“If I do not return, destroy this entrance. I’ll head back if I encounter any of the fallen adventurers or run into any dire-beasts of a higher level than myself.”

  Calaf had told Harold the Peasant this before disappearing into the barrow. Now he stepped, shield up, through the halls.

  The last words Harold said before Calaf walked over the threshold echoed through his mind:

  “Menuspeed, good sir. And watch out of the barrow-wights!”

  Barrow-wights. Good. Good! Something even worse than min-maxed cultists, dire-tarantulas, dire-worms, and fungal zombies! Just what Calaf needed in his fragile and listless mental state: undead wights from before the Demon King’s age.

  Still, Calaf stepped onward. He lit his spear ablaze and traveled forward, not unlike how he did in the Port Town cisterns.

  With his defense-focused class and his relative lack of Agility, Calaf had little way of detecting a trap before he tripped it. He would have to focus on his shield

  Sure would be nice to have the Holy Lockpicks of the Scout on hand, Calaf thought to himself as he walked, slowly, through the burial mound. They’d made trap-finding and stealth so much easier.

  Calaf did encounter previously triggered rock traps and tripwires. So, this was the path trodden by the previous dungeon crawlers. Still, he found no enemies nor any corpses. Traps would have injured the previous adventurers, but not enough to where they couldn’t heal up and carry on. They had not been deterred, and neither was Calaf.

  Of course, they were all dead now.

  Torches awaited at every turn and corner. Calaf used his burning spear to light every torch or scone he found. It helped, but the torches were old and had been set alight more than once in the past. They were near the end of their lifecycle and would fade within the hour.

  Still, Calaf pressed on.

  No enemies were ever found, save for a level twelve dire-rat, well below Calaf’s notice. It scampered out of the way, sensing his level advantage.

  The barrow layout was winding; older wooden supports had been knocked out and replaced with sturdier and newer stone archways. Each hall was straight, but constant intersections meant the ‘dungeon’ zigged and zagged. The path zigged along a route that maximized the travel time through the barrow – winding this way and that, taking up every modicum of space in the mound while moving around a central burial chamber. More rooms to traverse meant more rooms for traps – but luckily most had already been tripped.

  His boot tripped a wire right at the turn to the final hallway. Three great bolts flew out from hidden slits in the wall ahead. They embedded themselves harmlessly in Calaf’s mighty redstone shield.

  Poisoned Bolts (x3). A trap worthy of Honest John. Calaf stashed the failed assassination instruments in his Inventory and continued, moving more carefully this time.

  Still no bodies. Odd. Maybe the other dozen souls who disappeared down here had simply missed this last trap.

  Regardless, the final chamber awaited. No barrow-wights had yet been found. Though conspicuous caskets lined the halls that could lurch open to surprise dungeon-goers on the way out.

  Calaf dreaded whatever awaited in this main burial chamber. With no dead adventurers in the tunnels themselves, clearly, the previous twelve travelers died in this final chamber. He’d promised he wouldn’t head back until he found the other party’s corpses, though. And so, he stepped into a round, wide chamber.

  Moonlight streamed through a circular hole dead center in the mound's curved roof. Time grew wonky underground, and night had already fallen while Calaf was inching forward through the halls.

  The central chamber branched out into two divots to the back-left and front-right respectively. The other walls were cracked. Almost as if they were false.

  Calaf had a sneaking suspicion of what was going to happen. Still, he stepped forward, needing to know the fates of those who came before.

  A wall fell away just as Calaf stepped irrevocably into the chamber. A swirling vortex of flesh and claws emerged from the forward-left position. A snarling, fanged, bald head with a crown sat atop this maelstrom.

  “Of course, it has to be one of these,” Calaf snarled.

  “Level ninety-nine!?”

  Calaf pulled his shield up and repositioned his grip.

  He was going to need it.

  What good would this desert-sourced shield do against a rat statistically more powerful than the king of all demons!? No wonder none of the other adventurers had left a corpse when they died. This thing probably disintegrated level twenties with a touch!

  Counterweights moved about in the walls, and a great iron gate fell into place over the door Calaf came in through. Honest John was trapping Calaf in no-survival scenarios even across time and space. Somewhere out there, the Squire was sure that vile merchant was laughing with what remained of his lips and jaw.

  No retreat. The demon-rat was never going to accept his surrender. Fighting back was the only option.

  The rat-king held its jagged claws aloft and summoned its minions.

  While landlocked Calaf was distracted wondering what a hurricane was, the storm of rats twirled about counter-clockwise. The rat-tower gathered until they neared the ceiling, then they advanced.

  Calaf held his breath, shield up. A storm of rats hammered against red stone. He did not die right away! When the shield said it had one hundred percent physical defense, boy was the smith not exaggerating.

  Killing these things was the Squire’s literal job description. He wasn’t about to give up now, not while his hit points were greater than zero. Still bracing against the all-consuming rat-storm, Calaf swung laterally with his burning spear.

  Flames dispersed the lesser rats. The rat-nado died down, then the swarm returned to its master.

  Had Calaf just stared down a god-level creature with only a redstone shield and spear of the desert nomads? Not only are the women of the Firefield deserts impossibly bombshell-sexy, but their blacksmiths could also forge god-slaying equipment!

  Or, there was the simpler explanation: Honest John’s trademark trickery was at play.

  Calaf moved toward the middle of the chamber in search of better footing.

  Perhaps the rat king alone was level 99. The minions could be at-level for the hinterlands. If so, the battle was survivable, just unwinnable.

  Still, Calaf did not give up. He cast Tautological Defense, the better to provide any kind of barrier between his fragile level-forties flesh and a blow from a level 99 claw.

  A great light started at the tip of the rat king’s crown. It soon grew into a blazing conflagration.

  Who knew a dire-rat possessed intelligence enough to cast magic? Given the lack of a description, this may be the first time anyone observed such a phenomenon! Calaf only hoped he’d live to tell of it.

  The fireball crashed against Calaf’s shield. He was no longer wielding Kai’s fire-impervious tower shield, so Calaf took some minor scratch damage. Considering he wasn’t a smear on the wall though, it stood to reason Calaf was not locked in mortal combat with a rat with the powers of a deity.

  “Hey!” came a high-pitched voice from the hallway. “Don’t die before we get you out, Hot Shot. Just a few more seconds!”

  It wasn’t Howard, nor his apparent wife Martha. It was a most-familiar relic thief and her tall but slender bodyguard.

  “Enkidu, get the door!”

  The iron grating was sliced into four pieces with two diagonal swipes. Enkidu and Jelena soon ran up to Calaf’s flanks. A diminutive figure with short hair waited by the door.

  “Heheh. So that’s how it works,” Zilara said, looking at the rat-emperor.

  “What’ve we got?” Jelena asked, knives in hand.

  “Interface says it’s level 99.” Calaf ran to the front of the group, serving as de facto tank.

  “Whoa.”

  “In a random burial mound?” Enkidu sharpened his sword with a jagged pair of his unkempt nails. “Unlikely.”

  “Right?” Calaf nodded. “It’s got to be a trick. I know the guy who designed this place. He’s a conman. Total charlatan.”

  “Wanna do the honors?” Jelena asked.

  With a nod, Calaf moved into place. He took a running leap and was propelled upwards by a batting swing from the dull end of Enkidu’s blade. Flaming Sword of Faith lit both the redstone spear tip and shield ablaze. The spear skewered the rat king, toppling its crown. While the fiery shield crashed into the ‘throne’ of common dire-rats, scattering them all.

  The dire-rat king of kings was slain, with nowhere near six thousand damage accumulated.

  The beast’s loot came in short order.

  A fair haul. Nowhere near the cornucopia of experience expected from a level 99 creature. But…

  Level up!

  Exceptional gains for the level 40 doldrums. His hit points and general defense should’ve started increasing exponentially from here on out.

  “Good going.” Jelena smiled at him pleasantly.

  She was also eyeing him up and down and barely concealing a lip bite. Calaf ignored it for now.

  “It was a trick.” Calaf presented the level spoofing ring. “Probably closer to level thirty.”

  “You figured it out,” said Zilara, still near the door. “Not bad.”

  How did they even get rings onto a dire-rat’s claw? Honest John’s many cons boggled the mind.

  Two other collapsed walls evidenced where this ruse had been done at least twice before. But those rat kings were dead. Where, then, were the adventurers?

  Muffled sounds of falling stone and whirring rope indicated where more pulleys and unseen instruments were moving about in the background. A pedestal appeared, big enough for a full party of five, directly under the moonlight.

  “Funny. It was still day when we entered,” Jelena said.

  “Be careful,” Zilara added.

  “Well, you heard the girl.” Jelena patted Enkidu on the back. “Go step on it, big guy. We’ll watch and observe.”

  “With respect,” Enkidu said in his plain-but-sneering tone. “Your friend was the one who slew the beast. Perhaps he should stand on it.”

  “Oh, just drop a rock on it!” Zilara yelled. “You’ll see what I mean.”

  There were plenty of rubble bits and loose stone to go around. Calaf dropped one, with his Inventory of course, onto the plate.

  Another whirring of unseen mechanisms. The wall dead ahead opened after a few seconds lag time to reveal a hoard of gleaming gold and multiple overlarge chests bulging with coins. The victor’s podium also fell aside, revealing a long drop and a great pit filled with spikes.

  Many skeletons waited, impaled, at the bottom. One was clad in full, high-tier heavy armor. Spikes were enough to slay anyone around level thirty or below. And the fall damage alone was enough to kill off higher levels with heavier armor. There were twelve skulls, pierced and broken, at the bottom of the pit.

  “That accounts for the last of the adventurers,” Calaf said, softly.

  The other parties had survived the traps and tricks and defeated the fake rat-imperator only to die to one last ruse. Older corpses showed signs of being looted; John had been around at some point in the past year to collect his ‘winnings.’

  A second, smaller beam of ‘moonlight’ shined down on the treasure hoard, giving it an extra gleam.

  The group of four examined the stash.

  “All of it?” Calaf asked. “The whole thing is worthless?”

  Not sure what I expected, given who we were dealing with, thought the Squire.

  “Anyone at-level heading north from Granite Pass or Deepwood wouldn’t have high enough Agility or related perception skills to notice,” Zilara said. “Even if they won and survived that last pitfall, they’d head back to town with counterfeit currency. Scams all the way down.”

  “Doesn’t make much sense to stash gold in a chest,” Jelena added. “Anyone with a Brand can just keep it in their Inventory.”

  Calaf shrugged, acknowledging the point.

  “Hmmm.” Zilara gazed at a treasure chest. “Just one… last…”

  The young girl opened the chest with a sly smile. A great crashing sound like every trip-mechanism collapsing in the walls all at once sounded. Bricks and stones began to shake free and collapse.

  One last trick! The barrow began collapsing atop them.

  Moving lightning fast, Enkidu grabbed Zilara and was out the door in a greenish-red blur.

  “I did tell him to rescue the kid first if anything happened,” Jelena said, impressed by his dedication. “But I don’t think we’re getting out of here in time!”

  Calaf held his shield up to protect Jelena from falling rocks.

  “What should we do?” he asked.

  Jelena looked around the fool’s treasure hoard.

  “It’s another trick.” The relic thief stood under the small spate of moonlight. “Come, stand here.”

  Calaf did so, his chest flush with hers. She was quite lanky for her build, being shorter than him by just a smidge. Tall, slender bodies seemed to be another attractive desert-nomad quality.

  “Trust me.” She smiled. “’Course if I’m wrong, we’re dead.”

  Calaf kept his shield covering their heads as they embraced on this narrow opening. The entire subterranean dungeon collapsed around them, plummeting two floors. Only the space directly above them remained clear. An elaborate series of mirrors used to refract sunlight into an illusory moon remained dangling, however precarious.

  They were back in the light of day, surrounded by dust and a field of sod-and-stone refuse. Even Enkidu would take a while to traverse the mess that remained of this ancient barrow turned sacrilegious funhouse. And there Calaf and Jelena were, standing on the one safe pedestal.

  “In my business, you have to think on your feet,” she explained.

  Calaf didn’t say anything. He merely leaned down and kissed her, statuses or Interface titles be damned.

  The pair were embracing on the floor by the time Enkidu came to fish them out of the debris field.