Normann stepped out of the tunnel and into a small cavern, dug out into almost a complete circle thirty feet in diameter. This first area was impossibly round with huts lined along the wall and the center almost completely empty. At the first end was another tunnel that looked to immediately turn and continue down.

  As he entered the open room, he forced the storm of anima into his forearms and hands. None of the scaldren noticed him until he stepped fully inside. Their attention, or better framed as their aggro, immediately turned to him. It was almost a physical thing, something he could feel on his skin as though it crawled over him to bore inside of him.

  His first life, he had never been a melee combatant. He had been trained, sure, but that was mostly so Lucas and Beaumont could trust that’d he would stay alive until someone came along. His role in the squad had been more focused on augmenting the others to survive better in addition to the benefits of his informational debuff.

  The furthest four started to move towards him, lowering their weapons and shouting at him in their strange tongue. The fifth stood next to entryway that Normann walked through and spun with its spear pointed at his gut. He stepped into the attack, letting the spear slice his side and threw a heavy haymaker at its head. His anima flared a black and red corona as it surged up his arm and crashed against its skull. A health bar and debuff flashed brief over it but Normann grabbed its head and slammed it over and over again the wall until he felt the crunch. Chunks of bone and wet viscera splattered against the cavern wall.

  The other four scaldren paused in their charge. He felt Lyn stop in the entrance, just behind him. All of them stared.

  Normann turned and faced the four monsters, flicking his hand down a few times as the body collapsed to the ground beside him. His side burned as it knit itself back together. His anima fled from his hands to his wound, the dark red light bleeding from it as it closed up. “Sorry,” Normann said. “Bit rude of me to make a mess like that. Just one sec, if you don’t mind.”

  He kept his gaze on the four scaldren as he knelt down and grabbed the dropped spear. They charged, two spears, an axe, and a two-handed club raised as their feet pounded on the flatten stone beneath them. Normann kept low, stepping forward in a crouch to drive his spear into the stomach of one of scaldren. He kept his moment moving forward and stood up and aside, dodging both spears. The axe swung down, but he stepped in its reach, blocking its forearm with his own empowered one.

  He shoved the spear forward while grabbing the neck of a scaldren with his other hand. His Brawn wasn’t overpowering, but he leveraged his position and pushed down and to the side on it until the scaldren fell over. Normann followed the movement, spinning with the spear shaft against his hip so he twisted the impaled scaldren into another. He stepped out of the way of a heavy downward swing as he took two of them to the ground.

  His AE bar dropped slowly as he continued to force his sluggish anima through his body, empowering him when he moved. Every step he was fighting exhaustion, his body moving like it would in a dream. One foot moved while the rest of him stayed perfectly still. Then he shifted his arm to block another swung, letting a stab through and a licen tumble past him. He danced with them, between them, letting them slice, cut, stab, and otherwise brutalize him as he held their attention. Each had a debuff over their heads, but other than projecting their health and stamina, which was rapidly depleting, he learned nothing else. Most of it, he moved a limb at a time, barely avoiding the worst attack while taking the other two, but he as connecting, slowly carving away their health as they carved at him.

  Lyn finally stepped out of the tunnel and came running, only one dagger drawn. With her free hand, she pointed her palm at the scaldren with the massive club and shouted, “[Rip Cord]!” A flare of lavender and blue tore out from her hand and white rope whipped through the air, its spear-tip crashing into the scaldren’s eye. It didn’t pierce the skull fully, but she pulled on it. He half expected the scaldren to fly towards her, but instead, she followed along the rope like a zip line.

  Normann turned his head as a spear tip was driven at his face, then stepped into the attack and grappled with the scaldren. He slammed his forehead against it, forcing his sluggish anima and empowering the blow. The scaldren stumbled back, and Lyn slid past them, a second knife drawn. Both flashed sliver as she wove a complex pattern into their bodies with slices, stabs, and twists. She moved between Normann and the scaldren as they continued to attack him. The club crashed into his back, forcing him to take another step, while the ax-wielding scaldren stumbled to his feet. Blood splashed in a thin line across his face as he slammed his head against his captive. He turned into the next attack by the club and let the scaldren take the hit, only to have a spear stabbed into his gut.

  Lyn stepped behind him and attacked the scaldren with the club, though it swing at her again. Normann released his grip and slid in front of her, arms raised in a x over his had to block the swing. It opened him up to another attack with the spear and drove him to a knee, but Lyn safely moved out from behind him and drove a knife into its other eyes.

  Normann stomped down on the face of the scaldren he stabbed earlier, an unsatisfying crunch, and held the spear in his side. He twisted the spear out of its grip and thew an empowered punch, the last of anima, into the scaldren’s chest. Bone crunched beneath and it gasped out some final words as Normann followed it to ground. He punched again and again, until his hand sunk into its chest.

  He stood, finding Lyn looking down at a bloody sliced corpse. “he was attacking you,” she said, each word a single gasp of air.

  Normann wiped some of the blood off his face. “Good. They were supposed to.”

  “Dear Lord,” she dropped her daggers and covered her mouth for a brief second before running to him. “How are you standing?”

  “In a moment.” He walked over to the second scaldren he attacked, the one he drove a spear through its gut, testing his teeth to ensure none were loose. It was crawling away, down the tunnel they entered in. One hand felt slick, and he couldn’t really move his fingers at the moment. He grabbed the club with one hand and swung it up to rest on his shoulder as he approached. The scaldren turned over, hands up, and pleaded in its strange tongue. Its health bar was mostly gone, maybe only a third left, and its debuff that Normann applied flashed as ended.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  He lifted the barely up and twisted with his hips to use gravity to swing it down. It landed with a crunc that echoed down the small tunnel. The weight alone shattered its sternum and ribs. The scaldren coughed up blood as it died, its health bar zeroing out. “Okay, first lesson,” he said as he turned to face Lyn, “the fight isn’t over until everything is dead. It’s important to check at high ranks, so good practice.”

  “You’re…. You’re… You’re…”

  “Bleeding yes. Focus, Lyn.” Normann snapped his fingers with his good hand. Small droplets flicked around as he did, a few landing against his check though he barely felt it through the blood dripping down his forehead. “Check them, are they all dead?” She glanced around at them, barely taking the time to see the bodies. “No, damn it. Really check. That one’s dead, as is the one against the wall. The first one you killed is as well, between the rope through its eye and the dagger you drove in the other. That leave’s the one at your feet.”

  He stomped over to her and knelt down next to her; the scaldren at her feet had two daggers sticking out of its chest, one high on its rib cage, the other going up under it. He slammed down on the higher one, driving the dagger deeper into it, snapping bone and squirting blood onto his bare chest. It flailed briefly, eyes snapping open as it tried to grab at him. Two claws tore at his cheek, but he backed up fast enough so the cuts weren’t deep. The scaldren collapsed with a wheezing exhale and stilled completely. “Now, are all of them dead?”

  Lyn stared at him, hands still over her mouth. Blood had splashed on her too, though none of it hers. She stared at him and he stood in front of her, one hand hanging to his side the other cupping his own ribs. Breathing hurt, but the ax to the side didn’t cut deep. Probably fractured a rib or two though. His HP bar was only halfway gone, already refilling just like his AE. His stamina slowly dropped now that he was out of combat. Everything felt heavy and he wanted to sit down, but this dungeon had a race against time, and he couldn’t afforad a break, not yet.

  Normann held her gaze, partly to keep her attention and partly to rest even if he had to force himself to be as nonchalant as possible despite the paint. Silence settled between them as he waited for her answer.

  Lyn turned away from him. “They have health bars,” she said through her hands.

  “Yes,” Normann replied. “my passive gives them a debuff. Helps me hold threat but also projects their status to us. What do the health bars tell you?”

  “Then they are dead.” He exhaled and dropped his shoulders as the pain of his wounds tore through the adrenaline-fueled haze he felt. Even as his wounds stitched themselves back together, it didn’t negate the agony from them. Healing wasn’t as nice and sweet as video games made it out to be, as his magic repaired his body, returning it to whole. Bit by bit, muscle and bone were rebuilt from nothing and blood reformed inside his body as it dissolved into a white vapor. He took another breath, eyes closed, and tried to keep himself from collapsing. Through a shaky voice, he directed her, “loot the bodies. Try to see if there is anything valuable.”

  Lyn remained silent and presumably stood there, staring at him, as he just let his anima fix his body. Form controlled the amount of damage an operator could receive, both the total amount before death and how much that damage was reduced. It also determined how swiftly an operator’s body would recover, returning to its base form. Normann counted down from one hundred.

  He opened his eyes at eighty three. Lyn had turned over all the bodies so they couldn’t see their eyes and was currently crouching over the scaldren he smashed against the wall. “You good? Hurt at all?” he asked her.

  Lyn froze in her rifling of the corpse’s body, her shoulders taught, and shook her head. Grizzly affair, looting corpses. Dungeons didn't offer direct loot from monster drops. Sure some had items on them, especially the sentient ones, but it wasn’t a given. Not at F-rank. There might be things hidden in the dungeon itself, but with a timer like they were on, there wasn’t any real time to look. The only reasonable means of acquiring loot were bosses, which was part of the reason why he wanted this iteration of the dungeon. “That wasn’t too bad,” Lyn said as she stood up.

  He had to agree despite how badly he was cut up. He needed armor, at least something until he got his plating component. His HP was full, as was his AE, and his stamina had dropped completely down, but his heart wouldn’t stop racing. “Proof we did it right,” He said. “Good news for us then.”

  “I only found a few gems.” She walked over to him. “Nothing really worth holding onto.” Gems were valuable, beyond straight monetary worth through scarcity, whether it was artificial or actual. A good craft-person could utilize a dungeon-formed gem with other material foraged and mined from dungeons in making armor, trinkets and weapons that an operator might find useful in complementing their dungeon-found gear. She held out three acorn sized white gems, uncut. Normann could focus on it and bring up a tooltip, but simply glanced down at them then smiled up at her.

  “They’re yours if you want,” Normann replied. She placed the gems in a small pouch at her waist. “You did good. Quick hands. Even faster with your ability, so you must have practiced.”

  Lyn pushed a lock of blonde hair out of her face, but she didn’t look up. “Thanks, I wasn’t sure really what to do.”

  “Exactly as you did: dance around me and the monsters I’m threatening, cutting and taking down outliers or simply neutralize, however briefly. Your other abilities-”

  “One’s more of a second passive, helps me avoid damage,” Lyn offered quickly, “the third is that regen I have. Can’t really do much else.”

  “Missing Systems is tough.” Normann turned to look at the corpses. They were thin, but two of them had leather jerkins. His own shirt was closer to scraps and strips than an actual shirt. He needed armor. “Excellent use of- [Rip Cord], I think you called it – your transversal ability. Most operators fail to think about all the ways they can use what they have. Especially at F-rank.”

  He yanked the leather armor off the scaldren at his feet. He let the remains of his shirt fall and slipped it on, though it barely stretched across his back, and he couldn’t close it at all. Still, better than nothing. He grabbed the other one and used the discarded spearhead to slice it to two parts. Between the various pieces of his shirt and some pieces of rope and twine he found on the scaldren, he was able to fashion two pieces of armor that could graciously be called bracers. He tapped his fists together, the haphazard armor digging into his bare skin, then shadow boxed briefly, twisting his body. The left bracer had to be redone entirely, but the rest of it worked well enough. He smiled at the slipshod armor he wore then tapped his fists together again. He could make this work.

  Normann spun to face Lyn. She had taken a position at the other tunnel, watching down it for threats that would never come. F-rank dungeons lacked any pats that they would have to deal with. The monsters remained in specific spots, though a good defender could collect multiple pack to burn down quickly. Wasn’t always the best options, but it was possible. “C’mon,” he said as he walked to her. He added a last thought before passing her and heading down the tunnel. “You know you don't need to shout out your ability, right?”

  “What?” she practically shouted at him, but he kept walking. They might have one more pack of monsters before the boss, which was good. He wanted to test the armor and see if he could get anything else to supplement it.