Our system had six simple steps.

  1. Throw the Heavy Steel Ball down the corridor until all pressure and impact traps had been triggered.

  2. Slowly step down the hallway, searching for more signs of traps. I kept my hitai-ate closed for this, both because it helped notice some traps and because it meant I couldn't get a dart to the face. Lacie laughed the first time she saw it, confirming that she also thought it looked like a metal, cartoon beehive on my head.

  3. Scoop up all of the traps that could be triggered and then snatched.

  4. Spin into a powerful fastball at the traps that couldn't be safely triggered, repeating until they were reduced to broken shards.

  5. Throw a dart with a length of knotted thread from the stitch-divers and measure the hallways and door locations.

  6. Expand the map that Lacie was building.

  It was not quick, but it was working. I was incredibly tense, leaping back at the first sign of trouble as I inched down a hallway. Every time I twitched, Lacie would give a little Eep of worry and flinch as well.

  However, we weren't getting hurt. Judging by the comments from the few people still talking to either of us, this was rare. The trap-heavy subterranean spaces were generally the worst, as very few crawlers had developed trap-ready builds across the past four floors.

  We also encountered more creatures, and found they were actually all easy to kill. There were scarabs that were even hardier than megapedes. There were scorpions that also had that impenetrable exterior.

  For megapedes, if I sent them sideways with a fastball, they'd be confused for long enough for Lacie to dart in and cast her Invasive Growth, which looked a lot like the invasive roots those war mages had used on me. It worked through their armor, killing them over the next minute.

  For the scarabs, if I hit them into the air with a knockback, they opened their wings to fly back down. With sufficient care, I could have a fastball and breaking ball in the air at once, so the ball would knock them into the air, then the knife would come in under their wings and apply a rupture.

  The scorpions were the easiest. They had these weird little claws alongside their mouths, not quite like mandibles, that were always moving. They also always had open mouths. It was a small target, but I could get the knife in there and give them an internal rupture. Most of the time, they technically drowned in their own viscera instead of dying from the rupture.

  Lacie insisted on looting everything, and I learned that, with Luxe's sword, I was strong enough to lift anything but a megapede and take it all in one go. The megapede I had to split in half, which could be quickly done once they were unmoving and I could send a single, powerful fastball into their midsection.

  While we were out there, I got the notice that I'd been sponsored by Nikki's Dance Foundation and Lacie was sponsored by Big and Bold. She was excited, but I quite frankly did not care. We didn't slow down much for that.

  After sixteen hours of working our plan, we headed back to what was still the only safe room we knew of. I wanted to keep going, but Lacie reminded me we had fan boxes waiting.

  I hadn't really cared about opening boxes when I was alone, but sitting down with Lacie and watching her open one felt like we got to spend Christmas together, something Mom had not allowed.

  Gold Fan Box

  Entirely Black Make-Up Kit.

  Tub of Recently-Deceased Foundation.

  I grinned. It felt even more like Christmas. Lacie spent tons of time on her make-up, but she'd run out in the dungeon.

  Entirely Black Make-Up Kit.

  Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

  There are sixteen different shades of black in this kit. We all know you're not going to use more than black in your look. You're not even a bright enough goth to shop at hot topic. These blacks will replenish every hour.

  Tub of Recently-Deceased Foundation.

  It's not just white, it's dead-girl-in-the-morgue white. There's so much white foundation in this huge fucking tub, they make you consult with a therapist before you're allowed to buy it. This white will replenish every day.

  "I knew fan-boxes were usually just stuff, not weapons or armor, but I'm still a little surprised it does nothing else," she said.

  "We both know you're excited to go do your make-up."

  She gave a little shriek of excitement. "I am! But open yours first."

  Platinum Fan Box

  Left Shadowed Nipple-Ring of the Midnight Ballroom

  I dropped it and covered my face with my hands, blushing furiously.

  Lacie snort-laughed, snatching it up. "I think we know what the fans want to see."

  "This AI keeps destroying my clothes and never giving me any pants. This place is just so, so very, I just can't."

  "This is actually really good," Lacie said, reading it aloud.

  Left Shadowed Nipple-Ring of the Midnight Ballroom

  All nipple rings must be manually affixed the first time they are equipped.

  Let's talk about the Midnight Ballroom. A secret order of assassins who perform as dancers in their daily lives. They're like a bad movie concept of how murder-for-hire works, except that they began as a dance troop among the gods before everything went to shit.

  Although their original patrons were banished to the Nothing, the Midnight Ballroom remains, slowly eliminating those who they feel have wronged them by night, and dancing like ballerinas by day.

  +10 Dexterity

  Changes the Hide In Shadows skill to Hide Anywhere

  Attacks made while hidden from the target increase their damage 100%.

  "I can't check what Hide Anywhere does unless it's equipped," Lacie said, "and it requires Hide in Shadows of at least 5 to equip."

  "I'm not wearing it," I said. I was still blushing, still hiding my face.

  "I'll hold onto it until you change your mind."

  I sighed, looking down at myself. I'm not sure why I felt like I was keeping any modesty by refusing that. Only the magic clothing persisted through combat, so my leggings were creeping past mid-thigh with a ragged bottom, my shirt was again entirely gone, with a half-dissolved gray sports-bra the only thing under my mesh top to give me any coverage.

  I smiled. She'd just taken it and now I didn't have to think about it. I'd heard the ability buffs it gave just fine. It was obviously a powerful item, something we should have to improve our odds, and she wasn't trying to pressure me into it.

  Standing, I said, "Well, I'm going to head back out and clear some more while you get your sleep."

  "Be careful." She put a quick kiss on my cheek, which suddenly felt like it was on fire. Her lips were different from before, weirdly firm, like she was truly made out of wood, but still with the rough bumps of regular lips, just pressing into my skin because they were wood-hard. "And when you get back, you'll get to see what I decided to do with my makeup."

  Almost overwhelmed thinking of that, I hurried out to clear more of the floor. It continued to be slow going, and over the next eight hours I cleared forty more hallways.

  Unfortunately, based on everything we knew about the place, forty hallways wasn't a lot. We didn't know if the blast had destroyed any maps—it had definitely wiped out the quests for the maps—but people in other bubbles talked about thousands of corridors in complex arrangements through the subterranean floors.

  Of the ones that were deathtrap dungeons, of course. Quite a few were apparently straight-forward grind-fests.

  I squirmed through the rubble, stepped into the personal space, and found Lacie sitting with her back to me. She wasn't wearing all of her gear, only her top and skirt. Her hair, which had been green vines, was now a gleaming black, looking almost lacquered.

  She stood and turned, and I gasped. Instead of some eye shadow or some custom pattern, she had followed the grain of her wooden skin, white across most of it with veins of rich black along key strands. It was an overwhelming look, complex patterns all across her, but it all flowed cohesively into a whole.

  The grain wasn't random, but traced elegantly about her eyes, almost like tear-lines that merged and ran down to the corners of her lips. Several strands from her lips—those were fully, gloriously black—flowed down her chin and along her neck, joined by more that traced from her ears down towards her clavicles, narrowing towards a heavy, dark knot on her chest, above her heart, where the grain lines from all across her body converged. The black lace of her top half-concealed that, hiding just enough that I couldn't stop staring.

  I blushed. I would have stared if it concealed less, too.

  "I wasn't sure if it was too much," Lacie said.

  "Uh, I, you..."

  She walked over, swaying gently. "Just right, then."

  I swallowed and nodded.

  She leaned in and kissed me. My eyes slipped closed, the taste of her lips overwhelming me. For a moment we stayed there, bodies brushing against each other, then she lowered her lips, her forehead on mine as we shifted apart.

  I saw her throat twitch, the way I often swallowed because my mouth felt both dry and too full of spit at the same time when I got too nervous. She stepped back, and after a moment her smile returned. "Well, I guess we should, um, get back out there. Right?"

  I blinked. Out there? Oh. "Yeah, I, yes. Let's."