The wolves were not the size of real, full-grown wolves. To most people, they were closer to small dogs, squat and low to the ground, their shapes more suggestion than anatomy. To me, they might as well have been wolves. Anything with teeth that could reach my throat qualified.

  They were made of slime that burned and stuck to anything it touched. It was translucent in places and opaque in others, shifting constantly as if the creatures were never quite settled in their own bodies. Most of the time, the slime wolves favored the burning variant because it was fast and caused panic. Fire made people sloppy. Winnie forced them to adapt.

  Instead of trying to burn her, the slime wolves switched tactics mid-fight. Thick, sticky strands slammed into her from multiple angles, snapping out like ropes and splattering across her legs and torso. She went down hard, thrashing as the slime hardened around her, locking joints and stealing leverage. Log was still flaming in her hands, carving deep furrows into the dirt as she fought to keep her grip.

  The enchantment did not burn her when it brushed against her skin. As long as she held Log, the fire shut itself down at the point of contact. I felt the circuits cycle from a distance, safety measures engaging automatically as the enchantments recognized her as the owner and cut the effect instantly.

  It would have been easier if Log were an attunement. The safety and efficiency would have solved half our problems. I had chosen not to do that anyway. I wanted it to become a growth item.

  That concern stopped mattering when the den mother and the alpha charged me together.

  For a split second, my hand drifted toward the whistle at my chest.

  I didn’t blow it.

  A rush of sharp, cold air passed my shoulder as an arrow tore past me and struck the den mother dead center in the head. Muck splashed outward in a heavy spray. The impact did not stop her, but the wind buffeting her mass shoved her off-line and slowed her just enough to buy me space.

  That left only the alpha.

  I planted my staff and angled it forward like an impaling spear because that was what it had become. I had removed the focusing orb weeks ago and replaced it with a simple spear tip. There was no circuit involved, no finesse, just sharpened metal fixed to reinforced wood. Sometimes simple worked best.

  The alpha slammed into it chest-first. If the thing had possessed a sternum, the spear would have taken it square there. Instead, the tip punched into the center of its mass as the staff bowed under the force, flexing hard as the creature drove itself forward. It did not slow. Slimes did not care about piercing the way flesh did.

  But it let me hold it.

  I leaned into the staff, feet digging deep into the dirt, muscles screaming as I forced the alpha back inch by inch. The spear held it at bay, lifting and shoving it backward as the shaft fought against its weight. The creature was already starting to slide forward along the embedded metal, slowly working its way free. I could feel the pressure shifting, the balance worsening.

  Meka’s newest spell answered the opening.

  “I cast Summon Plant Spirits!” she shouted.

  The ground erupted.

  Vines burst up along the alpha’s flanks, thorned whips snapping and coiling around its mass. The creature recoiled as pain finally registered and its attention split between me and the sudden assault from below.

  Bramble fiends surged out of the earth to harry and restrain rather than kill outright. Thorned limbs lashed again and again, carving chunks of slime free and tearing at cohesion. The damage was not devastating, but it was more than I was managing alone, and more importantly, it slowed the alpha down.

  We still needed Winnie. She was our real damage. Without her, this turned into a long, ugly problem.

  Clarice kept firing. Arrow after arrow streaked through the clearing, some deflected, most landing. Even at her level of skill, accuracy against fast, shifting targets was never perfect, but she never stopped shooting, never let the pressure drop.

  The smaller wolves disengaged from Winnie once she was fully coated in slime and began maneuvering toward the bramble fiends instead, drawn to the new threat. That gave her space, but it also meant she was buried.

  If I could drop the alpha, the rest of the fight would collapse quickly. The problem was that I did not have many ways to actually kill it.

  Most of the enchantments on my staff existed to let me hit harder, move faster, and survive impacts that should have broken me. Flexibility, reinforcement, and durability mattered more than raw damage.

  At least the last one was holding. The durability circuits were the only thing keeping the staff from being melted away as the alpha pressed against it. The slime hissed and smoked where it met enchanted wood. It did not damage the staff itself, only ate away at whatever debris and residue remained from earlier fights.

  I held my ground, buying time, and hoped Winnie got free before I ran out of it.

  The alpha tensed.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Something horrible stretched inside its throat. Its neck elongated in a way no wolf’s ever should, translucent slime pulling thin as something swelled within. I could see it gathering there, mucus or acid or something worse, churning behind the membrane as it kept forcing itself forward. I was at point-blank range.

  I let go of my staff.

  I reached behind me, yanked my shield free, and planted it in front of my body. I curled in as tight as I could just as the alpha released it.

  The impact slammed into my shield in a pressurized wave. I felt the enchantments inside it surge and overload against my grip as acidic slime splashed and detonated across the surface. The force still threw me backward. My back hit a tree, air ripping out of my lungs, and I lost my grip on the shield as it skidded away across the ground.

  For a heartbeat, I knew I was in real trouble.

  Then I heard Winnie.

  She screamed.

  It was one long, uninterrupted howl of profanity, no pauses, no breaths I could hear, just a continuous stream of sound tearing through the clearing as she finally figured it out.

  “FUCK SHIT YA BASTARDS JELLYROT GRUNDFELD DOG EATING ASSHOLES YOU STICKY FUCKS SKARNBIT SPLATTERWANK GET OFF ME THRUMGRAK MOTHER FUCKING SLIMES COPPERLICK I HATE THIS DREGGIT SHIT FUCK URM STICKY FUCKING SLIMES DIE DIE DIE!”

  The words blurred together into something almost musical in their fury. Most of them didn’t even sound like real words anymore. I had no idea where she learned half of them, and I wasn’t entirely sure what the other half meant, but I was confident every single one qualified as profanity in some way. I would have to ask later. It seemed like it might be fun learning new words.

  More importantly, it meant she was moving.

  The alpha was still focused on me. The den mother lay dead. Meka had the remaining wolves tied up in vines and thorns, keeping them busy.

  Log came down like the end of an argument.

  Winnie’s swing crushed into the alpha’s side, driving it into the dirt with bone-jarring force. The creature let out a wet, muffled whine, the sound distorted as if it were drowning, and then it went still.

  Winnie did not stop.

  She kept shouting, the profanity still pouring out of her in one long, fuel?soaked tirade as she tried to keep swinging. Meka rushed in and wrapped both arms around her from behind, planting her feet and hauling Winnie back before she could pulp what was left of the body.

  “That’s enough,” Meka said, straining. “We’ll lose the prize if you keep going.”

  Winnie cursed louder in response, but she finally stopped moving.

  A soft chime rang through the clearing.

  Every adventurer knew that sound, even if most never heard it in person.

  A heartbeat later, something heavy hit the ground with a dull thud, and a chest sat where there had been nothing before.

  Dungeon loot.

  The good kind. The kind that made people take risks they had no business taking. The kind that made dungeons worth surviving.

  I looked down at my shield, or what was left of it. The surface was scarred, warped, and partially eaten away, enchantments spent and cracked. Myrda had helped me make that shield. I sighed.

  “Great,” I said. “Now I’ve gotta go kill another turtle.”

  I really didn't like killing those turtles. Especially after meeting Squishy in heaven. I didn't want to do it again.

  They made excellent shields, though.

  Clarice slid down from the trees where she had been firing from, landing lightly and already scanning the clearing. She looked at me, then at Winnie, and then back again.

  “Anybody hurt?” she asked.

  “Not much,” I said. “My hand’s a little burned from the grip when that thing hit me with the slime attack. Or the breath attack. Or whatever that was.” I exhaled. “We really should read the book.”

  Clarice nodded. “You do that. I’m going to check the loot.”

  “Fine,” I said. “If the stories are true, there should be something in there for all of us.”

  There were a few things that had changed in this lifetime compared to my last. One of them wasn't that there was a new god of the dungeons, but that the god of the dungeons had changed the rules.

  Gods rose and fell all the time. Minor gods burned bright and vanished, cult gods flared up and were forgotten, and the world kept moving. Dungeons, though, had always been the same. Brutal. Indifferent. A place where you risked your life for strength and often walked away with nothing but scars.

  That had changed.

  The god of the dungeons had implemented new rules. Real ones. Loot rules, among others.

  It turned out that when most people were asked to walk into a hole in the ground where death was common and reward was uncertain, they tended to refuse. Strength alone wasn't always enough incentive. Especially at higher tiers, where the value of a monster’s remains often failed to match the effort required to kill it. Some of the most dangerous creatures left behind nothing useful at all. A stone golem was still just rock.

  Greta had explained it to us in blunt terms. Steel was common. Steel dungeons were everywhere, which meant steel work was everywhere. It paid well enough to live on, the danger was understood, and there was always another job waiting when you came back out.

  Silver was different. Silver-ranked dungeons were rarer, and silver work bottlenecked hard because almost everyone pushing higher needed to pass through it. If you wanted gold, you needed silver, which meant silver quests vanished fast and stayed scarce.

  Gold was where most real adventurers stopped.

  Gold rank brought longevity more than anything else. For a human, it meant going from a century of life to several. Five hundred years was common. Longer if you were careful. That alone made gold worth reaching, even if you never intended to go higher.

  Above gold, everything broke down.

  Platinum-ranked dungeons were the last ones the world tolerated. Anything beyond that was something no one believed they could stop if it broke. There were only a handful of gold-ranked dungeons to begin with, and they were cleared quickly by those chasing something higher.

  Gold-ranked adventurers often took steel contracts instead, because steel was reliable and far less dangerous. The world couldn't afford gold-ranked solutions to ordinary problems, and so subsidies, special contracts, and compromises filled the gap.

  The new dungeon rules changed that equation.

  People became hungry for reward chests in a way they never had been before. Risk suddenly came with something tangible at the end of it, and that made adventurers bolder, sometimes smarter, and sometimes far, far dumber. More people went into dungeons. More people pushed deeper. And all of that attention and action fed back into the god of the dungeons, strengthening him in ways that hadn’t been possible when dungeons were mostly avoided.

  Greta had told us the change was recent, only within the last fifty years, long after she had stepped back from full-time adventuring. Even so, it had tempted her back into the field once or twice when the job was too good to ignore. She said it with a laugh, but she meant it.

  She enjoyed teaching too much to give it up, though. Raising the next generation of adventurers mattered more to her than chasing one more payout, especially if those students might one day surpass her.

  She also warned us.

  People called them greed hamsters, she said, and then snorted. Loot lemmings was a more accurate term, in her opinion.

  They weren’t monsters. They were people who ran headfirst toward shining rewards without thinking, and they got themselves killed for it.

  I watched the chest sit there and felt a flicker of something like anticipation.

  I was genuinely excited to see what was inside.