a defunct beverage counter, and threw up.

  Kitten Cowboy patted my boot once with a tiny paw.

  “Pew,” it said sympathetically.

  The food poisoning debuff had its say, violently and comprehensively. When I was done, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and felt immediately better—not perfect, but functional. The nausea had passed. My stats were crawling back toward normal.

  I looked at the compass. It had updated again—swinging around, settling. Still not pointing at Kevin's Lair. Pointing upward. There was a second floor.

  The escalators didn't work. The dungeon had told us that from the beginning.

  "There are stairs somewhere," Mira said, reading my expression.

  "There are always stairs," I said. "Come on."

  The stairs were where you'd expect stairs to be in a mall—tucked beside a defunct elevator bank near the center of the building, behind a pillar that had a directory board on it. The directory board had a map. The map had been partially destroyed by water damage, but enough remained to see the rough shape of the second floor: a balcony ring above the main atrium, with another cluster of storefronts, a shuttered cinema, and—at the far end—something labeled in the original map as MANAGEMENT SUITE.

  The second floor was also in significantly worse shape than the first. Down below, at least the architecture had been maintained in its deterioration. Up here, sections of the ceiling had come down entirely, leaving gaps open to whatever was above them (more mall, or maybe nothing at all). The storefronts had lost their gates in most cases; the interiors were dark and open and long since empty.

  The carpet up here was the same burgundy-turned-regret as the old maintenance wing.

  The compass pointed straight down the balcony ring toward the management suite end.

  "Karen is up here somewhere," I said.

  "KAREN?" the hare said, in the tone of someone for whom this was not an unfamiliar concept.

  "Mini-boss."

  We moved along the balcony ring slowly. The atrium below was visible through the balcony railing—the food court, the scattered trays from our recent battle, the directory board in Comic Sans that had welcomed us at the start. Seeing it from above made the mall feel smaller than it had from inside it. More contained. Like a very large box.

  From up here, I could also see the far end of the first floor—the direction the compass had been pointing toward Kevin's Lair, where the stockroom and the Crystal Chest were waiting. Still some distance to go. The dungeon was not small.

  The hare's ears went up.

  "HEAR THAT?" it said.

  I listened.

  From further down the balcony—from the direction of the management suite—came a sound. Rhythmic. Purposeful. The click of heels on hard floor, regular and unhurried, in the manner of someone who was going somewhere and expected the somewhere to know they were coming.

  And underneath it, just barely audible, a voice on a phone.

  "...I don’t understand what you're saying, but what I'm telling you is that this is simply not acceptable, and I need someone to explain to me why—no, I don't want to hear that, I want a solution—yes, I'll hold, but I want you to know I have been holding for twenty-three minutes and I am noting that for the record..."

  The clicking footsteps came around the corner of the balcony ring and stopped.

  She was tall. She was dressed in what had clearly been a blazer and slacks, but the blazer had been modified by time and circumstance into something closer to armor: stiff, squared at the shoulders, projecting authority through sheer structural integrity. Her hair was precise. Her expression was the specific expression of someone who had spent decades being disappointed by other people's incompetence and had stopped attempting to hide this fact.

  She looked at us.

  The notification appeared.

  KAREN

  Level: 19 | Type: Mini-Boss

  THREAT ASSESSMENT: High

  NOTES: Immune to fear effects—has long since transcended fear. Can inflict COMPLAINT OVERWHELM. Manager Summon: Can call for assistance once per encounter. CRITICAL ABILITY: Speak to the Manager—targets party leader with sustained pressure that reduces Presence and Cognition by 3 each. WEAKNESS: Unknown. (Has one. Find it.)

  Karen lowered her phone from her ear.

  "Excuse me," she said. Her voice was calm. Reasonable. The voice of someone who had been reasonable for a long time and had learned to use it as a weapon. "I need to ask you something."

  I braced.

  "Can I speak to your manager?"