Something was watching us.

  The prickling weight of unseen eyes, the way the air seemed to pause in certain places, as if the dungeon itself were holding its breath.

  I couldn’t see it, of course.

  That would have been useful, and nothing in my afterlife so far had suggested I was entitled to that kind of convenience.

  The creature—assuming I hadn’t started hallucinating, which seemed unlikely given my distinct lack of a brain—had appeared once. A flicker of movement at the edge of my vision, just long enough for my instincts to trip over themselves in warning. Small, fast, too quiet. Then it had disappeared, not with the blind panic of something fleeing for its life, but the measured retreat of something that knew it had the upper hand. Like a shopkeeper stepping into the back to fetch something more appropriate for a particular kind of customer.

  The shadows ahead weren’t just dark; they had a lean to them, like they were paying attention. I tightened my grip on my staff, which had long since crossed the line from weapon to comfort object, and kept moving. My jaw clenched on instinct. Pointless, since my bones didn’t actually do tension. It was a strange thing, realizing that all the old ways of dealing with stress had been taken from me.

  No deep breaths, no quickened pulse, no reassuring weight of fatigue in my muscles. Just stillness. Cold and endless and mine.

  I didn’t like it.

  But this wasn’t aimless wandering. I had a goal, even if it was little more than a vague declaration of intent. If I was going to survive—and by survive, I meant avoid being pulverized, incinerated, or otherwise forcibly disassembled—I needed to get stronger.

  I wasn’t much of an RPG guy in life.

  Civilization? Sure. SimCity? Absolutely. But spending hours hunting wolves for two percent better armor and a slightly shinier sword had always seemed like a deeply inefficient use of my time.

  Now, however, the prospect of grinding for survival felt disturbingly relevant. The main thing I knew about fantasy world dungeons… Deeper meant better loot. It meant new creatures. Which, being a dungeon boss myself, I hoped meant allies.

  If I wanted to stop being a glorified pile of laundry waiting to be folded, I had to go deeper.

  “Boss, Grib think floor two colder than floor one,” Grib said, his arms wrapped around himself.

  “Yes, Grib, the second floor is colder,” I replied.

  Which was actually a really weird thing to admit–I hadn’t really thought about it, but I could definitely still feel things. I knew the air was cold, but I didn’t feel it in the same way I would have when I was alive.

  Grib beamed as though I’d just promoted him. “Grib good at noticing things!”

  “Yes, like the cold. And... well, that’s it so far.”

  The glowing mushrooms from the first floor were gone. In their place, crystals jutted from the walls, casting a pale, yellow light. They didn’t just illuminate; they fractured the glow, throwing it in sharp, uneven patterns that made the walls seem farther apart than they were.

  The floor was too smooth. Not polished, not decorative—just unnaturally uniform, like something had cut the stone all at once and never bothered to rough it up afterward. My staff echoed in dull thuds as we walked, the sound coming back too clean, like an empty highschool hallway after hours.

  “Boss, why mushrooms gone?” Grib suddenly asked, jabbing at one of the crystals with his spear like it had just suggested something insulting about his mother. “Mushrooms friendly. Sneaky rocks, not so much.”

  “They’re crystals, Grib,” I said, rubbing the space where my temples used to be. “Crystals aren’t sneaky. They’re decorative.”

  “Decorative means sneaky,” he muttered darkly.

  Before I could stop him, he pried one loose with an enthusiastic twist of his spear.

  “Hah! See? Grib genius!” he declared, holding the crystal aloft.

  And then the trap triggered.

  A soft click echoed through the corridor, followed by a puff of greenish gas from the hole where the crystal had been. I stepped back instinctively, because in my experience, holes puffing gas were rarely the prelude to something pleasant.

  Grib sniffed at the air, tilted his head, and did absolutely nothing.

  “Grib fine!” he said proudly, as if being fine were a skill he had worked tirelessly to master.

  I frowned. “Wait... you’re not coughing or anything?”

  Grib sniffed again, his nose twitching. Then his eyes widened. “Boss, gas broken!”

  “No, Grib,” I said, the realization dawning on me. “You’re undead. You don’t breathe. That gas doesn’t affect you.”

  Grib stared at me, scandalized. “Boss mean Grib... dead?!”

  “Yes,” I said, gesturing at his remarkably intact undead self. “No breathing necessary. Congratulations, you’re immune to gas traps.”

  Grib’s jaw dropped, a feat made possible by both his goblin physiology and the general absence of shame. “Boss, you didn’t tell Grib before!”

  “You didn’t notice when I brought you back from the dead?”

  Grib’s expression went blank for a moment before he lit up like a particularly enthusiastic firework. “Oh! Right! Grib is dead! Boss is dead! We best dead team ever!”

  Grib moved on to testing his undead capabilities, which mostly involved spinning in place with increasing urgency.

  “Boss,” he announced mid-spin, “Grib faster now! Watch!”

  But I was too busy noticing something else.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  That flicker of movement again. Just at the edge of my vision.

  It lingered down the corridor. Just for a second. Just long enough to confirm that something was still there. Watching.

  I stopped short, raising a hand.

  Grib, naturally, took this as a direct order to start stabbing.

  “Boss see lizard?!” he whisper-shouted, his spear already jabbing at ghosts.

  “No,” I said, my voice low. “But it’s out there.”

  Grib squinted into the shadows like a goblin diviner consulting the stars. “Lizard waiting. Maybe plotting. Grib very good at noticing plots.”

  I kept my eyes fixed on the gloom ahead.

  We moved cautiously, the quiet pressing in heavier with each step. It wasn’t just the silence—it was the way it felt. The weight of something just outside my vision, pacing us. Every time I turned my head, it was gone. Every time I looked forward, the feeling returned.

  I gripped my staff tighter, expecting something to finally make its move.

  And then it did.

  No warning—just a blur of motion and the guttural hiss as something small and fast shot from the darkness. I barely had time to register its shape before it collided with my chest, claws scraping against bone as it scrabbled for purchase.

  I let out a sound that was absolutely not a shriek, just as Grib let out a battle cry of equal, if not greater, dignity.

  “Boss!” Grib shrieked, leaping back and brandishing his spear. “LIZARD ATTACK!!”

  “It’s not a lizard!” I shouted, flailing wildly. “It’s—get it off!”

  The creature clung to me with the enthusiasm of a tourist climbing a particularly challenging rock wall. I twisted, shook, and nearly whacked myself with my staff in the process, but it held fast, chittering excitedly in some language that sounded like a combination of barking and very enthusiastic swearing.

  Grib, meanwhile, was hopping up and down like an overeager mascot. “Grib save Boss!” he cried, stabbing wildly at the air. Unfortunately, his best attempt at "rescue" resulted in the tip of his spear coming dangerously close to my own skull.

  “Stop poking me!” I yelled.

  “Grib not poking Boss! Grib poking lizard!”

  “It’s not a—” I started, but the creature interrupted by smacking me squarely in the back of the head with something hard and blunt.

  A soft ding rang in my ears, and a system notification blinked into existence:

  Notice: You are immune to non-magical weapons.

  I froze.

  The kobold (because now that I could see it up close, I was fairly certain it was a kobold) hit me again, this time aiming for the general vicinity of my spine.

  Notice: You are immune to non-magical weapons.

  I blinked at the notification. Then at Grib, who was still flailing heroically at nothing. Then back at the kobold, which had apparently decided that I was either a pi?ata or a stubborn tree.

  “Grib,” I said slowly, still holding perfectly still as the kobold continued to slap me ineffectively with its tiny club.

  “Yes, Boss?” Grib replied, still hopping and waving his spear like a very angry pogo stick.

  “It can’t hurt me.”

  Grib froze mid-leap. “What?”

  “I’m immune. To non-magical weapons,” I explained, as the kobold delivered another hearty smack to my spine.

  Notice: You are immune to non-magical weapons.

  Grib stared at me, his expression shifting rapidly between confusion, relief, and mild offense. “So... no danger?”

  “No danger,” I confirmed, as the kobold shrieked again and doubled down on its entirely ineffective bludgeoning.

  Grib’s ears perked. “Then Grib still save Boss!”

  “Grib, you don’t—”

  Too late. He was already airborne, spear angled with all the precision of someone who had not fully thought this through.

  “Grib, stop jumping!” I twisted sharply, narrowly avoiding the fate of being impaled by my own minion.

  “Grib must save Boss!” he insisted, leaping again. This time, he actually managed to jab past my shoulder, missing the kobold by an impressive margin. The kobold, unimpressed, swiped at him with its tail, which only seemed to fuel his determination.

  “Grib! It’s fine! I’m fine! You don’t need to—”

  Ding.

  Notice: You are immune to non-magical weapons.

  I let out a long, rattling sigh as Grib continued his one-goblin crusade, his spear still failing to do anything except vaguely menace the kobold’s feet. Meanwhile, the kobold had apparently decided that if bludgeoning wasn’t working, maybe shrieking directly into my nonexistent eardrums would.

  The whole thing had officially stopped resembling a battle and started looking more like an extremely underfunded circus act.

  “Grib,” I said finally, cutting through the chaos.

  “Yes, Boss?” he replied, mid-jump.

  “Stop trying to stab it.”

  Grib landed awkwardly, ears drooping. “But Boss...”

  “It’s fine,” I said firmly, reaching back and grabbing the kobold by the scruff of its neck. It let out an offended squawk, flailing its tiny arms as I held it up for inspection. “See? Not dangerous.”

  Grib narrowed his eyes, spear still half-raised. “What Boss do with lizard-dog?”

  The kobold bared its teeth, tiny club still clutched in one hand like it might reconsider trying to hit me again.

  I sighed. “I don’t know. But I think it’s time we had a chat.”

  Before I could figure out how to reason with an angry kobold, I heard an ominous squelch.

  “Grib have idea!” he announced triumphantly.

  I turned just in time to see him yank something out of his tunic: his tiny, wobbling pet slime.

  It jiggled violently in protest, the universal body language of a creature that knew whatever was about to happen, it did not approve.

  I stared at Grib for a long moment, letting the sheer weight of my exhaustion settle into my bones. “Grib,” I said slowly, “what are you doing?”

  “Grib show slime to lizard-dog! Maybe slime scare it! Or... slime eat it?” He tilted his head thoughtfully, holding the slime up like an offering to a deeply unimpressed deity.

  The kobold, still dangling from my grip, paused its thrashing just long enough to glare at the slime. The slime, for its part, responded with a faint wobble—less an act of aggression and more the universal gesture for What’s your problem?

  “Grib, put the slime away,” I said, rubbing my temples out of pure habit, which was a really unpleasant sound as my bony fingers scratched against my skull.

  “Slime good for intimidation!” Grib protested, giving the blob a firm shake.

  The slime let out a damp, distinctly untrustworthy plorp, a sound that sent the kobold into an immediate frenzy. It hissed furiously, swiping at the air with its free hand.

  “See, Boss? Slime make it mad! Slime work!” Grib looked absolutely thrilled by this development.

  “No, Grib, you made it mad. The slime is just existing,” I said, still holding the kobold as it twisted and snapped at nothing. “Now put it back before—”

  But before I could finish, Grib, interpreting my words as encouragement, attempted to place the slime directly onto the kobold’s head.

  Both creatures immediately began shrieking. One in fury, the other in what I could only assume was an existential crisis.

  I closed my eyes for a long, suffering pause. “Grib.”

  “Yes, Boss?” he said innocently, as the kobold and slime continued their duet of indignation.

  “Put the slime away before I let the kobold hit you with its club.”

  Grib’s ears drooped. “Fine. But Grib still think slime useful.”

  He tucked it back into his tunic, giving it an affectionate pat. The slime gave a happy little jiggle, entirely unbothered by its brief moment of biological warfare.

  The kobold, by contrast, let out one final, indignant chitter before going limp in my grip, apparently deciding that surrender was the best option.

  I sighed, adjusting my hold on the scaly troublemaker.

  “Right,” I muttered. “Now where were we?”

  I love this story. And I hope you do too.