I tore down the stairs, pushing the limits of my Agility as I moved in a blur. I had to get there faster. Tomas needed my help. Ruby was in danger.

  I burst out of the exit at the bottom and skidded to a stop in another enormous, crystal-sheathed cavern. The entire closest third of the pristine walls were splashed with scorch marks and blood. The air hung heavy with the scent of charred flesh and gore.

  I took in the battle in a single glance. Ruby stood against the right wall of the cavern, almost a third of the way along the wall, between Scott and an enormous monster. It looked like a full-on dragon with mirrored scales, but no wings. It looked angry, its visible wounds only enraging it further.

  Ruby was alive, if battered. Her hair billowed around her as if she’d just finished a big jump. Her skin shone with the silver scales of her Battle Bio Morph enhanced defense, and her face seemed more angular and far deadlier.

  Tomas and Lana were farther to the right, creeping along the wall near a twin to the first dragon. That one looked far more battered, with scorch marks and patches of missing scales all across its snout and neck. It still roared and spun, lashing out blindly with claws and teeth and heavy tail.

  Because it really was blind. Both eyes were missing, replaced by ruined, bleeding sockets. I breathed a sigh of relief. They were all still alive. Battered and bloody, especially Scott, who was struggling to sit up, one arm clearly broken, with blood covering his face and neck.

  I focused on the dragon monster facing Ruby, but before Identify could trigger, it pounced. Roaring so loud it shook the cavern, the dragon moved with astonishing speed, lashing out with both powerful forelimbs.

  Ruby didn’t move, but stood her ground. No way even her enhanced defense could withstand a strike like that. I lunged forward, shouting a warning, but I was way too far to help. I just needed another two seconds.

  I didn’t get it.

  Identify kicked in as the monster pounced.

  “Prismatic Drake. Level 45. Elite. These apex predators are powerhouse killing machines. With thick scales resistant to many forms of magic, they slaughter their prey with unstoppable ferocity and strength.”

  “Move!” Why didn’t she move?

  The Drake struck, both forelegs slashing down with triple claws to rip her apart.

  Just as the claws descended to rend out her life, the Drake rebounded a dozen feet. At the same time, horrible gashes tore down the face and body of the other Drake. Blood and gore erupted from the mortally-wounded monster and it collapsed to the ground with a pained roar, limbs thrashing weakly at the smooth floor.

  “What the . . .?

  Then I realized what she’d done. Clever girl. I’d totally forgotten about Ruby’s trump card she’d gotten from killing those zombies.

  “Shifting Wardstone. Amulet. Rare. Choose up to one incoming hit in every fight to deflect and redirect against another enemy.”

  She’d spent the amulet’s power perfectly, turning the deadly attack of the Drake against its own wounded kin.

  The Drake facing her wasn’t dead, though, and the miss only enraged it. The monster opened its huge maw wide, roaring like rolling thunder. The wind of its breath blew Ruby’s hair back, but she stood tall in the face of the storm and a short, black tube appeared in her hands. With a soft whump, it launched a grenade into the roaring Drake’s mouth.

  Ruby dove aside, tackling Scott just as he finished sitting up, and rolled with him deeper into the cavern. The Drake staggered as the lava grenade detonated in its throat. It coughed, spewing lava out of its mouth.

  It spun after her and its body swelled as it breathed in deeply, despite how that must be burning its throat. A sinister orange glow gathered around its maw, eclipsing the lava and fire still trickling out. It had to be preparing some kind of breath attack.

  It took 1 second too long. I flashed across the cavern, killing intent roaring through me. That thing tried to kill Ruby. Now it would die. It never saw me coming. I jumped, soaring high over its broad back before crashing down fist first like a living meteor of final judgment.

  I triggered a mana potion along with Sapper Charge and drove my fist into the monster’s spine with all my strength and the full force of my momentum. Power flooded out of me, blasting into the Drake, and the impact smashed it flat to the floor on its belly. It grunted from the impact and the spell it had been about to unleash at Ruby dissipated.

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  Bouncing off its scaly hide, I sprinted up its back to its shoulder. The Drake started to recover, growling with fury as it twisted its head to look back at what had just attacked it.

  Wrong move, pal.

  I leaped off its shoulder, propelling myself forward with all my leg strength, straight at its giant, yellow eye just as it twisted to face me. In the blink of an eye it took to cross the space, I pulled my hot-hand fire spear from my inventory.

  The giant eye widened in shock. Doubly wrong move. With a shout of absolute rage, I drove the spear through the yellow orb. The eye imploded, splattering hot, sticky liquid everywhere as the spear plunged through.

  I followed, my body an extension of the spear until both my arms and half my torso disappeared deep into its ruined eye socket. I came to a jarring halt, shoulders slamming into the bones of its inner eye, but the spear punched 6 feet deeper into its head.

  Good thing I’d equipped my goggles, or that would have been even more disgusting. Blood and eye fluid and gore dripped off my goggles and down my face shield. I was surrounded by dark, mushy, nasty flesh.

  The Drake shuddered as I struggled to pull myself back out. I’d dived so deep, I’d really gotten myself stuck.

  “Congratulations, Lucas! You have defeated Prismatic Drake, level 45. Bonus experienced gained for defeating a higher-level enemy.”

  Perfect. I triggered Loot, dropping to the floor as the mighty Drake dissolved into stinking black smoke.

  “Lucas!” Ruby shouted, raising a fist in triumph.

  She stood 30 feet away. Scott struggled to stand beside her. Ruby’s Battle Bio Morph scales faded and she gave me a smile that lit up the entire chamber.

  I started to smile in return, but Scott shouted, “Look out!”

  He slammed into Ruby, knocking her sideways just before something vast smashed into him from the side. The impact swept him off his feet, blood spraying from his mouth before he was brutally crushed against the unyielding crystal walls. His body broke, limbs shattering, ribs imploding. Blood sprayed everywhere and he collapsed in a lifeless heap on the floor.

  For a second, all I could do was stare in shock. Somewhere Lana screamed.

  An enormous form corkscrewed out of the ceiling where it had remained perfectly concealed. The thing that smashed Scott turned out to be its thick tail that had lashed out from cover before dragging the rest of the monster forth.

  It landed with a boom that shook the cavern. The monster was enormous, at least twice the size of the other two Drakes, and when it unleashed its aura, its power flooded the entire cavern, rivaling Alpha’s for pure raw force.

  Even as I shook myself out of my astonishment and started forward, the Drake lashed out with a lazy-looking blow with one foreclaw the size of a trampoline. It caught Ruby just as she regained her footing, Battle Bio Morph scales forming over her skin again. Even 500% extra defense didn’t help. The monster tore through her body and armor in a ghastly spray of blood that sent her careening into the wall.

  “No!” I roared, my mind refusing to believe what was happening. Tomas shouted something, but I couldn’t hear. All I could see was Ruby broken and bloody on the floor. Lana screamed again, but the sound seemed to hang in the air as time slowed.

  Identify triggered, but I didn’t notice the text and barely heard Eva read it in that same calm tone, uncaring of the disaster we faced.

  “Prismatic Drake Overlord. Level 52. Dungeon Boss. The final evolution of its kind, the Overlord is the undisputed king of the dungeon. Ten times mightier than its lesser siblings, the Overlord is impervious to anything but the mightiest blows and rarely bothers unleashing its devastating incineration breath.”

  White-hot rage boiled through my mind, snuffing out rational thought, replacing it with a blood frenzy more fierce than anything I’d ever felt. With a wolflike howl, I sprinted at the monster, blades dropping into my hands so I could pierce its black heart.

  The monster shot toward me with blurring speed, moving so much faster than the other Drakes had. Monsters that big shouldn’t be able to move that fast. Even in my berserker rage, the danger registered, so I leaped high, twisting to soar feet first, hoping to either kick off its snout or strike from above when its enormous head shot beneath me.

  The monster changed course smoothly, its head the size of a box truck, rising to snatch me out of the air. I prepared my blades, grinning savagely as its huge maw gaped wide enough to swallow me in a single bite. More than one monster had tried that trick, and I’d killed them all.

  A crossbow bolt exploded against the Overlord’s throat. The flames washed harmlessly across its scales, but the blast made it jerk its snout downward, just a bit.

  So instead of swallowing me whole, those deadly jaws slammed shut like a spiky bank vault over my waist.

  Two of its top front teeth punched through my armor and my stomach, shearing entirely through my torso and scraping either side of my spine. At the same time, its lower teeth punched up through my waist, shattering my pelvis.

  Agony more fierce than anything believable shattered my mind. Every muscle spasmed, but I couldn’t scream. The impact blasted the air from my lungs, along with what felt like a gallon of blood. Echo tumbled from my left hand and I reflexively seized a short spike protruding from the top of the monster’s snout.

  Rage boiled through me, trying in vain to push back the pain. Lana, that idiot! She might have been trying to help, but her timing couldn’t have been worse. No monster had hurt me so badly since I climbed to stage 2, and it was all Lana’s fault! If I could reach her, I’d stab her through the stomach. See how she liked it.

  My Crash Test Dummy jacket chose that moment to speak. “Not wearing a seatbelt makes even a little crash so much worse. Let this be a lesson to you to be a bit more careful.”

  “Oh, shut up,” I growled.

  The Overlord shook me violently then, whipping me back and forth with the force of an avalanche, so hard my neck nearly snapped. My torso stretched and started to separate as the horrific tears through my entire body ripped open under the strain.

  The pain assaulted my mind like I’d dunked my head in a volcano and I passed out.