Aster held her spear before her, steeling herself for whatever was to come, and then she stepped into the darkness. As she did, a dim light lit ahead of her, illuminating the hallway for twenty feet in a cool, blue tone. Her foot pushed down on a false stone that almost had her stumbling, but that was the least of her concerns as a bright red mist shot up from beneath her.

  It stung her eyes and felt like acid on her skin, but disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. A new notification sprung up in her vision.

  New Creation Discovered!

  Bloodforge Labyrinth Poison

  This toxin can be inhaled or absorbed through the skin. It will reduce your HP by 5% every hour until you take the antidote located at the end of the Bloodforge Labyrinth. Your maximum health will be reduced by 5% for each hour it is below 50%. Health can be restored by defeating the monsters residing within the Bloodforge Labyrinth.

  “Shit,” Aster cursed. It tasted like copper in her mouth, and she felt a distinct discomfort settle over her, not unlike the tingles she’d get after a round of chemo. The thought was distasteful.

  Aster rolled her shoulders and moved forward. Left or right? The answer was obvious once she looked down the lefthand side and spotted a flicker of movement. Aster smiled and moved that way, considering how she should move around corners while wielding her spear.

  Instead of hugging the corner, she allowed the tip of her spear to act as a pivot point for her, bringing it to the edge of the corner before rounding it herself, placing the pointy end between herself and whatever lay unseen beyond her sight.

  Which, in this case, was nothing. Aster frowned and continued.

  For close to half an hour, Aster continued with her strategy of going left. During that time she saw no monsters and had begun to consider that a lack of available prey might make this labyrinth more of a simple death trap when she came upon her first dead end.

  A dead end with movement at the end.

  [Labyrinthine Rodent - lvl 12]

  The rat looked like a ROUS from everyone’s favorite movie, save that its tail wavered in the air like one path of an ever-changing maze. The movement was strange, but Aster looked at her health— already dipping just below 3%— and decided it was high time she discovered what she needed to stave off her poisoning.

  “Come on,” she said, lowering her center of gravity and swaying back and forth with her spear. “Nowhere to go.”

  That, it turned out, was not the case.

  The rat scurried toward her, its beady eyes reflecting the soft glow that followed Aster through the labyrinth, before it dove through the floor and disappeared— not all at once, mind you, but rather as if it were leaping into a hole.

  A hole with an exit behind Aster.

  She couldn’t react in time, and the first she knew of the rodent’s new location was when she felt its front teeth shave off a portion of her calf like a grater attacking a piece of cheese.

  The roar that escaped her throat was inhuman, and she saw red. Sparks like cinders filled her vision as she spun and stabbed, finding purchase just as the rat had tried to escape through yet another hole in space. Its squeal of pain came not from where she had stabbed, but from the opposite side, and before she knew it her instincts had spun her around again— felling her to her knees as her leg would no longer support even her emaciated weight— she stabbed at where the animalistic scream originated and found hard stone, but only beyond the head she skewered.

  Two halves of a rodent dropped to the ground. Alongside the halves clattered a small orange vial with a key around its rim.

  *You have slain [Labyrinthine Rodent - Level 12] - Experience earned. TP Earned.

  Aster considered this before she collapsed to the ground, her mind racing to catch up to her body. The portal the rat had jumped through had collapsed around it, cutting it cleanly in half. This had happened when she’d managed to spear it through the head, either killing it outright and stopping its ability to split space, or distracting it enough that it failed to keep enough focus on the spell. Either way, it was dead and her leg burned with the fire of a thousand suns.

  The little details and mechanics helped distract her enough from her pain that she was able to grab a healing potion and down it. The pain wasn’t quite overwhelming, but it was damn close. If she had waited longer for her adrenaline to wear off, she knew she could have blacked out from it, and in a place like this that was doubly dangerous.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Aster heaved herself up into a sitting position, only just realizing that she’d collapsed prone while fumbling for her healing potion. She watched as the bleeding on her leg began to slow, and then a tingling numbness raced along her calf as the potion began to fix her.

  She noticed that her health itself wasn’t improved by the potion, even if it was helping to heal her wounds. With that thought, she looked around for the small orange vial.

  Finding it, she used Identify.

  [Labyrinthine Health Potion (Unique)] - A healing potion that only works within the confines of the Bloodforged Labyrinth.

  Tied around the thin neck of the bottle was a small key.

  [Labyrinthine Lootbox Key (Unique)] - A key that unlocks a lootbox within the confines of the Bloodforged Labyrinth.

  “Huh,” she said, turning it over in her hands. Maybe the rat was guarding something?

  Cringing in pain, Aster stood, steadying herself with her spear and one hand on the wall. She worked her way toward the dead end the rodent had been cornered in and smiled when she saw the small box on the ground.

  The grin on her face stretched wide enough to counter the pain she was in. “Jackpot,” she said through gritted teeth.

  Aster leaned her spear up against the wall, leaning herself against the corner of the boxed-in deadend of the maze. Then, she took the little key and inserted it into the keyhole set into the center of the box. A notification appeared:

  System Message: Do you want to expend one (1) Labyrinthine Lootbox Key to open this Lootbox?

  Y/N

  “Obviously.” Aster’s nose wrinkled in agitation as she selected ‘Y’.

  The box did not open— it disappeared. Suddenly, she was left holding only a pair of leather armguards.

  [Starry Vambraces (Common)] - These vambraces possess a small quantity of Celestial Affinity, allowing them to cast a dim light around the wearer at the expense of a small amount of mana.

  +2 Agility +1 Wisdom

  “Huh,” she grunted as she took them out and examined them more closely. They seemed perfectly sized for her, sliding over her hands and wrists and stopping just shy of her elbows. Leather buckles shut with a click and secured the armguards in place. Bending her wrists to test their mobility in the armor, Aster found herself enjoying how a hidden star motif would show up under the right light.

  She tried to activate the enchantment… and failed. There wasn’t a button to press or any sort of movement-activation that triggered it. She felt like Toby Maguire’s Spiderman trying to figure out how to sling a web.

  It was only when she abandoned the idea of activating it physically and instead set her focus on it did her vambraces alight, casting a soft blue field of starlight about her.

  So it’s the intent that triggers it… Easier that way, for sure.

  Happy with her latest gift of luck, Aster decided to go back over to the rodent and give it an inspection.

  What she’d originally thought was a clean bisection did not appear that way upon closer inspection. It instead gave the impression of having been… torn. Whatever spacial magic or whatever the creature had used was violent.

  “And speaking of violent,” Aster mused as she turned over its front half and got a better look at the rodent’s teeth. They were enormous, slightly curved with an edge that looked like the less-fun end of a wood chisel. “No wonder you shaved off my calf…”

  Her leg was now able to support her weight without the help of leaning on her spear or the wall, but it still hurt like a bitch. In a bit of inspiration, Aster grabbed one of her makeshift pens from her pack and made a mark at the edge of the open wound. It wasn’t healing fast enough to see with the naked eye, but she had a feeling she’d be surprised by the amount of healing that would happen in the next few minutes.

  Meanwhile, she turned back to the rodent. It exhibited all the features she’d expect from such a beast— overgrown buck teeth, small, beady eyes, strong hind quarters, hairless tail, and claws for digging… and attacking. The shape of the claws on its front legs brought to mind those from a big cat species, not a rodent. It also did not have the size of the average earth rodent, being instead some meter and a half long, minus the tail.

  “A predator?” It was certainly possible. While most rodents on earth were herbivores or insectivores, they rarely hunted actively. Rats scavenged anything they could, but they couldn’t take down prey like a similarly-sized civet or mink. Capybaras had the size to wreck havoc, but not the tools. This labyrinthine rodent certainly had both, with magic to boot.

  Aster thought back to earth’s ecosystems and tried to find an analogue for the rodent, and the closest she could come up with was a wolverine or a badger. Vicious, active hunters that lived close to the ground, albeit without space magic.

  A cool wash of calm spread through her as she understood the animal better. Unless she was far from the truth of things, she wouldn’t have to worry about any sort of swarms of these things coming after her. Everything about them screamed, ‘lone predator’, which was fine by her.

  Upon reaching that realization, a notice appeared before her.

  Profession Selection Unlocked: Novice Naturalist - You have taken your first steps into the wider world of the multiverse’s mysteries. As a Novice Naturalist, your keen eye grants you the ability to identify plants, animals, and environmental patterns with growing accuracy. You gain passive bonuses to tracking, foraging, and recognizing creature behaviors, along with a small chance to uncover rare materials in natural environments. While your knowledge is still limited, ecosystems begin to unfold before you, offering subtle clues and hidden paths. With study and experience, the wilds will become your ally—and your arsenal.

  +2 Vit, +1 Wis, +2 Tough, +2 Free Point

  Become a Novice Naturalist?

  Y/N

  “Huh.”