The air changes instantly. The humid jungle heat and the sulfuric steam are gone. Here, it’s cool, dry, and smells like ancient earth and minerals. The tunnel is immense, wide enough to drive a semi-truck right through. The walls are a complex tangle of fossilized roots, thick as cathedral pillars, holding up the cavern ceiling.

  Kim opens her quick menu and spawns a Tactical Flashlight she just bought from the Cosmic Shop. She clips it under her rifle barrel with a professional click. The harsh white beam sweeps the darkness, revealing thousands of little glowing eyes in the dark corners. Insects. Glow-worms the size of cats scattering away from the light.

  “Stay tight,” I whisper. “No unnecessary noise.”

  The hike is long. Oppressive.

  Twenty minutes in, the ground starts to vibrate.

  THUMP-THUMP.

  A giant heartbeat echoing right out of the walls.

  “Hold up!” Kim hisses.

  Ahead of us, the tunnel widens. And right in the middle of the passage, blocking the road, a mass of pale pink flesh pulses gently.

  It’s a Deep Worm. A subterranean cousin of the giant surface worm, just a blinder, fatter version. It’s asleep, coiled up on itself like an obese python.

  Chris raises his sword.

  “No,” Nectarine intervenes, placing her four-fingered hand on the arm of Chris. “The Sleeper is sacred. If you kill it, its acidic blood will melt the rock and we will be buried. We must pass… with respect.”

  She steps forward alone. She places her hand on the monster’s flank and starts humming a strange lullaby made of soft whistles. The Worm shudders, relaxes, and rolls slightly to the side, clearing a narrow path against the wall.

  “Go,” she whispers. “Fast.”

  We squeeze between the wall and the soft flesh of the monster, holding our breath. The smell of wet earth is dizzying.

  An hour later, we hit a crossroads. Three tunnels.

  “Left,” Nectarine indicates without hesitation. “Right leads to the Nest of Burrowing Moles. You do not want to meet a Mole. They’ve got diamond claws and a very bad temper.”

  We take the left. But fate has a sick sense of humor. We barely step inside before the right wall explodes in a shower of rubble.

  A brown, whiskered head with a pink star-shaped nose bursts from the rock. A Giant Mole. It sniffs the air, claws scraping stone with an unbearable screech.

  “Shit!” Kim curses.

  “No fighting!” I yell. “Run!”

  We break into a sprint. The Mole, blinded by the flashlight beam, hesitates, grunts, and decides that digging another hole is way more interesting than chasing fast meat. It dives back into the wall, leaving us alone with our adrenaline spikes.

  The slope steepens. We head down. Deeper and deeper.

  “We are here,” Nectarine breathes, a gleam of pride in her eyes.

  The tunnel suddenly opens onto the void.

  We stop at the edge of a dizzying drop. We’re on a natural ledge, high up the wall of a colossal cavern. A cavern so massive it has its own climate.

  Below, hundreds of meters beneath our feet, lies the Kingdom of the Minimoons.

  An immense patch of light glows at the bottom of the abyss.

  A sprawling city, without skyscrapers or towers, built directly on the rocky floor. It’s an ocean of dark roofs laid out in concentric circles around a central square. Thousands of amber and blue lanterns trace the streets like veins of fire in the pitch black. It’s a fragile bubble of life, a Shadow City pushing back the eternal darkness through sheer bioluminescence.

  It looks like a complex diorama abandoned at the bottom of a giant cellar. It’s beautiful, melancholic, and totally unexpected.

  “Welcome to Lunaria,” Nectarine declares, spreading her arms. “My home.”

  I stare at the spectacle, jaw hanging open.

  “Okay,” I admit, impressed despite myself. “For people living in the dark, you’ve got a hell of a sense of decor.”

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  Nectarine suddenly stiffens. The pride of showing off her kingdom fades, making way for fleeting paranoia. She looks around for something to hide behind, nervously grabbing a piece of her own torn sleeve.

  “No one must recognize me,” she whispers, her voice trembling slightly. “Those who sold me… they might be down there. They’ve got eyes everywhere. If it becomes known that the Eldest Daughter has returned, I am dead before reaching the Palace.”

  Chris hurriedly rummages through his [Atlas’s Burden].

  “Wait! I’ve got what you need.”

  He pulls out a dark cloth garment, slightly burnt at the edges but still functional. It’s the old tunic Kim wore under her tactical vest before the mage’s fire destroyed it. Chris kept it “just in case.”

  “Put this on,” he says, handing her the fabric. “It’s big enough to make a hood and hide your ears.”

  Nectarine takes it gratefully and wraps herself up, pulling the fabric over her face until only the bottom of her chin is visible.

  Just as she adjusts her disguise, a familiar vibration ripples through the air. The System confirms our progress.

  [TIER 3 COMPLETED: ESCORT IN HOSTILE TERRITORY]

  [Start of TIER 4: BODYGUARD]

  [Objective]: Escort the target to the Palace.

  [Failure Condition]: Death of the target.

  [Sanction]: Instant Death of the squad.

  A heavy silence falls over the group. Chris turns deathly pale, eyes locked onto that last blood-red line.

  “Instant death?” he stammers. “Just if she dies? We don’t even get a classic ‘Game Over’? That’s… that’s way too much pressure!”

  Kim grips the stock of her rifle.

  “One mistake and we’re erased,” she breathes, jaw clenched. “If a sniper hits her, we die. If she trips and breaks her neck, we die. Our lives don’t depend on us anymore.”

  I feel a drop of cold sweat roll down my back.

  “It’s a suicide mission,” I whisper. “The System just slapped an explosive collar around our necks and handed the remote to fate.”

  Barely has the System notification faded when a small pink window, way more intrusive, pops right in front of my eyes with a cheerful chime.

  [Lilith]: Good thing I dropped by, honey. A princess, a disguise, tension… This is getting very interesting.

  I swipe the window away, but an insidious doubt takes root in my mind. Something is off.

  Lilith told me she was backing another GodRunner, an absolute speed-runner who’s already on Floor 19. So, logically, she’s already seen this floor. She already knows the script. She should be jaded, spoiling the ending, not watching the plot unfold with popcorn.

  Why is she reacting like it’s a brand-new episode? Did my predecessor miss this quest? Or is she lying to me about everything?

  I don’t have time to dig into this inconsistency. Survival first, existential questions later.

  I turn to the others, my face dead serious. We have to channel this fear into discipline.

  “Okay,” I say, forcing my voice to stay steady. “The script just changed. We’re not transporters anymore. We’re secret agents carrying a ticking time bomb. We switch to incognito mode. Kid, you take point, you act as the wall. Kim, you watch the roofs. I’ve got the package.”

  I’m about to take the first step down the ramp, but Chris holds me back by the sleeve. He’s white as a sheet, eyes glued to a notification only he can see.

  “Uncle Ben… wait,” he breathes in horror. “My Sponsor… He just told me something.”

  “What? He wants you to swap shields?”

  Chris shakes his head frantically.

  “No. He says we’ve been in a ‘Bonus Quest’ since we opened that cage. It’s hidden content.”

  He gulps.

  “According to him, 99% of Climbers fail at Tier 1. They don’t have enough Speed. They never reach the door before the timer runs out. Those who pull off a miracle usually get crushed by fatigue or Orcs at Tier 2. No one ever reaches the Pink Tent.”

  Kim frowns.

  “So what? What happens to them when the timer hits zero?”

  “That’s the worst part,” Chris answers, his voice trembling. “They don’t die. When time runs out, the shrinking spell wears off. They grow back to normal size, and they just have to walk through the door. Alive.”

  I freeze. The blood drains from my face.

  I think back to the previous notifications.

  Tier 1: [Time Remaining]. Tier 2: [Time Remaining]. Tier 3: [Time Remaining].

  It never said “Failure = Death.” If we had been too slow, or too weak to beat the King, we could have just waited for the timer to run out, grown back to full size, and walked out. Alive.

  I look at the current notification, burning blood red.

  [Tier 4]: [Failure Condition]: Instant Death of the squad.

  A nervous, borderline hysterical laugh rises in my throat.

  “Wait…” I say in a hollow voice. “You’re telling me that if we sucked… if we had been totally mediocre like everyone else… we’d be perfectly safe right now?”

  Chris nods miserably.

  “It’s because we were ‘Perfect’ that the System unlocked the ‘True Ending’. And the True Ending… it can actually kill us.”

  I look up at the rock ceiling, fists clenched.

  “It’s the ultimate punishment for tryhards,” I rage. “We played so well, ran so fast with our mutant stats, that we accidentally unlocked Hardcore Mode. It’s the literal definition of ‘Suffering from Success’.”

  I turn to Nectarine, who is adjusting her veil. She is the key to this lethal bonus level. If we had just left her in her cage, we’d be fine right now.

  “Great,” I conclude bitterly. “We’re victims of our own competence. Well, now that we know we dug our own grave by being too good, we better climb out the top.”

  I tighten my grip on my shovel.

  “We can’t go back. If we fail now, we die for being overachievers. So we finish this bonus quest, and we rake in the maximum reward.”

  I pull out my flask with a slow, solemn gesture. I unscrew the cap, taking my time, savoring this little ritual of calm before the storm. I bring the cold metal to my lips and take a long, deep swig, letting the cheap booze burn the fear and anesthetize the doubt.

  I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and recap the flask with a sharp click.

  “Move out.”

  While Chris and Kim fall into formation around Nectarine, I slow my pace for a second. I discreetly open my private chat with Lilith. The alcohol calmed my nerves, but not my suspicion.

  [Ben]: Did you know?

  The answer comes instantly, accompanied by a little mocking bell sound.

  [Lilith]: If you had answered me in the bath when I asked who she was, I would have told you… or not. ^^

  [Lilith]: But don’t make that face. Know one thing: Bonus Quest means Exploit.

  I snap the window shut, my teeth clenched.

  “She’s worse than the dungeon,” I whisper.

  I rejoin the others. The path to the Royal Palace is open. And we’re going to have to kill everything that moves if we want to get out of here alive.