The next floating priest began to bleed from his nose as I popped the statue in the face with my iron fist. It bucked under me hard, but our combined weight held it in place. I just kept clobbering as the warriors threw sticks at me.

  They were probably javelins or some shit, but they might as well have been sticks for all the good it did them.

  [You’ve earned: 300 XP.]

  The second floating priest dropped dead. Even if I didn’t have the notification, they stopped floating the moment they expired.

  A ropey whir spun up behind me, probably the warriors trying to “help” again. I heard a hiss right before getting snared in a primitive bola. The weighted rocks wrapped around me, ensnaring and pinning my arms against me as they clacked together.

  Vines were surprisingly resilient. I couldn’t just break out of them by flexing. They hit me with two more snare-bolas. Before I knew it, they were pulling my ass off the damn statue. I held on the best I could, squeezing my thighs. But without my arms, it was a losing battle.

  They’d basically lassoed me and dragged me onto my back, giving the statue time to get up. The third priest stood floating over the pedestal, and air-marched the effigy up to me. He rose a foot and stomped. The statue mimicked him, bringing a heavy foot down on my stomach.

  It wasn’t very effective.

  Limited to rolling, I did my best to position myself so the stone foot would stomp on the vines as much as me. With any luck, the dumbass would cut the cables before he realized his mistake.

  It took all six of the warriors to keep me pinned while the statue feathered me with its foot. Asshole tried to curb-stomp me once, but I jerked my head out of the way. It missed and went back to punting my midsection.

  I felt the vines give way as I flexed but stopped short of snapping them. I flung my shoulder up and over as I rolled onto my stomach. The stupid priest continued to play into my plan as he stomped at the vines on my back.

  They thought they were literally kicking the shit out of me, but the joke was on them. I blasted out the hardest push-up of my life, snapping the weakened vines and rising high enough to get a foot under me. I drove myself forward with everything I had, aiming for one of the two warriors dead ahead.

  They were still recovering from the sudden slack in their line as I tackled the right one.

  A half-ton of iron landed on top of him, crushing him under me. Unable to breathe, he panicked. With nowhere to go and no way to escape, I ended him with a four-knuckle sandwich.

  [You’ve earned: 300 XP.]

  Thankfully, the brutality didn’t scare away the others. They charged me like good little lambs. I picked up the first warrior and whipped him around, using him as a literal human shield against the incoming stone-fisted punch.

  He blocked two more blows before dying.

  [You’ve earned: 300 XP.]

  Not wanting to risk his head getting smashed in, I tossed the warrior’s corpse aside and grabbed a fresh meat shield. Unfortunately, they’d smartened up. The priest stopped chanting to shout.

  “Stay back, you fools! He’s mine.”

  I stomped, shattering the warrior’s shin. He screamed and dropped to a knee. His voice shot up an octave as I crushed his wrist in my grip. I let go of his arm and silenced him with a snap of his neck.

  [You’ve earned: 300 XP.]

  “Well, what are you waiting for?!” I shouted to the floating asshole. The ground trembled as I charged the effigy again.

  The priests were shit at fighting; they should have stuck to sunbeams. The statue didn’t brace and went for a haymaker instead.

  I dove under the swing, caught it in the gut, and toppled its terracotta-looking ass. A dust cloud billowed out as it struck the hard-packed earth.

  I finished up with a good old-fashioned ground-and-pound, just like the others.

  [You’ve earned: 300 XP.]

  I didn’t know if the effigy still worked with only one priest. An errant backhand across my cheek answered my question.

  [Your Intellect has dropped to level 10.]

  Sick of getting hit in the head, I pinned one arm under my knees and grabbed onto the other. Thankfully, it wasn’t strong enough to make me punch myself like The Executioner had. While I couldn’t slug him while holding him down, I could still elbow the shit out of him. They weren’t as hard-hitting as my fists, but they got the job done after a dozen repeated strikes.

  [You’ve earned: 300 XP.]

  I saw the notification but didn’t stop elbowing until the damn head came off. I didn’t want any other priests showing up and using this thing.

  “Protect the temple!” was their rallying cry.

  Idiots.

  They charged to their deaths as I mopped up. One after the other, they fell.

  [You’ve earned: 300 XP.]

  [You’ve earned: 300 XP.]

  The last one lay on the ground, cradling a broken arm as he said with a raspy voice, “My life for—”

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  Just like his life, I cut his last words short.

  [You’ve earned: 300 XP.]

  I got up from kneeling and gathered all the bodies together, arranging them in a row. I even took out the ones in my inventory and added them to my buffet line. After they’d all been placed, I saw a problem.

  “Dick, how do I loot them if they don’t have pockets?”

  “You’ve still got a minute before your combat drops and I can see, but uh… do they have any purses, bags, or pouches?”

  I took another look and found that one of the warriors wore a belt with a tiny pouch. I flicked it open, but there wasn’t anything inside.

  “I found a pouch, but it’s empty.”

  “Stick your hand in.”

  “It’s not that big.”

  “Stick a finger in, then.”

  Now he went and made it dirty.

  I started to argue. “I’m not—”

  But I shut my trap, frowned at the empty pouch, and stuck my damn finger in anyway.

  [You’ve gained: 630 gold, 1 potion of healing, 4 ephemeral daggers of self-sacrifice, and 1 skill book of running. Total gold: 5,270.]

  Surprisingly, the daggers only took up one inventory slot.

  I asked, “Dick, do identical items stack?”

  “Yep.”

  They may be worth something, so I’d only ditch them if I needed the room.

  “Hey! You found a skill book,” Dickhead said. “That’s a pretty rare find. I’ve seen players grind the same Instance for weeks, waiting for a skill book to drop.”

  I took it out of my inventory. It had some heft to it and looked to be a few hundred pages thick. It was a leather-bound book with embossed lettering that read “Running”. I started flipping through pages at random.

  Not sure anyone needed a book to learn how to run. By the time most schmucks could read, they’d pretty much figured out the whole one-foot-in-front-of-the-other thing.

  But Dickhead sounded really excited about it, so I asked, “What does it do?”

  “It levels up the relevant skill when you use it.”

  “Oh… too bad I already maxed out the skill for this expansion.”

  “That’s why players are willing to grind for them. They’ll let you level past the expansion limits.”

  Now that sounded handy. I flipped to the end of the book, looking for instructions.

  When I didn’t find any, I asked, “How do I use it?”

  “You sleep with it.”

  My lip curled in disgust as I thought about what filth the book might be covered in. I dropped it like a used porno mag.

  Wiping my hands off on my jeans, I said, “I’m not having sex with a damn book. That’s gross.”

  Dickhead sighed. “No, not like that. You tuck the skill book under your pillow when you go to bed, and you’ll learn it as you sleep.”

  “Oh.” I squatted to pick it back up and dusted it off. It didn’t look like dropping it had banged it up too badly.

  Now all I could picture was some skill book fairy showing up to frank with my head in the middle of the night. The skill book was useless to me in the Instance, so I slipped it back into my inventory and forgot about it.

  I got to work on the brains, starting at one end and skullcracking my way to the other. I must have been under 90% Vitality because the first brain didn’t give me an Intellect level-up. That was a bit of a disappointment. But I got over it as it started raining notifications. They staggered in about every three minutes, which was as fast as I could scoff down a brain.

  [Your Intellect has increased to level 11… level 12… level 13… level 14… level 15.]

  Your Intellect has increased to level 16.]

  Only halfway through brunch and I got a skill-up notification.

  [Your Grappling skill has increased to level 4.]

  Technically, grappling was a requirement to use Skullcracker. I shrugged and continued stuffing my face until I ran out of brains.

  [Your Intellect has increased to level 17… level 18… level 19… level 20… level 21… level 22.]

  [Your Intellect has increased to level 23.]

  I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and finally looked past the carnage to what was just a backdrop before. The courtyard was a shoebox compared to the stone structure looming ahead. The temple wasn’t some neat pyramid with a pointy top. Nope, this thing had a crown the size of half a football field, flat and wide.

  A staircase wide enough to drive a damn Jeep up climbed the face with a dizzying run of steps. I didn’t see any doors, windows, or entrances on the ground level. It looked like up was the only way forward.

  I took the first step of many. Apparently, stairs didn’t count for my No Rest for the Dead trait. I was gassed halfway up and had to take a breather. I had to admit, it was a stunning sight. I sat on the steps for a couple of minutes and took in the surrounding jungle canopy. There was a river to my right and mountains off to the left. But I wasn’t here for sightseeing, so I got back up and continued my climb.

  More good news came just before I reached the top of the temple.

  [Your Climbing skill has increased to level 2.]

  That seemed like the perfect spot to catch my breath before finding out what was at the top of the stairs.

  “Dick, are mana potions a thing?”

  “Potions of mana,” he corrected. “But yes. They’re much rarer than potions of healing, though.”

  “Can Freelancers craft them?”

  “They certainly can. However, you’ll need to find the recipe first and then source the proper ingredients.”

  “Are there resource nodes for those ingredients?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Good. Running low on Mana sucked.

  I still needed a minute, so I asked, “Do potions have a cooldown?”

  “Only when used in combat. It’s a global cooldown. The formula is 600 seconds minus Constitution and Willpower to a minimum of 60 seconds. Yours, for example, would be 560 seconds, or uh… nine minutes and twenty seconds.”

  “So, I won’t be the next Witcher, got it.”

  “What’s a Witcher?”

  His question caught me off guard. I thought he knew everything.

  “They’re these badass warrior-mage-alchemists who hunt monsters for a living.”

  “That sounds like a player’s worst nightmare, to be honest. But there are alchemist-based classes with traits that change or straight up ignore the standard rules. Just like some of your zombie ones.”

  “Huh.” I hadn’t considered that the rules didn’t apply to everyone. But honestly, that wasn’t any different than before those DungeonCore shitheads showed up. Now there were just different assholes making and breaking different rules.

  I finished climbing the stairs and finally saw what was at the top.

  I’d been accurate on the size, about half a football field. In each corner rose a tower of metal scaffolding, spindly and way too modern for the whole jungle-ruins vibe. They looked like lightning rods, or really big antennas. Next to each of them was a comically large wooden wheel, like giant, people-sized hamster wheels.

  The rest was open space, broken up by shin-high rocks scattered everywhere. I couldn’t imagine how the hell they all got up here.

  Dead center of it all was a plain stone altar with a plaque too tiny to make out. I strolled up to the altar to read it.

  “Open your hand and give of your Life,” I read aloud.

  I made a fist, held it out over the altar and opened it. When nothing happened, I frowned. “What kind of mumbo jumbo is this crap?”

  I peeked under the altar, but it was solid stone. I searched the sides and still found nothing. Behind it was a weather-worn leather rucksack with tarnished brass buckles. It was empty save for a thick, well-used journal.

  My stupid inventory wouldn’t let me stow the backpack unless it was empty.

  I figured a journal was a record of life and tried dropping it on top of the altar. But still, nothing happened. I tossed the journal in my inventory.

  “Open my hand…” I shook my head, disappointed it took me this long to get it.

  I took out a dagger of self-sacrifice and stared at my other iron hand.

  “Not sure how this is supposed to work, but here goes nothing.” I dragged the blade across my palm, expecting to dull the blade like all the others. But it sliced through my skin as easily as my old flesh.

  “Shit,” I cursed as I bled all over the damn altar.

  My dumbass had cut deep. A red river flowed even through my clenched fist, which was odd because I figured my blood would be oil or something since I was made of living iron.

  [You’ve engaged Skybeak, the Avatar of Air, level 3 Instance boss.]

  [Hint: Run. Good luck.]

  A screech drew my attention to the sky. The damn boss was a giant pterodactyl.