A warrior.

  And I was at its feet, on my back, staring up at its mandibles.

  “Oh. Crap.”

  I barely got my shield up before the warrior came down on me like a certain crow’s punishment. The impact cracked through my arm and shoulder like a lightning bolt in slow motion. The wood splintered, the metal edge screamed, and something deep in my back made a noise it really shouldn’t have.

  Yup. That was probably important.

  Still, it bought me enough time to roll, more like flop, sideways across the packed earth, grit scraping my cheek, my breath hitching with every inch.

  I gasped, blinked sweat out of my eyes, and looked up… only to see one of the smaller termites stumbling drunkenly toward me, its antennae twitching in confusion. The other two were still nursing concussions from their passionate rendezvous with the wall.

  So that made it just one clear and very motivated incoming face.

  “Oh, no way,” I hissed, pushing up on shaky arms. That was the plan. The reality? My spine screamed a hard nope, and I immediately collapsed again like a puppet with half its strings cut. “Okay… I see how it is.”

  Then… shuffling. Behind me.

  I twisted on the ground, teeth clenched, and caught sight of the warrior termite rearing up again, its grotesque mandibles clacking, its bulk casting me in its monstrous shadow. Then it brought its full weight down with the fury of a collapsing bar.

  CRASH.

  My shield caught it again, but this time the frame twisted, my wrist buckled, and stars exploded behind my eyes. I felt the air wrench from my lungs as I hit the dirt harder than before, coughing and dazed.

  Somewhere beneath all the panic and pain, instinct finally stopped chilling in the background and kicked into gear.

  I thrust a hand toward myself and drew a quick rune in the air, half-formed, shaky. But it worked. Golden energy pulsed from my palm, surging across my skin like hot lightning turned gentle.

  “No fighting skills?!” I shouted like I’d just opened a loot-box and found a wet sock. Left sock division may be happy about that and Scamantha could probably scam… eh, trade it for better gear, but…

  Focus, stupid me!

  Still, the sudden surge of indignation came with an equally sudden hit of adrenaline, and I scrambled sideways just in time for the termite warrior to slam down again like it was trying to crack the earth in half.

  But this time?

  It hit its own dazed friend, a crunchy, meaty CRACK echoing off the walls. One leg twitched.

  “Hah!” I cackled like a goblin with a stolen wallet, chest heaving, trying to pretend I wasn’t seconds from becoming mulch. I scanned the tunnel frantically, eyes catching on a glint… my sword.

  Fantastic.

  It was lying right behind the brute, in the exact spot I’d face planted earlier. Of course it was.

  The warrior turned toward me, its grotesque head tilting with a click-click-click that sounded way too smug for a giant insect. “You have to be kidding me…” I muttered. Then, louder: “I swear I’m not a noob! It just feels real, y’know?!”

  I started inching back toward the tunnel I’d entered from, one cautious foot after the other, shield raised like it was going to save me from embarrassment.

  Or dismemberment. Both, ideally.

  Its smaller cousins were still twitching on the ground like broken Roombas, so it was just me and Big Brother Bug. And apparently, Big Brother didn’t appreciate trash talk.

  He charged.

  “Oh, you are as dumb as you look,” I said sweetly, sidestepping fast and swinging the shield to the side like a termite-themed matador. “?Olé!”

  It worked. Holy Saevrin, it worked.

  The brute barreled past, all six legs flailing to slow down, and I didn’t wait. I bolted.

  Stupid boots pounding on packed dirt, tunnel spinning, breath ragged in my throat. I dove for my sword, barely avoiding slipping on termite juice from his buddy’s splattered corpse, and snatched the hilt with all the desperation of a college student finding Wi-Fi.

  “Round two, asshole,” I growled through clenched teeth, spinning to face the warrior. But he was already charging, because I, goddess of reflexes in my head, was apparently still stuck on dial-up in reality.

  “Damn!” I yelped, yanking my shield into position and bracing for another termite-flavored train wreck. I even tried the matador trick again. Shield to the side. Classic bait move. But Big Bro had finally plugged in his last brain cell.

  Instead of going for the shield, he went for me.

  Smart. Rude.

  Still, he forgot one little thing. I could stand behind the damn shield. Which I did. So his glorious leap met about three square feet of reinforced wood and a very annoyed elf.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  He crashed into the tunnel wall with a rumble like collapsing stone, and I didn’t waste the chance. I roared something halfway between a battle cry and a sneeze and swung with everything I had.

  Clang.

  Zero. Zero. Not even a scratch. The sword bounced off his armor like I’d just tried to stab a castle.

  “What the—?”

  Before I could finish complaining, the bug rotated mid-tunnel like it was doing a pirouette in interpretive murder ballet and came right back at me. A fake charge?!

  “You cheating—!”

  No time to dodge. No time to dance. I gritted my teeth and jammed my sword forward, ramming the blade straight into its eye socket to the hilt.

  Victory?

  Not quite.

  Its momentum didn’t stop. It slammed into me full force. The shield didn’t just buckle—it shattered, and something ripped across my stomach with a wet, splitting sting.

  Pain. Sharp, hot, immediate. Like someone carved me open with a forge blade.

  “Fff—!” I choked down a scream and slammed my hands into the ground, already sketching the healing rune again and again, golden light crackling over my skin like sparking thread. My vision blurred, and the blood kept coming, sticky and warm as it soaked into my shirt.

  The warrior twitched, slower now, my sword was still jammed in its brain, but the thing refused to die. So I rolled back through my own blood like a grimy floor goblin, chanting healing runes like they were lottery numbers.

  “If anyone saw me right now…” I panted. “One day I’m fighting a mythic-tier elven queen… the next I’m rolling in dirt, getting gutted by a level-one termite.”

  I forgot about his even dumber brothers.

  One of them barreled toward me like a six-legged bowling ball. Its mandibles clicked in a way that sounded like it was trying to cuss me out in termite. “I don’t wanna die!” I shouted and yanked mana up like I was hauling it from the bottom of a frozen lake.

  What I summoned wasn’t exactly majestic. It was a lance of ice… Well, technically. More like a jagged icicle glued to a popsicle stick. But hey, it flew straight and drilled right through its eyeball like a kebab skewer.

  “Boom,” I muttered, then wiped sweat from my brow with a shaking hand.

  “Stop messing around, Charlie,” I hissed to myself, trying to force my fingers steady. I pulled again, shaping the mana tighter this time. Less striking, more precise. A dagger. Compact. Fast. Dangerous.

  I looked down.

  …Icicle again.

  Fine. I’d take it.

  The rest of the bug squad was still dazed, twitching in that brain-damaged insect way. I didn’t wait. I circled them like I was cleaning the house. One sharp jab per confused drone.

  Squish. Stab. Shatter.

  Crunched shell and leaking ichor painted the tunnel floor in gross brown-black smears.

  When I dropped the last one, I slumped onto a nearby rock, my back sticky with dried blood and my hands cold with mana residue. And that’s when the system finally chimed in:

  “…Not even congratulations?” I squinted upward instinctively, like the gods of Rimelion were hovering somewhere above the cave’s crust, watching my show on divine holovid. “Not even a confetti emoji or a sarcastic tooltip?”

  Silence. Rude.

  I waited. Nothing. No trumpet. No sparkle. No skill notification. Not even a smug AI voice.

  “Okay… Where’s my skill?” I asked, dragging myself upright, swaying like a drunk who had just realized the party had ended hours ago. “I just soloed a termite pit with scraps and sheer misery. That’s got to be worth something. Shield skill? Sword skill? Doesn’t that prove I’m an outstanding, powerful, brilliant—”

  The word appeared in a neat little system font. I blinked at it. “Wow. Just wow. Thank you for that divine slap.” The message faded, but my pride didn’t recover nearly as fast.

  As I sat there grumbling, I scrawled another healing rune across my thigh with a finger. Golden light bloomed and seeped into me, slowly patching up the wound. “Sorry for bothering you,” I muttered. “It’s just a coping mechanism. Talking to myself. Helps drown out the whole magically bound slave situation I don’t like.”

  My stomach still throbbed from the gouge. I pressed a hand against the rough, half-healed skin and sighed.

  “Actually, scratch that,” I growled. “I don’t dislike this situation. I hate it. With passion. The kind of hate that starts bar fights and writes punk albums.”

  Another rune. Another glow. Still on cooldown. I could cast it again in a few seconds… but it was never fast enough.

  And that’s when it hit me.

  “That’s why!” I leapt to my feet, my voice echoing off the tunnel walls. “That’s why boss fights were always so freaking unfair!”

  I gestured wildly into the stale cave air like I was giving a TED talk to a very disappointed god.

  “They could spam their skills like toddlers, and I was sitting there rationing stamina and mana!”

  I paused.

  “…I need a drink.”

  I rested for a bit, slumped against a cold tunnel wall slick with termite gunk. The glow of my last healing rune had faded, and my pulse had settled somewhere below “screaming panic.” The worst part? Leveling up did absolutely nothing. No stat increase. No perks. No shiny new toy.

  Just a pity notice.

  “Great,” I muttered, hauling myself up. “One level in and I already feel like I’ve peaked.”

  I flexed my fingers, testing my grip on the bent, half-shattered excuse of a shield that was more decoration now than defense. Then I limped forward, grumbling, “Karzi…” like it was a swear word. Which, honestly, it kind of was.

  The tunnel curved upward; the air getting just a little cooler. Wind direction, slope, lack of horrifying chittering… I figured I was heading the right way. Hopefully toward daylight. Or something that didn’t have mandibles.

  But just as I rounded the bend; boom. Elves.

  Three of them. Shoulder to shoulder like some fantasy boy band, each holding a massive two-handed sword with the confidence of someone who’s never actually swung one in a tight tunnel. Their armor was dented, scraped, and caked with dried bug guts.

  “Uhm… hey there, fellow knife-ears,” I said, holding up my mangled shield like a sad badge of peace. “Don’t mind me, just heading out to fetch a new armrest before Karzi makes me fight more oversized roaches.”

  They didn’t say a word, but the moment I inched a little closer to pass, they lunged.

  At me.

  “Whaaaa—?!” I yelped, throwing myself back, instinct taking over before logic could catch up. One of their blades whooshed past my ribs, carving a neat slice through my tunic. “What the hell, guys?!” I stumbled, shield up. “I thought we were doing the united against the slavers’ thing, not the murder your local mage arc!”

  My shield couldn’t take much more. So I wasn’t relying on it and threw it at the middle one. “Don’t tell me she gave you an order to kill everything in this tunnel!”

  I took a step back… and they stopped attacking me. Like soulless puppets. With one gulp I created icicle and two-wielding it, I prepared for the worst. They did not attack.

  “No way… She probably said ‘attack everything that moves towards you’, right?”

  They didn’t answer, not even glanced at me, and with swords ready, walked past me down the tunnel. I stayed glued to the wall as they walked and then fell to my knees, cursing.

  “Karzi. Karzi!”