I pushed upward, one hand over the next. Moving my foot, then arm again, then the other foot, each movement a little higher than the one before as I climbed from ledge to ledge.

  Up and up and up, into the mountains.

  Rocks cracked. Snow crumbled. Sometimes entire ledges disappeared beneath me. Sometimes I’d lose my grip, skittering down the sheer cliff, until my picks managed to claw into even the faintest outcropping of rock.

  And then I'd keep climbing.

  Once you’ve gone far enough, there’s no point going back. No matter how much more dangerous things became, I had to finish.

  The wind started howling, biting into my coat. It was a thick coat, made of wool and hard cloth. Even so, I was cold. It stiffened my movements and bit down into my skin. So I used the pain as fuel and climbed faster.

  Cliffs curved around, leveling to a pointed area covered in snow.

  Then, all at once, I was there. A long path of flat snow, sloping upward, to a slight point.

  The top of the world.

  My steel picks slipped out of hand, into the dense snow. I ignored them, running forward, grabbing the pick, and jumping off, into the air.

  Gravity called me back down, and I fell into the snow with a thud, laughing, despite the burning air in my lungs.

  At the moment, I was the tallest person in the world.

  And I laughed harder.

  {Barside Inn Sleep Bonus}

  [Exhaustion I – cleared]

  [Hunger XXVI – stalled [5:00]]

  [Hp set to max]

  The world dimmed, and I blinked furiously, piecing together the scattered remains of last night.

  There was some food, I think.

  Then a guy with a beard. But not the same old guy with the beard as all the other relatively old guys with beards in the bar. He was the relatively old guy with a beard running the bar.

  NPCs look an awful lot like each other.

  I started brushing the covers off, before realizing that I was in a real bed. With real covers. And that’s really comfy. And knowing my luck, any morning I didn’t wake up screaming was probably a morning worth savoring and so I pulled the covers up and snuggled in.

  A yellow notification popped up beside me.

  [Hunger XXVI – stalled [4:29]]

  What was that number? …Twenty-six?

  Maybe just a few more minutes.

  Another notification appeared, flashing angrily.

  [Hunger XXVI – stalled [3:59]]

  “Get some food before you start hallucinating, idiot.”

  Man, I hate this game.

  I chucked the covers off, checked my clothes—rumpled, ragged, disgusting as expected—and tramped downstairs to the bar.

  Dexten grinned, spotting me the instant I walked in. “Hey! Grind! Get some food, wouldya?”

  I made unspecified gurgling noises, slumping down into a booth.

  He shoved a plate of food into my hands, then a couple more.

  “Don’t worry about cost, friend!” Dexten laughed, juggling copper coins between his hands. Today, and for no apparent reason, he wore an apron. “It’s all on me!”

  “Dexten—!” Mall shouted, storming into the bar and ripping the coins out of his hand. She raised a hand, stopping herself, teeth gritted as she took slow, measured breaths. “Dexten, this is all of our money—”

  “Oh come on, Mall,” Dexten smiled. “We’ll get more in the dungeon.”

  She pulled her sweater over her head and started screaming.

  I shrank a little in my seat, eating breakfast just a little faster.

  “Okay,” Mall snapped, smoothing the folds on her purple sweater. “Okay. Fine. But I’m going to be taking care of our finances from now on. Understood?” she asked, without phrasing it like a question.

  Dexten rolled his eyes, sitting down beside me. “Eat some food, Mall. You’ll need your strength.”

  She slumped into her seat, stuffing the coins into the pockets of her cloak.

  “Mall.” Dexten sighed. “Eat food. You’re hangry, aren't you?”

  “A little,” she mumbled.

  He grabbed a spoonful of eggs. “Need me to feed you?”

  She smiled politely, shoving a spoon up his left nostril. “I’ll feed myself, thank you.”

  I ate my breakfast a little faster.

  [Debuff : Hunger - cleared]

  [Debuff : Oversaturated II [1:00]]

  Groaning, I collapsed onto the booth, clutching my stomach.

  “What happened over here?” Cierin asked, pushing past the meter-high stacks of dirty plates clustered around our table.

  Mall sighed, counting the coins in one hand. “Grind was hungry. Thankfully, Dexten had the good sense to order him a buffet, otherwise we’d be flat broke—and likely in a year of debt.”

  “Earth ngh mhp grua,” Dexten echoed, still grabbing the spoon in his nose.

  “Oh, hey…” Cerin grimaced. “Do you want any help with that?”

  Once Cierin had finished eating breakfast, we finally started our journey to the dungeon.

  “Now hang on a second,” Mall snapped, grabbing the map out from Dexten’s hands. “We’re supposed to go here, right?” She asked, pointing to a little red X with “dungeon” in bold letters—right beside a stain of mustard and two small wrinkles. “So why are we going all the way around the forest, over a hill, around a field of flowers, just to go back to the forest?”

  I scoffed. “This is a dungeon map, Mall. You’ve got to follow it. Otherwise you miss out on the whole dungeon experience.”

  Dexten nodded. “Besides. If there’s a few warm-up monsters on the path, we’d be able to get a little stronger, so that the actual dungeon part of the dungeon won’t be so overwhelming.”

  “When I woke up, in the forest, I felt a massive…something…wandering around,” Cierin said, with a shudder. “If we go wandering off the path we might find enemies outside the difficulty of this level.” he turned to me. “Grind? Any opinions?”

  “I’m good with pretty much anything,” I said, with a shrug. “So long as we don’t fight to many monsters.”

  Dexten glanced over his shoulder. “Like that fellow over there?”

  We straightened into the eyes of an angry one-tusked green-back goblin.

  We started screaming.

  {LEVEL UP!}

  [+1 Skill point]

  “You know, that wasn’t so bad,” I admitted, wiping black tar off my bare feet and pants. “I don’t know what I was so scared about.”

  Cierin sighed, sending his daggers back into his inventory. “There’s no fun fighting monsters that snap in half when you blow on them.” He stood up from his pile of goblin bodies, hopping down to the ground with the rest of us.

  A goblin burst from the trees, grabbing onto my face.

  I flicked it on the head, and it disintegrated into a haze of tar.

  Dexten smiled, walking on over. “Excellent work you two! Excellent!”

  “You and Mall hid behind a tree the entire time,” I grumbled. “You should’ve at least pretended to be helpful.”

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

  “O,h we can’t be wasting our arrows on these pushovers,” Dexten stated, waving the mere thought away. “And besides, you two fighting, don’t you?”

  “Some fight this was,” Cierin mumbled, shuffling past me.

  I frowned. “Is he alright?”

  “Don’t mind him,” Dexten said, nudging me in the side. “He just got his hopes up. Anyway—your first fight! How was it?”

  “It was almost too easy,” I stated, puffing out my chest, twirling the shovel in one hand—before I fumbled, dropping said shovel onto the ground.

  Mall smirked, picking it up, about to hand it toward me. when a curious look crossed her face. “Grind, how’d you get this?”

  I blinked. “Eh?”

  “Crapshoveler?” Mall asked. The shovel started writhing, shaking steadily more violently, until it tore out of her grip, lodging itself hilt-deep into the ground. “Seriously. It’s legendary. You’re only common rank.”

  “I just asked,” I said, which was more or less the truth. There was something else I’d done—something with overlapping screens, but in wait little practice I’d been able to sneak in, I hadn’t been able to make the trick work a second time.

  If it was a bug, could it have been patched? This was a video game, after all.

  “You mean I could've gotten this shovel if I’d just asked?” Mall groaned, snapping me from my thoughts. she grabbed her head in her hands. “To think I missed out on a legendary drop like that.”

  “Happens to the best of us,” Dexten chuckled. “So. Did the goblins drop anything worthwhile?”

  Cierin shook his head. “Maybe one point of exp each, if that. Speaking of which,” he said glanced at me. “Aren’t you going to use that skill point?”

  I blinked. “Eh?”

  “Skill points.” he pointed toward the glowing blue screen above my head. “You don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, do you?”

  I thought for a moment, before responding. “Nope.”

  He concentrated, summoning a dark purple screen. “There are permanent upgrades beyond just stats. You’ve unlocked Parry, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said, summoning that screen. “So?”

  “You get new abilities by investing skill points. Say ‘Skill deck.’”

  Instantly, his screen folded upon itself, shifting into a large purple book.

  “‘Skill deck?’” I said. “Skill….deck?”

  Mall shook her head. “It’s a command. You’ve got to actually think about it, and then force it to work.”

  I looked at Cierin’s bright purple screen. “Skill deck.”

  A heavy tome conked me in the face.

  {SKILL DECK}

  [ Search…]

  (recents: )

  [Parry]

  I got up off the ground, too stunned to be angry. “What’s it doing?”

  The thick book continued radiating mystical purple energies all over the grass.

  “It’s just like that,” Cierin stated. “If you don’t already have an ability in mind, do some research before making rash decisions—”

  {SKILL ACQUIRED}

  {Reach I : grab things from slightly further away}

  Cierin looked from me to my tome then back to me again. “Seriously?” he groaned.

  “What?” I asked, hands in the air. “It’s TELEKINESIS. Don’t you have any idea how practical that is?”

  He blinked.

  I cleared my throat. “You know all those times where you're just a little ways away from the TV remote—”

  “Those don’t exist here.”

  “Well, no, but—” I shook my head, sighing. “Here, let me show you.” I aimed my hand toward a flower on the ground, concentrating.

  Nothing happened.

  “Oh. Maybe I’m too far away…?” I bent down to my knees, barely a centimeter from the ground. There was a sizzle of energy, and the stem tore, zipping into my hand.

  “You do realize that three skill points get you fire magic, right?” Cierin asked, massaging his forehead. “Or bursts of attack speed? Or exp gain? Or literally anything else?”

  “It was on sale,” I muttered.

  “On sale—” Cierin grabbed my tome, scowling. “Skills don’t go ‘on sale…’”

  {SALE / NEW SKILLS!}

  [Reach I ] 2 Skp (99% off!)

  [Core Eater I ] 17,000 Skp (50% off!)

  [Echostep I ] 250,500 Skp (90% off!)

  “Well would you look at that.” he blinked. “HANG ON. You’re telling me that without the sale, Reach I is TWO HUNDRED SKILL POINTS!?”

  Mall sighed. “Grind, I think you just got scammed.”

  I was on the ground, testing the limits of my ‘ability’.

  I groaned. “Man, I hate this game.”

  The path to the dungeon took a lot longer than we’d expected, so we spent the time showing our stats, equipment and tools. Unsurprisingly, Mall had more or less the same stats as me, since she was a noob too. Fifteen health, five damage.

  Looking at Cierin’s display, he had much higher stats, with fifty health and seventeen damage, and a couple points in dexterity, along with a stat relating to attack speed that he was just starting to build up. It was aptly named, AtkSp.

  As for abilities the other party members kept to relatively basic skills. Mall had Forage I, which sometimes gave her additional berries or fruits from shrubs. It wasn’t crazy, but it was cheap and handy to have in other regions without lots of food.

  Cierin had Swift Tempo II and Regen I, the former giving a temporary boost to attack speed and the latter restoring a small portion of health over time. He also had Deep Pockets II, for extra inventory space. Apparently he had an issue with throwing away weapons, so his inventory got clogged pretty quicky.

  Another fifty goblins down the path, I tried asking Dexten about his abilities.

  He just smirked and kept walking.

  “Beautiful weather today,” Dexten said, sighing deeply. “Good dungeon crawling weather, if you ask me.”

  “Nobody's asking you anything,” Mall grumped. “And keep quiet. We’re getting into more dangerous parts of the woods.”

  “Please,” Dexten snorted. “We’re almost to the dungeons, and yet, every monster we’ve faced has gone down in a single hit. What’s there to be scared of?”

  “You realize you’re asking for trouble, don’t you?” Cierin hissed, snapping a blade out from his inventory.

  I frowned, watching the forest. “What’s wrong with the enemies in this place?”

  Dexten glanced back. “Huh?”

  “This is supposed to be a pretty tricky dungeon, right?” I asked. “But so far, we’ve only fought goblins. Aren’t they supposed to be getting stronger? It’s just the same stuff over and over again. Not to mention,even if this is an easy nothing-fest dungeon, then why would the path be so long?”

  “You're definitely right about it being unusual,” Cierin said, with a frown. “If I had to guess, this is a battle of attrition. Whoever’s controlling that dungeon is trying to get us to use up as much of our durability and energy as we possibly can, before we get access to any loot.”

  “Give us some credit,” Dexten said, with a shrug. “Both me and Mall haven’t fired a single arrow yet, and I’m not even sure Grind’s shovel can break. It’s not like we’re scraping by. ”

  Crapshoveler jostled in agitation.

  He laughed. “What’s the worst that could possibly happen?”

  Shockwaves rippled through the forest.

  “Dexten—” Mall warned.

  “Just the weather,” he said, with a little wave.

  The ground shuddered.

  Dexten bit his lip, frowning. “It’s…probably…just the weather.”

  “Does that look like weather to you?!” Mall shouted, pointing toward a green wave in the distance, approaching fast.

  Goblins had piled up into a solid form of twisting arms and legs, howling and clawing at the ground, flattening trees and boulders.

  Dexten looked up into the approaching flood of monsters, then back at us, then back to the monster. Then he turned a heel and started sprinting.

  “DEXTEN!” Mall shrieked, staggering along with the rest of us as we rushed behind her.

  “You don’t want them to catch up with us, do you?” He asked, with a laugh. “If you can’t keep up, I could always carry you.”

  “I’m fine,” she snapped, blushing and running faster.

  I ran behind my party, shovel in hand. “Aren’t we going to fight?”

  “Are you insane?!” Mall asked, ducking under a flying arrow. “Goblins get stronger in packs!”

  I glanced back at the mob. “I can take ‘em.”

  “That’s a yes,” Mall muttered.

  Dexten grinned, pointing to an open door lodged into the inner walls of a cave. “Bingo!”

  We dived into the bronze door, slamming it behind us, bracing for impact.

  There wasn’t one.

  After a second or two, I peeked an eye open, and gasped.

  Inside the door, the dungeon split off into a sprawling web of passages and hallways, twisting into one another—sometimes flipping upside down or folding in half. The halls were lined with metal statues, gold trim, and assorted finery.

  “Can we take this stuff?” Dexten giggled, plucking a painting off the wall. It splintered down the middle, dissolving in a burst of black dust, despite his delicate touch. He sighed. “That’s a no.”

  I turned back, paling. “Guys—”.

  Dexten laughed, spinning in a full circle. “Now this is a dungeon!”

  “Guys!” I hissed. “Look at me!”

  With their full attention, I grabbed the doorknob again.

  As before, a flashing red notification appeared.

  {2-Star Dungeon : Gauntlet of Stairs}

  [Dungeon Core: Active]

  [Locked]

  “What’s a Dungeon Core?” Dexten asked, poking the floating screen. “Is that something that all these things have?”

  “It means we can’t leave,” I stated. “And it means the doors are locked.”