Jess sat on a fallen log, surrounded by carnage.

  Beetle corpses littered the forest floor in every direction—some fresh, some days old, some just fragments of chitin ground into the soil. The smell was indescribable. She'd stopped noticing it sometime around day three.

  "Why doesn't everybody do this?" she muttered, gesturing at the wreckage.

  Miri's voice was flat in her ear. "Baseline parameters of your body and class significantly outpace enemies of the same level. Inference: the danger of this region creates natural friction for locals. The A-rank could have killed you if you were less sturdy. Repeat call to caution."

  "The monkey." Jess grimaced. "I know. I haven't forgotten."

  Terry waddled past, pecking curiously at a severed mandible. He'd grown—not much, but enough. His down was filling in, hints of darker feathers emerging along his wings. He still made the same soft cooing sounds, still demanded belly rubs, still had absolutely no idea he was supposed to be a predator.

  "No levels for you, huh?" Jess watched him. "Just me."

  She'd noticed it days ago. Terry fought—or tried to—but there were no notifications. No EXP. No growth pings. The system simply didn't register him.

  Only sapients got the Nexus.

  She thought about the monkey. The way it had looked at her. The intelligence in those eyes. The boredom.

  Hah, she thought. I'm superior to you. The system counts me. You're just a smart animal.

  "Phantom, I advise against smugness." Miri cut through her thoughts. "In nine out of ten cases, smugness leads to mission failure according to my data."

  "Okay, okay." Jess waved a hand. "Let me dream."

  She pulled up her status. The blue window materialized in her vision, familiar now, almost comforting.

  [Name: Phantom]

  [Age: 320/354]

  [Race: Orc]

  [Class: Frontline Huntress]

  [Level: 25/25]

  [Exp: 26000/26000]

  [Slain Unique Enemies: 423]

  [Core Slot 1: Too Close For Comfort – Rank 0]

  [Core Slot 2: Bash – Rank 0]

  [Core Slot 3: Shedded Alabaster Carapace of War – Rank 0]

  [Advancement Quest: Available.]

  Four hundred and twenty-three kills. Thirty-four years added to her clock. It should have felt like more. It just felt like... Tuesday.

  She focused on the quest prompt.

  [Advancement Quest]

  [Kill a B-rank hive queen or higher in melee combat without wielding weapons.]

  [Reward: Rank 1 Ascension, Core Slot Upgrade, Class Evolution]

  "Well," she said. "That's specific."

  Terry cooed at her feet, tugging at a strand of something she didn't want to identify.

  "Time to enter your house, magical or not, little one." Jess reached down and scratched the soft spot behind his beak. "This one won't give me enough room to play with you."

  Terry ran a circle around her legs, pecking at the air in what might have been a threat display or might have been excitement. Hard to tell.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  "Not now." She kept her voice soft. "When you're grown up. Sorry, buddy."

  He looked up at her with those large dark eyes. Then he dissolved into motes of light, streaming into the Beast Space like fireflies going home. The space where he'd been felt emptier.

  Jess stood. Rolled her shoulders. Felt the armor settle against her skin.

  "Miri. Odds?"

  "Not enough data. Extrapolating from baseline scout parameters: doable. Your defensive scaling significantly exceeds expected values for your rank."

  "Then I've got a clear." She looked toward the tunnel mouth, dark and waiting. "But I want to take a look first. The system says I can take it. I feel powerful." A pause. "I felt powerful before the monkey."

  "Phantom, it is your judgment call."

  Jess stood there for ten minutes, staring at the darkness.

  The wind moved through the trees. Somewhere distant, something screamed and then stopped. Terry slept in whatever pocket dimension held him, dreaming of belly rubs and bug meat.

  "Hmmm?" She hadn't realized Miri had spoken.

  "What is the question that keeps your mind occupied?"

  Jess let out a breath. "I wonder what rank Kirael is by now. He was always slow. Took his sweet time with everything."

  "AI Partner chip advises against competition with a century-long headstart."

  "Fine." She almost smiled. "Still. This is interesting. Do you think I'll get a new class? Will I become more... orky?"

  "'Orky' is not a word in my lexicon."

  Jess punched her own fist. The impact was solid, satisfying. "Doesn't help, waiting. The Nexus clearly tracked that I prefer unarmed combat. It reacts dynamically to experience and playstyle. That's a novel mechanic."

  She took a step toward the tunnel. Then another.

  "I think," she said, "I want to go for it. Who knows what the next quest looks like? I want to know what it means."

  The darkness swallowed her.

  The tunnels were different now.

  Before, she'd stayed in the upper levels—the hunting grounds, the workers' paths, the places where light still filtered through cracks in the earth. Now she descended.

  Her eyes adjusted quickly. Orc physiology handled low light like it was born for it. The world resolved into shades of gray and green, every detail visible.

  Glowing moss lined the walls in patches, casting a soft bioluminescent haze. Strange bulbs hung from the ceiling—pale, pulsing faintly, connected by threads of mycelium. She'd seen them before, but never this deep. Never this many.

  She lost the main tunnel somewhere around the second hour.

  Not lost-lost. She knew the general direction—down, always down—but the side passages branched and twisted, some natural, some excavated, some collapsed and reopened. She followed the ones that sloped deeper, that smelled of queen rather than worker, that pulsed with that same organic wrongness.

  A side tunnel caught her eye. Different from the others—lined with storage chambers.

  She stepped inside.

  The bulbs were here. Hundreds of them. Stacked in organized piles, sorted by size, their pale glow illuminating the chamber like a harvest moon. Food stores. The hive was stocking up.

  Jess moved past them, deeper into the side passage, until the walls opened into something else.

  The brood chamber.

  It was vast—easily fifty meters across, the ceiling lost in darkness. The walls were lined with egg sacs, each the size of a person, pulsing with internal light. Most were intact. Some were not.

  The signs of rampage were everywhere.

  Sacs torn open, their contents spilled and dried. Scorch marks on the walls—not fire, something else. Acid, maybe. Chitin fragments scattered like confetti. The remnants of a battle fought and finished.

  Something had come through here. Something angry.

  And in the center of the chamber, surrounded by the ruins of her children, stood the queen.

  She was massive. Forty feet from head to abdomen, her carapace darker than any skitter Jess had fought—black shot through with veins of deep crimson that pulsed with each breath. Her abdomen was swollen, translucent in places, showing the shapes of eggs within. Vestigial wings folded along her back, not for flight, but for display.

  Her mandibles were scythes. Curved, serrated, each the length of Jess's entire body.

  Her mouth opened as Jess stepped into the light. The maw was enormous—big enough to swallow a person whole. Big enough to swallow her whole.

  Jess stopped. Stared.

  The queen stared back.

  For a long moment, neither moved.

  Then Jess found her voice.

  "What an ugly girly." She planted her feet, rolled her shoulders, felt the armor settle. "Makeup by Team Fisty Cuff. And Jess is waiting for you."

  The queen's mandibles clicked. A sound like swords being sharpened.

  The roar came.

  It shook the chamber. Eggs burst. Chitin rained from the walls. The ground vibrated through Jess's boots, through her bones, through her teeth.

  She didn't flinch.

  "Okay," she said. "Let's dance."