I think, at one point in their lives or another, every person has a time when they look back on what they’ve been doing for most of their life and just gives themself a solid slap across the face. This was mine.

  As the treant hammered at the outside of the tree, causing splinters of wood to fly everywhere, I took the time to reflect on what I had done in the past week or so to end up in this situation. And there was only one conclusion I could think of. I was being too casual about this whole experience. It almost made me laugh to think about how whimsical I had been. So cavalier, so nonchalant, so… idiotic. I was in a place that would kill me without a second’s thought and I was laughing my way through the whole thing.

  For what reason was I risking everything I had ever built? Because I wanted too, that’s what. I was willing to throw away my life for a little enjoyment. That was what idiots did, not me.

  Not anymore.

  I opened up my interface and took a look at it. There were some notifications I hadn’t looked at yet, and it would serve as a good distraction from the pain in my shoulder and hip and the mad treant outside my little shelter. Still, I scrunched myself into the crack just a little further before anything else.

  Two urgent notifications popped up immediately, with another in the background. The first was another floor-wide notification yet again.

  Warning! The Moonkissed Ritualist has infected [26] creatures with her curses. Each of these creatures has the ability to pass on the curses with relative ease and will do so the moment they have the chance. DO NOT let yourselves get infected. If you do, it will be nearly impossible to be cured.

  That was not a good sign. And as I watched, that number ticked up to [29]. Not good at all. The witch could infect mobs and people at record pace, and they wouldn’t have a chance against her. Nobody above level six would ever bother to stick around on this floor, after all. Level fives would usually move on if they could. Even I would not hesitate to leave if I could. But given what the next notification said, I guessed that wouldn’t be possible.

  Floor Quest: Stop the Moonkissed Ritualist and cure or kill the creatures she has cursed.

  As this quest is beyond the bounds of a solo quest, you may have others help you. Do note, however, that the more help you have, the worse the reward will be.

  Well, that was something. It had been stupid of me to come this far alone. I had already paid for it once before, and was not in the mood to do so again. Besides, if I couldn’t even take on the treant by myself, what chance had I against Dalia and her creatures?

  It would be like a going against the wall of a house with nothing but a rubber chicken. Sure, it might leave some stains and do a little damage depending on how hard I swung it and how much of my fist was behind it, but it was minor on the whole. I needed to have a sledgehammer for that purpose.

  Besides, I was definitely not suited towards damage. I was likely going to be a tank in some capacity or other. I’d have a couple of heavy damage-dealing spells, but those would take forever to charge due to my low Intelligence stat. Having help would fix that issue somewhat.

  If only I had managed to stay with Roland and his sister. I was reasonably certain Roland would be a swordsman of some kind, based on his build. His sister was a mystery to me, but she wouldn’t be a direct damage dealer anyway. Roland would be the one dishing out the punishments in that pairing, if I knew anything about people at all. Which, of course, was not a thing I looked into particularly much, though I knew enough to make a judgment here.

  A twinge in my shoulder brought me back to the real world. Hopefully I could find a healer to fix that for me. I could afford to pay now, with a silver and a half burning a hole in my pocket. Though I wasn’t naive enough to think that a healer wouldn’t gouge me for at least a silver. That was more expensive than out in the outside world, but people needed more regular healing in here. The dungeon was a rough place.

  Failing that, I could probably have someone set the bone and splint it. I wouldn’t be able to go out and fight, but a hundred and fifty or so bronze would keep me fed and out of the weather for about a month. Plenty of time for my arm to heal, and more money than I had ever had in one place at any given time before Roland’s coin.

  Whatever I had left over would go towards equipment. Speaking of which, once the treant went away, I wanted to go back and find my shield. While I didn’t strictly need it, the hickory and aluminum had held up incredibly well given the beatings they had taken over the past week. Sure, the top had been dented and the boss was slightly loose, but it hadn’t broken yet.

  I was rather hard on equipment.

  Still, I was feeling a bit sentimental. And besides, it was better for a piece of wood to take the beating than my bones. The treant had proved that quite handily with a shattered arm and shoulder, and a fractured hip.

  One more notification blinked in my vision. I had nearly forgotten about it in my musing.

  Achievement: Mind of Steel

  You have successfully bypassed a curse of a vastly higher level than your own. Even more impressively, you have bypassed a curse of the mind, designed to completely remove your ability to think, without any outside aid. While the curse may not be cured just yet, you have achieved something very few people could ever do.

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  That was right. I still had to get myself cured of the curse as well. That was going to make finding any decent help so much harder, not to mention making everyone wary of me. I was sure I was now identified as a Moonstruck Human in the system’s view. Others would see that and at best they would stay away from me entirely. At worst, though, they would try to kill me.

  My curiosity was also piqued. I had no frame of reference for how hard it was to earn achievements, nor did I know how hard it was for me to bypass my madness and moonsickness. However, if the achievement itself was anything to go off of, I was willing to bet achievements were fairly hard to come by. Though I had gotten that one back when I had just completed my first quest. So maybe they weren’t that rare. Only time would tell.

  Waiting for the treant to leave turned out to be more tedious than I had thought. The first time I had met it, I was beaten half to death, and my mind had been in a haze for the whole time I lay there with my shield over my head. At that point, I really didn’t have any grasp on time other than day, night, and treant gone. Now, it was different.

  I don’t know if you’ve ever had to sit on your bed and stare at a blank wall for fifteen minutes before, but I have. It is boring. Not the kind of boring that most people think of nowadays when they go more than five minutes without being plugged into some kind of device, but the kind of boring that causes your mind to wander to unpleasant places.

  My mind went to those places.

  I had waking nightmares about my parents, glowing silver and chasing after me. My mom’s dress was in tatters, torn to shreds around the edges from countless snagging branches. Her hair was patchy and burnt. She would never let it get like that; she would rather shave it than let it be that uneven.

  Dad was bare-chested and barefoot with worn khakis on and a feral snarl decorating his face. His teeth were white in the moonlight, like freshly painted drywall in a room with an bright halogen lightbulb. His fingernails had blood crusted underneath them, and I knew if I were to look in a mirror I would see matching scratches lined up and down my face and chest.

  Finally, I would look down at my hands and see them coated with blood and clutching a pair of hearts in them. Then I would look back up and find my parents advancing, each one with a gaping hole in the center of their chest revealing shattered ribs, punctured lungs, and a missing heart.

  Then I would blink and it was all over.

  The treant was still happily banging away at the tree, occasionally roaring a challenge to me that I pointedly ignored. It would go away in time, but the waiting was bad.

  Even worse was the fact that I had pain shooting up my side every time I moved. And it was a burning pain, too. Not a sharp pain like a quick cut or a stubbed toe. No. It felt as though somebody were shoving a slightly sharpened, rusty paper-clip into my skin at a slow pace, inch by bloody inch.

  If I had stopped to think about it much more than this, I would have realized it was my shattered arm slowly slicing and poking its way through the muscles of my arm every time I jostled it.

  Eventually, though, the treant left, and I was able to leave the crack in the tree without fear of a big log clobbering me across the face when I knelt to drink from a nearby stream. It was gone, but not forever. Eventually, I would have to face it down and kill it. Not on my own, of course, but with a little help we could overpower it and either kill it or cure it. I was a fan of the former, as I didn’t see a reason for it to stay alive anymore now that the village was gone.

  I limped off in the direction of the now desolate village, hoping everything would have blown over there by now. But of course, nothing in life is easy—or fortunate—and I found Dalia standing in the village square, staring straight ahead with a vacant expression. She was still mad as an old hatter, or an unusually careless chemist who had done one too many reactions with lead in the mix.

  Not wanting to get any closer, I slunk away into the forest again and made my way around to the back gate. Using that as a way-point, I journeyed out into the woods in an attempt to find the villagers. They couldn’t have gotten too far, could they?

  But as I journeyed deeper and deeper into the forest, holding my arm against the pain and looking around carefully, I came to the conclusion that they were far more clever than I had given them credit for. Either they had picked a non-cardinal direction to go in or they were just really determined to get as far away from the Moonkissed Ritualist as possible. Either one was sensible, to a degree, but only one was really worth their time: running as far and as fast as they could manage.

  Still, even if I couldn’t find them, that didn’t mean others couldn’t. I wasn’t too terribly worried about other NPCs, but some outsiders were real nasty people and would do whatever they wanted to the villagers if they found them. Guards or no guards, the village wouldn’t withstand a determined assault by a party of outsiders. Especially in this dungeon where the young nobles had been preparing all their lives for just such an occasion.

  I needed to find them as soon as possible, but try as I might, I couldn’t avoid every hindrance along the way.

  The first time I met with a monster when I had my broken arm, I wasn’t quite paying enough attention. It was a massive wolf stalking along through the grass, trying to decide on which side to attack. At least, that’s what I assume it was doing. I wasn’t paying any particular attention to my surroundings at the time. Instead, the moment it leapt out of the brush, I flinched away.

  See, when professional fighters or soldiers train over and over and over and over again, there’s an actual reason for it. First off, they are teaching their body not to flinch when something attacks them. What they are replacing that instinct with is the innate urge to attack. Then they hone that attack to perfection and their mind to be able to assess the situation in a second and perform the correct move.

  I, for all of my experience on the streets, had not done such a thing. So my instinct to flinch and protect my vitals was roaring and strong. And when the wolf launched itself, claws and teeth extended, at my left side, I automatically raised my left arm. This was very much a mistake. Not only did it cause pain to flare through my entire torso, but it allowed the wolf to sink its fangs into my already compromised arm and shake it around.

  Needless to say, I was screaming in pain and spitting mad.

  That wolf did not have a pleasant end at all. Or quick, for that matter. It got its legs broken and its head and nose bludgeoned with a pointy rock until it stopped moving. Then I stood up, kicked it a couple of times for good measure, and continued on my way to wherever I was bound next. Maybe north, maybe east, maybe northeast. Who knows? I still don’t.

  Thankfully, the rest of its pack decided not to attack when they saw how I brutalized the thing. I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t attack a crazed human covered in another thing’s blood and screaming at the corps of my brother either.

  I think I’m starting to understand what my friends see when they look at me.

  Oh well. At least it stops the monsters.