As Billy stepped through the rift, he was hit by the fragrant smell of lush vegetation.

  The dungeon appeared as a vast forest, with towering elms as tall as skyscrapers and flowers the size of human faces, set against a strange night sky.

  The stars pulsed with multicolored light in a swirling night sky, where they rotated around a point at the forest’s crown.

  Billy could vaguely see in the distance the hulking figure of the chitin-covered giant that had slain that Beli Player, disappearing into the depths of the forest. He didn't appear to be the least bit concerned about the possibility of being tracked.

  It took either great power or incredible arrogance to act so recklessly—perhaps a bit of both.

  A strong, pungent odor filled the air-the smell of blood. The scene was dominated by the partially quartered corpses of strange beasts. Transparent snakes… a bear striped like a tiger… a herd of rune-antlered moose—everything lay torn open, as if something had rummaged inside them for treasure.

  “They are systematically killing all the beasts in the area,” Bob covered his nose with his right hand, trying to avoid the smell. “What are they trying to achieve?”

  “I think I know,” Jenna answered. “Billy, what can you tell us about the dungeon?”

  Billy concentrated on his Essence Sight. His respawn screen manifested in his mind’s eye, showing the information he desired.

  Name: Lair of Bethella.

  Rank: 7

  Motif: Spiritual Beasts

  Tags:

  -No bosses: The dungeon only has Mobs and the Core, but they all become more powerful.

  -Progression: Excess Essence is turned into Experience and concentrated into Cores, which may be harvested and used to power Progression Bars.

  -Surprise!: (REDACTED)

  “The spirit cores they are using to access their progression bars come from the bodies of these beasts,” Billy signaled, pointing to the broken corpses. “That is the reason they are in such a state. They have carved them, looking for the cores.”

  Jenna sat down, meditating for a few seconds in the lotus posture. Billy knew she favoured that stance when she expanded her spirit using her powers. She was probably having a look at the dungeon’s layout.

  Three minutes later, she opened her eyes; “The dungeon is a circular platform, twelve miles across. The Core is some type of bear-thing, hiding in a swamp at the very center,” she sketched with her finger on the wet earth.

  “These progressors are killing every beast they can find, advancing in a clockwise fashion. I think they are taking the cores from every beast they slay.”

  “But won’t this just empty the dungeon?” asked Bob.

  “No, Bob,” Billy explained, ”the dungeon is in the middle of a megacity. It is supercharged with Essence. When the Progressors complete a whole turn of the dungeon, it has already managed to regenerate all slain Mobs. They could be farming it indefinitely.”

  “Billy, you are the expert on this,” Jenna asked him while she surveyed the killing field. “Do Mobs regenerate at their full power?”

  “Not at all,” he answered her. “The only way to get that type of respawn is a complete dungeon upgrade. Essence continually refills the dungeon with more Mobs as soon as they are slain, but they appear in a weaker state and regain their powers over the course of hours, as the dungeon feeds them essence.”

  Billy inspected some of the corpses, getting a feel for the Essence inside them. “This is a rank seven dungeon with the ' no bosses' tag. Its Mobs should have power equivalent to a 35-level Avatar when fully grown, like the ones these fellows belonged to,” he prodded with his feet one of the semitransparent snakes, which was almost split in half.

  “But they don’t,” Bob guessed. “They read as Progressors, don’t they?”

  “You got it, Bob,” Billy answered. “They have three Evolutions instead of the usual Avatar levels. It seems each Evolution is equivalent to 10 levels. I am guessing these guys will have stronger stats or more powers to compensate for those missing five levels.”

  “At the current pace of the kill squad, I calculate it will take them about eighteen hours to complete a full sweep of the dungeon,” Jenna explained.

  “I bet that this is the time the dungeon requires to mature its new Mobs. They want to kill Mobs at their full power. The larger the Mob, the more experience its core provides.”

  “We can’t allow that, Jenna,” Bob said as his elvish armor and weapons appeared on him in a flash of blue light. He was going to need easy access to them.

  “They must be getting hundreds of cores each day. We must stop them somehow, or they will become too powerful for us to handle.”

  “We are going to do much more than stop them, Bob,” Jenna said, standing up from her yoga stance. “We are going to steal those spirit cores.”

  They moved slowly in a counterclockwise direction, opposite to the Progressor kill squad's movements. It felt like watching one of those National Geographic documentaries featuring ecosystems in fast motion.

  The freshly killed animal corpses were soon scavenged, at first by purple maggots pulsing with blue light and by weird winged insects resembling a knot of wings with no body connecting them.

  Two miles later, these carrion eaters had already picked clean the bodies, but became the target of small six-legged lizards that stunned them with some sort of sonic attacks.

  Three more miles, and the lizards fell to rodents with three heads. Billy could not help but notice that more aggressive and territorial Mobs always replaced the initially shy creatures.

  “A couple more miles and we are going to have to start to fight our way in,” he announced to the rest of the Losers.

  The words turned prophetic as Jenna suddenly pushed him out of the way of a projectile aimed at his head, which embedded itself in a nearby trunk with a loud thunk. It was a sparrow-like thing with a metallic body; it had tried to take Billy with it in a suicide attack. He focused his Essence Perception on it.

  Kamikaze Bird: Mob. One Evolution

  Dungeon: The Lair of Bethella 7

  Slaying Intent 1.

  Evolution: Bullet Body (Slaying 1)

  “This is way different from the Essentials at Earth,” he told the rest of the group.

  Jenna used one of her elvish daggers to pry the corpse open. Inside it, in place of its heart, the beast had a diminutive spirit core.

  “Seems the theory is valid,” Jenna announced. “The more powerful they become, the bigger the Cores and the more experience they grant,” she said as she put the core inside one of her pockets.

  They had already been inside the dungeon for three hours, and things were starting to get hairy.

  “If we keep at this pace, we will meet their Kill Squad in less than eight hours. I would like to avoid that if possible. Surprise is going to be our strongest weapon,” she added.

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  “I am still in human form. I will need to change my shape if I am to pull my weight around here,” Billy summoned his respawn screen and considered his Akashic Library options.

  Amazon Druid 9 Levels Mob

  Amazon Hunter 9 Levels Mob

  Fungal Tree 21 Levels Boss

  Ethel 99 Levels Tribulation

  Headless Machetist 21 Levels Boss

  Moon Goblin 10 Levels Core

  Mystic Storyteller 99 Levels Avatar

  River Dragon 63 Arcana Boss

  Shadow Ninja 9 Levels Mob

  Shapeshifting Pomeranian 21 Levels Boss

  Thousand-Faced Assassin 21 Levels Boss

  Undead Firelord 15 Levels Avatar

  War Gryphon 9 Levels Mob

  Each Level costs 50 Achievement Points

  Each Arcana costs 50 Achievement Points

  “I only have 897 points left,” he mumbled. “I guess the safest choice is Undead Firelord. Good ranged attacks and some points left, more than enough for a basic respawn.”

  “Absolutely not,” Jenna replied.

  “I refuse to be a third wheel, Jenna -I need to change my shape.”

  “Honey, we are living together. Last time you went burning lich, the whole house stank of sulphur and rotten bodies for days. It smelled as if we had been barbecuing zombies.”

  “Moon Goblin Boss, then. I have not tried that one, and it has an interesting power. It can create one single new power based on the last creature it ate.” Billy spoke with the enthusiasm of an eight-year-old eager to try out his new Christmas present.

  “Billy, do you really want me to sleep with a five-foot scaly version of Gordon Ramsay? It is a cannibal, for God’s sake.”

  “But I don’t have to eat people. It can eat anything and gain powers from it. I could go vegan if it makes you feel more comfortable.”

  “And what are you going to do with those vegan powers when we face enemies? Lower their cholesterol?”

  “Shadow Ninja, then. A rogue type could work well,” offered Billy.

  “ I am nineteen years old, and we have been dating for one week. I have needs, for God’s sake, you can expect me to cuddle with Sauron’s kid, who goes to karate on Wednesdays and pretend it is you,” answered Jenna.

  “Uhmm, you know I am here, don’t you?” asked Bob, more embarrassed by the moment.

  “No, you are not!” Jenna told him.

  “You are right, I am not,” Bob conceded.

  “I need to be with you!” she concluded.

  “The hell you do,” Billy countered. “Remember that last time I was in Doppleganger form, and you wanted me to transform into Clark Gable? Then it was Tom Selleck and Errol Flynn. What is it with you and moustaches, anyway?”

  “Billy, for god’s sake, we are not alone!” Jenna exclaimed, mortified, “Bob is right there!”

  “Yes, I am,” Bob admitted, quickly adapting.

  Finally, they compromised on shadow ninja as a temporary solution. Some conversations could only be stretched so far without dignity breaking into pieces.

  Not the Omega, actual dignity.

  Five minutes later, Jenna approached him and lay her head on his shoulder.

  “I don’t know why you put up with me,” she said.

  “I do it for the dough, of course,” Billy answered. “With the money you make at the Burrito, I may eat one can of cat food per week instead of one each month-who would not sign up for that?” Then they both laughed, and everything was all right again.

  Thirty minutes later, they reached a shallow river, no more than one foot deep and sixty feet across.

  “Thank God,” said Bob. “My feet are killing me. While the War Form is great for trekking, it feels like it weighs about 40 pounds more than my actual body. It seems that the only part of it that doesn’t shapeshift along with the rest are the soles of my feet.”

  “Bob, wait!” Jenna shouted as he was about to cross the river. She held onto the leg of one of the animal corpses that littered the ground. With great care, she slowly pushed it into the river. Billy saw it dissolve as it dropped into acid. No. Not dissolve.

  It was being eaten in front of his very eyes by a swarm of almost transparent piranha-like creatures, each one no bigger than one thumb. “This place is dangerous. Everything here is a trap,” she added as Bob’s face paled visibly.

  "We need to find another route if we want to continue in that direction," Billy said, squinting as he searched for a safe passage through the nearly invisible predators. Suddenly, he heard a low growl behind him.

  The Losers suddenly turned around, watching a pack of sleek predators studying them as they partially hid among the bushes. Their sleek forms were covered in metallic scales, each with a single eye protruding from it. Instead of mouths, they had a razor-tipped snout that looked as if it had been designed to scoop guts out of their victims’ bellies.

  They could be described as wolf-like, much as a neurosurgeon could be described as monkey-like.

  Billy shared the information from his screen with the rest of the group.

  “They are called Evolved Stalkers. They have only two Evolutions, but there are almost twenty of them. And they have rank 2 Teaming Intent, which increases their power when acting in coordination. This does not look good, Jenna.”

  He caught that one-second blank stare Jenna always gave before battle. That was her calculation window—the moment she mapped every outcome. That single second had won more fights than Billy could remember.

  He felt her mind pushing information into his brain and Bob’s through Dignity’s blood link, and he knew what he had to do.

  Suddenly, the wolves attacked as a well-trained and coordinated commando unit. When they were thirty feet apart from them, they started howling in unison, without breaking their stride. When the sound hit him, Billy felt all the strength drain from his body. The hands holding his katanas began to shake, even as the enemy drew near.

  “They are using some kind of mass-debuff effect, enhanced by their teaming Intent,” he announced to his friends. “The nearer they are, the mightier it will become.”

  Jenna’s body began to bulge until she became an enormous brute with oversized hands, and, perhaps, a greenish tinge to her skin.

  She clapped her hands together, creating a sound wave so powerful that Billy was knocked to the ground, and his ears began to ring.

  The Stalkers’ howl was drowned in the blast, and their advance halted. Jenna put her hands on Bob’s shoulders

  She pumped Bob full of freebies as he dropped his War Form. She added +3 to Focus and +3 to Magical Affinity to his already powerful +6 mind.

  Aqueous Arm (Watercraft 3): Summon an arm made of water from any visible water source. Its strength scales with Mind. The arm lasts for 10 seconds and has a one-minute cooldown. It shares cooldowns with other Watercraft perks.

  What is worse than getting hit with a skyscraper-tall watery arm? -Getting hit by one filled with evolved Piranhas.

  When the water dispersed, the gleaming skeletons of the once-hunters stood among the almost invisible bodies of the thrashing piranhas, gasping their last breaths.

  Numerous spirit cores lay among the bodies, as if the Stalkers had adorned themselves with their best jewels for their own wake.

  They waited in silence for the piranhas to die and then collected each and every one of the eighteen spirit cores.

  Then they heard the sounds of the approaching hunting party. Jenna silently signaled them to follow, and they hid among the nearby trees.

  Six minutes later, the first members of the party arrived. Their appearances were so varied that it was hard to believe they belonged to the same race. Some looked almost human but had one or two clearly supernatural features, such as extra heads, wings, or an unusual number of limbs. Others appeared so bizarre that it was difficult to find words to describe them: there were rolling wheels made of heads, giant brains slithering across the ground like slugs, and beings that seemed to shift shapes with every step.

  They stopped in surprise as they beheld the skeletal remains of the creatures they had just fought. One of them searched among the corpses, eventually finding one core they had missed. He barked an order in a foreign language.

  The Imperials parted ranks to let one figure in the rearguard approach the front.

  Billy’s breath caught as he recognized him. It was Useful Pob. He looked badly beaten and had a chain attached to his neck. He was carrying a small, ornate coffer in both his hands, with its lid open. Only darkness could be seen within it.

  The Imperial dropped the core inside that darkness. No sound emanated from the coffer, as if the core had fallen a great distance and not hit the bottom yet.

  “Do you know what that is?” asked Billy.

  “We both know what that is,” answered Bob. “It is a Bag of Holding.”