"All right team, gather up!" Hydrion snapped, striding purposefully in front of the already gathered group. "We need to clear one very important thing here."

  "You know you could have just asked me?" Pierre whispered to Jack with exasperation.

  "No, no, Pierre, this needs to be addressed publicly." Hydrion shook his head gravely. "We are in a game after all, and people need to be made aware. Dragons are the absolutely fucking worst."

  "Are we having this conversation for real?" Cruz Control asked, still panting from the jog. "I vote we'd rather talk about this whole running bullshit you've inflicted on us."

  "Long ago, people knew Dragons and the evilness they represent." Hydrion raised a finger like a professor beginning a lecture, completely ignoring Cruz Control’s question. "Every culture, everywhere you look, depicted dragons as the creatures they truly were. Mad with lust for money, drunk on power, bringers of doom and destruction!"

  "Except like... the whole of Asia?" Jack muttered, taken aback. “They always liked dragons in Asia.”

  "They would sweep by villages, steal your cattle, burn your crops, crap on your hut." Hydrion continued as if he hadn't heard Jack at all. "People understood that making a deal with a dragon brought nothing but misfortune and sorrow. And then, two or three hundred years ago, dragons did the impossible." He paused dramatically. "They got themselves a PR specialist."

  "A what now?" Martha perked up, suddenly interested.

  "Or at least that's what I think happened, and there is strong evidence for it." Hydrion nodded sagely. "Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, they systematically subverted humanity's natural caution and instead, enshrined this ridiculous picture of majestic beings. Writer after writer praised them as sublime creatures—if not forces of good, then at least beings of very complex character worthy of sympathy and understanding."

  "Seriously people, we could talk about stats, skills, actual plans." Cruz Control tried desperately to shift the conversation. "There are literally so many useful things we could be discussing right now."

  "But they are as evil as they ever were!" Hydrion spoke right over her, voice rising. "Don't let their shiny scales fool you! That's exactly what they want!"

  "Dude, they are cool though," Jack said with a shrug. "They breathe fire, and in Europe they've got wings and everything."

  "And what's so cool about that, huh?" Hydrion rounded on him. "Oh, you can breathe fire—wow, every fire mage worth their hat can do that. And wings." He threw his hands up. "Wings! Please. Oh look at me, I got wings." He began flapping his arms mockingly. "Flap, flap, fap, fap—"

  He stopped. The group stared at him.

  "Did you just—" Pierre started.

  "The pronunciation shifted," Hydrion said quickly, lowering his arms. "Moving on. Vampires—"

  "FUCKING STOP!" Cruz Control yelled. An impressive feat considering she was still gasping for air. "Seriously, who gives a shit about dragons!?"

  "My point exactly." Hydrion nodded with approval. This, at last, made Cruz Control erupt.

  "It's been six hours since the quest was issued, and I'm tired, my feet hurt, and my pride hurts even more!" she spit out, jabbing a finger at Hydrion. "I'm still level 2 and I would love nothing more than to take my bowstring and tie it around my consultant's throat. Hydrion, this whole jogging thing sucks ass, and I'm done with it!" "Did you get any bonus stat points from the exercise?" Tadzio asked with polite curiosity.

  "No! The only thing I got from it is depleted stamina and self-respect." She growled. "I'm only a few points from level 3, and I would love to get there TODAY. By killing things. Like we're supposed to."

  "Se?orita, to reach perfection a hero must struggle!" Don Espadón stepped forward with theatrical gravitas. "You must—"

  "If you tell me one more time something about glistening muscles," the bartender turned on him, eyes blazing, "or what I must do, I'll shove your sword so far up your ass that your tonsils will be knighted."

  The group went quiet for exactly half a second.

  "Caaaaareful, Don," Hydrion smirked, his good humor returning after he got the dragon thing off his chest. "Keep pushing and your next bowel movement will qualify as a legendary weapon drop."

  "Your colon might unlock the Sword Storage passive skill," Sir Wpierdol added thoughtfully, stroking his chin as if considering the game mechanics.

  "You'll be trending under hashtag Medieval Proctology," Martha grinned.

  "Dios mío." Don Espadón took a careful step back, hand instinctively moving to protect his rear.

  "Nothing unites a team quite like ass-related threats," Hydrion nodded with genuine approval. "This is growth, people. Real growth."

  "I hate every single one of you," Cruz Control muttered, but there was the faintest crack in her scowl. "When we're done with this tutorial, I'm joining a team of amazons. No men included. Just serious and competent women who take quests seriously."

  "Well, at least you wouldn't have to jog there." Pierre, who had mercifully refrained from participating in the previous topic, nodded sympathetically. "You'd just be running instead. Through a jungle. Chasing prey."

  "Pierre," she turned on the assassin, but he wasn't done with his vision.

  "And dressed in whatever furs you managed to hunt," he continued, undeterred. "Very freeing, I imagine. Very breathable."

  "Ohhh, fantástico idea!" Don Espadón clapped his hands together, eyes lighting up. "I can help you stitch the furs together before you go! A true crafted piece! People would die for an authentic amazon woman in furs—the aesthetic alone would be worth—"

  "Ooh, very Frazetta," Martha added appreciatively. "Classic fantasy vibes."

  "We could bedazzle it," Jack offered. "Add some bones, maybe some teeth. Really lean into the whole savage huntress thing."

  "I know a guy who does leather tooling," Tadzio said. "Custom work. Very reasonable rates. Maybe we can find him."

  "FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!" Cruz Control threw her hands up. "Do you all have ADHD!? Can we get a new plan going instead of collectively workshopping my jungle bikini!?"

  "To be fair," Hydrion raised a finger, "you brought up the amazons."

  There was something almost beautiful about it, really. Nothing united a group quite like collectively ganging up on one person. All the tension channeled into the sacred bonding ritual of making someone's life worse. Cruz Control's life, in this instance. Classic. Even Balladin was smiling, though he'd been smart enough to keep his mouth shut. The stress that had been mounting during their forced march melted away with every jab.

  "I was making a point about competence!"

  "All we heard was 'butt-naked through the jungle,'" Martha shrugged. "You lost us after that."

  "In the furs. In the furs," Hydrion corrected, then quickly added before Cruz Control could reload. "Here's what we're going to do. Cruz, I've heard you. No more jogging for you today."

  That seemed to stop her before more curses spewed out of her mouth. She narrowed her eyes suspiciously, waiting for the catch.

  "It seems the deeper we go into the forest, the harder the enemies we encounter," Hydrion continued, shifting into actual leader mode. "So there's no point staying split up and farming the easy stuff near the edges. We push forward as a group until we start having meaningful encounters. Real fights worth real XP. And along the way, we test formations, try some tactics, see what works best for us as a team."

  "Finally," Cruz Control muttered. "Actual strategy."

  "Don't get used to it," Martha said. "Give him five minutes."

  "I wonder," Pierre mused, ignoring them both, "if we go deep enough, whether we'd find where those imps and gogs are actually spawning from." He glanced around at the forest. "Or do you think they're just popping into existence out of thin air whenever the game wills it?"

  "Oh, the game has to have something to do with it," Hydrion said. "These spawn holes we found don't just randomly spawn monsters—there's got to be a dungeon system underneath coordinating the whole thing. It has to be something we can actually find and explore, otherwise what's the point of the quest?"

  "What if the dungeon only spawns monsters proportional to how many players are nearby?" Martha leaned in conspiratorially. "Like, the system is literally feeding on our presence. The more of us that go in, the more monsters it creates. We're not hunting them—we're creating them just by existing here. Classic positive feedback loop. We're the content."

  "Martha..." Pierre groaned.

  "Or—hear me out—what if this ain't random spawning at all?" Martha's eyes lit up with that familiar gleam. "What if the dungeon's a breeding farm? Like, the game designers are literally farming imps and gogs deeper down, and these are just the ones that escape to the surface. Maybe there's some giant demon queen squatting in the depths just popping out babies by the hundreds, and we're the unpaid pest control."

  "Please stop," Pierre cut in, but Martha was already bouncing on her heels, hands gesturing wildly.

  "OR, or, or—what if we're the farm!?" Her voice pitched higher with excitement. "Think about it! Every time we kill something, the dungeon absorbs the death energy and uses it to spawn two more! We're not clearing it, we're feeding it! The whole economy is—"

  "Martha." Pierre grabbed the bridge of his nose. "Do you remember our deal from before? Right now the only one doing farming is you. Farming engagement. This is not X, this is not Rumble, it's your goddamn party. We don't need to subscribe and smash that like button."

  Guitar notes cut through the chaos. The group turned as one toward Balladin, who'd been content to stay at the back until now.

  "Little Martha had a farm..." he intoned softly.

  "E-I-E-I-O." It was out of Jack's mouth before he could stop it.

  "That's it!" Cruz Control snapped her fingers. The sound of guitar died mid-strum, and nobody else picked up the tune. "I've finally snapped. I went to a mental hospital, they pumped me full of some really good shit, and now I'm hallucinating all of you."

  Martha's eyes sparkled. In fact, her whole face lit up. Looking at her, for a second Hydrion thought the sky would part, a beam of light would lift her off the ground, and a pair of soft white wings would sprout from her back.

  "Honey," Martha looked at Cruz Control, who instinctively took a step back—already regretting not the outburst itself, but definitely the mental hospital angle. "What if you're right? What if we're all in some psych ward right now, strapped to beds, and this whole 'game world' thing is just mass shared psychosis from whatever they're pumping into us? The perfect cover—make us think we're playing a game so we don't realize we're actually test subjects for some pharmaceutical company's experimental—"

  "It's a trap!" Hydrion blurted out, quickly covering his mouth. "Sorry, Pierre. It sort of escaped," he added sheepishly.

  Pierre just sighed.

  "I want to go back to my bar," Cruz Control covered her face with her hand. "I want my drunk and disorderly customers back. They made sense."

  Hydrion's eyes dulled down to gray—Sloth, who'd been trying to get the rest of him to focus for a while now, finally ran out of patience and took the reins, forcibly dragging the quest to the forefront of the attention all five heads shared.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  [New Quest Available: Where do they come from?]

  Objective: Find out where the imps and gogs are coming from.

  Time Remaining: Finish the quest before you leave this level of tutorial.

  Details: Are these creatures spawning from thin air, breeding somewhere deeper, or arriving through some other means? Investigate their origin.

  Accept the quest? Yes/No

  Time remaining for quest acceptance: 59 minutes 54 seconds

  “Oh,” Hydrion murmured as his eyes returned to normal, “did everyone get a quest to find where the imps are coming from?”

  "Well, would you look at that," Martha said triumphantly, putting her hands on her hips. Her words cut through the silence that suddenly fell upon the party as everyone read. "Big System is watching. It's listening. It's—"

  "Maaaaartha," Pierre called out with anguish.

  "Oh for fuck's sake, you're no fun." The witch stomped her foot.

  "You're welcome to leave the party," Hydrion smirked, "and join the amazons with Cruz Control. Run through the jungle. Very liberating, I hear. As much as we love to have you around and would miss you terribly, we can’t stand between you and your heart’s desires."

  "I will murder you in your sleep," Cruz Control said flatly.

  "Noted. All right everybody," Hydrion clapped his hands to get their attention, "we're accepting this quest and moving out to find where those imps and gogs are coming from!" He shifted into commander mode, pointing at each party member in turn. "Pierre, you cover our backs. Martha, you take the left flank. Don Espadón, you take the right. Balladin, you take center and support the fighting with your music. Tadzio, you're on janitor duty. You’re our reserve—where shit's going down, you go in and help resolve it quickly. I'll spearhead the expedition."

  "What about me?" Cruz Control asked, arms crossed.

  "I'm glad you asked." Hydrion grinned from ear to ear. The kind of grin that made people nervous. "Jack, you're responsible for Cruz Control's safety and mobility. To help her regain stamina, you get her on your back and carry her. Drop her off to wherever the fighting will be so she can provide support. Then back up she goes."

  "If you think for one second that I'm going to—" Cruz Control started, then yelped as Jack hoisted her up with practiced ease and placed her on his shoulders as if she weighed nothing.

  "Comfortable?" Jack asked cheerfully from below.

  "I WILL END YOU."

  "She's comfortable," Jack reported.

  "Excellent. If anyone sees any clues, shout. Otherwise, we only stop to fuck up some imps and gogs!" Hydrion raised his fist. "Horror Story, move out!"

  They didn't quite break into a run, but the pace Hydrion set was definitely not a leisurely stroll through the forest. To the accompaniment of "let me down!" and "you goddamned--" this or that, bolstered by Balladin's jaunty march tune buffing the entire party, they jogged deeper into the woods and further away from the road.

  That gave Hydrion an opportunity to glance at his Party Roster while Sloth fell asleep on duty.

  [System Scan: Horror Story Party Members]

  Leader:

  Hydrion - lvl 5 Healer

  Members:

  Balladin - lvl 2 Bard

  Cruz Control - lvl 2 Archer

  Don Espadón - lvl 3 Gladiator

  Jack - lvl 3 Warrior

  Martha - lvl 3 Witch

  Pierre - lvl 3 Assassin

  Sir. Wpierdol - lvl 2 Brawler

  It seemed levels had become a thing since he'd last looked at his party information. His eyes scanned the familiar names—Martha, Pierre, Don Espadón—before falling to the last entry.

  Sir Wpierdol. Level 2.

  Hydrion blinked. That couldn't be right.

  He'd watched Tadzio slip between attacks like smoke through fingers, landing strikes with the casual precision of someone who'd been doing this for decades. The man moved like violence was his native language. To think someone with that kind of skill was sitting at level 2 was mind-boggling.

  It took Hydrion a while to figure it out as he scrolled through notifications and dissected the combat logs. The answer lay in the brutal mathematics of the system. Killing a low-level imp gave barely any experience—maybe ten XP base. The party sphere actually helped everyone by granting a bonus one XP to each member for any kill within range, but that didn't change the fundamental problem: ten XP was nothing.

  Then there were Hydrion's own tactical decisions, which had inadvertently screwed the brawler over. He'd assigned Tadzio to watch his back—a position of trust and importance, but one that kept him away from most of the actual fighting. While Martha was racking up kills with her creative brutality, Tadzio was standing guard. And later, when Hydrion had sent him sprinting across the field to gather the scattered party members? That had been more cardio than combat. Great for building Speed stats, maybe. Terrible for XP gains.

  The man was the best fighter they had, and Hydrion had turned him into a glorified babysitter and messenger boy. No wonder he was still level 2.

  He glanced over at Tadzio, half-expecting resentment. Instead, the half-elf had his red-and-blue scarf pulled up—combat ready—fist pumping to some ancient rhythm only he could hear.

  "Yesh-cheh yeh-den! Yesh-cheh yeh-den!"

  “The dedication,” Hydrion thought. “A true martial artist.”

  He tried to parse what Tadzio had actually chanted, but the sounds slipped away like water through fingers.

  "God damn it," his Sloth head groaned internally. "Leaves scraping gravel. Consonants stacked like ram horns. Vowels apparently optional."

  He gave up and returned to his stat sheet duty. Several +1 XP notifications floated briefly through his vision before fading.

  "Nah, he'll be fine," Hydrion reassured himself. "The man's basically earning experience just by existing enthusiastically."

  The deeper into the forest they moved, the more monsters they encountered—and at higher levels than before. The easy pickings near the road gave way to actual threats. At first, the formation held, but that didn't last and the rhythm broke down quickly. By the third encounter, any pretense of organized movement had dissolved into creative chaos. At one point Hydrion spotted Don Espadón jumping over a crater with Cruz Control slung over his shoulder, her fists pounding against his skull while she screamed what sounded like creative suggestions about where he could shove his chivalry. Jack bounded after them like a delighted golden retriever, turning the whole thing into what looked like a game of tag. Hydrion didn't inquire. In fact, he pretended not to see the whole thing.

  Yet it wasn't until they encountered a creature the system identified as a hellhound, along with its imp and gog buddies, that they were forced to regroup for a full-blown fight.

  The beast stood as tall as a black bear, a massive dog with a muscular frame and coarse brownish fur matted with ash. Its snarling jaw was lined with exposed teeth, and its glowing red eyes swept across the party members, as if deciding which one to kill first. Broad-chested and grounded on thick limbs, the overall silhouette was dense and imposing—less "man's best friend" and more "man's final problem."

  Rustbucket and Faye had warned them about these things, so they weren't caught completely off guard. But hearing about something and standing eye to eye with a saliva-dripping hellhound were two completely different experiences. The former involved nodding along politely. The latter involved a very real possibility of becoming dog food.

  They handled it, but the screaming levels far exceeded Hydrion's comfort zone.

  Unfortunately, on the quest front they didn't make nearly as much progress. At one point Pierre split off to shadow a group of imps, hoping to track them back to wherever they'd come from. No luck—he tailed them for fifteen minutes before they found another group of players who annihilated them while Pierre returned empty handed.

  The party searched for clues without success, spreading out and regrouping, until Martha spotted movement near a gnarled tree—one of the imps squeezing out from underneath a thick root like some kind of demonic birth.

  When they went to investigate—after dispatching the imp with casual efficiency—they found a hole masked by blackened roots and ash, barely wide enough for the creature to have wriggled through. The opening descended at a sharp angle into darkness, and when Hydrion crouched down to peer inside, he caught the faint scent of sulfur and heard distant chittering echoing up from below.

  Unfortunately, yelling "Oy, we found it! They come from holes in the ground!" at the sky didn't seem to resolve the quest, and nobody in their party was keen on a Viet Cong reenactment. Crawling through cramped, monster-infested tunnels in the dark held exactly zero appeal. The hole was too small for most of them anyway, and sending someone in alone seemed like a fantastic way to lose a party member.

  So they left the tree behind and pushed deeper into the forest, moving east. The golden nexus glimmered to their left, perched atop the distant mountain. They hoped to find either a larger entrance or some other clue that didn't require becoming tunnel-crawling bait.

  ***

  The gog never saw it coming.

  One moment it was prowling between the blackened trees, claws scraping against charred bark as it searched for prey. The next, something massive dropped from above--a blur of patchy fur and exposed sinew that slammed into the creature's back with bone-crushing force.

  The gog shrieked, twisting to face its attacker, but the rougarou was already moving. Elongated limbs wrapped around the smaller creature with predatory efficiency, digitigrade legs finding purchase against the ash-covered ground. The lupine skull darted forward, jaws unhinging with a wet crack before closing around the gog's shoulder.

  The gog thrashed, its claws scrabbling against the rougarou's semi-skeletal frame, raking through exposed sinew—strikes the rougarou barely seemed to notice. Serrated claws punched through the gog's ribcage—one, two, three precise strikes that found the spaces between bone.

  There was a horrible tearing sound.

  The rougarou wrenched its head back, taking a chunk of scaled flesh with it. Dark blood sprayed across the ash-covered ground, hissing and steaming where it pooled. The gog's yellow eyes went wide, its body seizing as curved claws hooked under its jaw and pulled, snapping the creature's neck with casual, brutal efficiency.

  The body went limp. Unlike the imps that dissolved instantly into thin air, the gog's corpse began slowly melting into the rock beneath it, scales liquefying into dark pools before the entire form gradually sank from view—leaving behind only a wrapped package that the rougarou ignored entirely.

  The creature's eyes narrowed as it rose to its full height. Its ears swiveled, catching sounds through the forest—voices, laughter, the incongruous blast of music echoing between the blackened trees. Loud. Careless. Prey.

  The rougarou lifted its muzzle, nostrils flaring as it tried to catch their scent, but the light breeze was blowing the wrong direction. That wasn't an issue.

  Without a sound, it turned its head slightly toward the shadows behind it—a brief, deliberate movement.

  The darkness shifted.

  Then the rougarou melted into the mist-heavy terrain, and the forest fell silent once more.