Wave five has begun!

  Watching monsters appear out of thin air was weird even in the context of the last few weeks.

  The critters arrived instantly and without disturbing the air around them. They didn’t generate any lights or sounds. It was as if some evil god had said ‘let there be monsters,’ and there were monsters.

  Roland was waiting for them about thirty feet from where he assumed they would spawn. He miscalculated, however. Four critters appeared less than a foot away from him, blocking his line of sight to the rest of them. The four he could see were a new breed of lieutenant:

  Roach Reaver (Beastkin)

  F-Grade Lieutenant

  Health 130 Endurance 130 Mana 80

  Bigger and tougher than the Ratling Champions, these giant bugs were insectoid centaurs, with the main body of a roach and an upper torso featuring two sets of arms. The top pair of limbs were tipped with clawed three-fingered hands like the ones on the Cockroach Slashers. The other set featured serrated blades like a praying mantis’ limbs, made of gleaming brown chitin.

  The insect heads were as expressionless as any roaches’, but Roland still sensed malice oozing out of their five insectile eyes.

  Roland triggered Deadshot and fired from the hip, angling the Executioner’s Gun so the slug hit the closest bug right under its mandibles. Its head popped up like the cork on a champagne bottle, releasing a spurt of oily ichor as Roland ghosted through the crowd, leaving injuries but no further deaths in his wake.

  His spirit form could still see System name tags. Besides the Reavers, the roaches he’d been expecting were also there, over a dozen of them.

  Vermin Warlock (Beastkin)

  F-Grade Lieutenant

  Health 75 Endurance 75 Mana 160

  Wrapped in raggedy hooded robes just like the first roach wizard Roland had met, the Warlocks were armed with wands, making them the first ranged enemy the Dungeon had thrown at them. The wands had lousy range and damage, but with their Mana reserves they would be able to over-charge them and one-shot any human they targeted.

  They all had to go.

  Roland moved through the crowd, his ghostly form draining their life with every step he took as he replaced the gun with his naginata.

  The thirty-odd monsters finally reacted to the enemy in their midst. Reavers pressed forward while the Warlocks moved back and readied their wands. The Reavers slashed at him with their cutting forelimbs. The attacks weren’t entirely physical and they hurt him, disrupting his life force to the tune of twelve to twenty points of damage per hit.

  Roland picked up the pace and dodged around like a rabbit on meth. A flurry of naginata slashes took down three Reavers and cleared the way to the Warlocks. He dashed to close the gap and began chopping and clubbing the spellcasting roaches. Segmented limbs and bursts of ichor went flying as he danced among them.

  Six Warlocks down before the first overcharged wand beam hit him. Thirty-four Health vanished as a chunk of his ghostly form boiled away. It was as pleasant as being burned with a blowtorch.

  Congratulations! Pain Tolerance has increased to Beginner 2!

  You knew just how bad a situation was when the System rewarded you for living through it.

  More Warlocks were shooting now, not caring when misses tagged one of their own. Once it became clear he was going to be overwhelmed, Roland dashed into the woods, injuring and killing a few more roaches, and dropped Reaper’s Dance.

  Using the sickly trees for cover and concealment, he returned fire with his Legendary shotgun, spending Endurance to guarantee critical hits and Mana to make them count. The wands turned out to be unable to penetrate the tree, although they did set its bark on fire for a few moments before whatever toxic sludge passed for their sap smothered the flames.

  His leather jacket hadn’t protected him while in his spirit form, but in physical form it worked just fine, significantly reducing the wands’ damage. Vital Energy healed him as he fought.

  He dropped three more Warlocks before he had to ghost away again when a bunch of Reavers charged his position. The ground was as muddy and toxic as its appearance had suggested, and the bugs had to plod through it. They lost a few hit points when the acidic sludge ate into their chitinous feet. Roland’s combat boots had started to smoke on contact with the mud as well, but so far the stuff hadn’t reached his skin.

  Reaper’s Dash got him through the small monster horde and to the other side of the road. There were four Warlocks left, all wounded badly by his life-draining Skill. He finished them off in a brutal exchange of gunfire and energy blasts. At that point, half the remaining ten or twelve Reavers ran down the road towards the rest of the party while the rest tried to keep Roland busy. It was a hopeless plan, but the monsters didn’t have any good options.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Roland simply ghosted through the blockers and chased down the runners, killing or crippling them in quick succession even as Bob began to engage with the SFAR. By the time Josh and Wendy opened fire with their lighter weapons, it was all over. A few bugs made it to the landfill gate; none reached even the foot of Trash Hill.

  “Too easy,” Josh said, leaning his rifle against his shoulder and wincing when the hot barrel turned out to be too toasty even through his plate carrier. “Shit!”

  “Easy for you to say,” Roland replied on his way back to Trash Hill.

  His Vital Energy bar had about sixty points left; he used it to fill up his Endurance. Between the continuous drain Reaper’s Dance inflicted and the occasional hits from the bugs, he'd gone through the absorbed life force almost as quickly as he gained it.

  Roland felt strung out and tired in a way that a full Endurance bar did not help. The constant tension from keeping track of dozens of enemies had been exhausting in ways beyond what the System measured.

  His Pants of the Wandering Monk were down to under three hundred Durability. He spent five Significance points to restore fifty of those; a long rent where a bug had cut into his thigh disappeared. Remembering that he had the Mend Skill, he used it on the pants and discovered it cost ten Mana to restore one Durability point per Skill level.

  He gave up in disgust after repairing a whole two points, but spent Mana fixing his mundane, half-melted boots. Wasting Mana to fix his pants didn’t seem like a productive use of his time. He hoped to get something better for his lower extremities soon. Giving up on the pants, he checked his notifications:

  Congratulations! Coup De Grace has improved to Beginner 2. Gun Proficiency Skill has improved to Beginner 6. Mend has improved to Beginner 3. Naginatajutsu has improved to Beginner 6. Reaper’s Dance has increased to Beginner 3.

  Working on the Uncommon-quality pants had improved Mend by two levels. Now ten Mana would let him fix three Durability points, which was a decent improvement. When they had some down time, he would use the Skill and maybe push it to mid-tier.

  His naginata, jacket and helmet were all down a handful of points; using the Skill would save Significance and improve it further.

  All that would have to wait, though. They had three minutes until the last wave.

  “How are you doing?” Dahlia asked him.

  “I’m supposed to ask you that.”

  “You’ve been carrying us so far. It’s got to be rough on you,” she said. She’d wiped off most of the raccoon-eye mascara on her face and looked more like a person and less like a stereotype. “I know we all owe you our lives multiple times.”

  “I dragged you into this. I...” Roland stopped.

  If any of you die, it’s on me. That wasn’t something he wanted to say, but that was how he felt.

  “No,” Dahlia told him. “We all volunteered, and after that freakshow with Raven, we knew you weren’t just talking out of your ass. We knew that when you said it would be dangerous, you meant it.”

  “Shoulda tried harder to convince you not to come.”

  “And then what? We hunker down somewhere and wait for the apocalypse? Roland, I’ve read a bunch of those books. Just about every story ends with a huge percentage of humanity dead, transformed into monsters, or enslaved by high-level tyrants. Might as well take our chances here, with someone who’s risking his life to power level us.”

  “I’m not really risking that much,” he said. “I probably could solo the damn dungeon.”

  “Maybe,” Raven said, coming out of nowhere and landing on Roland’s shoulder. “Maybe not.”

  “How cool is that?” Dahlia said. “If you had another one, you could be like Odin.”

  “Hugin and Munim,” Raven said. “A little stuck up, they are.”

  “You know Odin’s ravens?” Dahlia asked, her eyes wide. “Wait, you know Odin?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  I guess you got yourself a fangirl, Roland sent mentally to the bird.

  Oh, I think her eyes are mostly on you.

  “All right, people, one minute warning,” Roland said out loud. “Get ready. I’m going down the road to lay down a welcome mat for our new friends.”

  Their response was somewhere between a ragged cheer and desperate prayer. It would have to do.

  This time, Raven followed him, flittering between the trees lining the road.

  Got any last-minute suggestions? Roland asked the bird.

  Spoilers are against the rules. My guess is that the System will generate an appropriate response based on your performance so far.

  Roland didn’t like the sound of that. There were two reasons for the party’s success: their firepower and Roland’s overpowered build. A party of typical World of Warcraft-style adventurers couldn’t have handled the sheer number of monsters. Only semiautomatic weapons let the party wipe out the horde of dungeon dwellers the challenge kept throwing at them. And without Roland’s high-quality abilities, the guns wouldn’t have been enough.

  If the System wanted to wipe us out, simply increasing the numbers of the next wave would do the trick. Ten more monsters would have been enough to overrun our position before I could hunt them all down. But that’s not what Dungeons are for. They give us a chance to win; maybe not a fifty-fifty chance, but a lot more than zero.

  As the final seconds ticked down, Roland waited off the road standing on a slightly less toxic patch of mud, shotgun ready.

  Dungeons are tests, he thought as he prepared for whatever was coming. If you pass, you become stronger. You fail, you die or, worse, you watch your loved ones die.

  Tests for what, though? That question remained unanswered, but if he failed any of the tests, he’d be too dead to care.

  The new threat appeared when the timer reached zero, and Roland discovered the nature of the new test.

  Wave six has begun!

  It stood at least nine feet tall, a hideous amalgamation of flesh. Six insectoid legs protruded from a furry, mangy body, something that might have belonged to a diseased possum, if a possum could grow larger than a Clydesdale horse.

  A gigantic rat’s head with the segmented eyes of a cockroach stood between two clusters of mismatched limbs, everything from ratty hands to serrated mantis claws. There were dozens of eyes belonging to just as many different species covering its thick body in asymmetrical arrangements. Swarms of large horseflies hovered around it.

  The monster smelled worse than it looked, and Roland had to fight a wave of nausea that threatened to overcome him.

  Roland held his fire for a second while he used Analyze on the creature.

  Pestis the Diseased (Chimera)

  F-Grade Level Boss

  Health 880 Mana 1,200 Endurance 880

  Skills:

  * Pestilence Nimbus (Epic, Toggle): Inflicts random disease within a twenty-foot radius)/

  * Roach Hardiness (Epic, Passive): Damage Reduction (25) against all attacks)

  * Sticky Nimbus (Epic, Toggle): Inflicts Slow Debuff and negates travel powers within a thirty-foot radius).

  * Swarm of Pestilence (Epic, Summon): Calls a swarm of biting insects; anyone within the swarm will be attacked by 1-5 insects inflicting 1-3 points of damage; the swarm has a radius of thirty feet).

  *Vermin Regeneration (Epic, Passive, Regains 50 Health per second).

  Affinities: Death, Disease, Poison, Pollution, Survival, Vermin, Wrath.

  Resistances and Invulnerabilities: High resistance to mental and spiritual attacks.

  Vulnerabilities: Eyes are not protected by Roach Hardiness; Fire-related attacks inflict 50% additional damage.

  Congratulations! Analyze has improved to Beginner 9.

  Congratulations! Roland told himself as he began shooting. We’re FUBAR.