That was the first thing. It was simply much, much bigger than a stockroom had any business being. The ceiling disappeared into darkness somewhere above us. Industrial shelving units stretched in every direction, reaching up into that darkness like the ribs of something dead and very large. The units were packed floor-to-ceiling with boxes, shrink-wrapped pallets, hanging garment bags, unsorted merchandise still in shipping crates from vendors that no longer existed.
The second thing was the cold—the kind that settles into your joints and makes you aware you have them. The kind that leaks from industrial refrigerators when the seal goes bad. Underneath everything was a hum, steady and mechanical, like a heartbeat with no body attached.
The third thing was Kevin.
The system notification appeared about three seconds after we walked through the door, just long enough for me to feel the specific kind of dread that comes from scanning a room and not immediately seeing the thing that's in it.
FINAL BOSS ENCOUNTER INITIATED
KEVIN
Level: 20 |
Type: Final Boss
Classification: Mall Manager (Corrupted)
THREAT ASSESSMENT: High
-
NOTES: A former security guard who was locked inside the mall during closing hours in 1987 and has been here ever since. Has become one with the facility. Controls the stockroom environment. Knows where everything is. Has had thirty-eight years to arrange it.
ABILITIES:
-
Inventory Check: Can throw any object in the stockroom at any time. Range: unlimited (within stockroom).
-
Closing Time: Gradually dims the lights. At total darkness, Kevin's stats double.
-
Loss Prevention: If any party member attempts to leave with the Crystal Chest before Kevin is defeated, he teleports directly to their location.
-
Manager Override: Once per fight — absorbs one hit completely and counterattacks immediately.
-
Overtime: When health drops below 30%, Kevin enters a rage state. Speed and damage increase. He starts throwing larger things.
WEAKNESS: Check his employee badge.
Note: He's been alone for a very long time. Don't feel too bad, though. He's definitely going to try to hurt you.
I read the note a second time. He's been alone for a very long time.
"I feel slightly bad," Mira said quietly, from my shoulder.
"I FEEL SLIGHTLY BAD TOO," the hare said. "WHICH IS UNUSUAL FOR ME BECAUSE I NORMALLY JUST FEEL SCARED."
"We're still going to fight him," I said.
"Oh, obviously," Mira agreed. "I just feel bad about it."
A shelf unit two rows deep moved.
Something stepped out from between the aisles with the measured, deliberate pace of someone who had walked this space so many times that the floor knew his footsteps by name.
Kevin was not what I expected.
He was tall — somewhere in the six-foot-four range — but built like someone who had spent thirty-eight years doing physical labor alone with no one watching, which is to say efficiently and without vanity. He was wearing a security guard uniform that had been repaired and re-repaired until it was more patch than original material. His hair was gray. His jaw was set. His eyes were the flat, patient eyes of someone who had run out of places to put their feelings and had simply decided not to have them anymore.
He had a flashlight clipped to his belt. He was not using it.
He looked at us. He looked at each of us in turn with the thorough, unhurried attention of someone who had conducted many security sweeps and found, over time, that rushing them just meant you had to do them twice.
"Store's closed," Kevin said.
His voice was a low, even baritone.
"We're not shopping," I said.
"Then why," Kevin said, with the patience of someone who had heard every possible excuse, "are you in the storeroom?"
"We were hired to retrieve something."
"The Crystal Chest."
It wasn't a question.
"Yes."
"No."
There was a pause.
"No?" I said.
"It's mine."
"It was probably here before you were," I said carefully.
Something moved behind Kevin's eyes. Something old and complicated and probably not worth unpacking in the next thirty seconds, or the next thirty-eight years.
"I know," he said. "I've been keeping it safe."
"We just need to—"
"From people like you."
He picked up a box off the nearest shelf with one hand. It was the size of a microwave. It had FRAGILE — HANDLE WITH CARE written on the side in faded Sharpie.
Kevin was not handling it with care.
"Store's closed!" he said again, and threw it at my head.
Delayed Reaction activated.
2.0 seconds.
The box was moving fast. I had time to step right, grab the shelf unit beside me, and haul myself sideways around it. The box hit the unit a foot from where my skull had been, split open, and scattered a hundred individually wrapped decorative Christmas ornaments across the concrete floor.
The ornaments immediately became a hazard. The entire floor between me and Kevin was now covered in small round objects on a smooth surface.
Kevin was already reaching for the next shelf.
"MOVE," I said, less to anyone specific and more to the universe in general, and started running laterally down the aisle as a shrink-wrapped pallet of bottled water launched over my head and exploded against the far wall in a cascade of plastic and sound.
The hare had already vanished. Its Softstep Paw Wraps made it essentially undetectable on any surface, and whatever else you could say about the hare, it was extremely good at not being where things were landing. I could hear it breathing rapidly from somewhere to my left, but even Kevin, who apparently knew every inch of this stockroom, couldn't seem to locate it by sound alone.
Mira went up. She cleared the shelving units, gained altitude, and started firing fire bolts from above. They were small — barely the size of a golf ball — but they were accurate and they produced satisfying scorch marks on Kevin's shoulder and the back of his uniform.
Kevin looked up. His expression didn't change. He reached behind him without looking and hurled a flat of canned goods at Mira's position.
She banked hard, wings cutting the air, and the flat missed her by a foot and a half.
"He can see me up here," she called.
"Yeah, he knows where everything is," I said, ducking around a corner as a garment bag full of coats sailed over my head. "The whole room is his."
Kitten Cowboy had done what Kitten Cowboy always did: moved to an unexpected angle. I caught a glimpse of the small cat navigating the ornament-covered floor with absolute zero trouble.
It reached a clear sightline, went still, and raised both paws.
Kevin turned to look at it. For one second they regarded each other with equivalent stillness.
"Pew," Kitten Cowboy said.
The spectral round hit Kevin in the chest. He rocked back one step. His hand went to the spot. He looked at it.
Then he picked up a box of industrial cleaning solution and threw it directly at Kitten Cowboy.
The cat rolled. It was a beautiful roll, low and sideways, and all bottles landed in the ornament field and set off a secondary cascade that covered another ten feet of floor in round, slippery hazards.
The stockroom was now roughly twenty percent ornament.
"This is getting worse," Mira observed.
"Yeah," I said, scanning the shelves around me. "Give me a second."
What I had access to: industrial shelving units bolted to the floor (immovable), boxes of varying sizes and weights (available), shipping tape and packing materials (useless), a forklift parked at the far end of the room (interesting), a fire suppression pipe running along the ceiling (very interesting), and a service cart on wheels with a stuck left wheel that made it pull to one side (potentially useful).
Kevin had: the entire room, thirty-eight years of knowing exactly what was where, more arm strength than seemed proportional, and the patience of someone who had been waiting since 1987.
I grabbed the service cart.
I pushed it at Kevin from twenty feet out, knowing the stuck wheel meant it would pull left on its own. I aimed right.
The cart hit the ornament field halfway and immediately turned sideways, careening left with the stuck wheel now actively driving it at an angle. It caught Kevin across the shins at a completely different trajectory than he'd anticipated and he went sideways rather than backward, catching himself on a shelf.
The shelf groaned. Kevin was heavy enough that three boxes fell off it.
One landed on his head.
He stood there for a moment, box balanced on his head, looking at me.
Then he put the box back on the shelf. Calmly. In the exact position it had been.
"He's organizing," Mira said, with a tone of genuine alarm.
"THAT'S DEEPLY UNSETTLING," the hare agreed from its invisible location.
Kevin pulled the cart upright, set it aside at a precise ninety-degree angle to the wall, and then threw a twenty-pound bag of rock salt at me.
I got the brick up in time for it to absorb the hit and went backward two steps. My arms were ringing.
"Pocket Sand!" I called, closing the distance first. It swirled up and out, aimed directly at Kevin's face.
He turned away from it. The sand sprayed across the side of his head and the back of his collar rather than his eyes. He didn't even stop walking.
"OH NO! YOUR POCKET SAND DIDN'T WORK!" the hare hissed.
Kevin hit me in the chest with an open palm.
But he was significantly larger than me and moving fast. I left my feet, traveled five feet backward through the air, and landed inside a shelf unit. Its contents rained down on my head in several successive waves.
Keychains. A lot of keychains. Hundreds of tiny metal keychains, all shapes and sizes, bouncing off my skull with individual small impacts that added up to something genuinely humiliating.
"Are you okay?" Mira called.
"I have never been this okay before," I said from inside the shelf unit.
"Is that a yes?"
"Yeah." I grabbed the shelf bar above me and hauled myself upright, keychains clattering around my feet.
Kevin was already reorganizing the items I'd knocked over.
"Will you stop tidying during the fight," I said.
"Everything has a place," Kevin said, without turning around.
The lights dimmed.
Just a little. Just enough to notice.
KEVIN ABILITY: CLOSING TIME — STAGE 1 Ambient light reduced by 25%.
Note: At Stage 4 (total darkness), Kevin's stats double. Current progress: 1/4.
If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
"We need to end this faster." Mira said.
"Working on it."
The forklift was thirty feet away. It was not a subtle plan. It was, in fact, the opposite of a subtle plan, which is to say it was the kind of plan that might work specifically because no reasonable person would attempt it.
"Everyone," I said, keeping my voice low and even. "Can you keep his attention from the north side of the room for about thirty seconds?"
"How?" Mira asked.
"Fire at him continuously. All of you — whatever you can do to draw his focus that direction."
A pause. "That's the whole plan?"
"I'm going to drive the forklift into him."
"That's your plan?"
"I'm going to drive the forklift INTO him," I confirmed.
There was a longer pause.
"Okay," Mira said.
She came in low over the shelving units from the north and opened up with every fire bolt she had, rapid-firing in a pattern that would have been impressive for someone who had learned the spell forty-five minutes ago in a hallway after a different fight. Each bolt was small, but they hit Kevin in quick succession and the cumulative effect of being pelted with magical fire by a small and extremely motivated imp was enough to occupy his attention.
I ran for the forklift and pulled myself into the seat.
The keys were in it. Of course they were. Kevin had been here for thirty-eight years. He wasn't worried about theft.
I started it. The engine turned over with the specific groaning complaint of industrial machinery that hadn't been driven recently.
Kevin heard it.
He turned.
I drove at him at the forklift's maximum speed, which was not fast, but was extremely committed.
Kevin did not move. He watched me come. He waited. He waited until I was fifteen feet out, and then he did something I hadn't anticipated: he stepped aside at the last possible moment and grabbed the forklift's mast as it went past him.
The forklift swung. With me in it. He used the mast as a lever point and the whole machine pivoted around it with a grinding screech of metal, and I held on to the steering wheel while the world rotated, and the forklift's forks caught the bottom row of a shelving unit on the way around and the unit came down.
The unit contained approximately three hundred units of miscellaneous things.
It came down on Kevin.
All of it.
He disappeared under an avalanche of boxes, bags, hanging garment bags, loose items, and what appeared to be an entire collapsed shelf of office supplies.
There was a loud crash.
Then silence.
Then a stapler landed somewhere in the distance with a small, late clunk.
"Was..." Mira said from above. "Was that—"
Kevin stood up out of the debris.
He was covered in packing peanuts. There was a piece of bubble wrap draped over his shoulder like a scarf. He had a pen behind his ear that hadn't been there before.
He looked at the devastation around him. He looked at the collapsed shelf. He looked at me.
He started reorganizing.
"THAT IS NOT A NORMAL RESPONSE TO BEING HIT BY A SHELF," the hare said.
"Kevin," I said. "Please stop organizing. We're in a fight."
"Everything has a place," Kevin said, picking up a box and setting it in a pile with mechanical efficiency.
I stared at him.
Then I picked up a box, walked over, and put it in a different pile.
Kevin stopped.
He looked at the box.
He picked it up and put it back in the original pile.
I picked it up and put it back in my pile.
Kevin looked at me.
"Don't," Kevin said.
I picked up another box and put it in the wrong pile.
"Don't."
I knocked over a stack of six boxes with my forearm—casually, like someone who had no idea what went where and had stopped caring.
Kevin made a sound. Then he charged.
He covered the distance between us in three strides, and I was already running.
Delayed Reaction fired.
Kevin's first swing was at head height. I ducked under it and the fist went through a shelf unit's upright, bending it sideways, and Kevin pulled his hand back with zero acknowledgment of the fact that he'd just punched metal infrastructure.
The lights dimmed again.
CLOSING TIME — STAGE 2 Ambient light reduced by 50%.
Note: At Stage 4, Kevin's stats double. Current progress: 2/4.
The stockroom was darker now. The industrial ceiling lights were failing one by one, starting at the far end and working inward. Kevin moved through the dimming space with complete confidence, because he knew every inch of it regardless of light level.
I did not have this advantage.
"Mira!" I called.
"On it!"
She cast fire bolt not at Kevin but at the wall behind him, and the small flame caught in a poster that had been on the wall and went up fast, casting orange light across that corner of the room.
It wasn't much, but it was something.
Kitten Cowboy had found a new angle. I caught a flash of orange fur between two shelf units and then the sharp report of the revolver, and Kevin took a round in the shoulder that staggered him sideways — and the sideways step put his foot into the ornament field, and his weight came down on them, and for the first time in the fight Kevin's footing failed him and he went to one knee.
I had the brick in my hand. I threw it.
It hit Kevin in the side of the head with a sound like a gavel.
Kevin stayed on one knee.
I called the brick back.
The Return ability launched it toward me at high speed. I didn't catch it — I had long since learned not to attempt this — but I let it hit my forearm, controlled the deflection, grabbed it off the bounce, and swung it at Kevin on the backswing in one continuous motion.
It connected with his shoulder.
Kevin suddenly lunged forward and grabbed my arm.
He was very strong. I was aware of this before but being grabbed by him made it real in a new way. He stood up out of the ornament field, using my arm as a handhold, and I was aware that I had just become a counterweight in someone else's physics problem.
"Let go!" Mira fired a flame bolt directly at Kevin's hand.
He let go. I stumbled backward into a shelf and grabbed it to stay upright.
Kevin had a scorch mark on his knuckles. He looked at it.
He looked at Mira.
"Mira—" I started.
Kevin reached behind him without looking and produced a large cardboard tube — the kind that posters come in. He threw it not at Mira but ahead of her flight path, predicting where she'd be in half a second.
It hit her directly.
The shield spell activated. One hit, blocked. The tube deflected off the shield with a flash of pale blue light, and Mira spun with the impact, wings scrambling, and found her balance six feet lower than she'd been.
Mira was unharmed.
"Okay," I said, and I meant it as a general statement about where we were.
The health bar floating over Kevin's head — which had appeared at some point in the fight without me noticing — was at about forty percent.
The lights dimmed again.
CLOSING TIME — STAGE 3
Ambient light reduced by 75%.
It was genuinely dark now. The fire Mira had lit was still burning — too small to spread to the metal shelves but providing a warm, limited pool of orange light in one corner. The rest of the stockroom was deep shadow interrupted by the occasional failing fluorescent tube.
Kevin looked more comfortable. His posture changed. The mechanical patience became something more fluid, easier.
"We need to end this," Mira said, her voice tight, landing on a shelf near me. "Stage four is total darkness. We don't want that."
"Yeah, no shit," I said, looking at the room. Looking at what was left.
The forklift was at an odd angle against two collapsed shelf units. The service cart was lying on its side. The floor was a map of every fight we'd had — ornaments, packing peanuts, cans, keychains, the debris of thirty-eight years of stockroom inventory.
The fire suppression pipe ran along the ceiling. Overhead. A large, water-filled pipe. The kind that buildings install because at some point someone decided catastrophic water damage was preferable to catastrophic fire.
I looked at the pipe.
I looked at Kevin.
I looked at the forklift.
"Mira," I said. "Can your fire bolt ignite the suppression system?"
She looked up at the pipe. "That's... that's not how fire suppression systems work, Daniel. You can't set fire to a pipe."
"The sprinkler heads," I said. "They activate at heat thresholds."
She looked at the sprinkler heads mounted below the pipe, spaced every ten feet across the ceiling.
"Oh," Mira said.
"Yeah."
"That would release—"
"Everything."
"Over the entire stockroom."
"Including us."
"You want to get drenched?"
"I want Kevin to be on a wet floor covered in small round objects," I said.
There was a pause.
"That's actually—" Mira started.
"I know."
"That's a good plan."
"Don't make it weird."
The forklift was still running.
I climbed back in, raised the forks to maximum height — which put them just below the ceiling — and drove at the sprinkler pipe at the same optimistic pace as before.
Kevin saw me coming again. He moved to intercept. He was faster this time, more fluid in the near-dark, and he got a hand on the mast—
The forks hit the pipe.
They didn't break it. The pipe was industrial, designed to not break. But the impact sheared three sprinkler heads off their mounts in a rapid sequence as the forks raked across the ceiling, and the pipe was breached in two places, and the system pressure did the rest.
The water came down.
All of it. It came down like the sky had a personal problem with this specific room. It hit the floor and the shelves and the debris field and Kevin and me and the forklift and everything else in the stockroom with complete democratic impartiality.
The ornament field became a skating rink.
Kevin's feet hit the wet ornaments and wet packing peanuts and wet concrete floor and went out from under him in a way that had no dignity to it whatsoever. He went sideways. Then down. He hit the floor and slid through three feet of debris and came to rest against the far wall.
He lay there.
The water was still coming down.
The lights were flickering. The remaining fluorescents shorted out one by one — but that didn't matter now because the fire in the corner was also dying in the deluge, and somehow the emergency lighting came on in the water-soaked apocalypse of the stockroom, casting everything in red and the silver-white of falling water.
Kevin sat up.
His health bar was at twenty-nine percent.
KEVIN ABILITY: OVERTIME — ACTIVATED
Health below 30%. Kevin's speed and damage increase. He's going to start throwing larger things.
Kevin stood up. He was soaking wet. His uniform was plastered to him. His expression had not changed from the one he'd been wearing since we came through the door, which was the expression of a man who had decided, a very long time ago, not to be surprised by anything.
He picked up a shelf unit.
The whole unit. Both hands, full depth, an industrial shelving unit approximately seven feet tall and four feet wide with twelve inches of water running off it. He picked it up the way you'd pick up a chair.
"Oh," the hare said, from somewhere in the water. "OH NO."
Kevin threw it.
I activated Delayed Reaction. 2.0 seconds. I ran left at full speed, slipping twice on the wet floor before the Dishwashing skill (I CAN’T FUCKING BELIEVE THIS FUCKING SKILL ACTUALLY HELPED ME) pulled me upright both times. The shelf unit hit the wall behind me so hard the concrete cracked.
Kevin was already picking up another one.
"MIRA," I called.
"I'm out of mana!"
"Kitten Cowboy!"
From the shadows and the red light and the falling water, Kitten Cowboy stepped forward. Soaking wet, fur plastered flat, somehow still upright on two legs. The leather holster was dark with water. The revolver was out.
The cat looked at Kevin.
Kevin looked at the cat.
They regarded each other for two full seconds in the emergency red lighting with water falling between them like a curtain.
DRAMATIC STANDOFF — ACTIVATED
Two seconds of absolute stillness in a flooded stockroom. The water fell. The lights pulsed red. Kevin did not throw the shelf unit he was holding. Kitten Cowboy did not fire.
One second.
Two.
The revolver fired.
The spectral round hit Kevin in the chest. He rocked back — one step, then two — but stayed on his feet.
MANAGER OVERRIDE activated. The hit was completely absorbed.
Kevin's counterattack was immediate. He threw the shelf unit he was holding directly at Kitten Cowboy with zero hesitation.
The cat dove sideways into the water, vanishing under the surface as the shelf unit sailed over its position and crashed into a support column behind it.
Kevin's health bar was at twenty-eight percent.
"Okay," I said. "New plan."
I was already moving. I crossed the waterlogged floor at a run, hit the ornament field at the wrong angle, used the slide rather than fighting it, came out of the slide faster than I'd gone in, grabbed a loose shelf support bar off the floor — a long metal rod, solid, heavy — and swung it at Kevin's shoulder like I was hitting a very specific kind of home run.
It connected.
Kevin staggered. His health bar dropped to fifteen percent.
He turned toward me, slower now, and reached for another shelf unit.
"Mira!" I called.
She had recovered enough mana for one more fire bolt. It was small — barely larger than a marble — but she fired it directly at Kevin's hand as he gripped the shelf.
The bolt hit. Kevin's grip loosened for just a second.
I swung the bar again.
This time it hit his knee. Kevin went down—to one knee, in the water.
His health bar dropped to four percent.
I raised the bar one more time.
Kevin looked up at me. Water was running down his face. His expression hadn't changed.
I brought the bar down on his shoulder.
It connected.
Kevin's health bar went to one.
The red emergency lights shifted. Something in the room changed — a mechanical sound somewhere deep in the walls, a settling. The water flow slowed and stopped, the last of it draining off the shelves in rivers.
Kevin sat against the wall. His hands were flat on the floor. He was breathing.
He wasn't fighting anymore.
He looked at me, then at Kitten Cowboy — still standing on two legs, revolver raised, fur a complete disaster — then at Mira hovering above, wings beating steadily through the humid air. Then at the hare, which had emerged from behind a shelf unit and was dripping with an expression of haunted vindication.
Kevin looked at the stockroom.
The entire stockroom.
Every shelf knocked over, every box scattered, every ornament crushed, the forklift at an angle, the service cart upside down, the burst pipe overhead, the debris field, the water still pooling on the floor around keychains and packing peanuts and cans of cleaning solution.
"My stockroom," Kevin said.
His voice had changed. It was quieter. Not angry. Something else.
"It was really well organized," I said, because it had been.
Kevin looked at me.
"Thirty-eight years," he said.
"I know."
A very long pause.
Kevin reached up and unpinned the employee badge from his uniform. He looked at it. The badge was old — the plastic yellowed, the laminate cracked — and it said SECURITY GUARD and his name and a date in 1987.
He held it out to me.
I looked at the notification that had appeared over it:
ITEM ACQUIRED: KEVIN'S EMPLOYEE BADGE (UNIQUE)
He's been here since 1987. He never called in sick. He never left. He was the most reliable employee this mall ever had, and the mall locked him in and forgot about him.
Can be turned in for rewards. Or kept. Up to you.
Flavor text: "Closing time is at 9:00 PM. It's always 9:00 PM. It's been 9:00 PM for thirty-eight years."
I took the badge.
"Thank you," I said.
Kevin nodded once. Then he looked at the floor, at the accumulated wreckage of the fight, and something in his expression settled into something I hadn't seen from him before. Something looser.
"There's a mop," he said. "Utility closet, northeast corner. If you were—" He stopped. Started again. "I'd appreciate it if you didn't leave it like this."
"We'll take the chest and go," I said. "And Kevin."
He looked at me.
"You can leave too," I said. "You know that, right? There's no one keeping you here."
Kevin was quiet for a long moment.
He didn't say anything else.
The Crystal Chest was exactly where the compass had been pointing: back corner of the stockroom, behind a shelf unit Kevin had apparently moved in front of it. The shelf was still neatly stocked—despite everything—with surplus merchandise.
I moved the shelf unit with considerable effort and the help of the hare, who turned out to be surprisingly strong when motivated by the prospect of leaving.
The chest was ornate, about the size of a large suitcase, with that specific quality objects have when they communicate this is important without explaining why. The compass needle spun in lazy circles, satisfied, its job done.
I picked it up with both hands. It was heavy but manageable.
QUEST OBJECTIVE COMPLETE: Crystal Chest Retrieved.
Return to client to claim reward.
Current Mall Survival Rating: SSS
Dungeon Completion: 100%
A longer notification followed. A good one.
DUNGEON CLEARED: THE ABANDONED MALL OF MILD INCONVENIENCE
FINAL ASSESSMENT:
You entered this dungeon severely underleveled and in questionable physical condition. You proceeded to: defeat mannequins, survive a ball pit dragon, defeat a Vault Scuttler through negotiation, absolutely demolish an entire wing of Bargain Bin Golems with a shopping cart, survive the Expired Food Court Spirits despite catastrophic food poisoning, defeat Karen using a decorative planter, and flood the final boss's entire arena.
This was not how any of these encounters were designed to go.
The dungeon's notes: "We're genuinely impressed. Also, please stop breaking the infrastructure."
EXPERIENCE GAINED: 2000 XP
LEVEL UP: You are now Level 10.
UNALLOCATED ATTRIBUTE POINTS: +8
SKILL POINTS: +3
-
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: "MALL CLOSED"
You have completed the Abandoned Mall of Mild Inconvenience.
Reward: Title — "The Last Human Who Shops Here"+5% experience gain.
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: "IMPROVISED AS INTENDED"
Used the environment as a weapon in 80% of combat encounters.
Reward: IMPROVISED WEAPONRY SKILL — LEVEL 2 → LEVEL 3
Environmental objects now deal 50% increased damage. Minor chance upgraded to moderate chance.
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: "WORKS SMARTER AND DUMBER SIMULTANEOUSLY"
Ended a boss fight by breaking the sprinkler system.
Reward: 1 Skill Point
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: "MOST IMPROVED"
Entered this dungeon at Level 9 with a Mall Survival Rating of C-.
Exited at Level 10 with a Mall Survival Rating of SSS.
Reward: 500 bonus XP.
I was still holding the Crystal Chest. Water was still dripping off my pink sash.
Kitten Cowboy walked up beside me, holstered the revolver with a tiny decisive click, and looked at the exit door with the air of someone ready to never come back.
"Pew," the cat said.
"Agreed," I said.
"CAN WE GO NOW?" the hare said. It was wringing water out of its ears. "PLEASE. I HAVE NEVER WANTED TO LEAVE A PLACE MORE."
Mira landed on my free shoulder. Her wings were damp and slightly ragged. Her gossamer shawl was plastered to her and had completely lost its ethereal quality, which made it look like she was wearing a wet dishcloth, which I chose not to mention.
She looked at the notifications still hanging in the air. Then at me.
"You're Level 10 now," she said.
"Yeah."
The hare located the exit door. It pushed it open and looked back at us with an expression that contained every moment of this dungeon at once.
"LEAVING NOW," the hare said. "JUST SO EVERYONE KNOWS. I AM LEAVING RIGHT NOW."
I took one last look at the stockroom. At the water on the floor, the scattered debris, the collapsed shelves, the forklift at its angle. At Kevin, who was still sitting against the far wall, looking at his empty palm where the badge had been.
He didn't look devastated. He looked like someone who had set something down after carrying it for a long time.
I turned and walked through the door.