In the many months that Cal had been in the dungeon, she’d seen Tess take some brutal hits. Her general attitude by now was that, unless she confirmed Tess was 100% dead, then the Protagonist was fine and would bounce back from just about anything.

  Even so, when Tess’s limp form flew into the ground with a resounding crunch, Cal knew something was very, very wrong. Temporarily abandoning her assault on the hydra, she quickly identified Tess’s body, desperately hoping that it wasn’t a corpse.

  Tess: 380/850hp

  Damn, that was a lot of damage. In fact, it was more than Cal’s entire health pool. The exact math around different types of damage could get pretty hairy, especially when it came to collisions and other types of attacks that weren’t from system-based skills. Regardless, Cal was fairly certain that she would have outright died from the bite or the fall alone.

  Still a lot of health, though. Why isn’t she getting up? Is she out cold? Another identification showed Tess’s health steadily sinking, and while it could have been from internal bleeding, Cal imagined there was another more likely answer. She’s poisoned? Probably from the bite.

  And hells, if she’s unconscious, she’s probably not using Internal Breeze anymore. Every second she lay there was another breath of poison seeping into her lungs. Cal spared some mana for a few quick light-based healing spells, hopefully staving off the worst of Tess’s damage. Still, it was clear they were on the clock now. If they couldn’t beat the boss quickly enough, they’d have to retreat.

  Thankfully, said boss had taken a brief respite from its enraged warpath. It took a brief pause to throw its final head into the air, billowing out another cloud of poison. With that complete, however, rather than charging Tess down to stomp on her, the hydra was still focused on munching down on roots. Its noticeable uptick in healing would be a problem, but that was a problem for later.

  “Verin! Moving Tess to you! Throw some ice walls around her.” In a kinder world, Cal would have carefully transported Tess over on a gurney. If being flung directly into the ground hadn’t killed her, though, then a bit of roughhousing wasn’t likely to finish the job. After making a mad dash to Tess’s position, Cal simply grabbed her by the legs and tossed her. As much as Cal didn’t plan to keep her current class forever, she had to admit the extra Strength was nice sometimes.

  With another (less loud) crunch, Tess landed right beside Verin’s glacier, and Cal fully intended to put the two of them out of her mind for now.

  That quickly changed when she noticed how slowly Verin was creating her ice walls. For a moment, Cal worried that the noble had somehow run out of mana, but as she peered into the much-diminished glacier, she saw something even more concerning.

  Verin’s eyes. In between casts, they drooped downwards, barely staying open long enough for Verin to get her spells off.

  Having a sneaking suspicion of what was going on, Cal dismissed her Apex Shroud, taking in the tiniest breath she could manage.

  You have been poisoned!

  You have been dosed with a soporific.

  “Fucking hells! What’s with this dungeon and sleep effects!” First the curse region, and now this. “You guys owe me so hard for this one.”

  In a twisted way, it actually felt kind of nice. True, she’d also been the MVP during the fight with Din’Ket, but she doubted that Tess or Verin would have actually lost without her. This time around, she couldn’t see any way that the others would survive without her intervention. Cal had long since wondered if she’d ever catch up to Tess’s level of power, but for once, she’d surpassed the Protagonist.

  Wish it didn’t have to do with sleep, though. Out of all her abilities, Cal had the most complicated relationship with her immunity to anything sleep-related. Unlike any of her actual earned skills, her sleeplessness had been present since birth, a fact that caused her father no small share of grief.

  Not only did it make raising her a pain -- a sleepless baby was not a pleasant thing in the least bit, after all -- but it also served as an uncomfortable reminder of Cal’s mother. While Cal had never met the woman, she was made to understand that her mother also hadn’t needed to sleep, amongst other things. Her father had been very insistent that they figure out a way to make her fall asleep, as if that would somehow keep her from turning out like her mother did.

  Hells, the enchanted Captain Cozy’s nightgown that Tess had taken as a reward was one of the king’s many attempts to use magic to make Cal fall asleep. Like all the others, it had failed. In fact, it was probably the intense boredom from being up all night that had first driven Cal to her rogue-like pursuits and her sneaking out of the palace all the time.

  In some twisted way, that meant it was to blame for her original class, which meant it was also partly the reason she’d joined Tess and was here in the first place.

  Still, as evidenced in the curse region and with the poison right now, Cal couldn’t deny that the ability had its perks.

  Not afraid of the soporific poison in the least bit, Cal dashed to the hydra, briefly turning into gas with the Soma of the Sylph spell that Apex Shroud had absorbed, floating upwards onto the hydra’s back.

  Finally, the beast had stopped its gluttonous feast, turning its attention back to its visible enemies. Deciding the still-awake Verin was more of a priority than Tess’s inert and ice-wall-protected form, it homed in on the glacier. Instead of running towards the noble, however, it began to take slow, unsteady steps, swaying from side to side. At first, Cal assumed it was a result of its many injuries before she put the picture together.

  Rematerializing on its back, Cal chastised the hulking hydra. “Seriously? You’re sleepy too? That’s just sad, man.” Well, no matter. Hopefully, it would make this next part easier for her.

  Not willing to let the boss reach Cal’s sleeping and soon-to-be sleeping companions, the Indefatigable Onslaught summoned her feather blade and began to empower it, sinking both mana and stamina into the weapon. Had she passed the first Perception threshold, she would have heard the resonant hum of the blade’s mana, signaling its power. As it was, she just waited a while until it felt right, and then she struck.

  The blade bit deep, through scale and sinew alike, but ultimately didn’t penetrate very far. Even had she been strong enough, her blade wasn’t ideal for hacking through something so large.

  Immediately, the hydra ceased its ambling hunt to roar once more, its final head twisting around to either bite through Cal or bat her away.

  To call its efforts ineffective would have been generous. Even if the beast were at its prime, Cal doubted it could touch her as she effortlessly went in and out of Apex Shroud, vanishing before its foul fangs could reach her. And quite noticeably, the boss was not in its prime. Growing increasingly drowsy, it flailed its head at her with the wild gesticulations of a drunkard.

  One hit, then another, and another after that. Slowly but steadily, Cal continued to chop into the thrashing, undulating neck before her. At some point, she worked her way through enough of its muscles that the neck failed to move properly, limply flopping around like a beached fish.

  Swords has reached level 14!

  “All right! Not quite a dragon, but it has scales so I’m going to count it. Definitely telling everyone I’m a dragonslayer when I get home. Hear ye, hear ye, here starts the epic tale of dragonslayer Cal!” With one final slash, Cal worked her way through the rest of the serpentine neck, sending the fifth and final head to the floor. At last, the fight was over.

  Right. The fight was over. Incredibly over.

  Why was the damned thing still moving then? And where was its death notification?

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  And… why were its necks still regenerating?

  “Oh, come on! It’s headless! It literally doesn’t have a brain! I won!” Despite Cal’s complaints, the system didn’t seem to care, nor did the hydra suddenly drop dead.

  Well, that was fine. Nothing could regenerate forever, and it wasn’t like Cal was really at any risk. Her entire class was about never running out of energy, after all. She could easily outlast the hydra if need be.

  Guess I’ll just keep chopping away the necks for now, huh? Without any better plans, Cal quickly got back to it.

  What followed could only very generously be called a fight. Losing some of its sluggishness, the hydra began to run around its lair with no sense of direction, trying and failing to buck her off while intermittently crashing into the walls. The entire time, Cal engaged in what felt like a game of whack-a-mole played with a weed-whacker.

  You have gained a stack of Rising Tenacity. Stamina recovery enhanced.

  You have gained a stack of Wellspring’s Renewal. Mana recovery enhanced.

  You have gained a stack of Surging Vitality. Health recovery enhanced.

  With each hit, her bread-and-butter class skills triggered, adding to her recovery. At the same time, she made ample use of her two newer acquisitions. Omnisource allowed her to spend her fullest resource pool to top the others off. Not that she really needed to, but the extra resource spending helped to empower her other recent purchase.

  Embrace of Exhaustion

  During combat, gain additional Strength, Intelligence, and flat damage based on how much health, stamina, and mana you spend.

  While she hadn’t lost much health yet -- save for through Omnisource -- she was actively emptying boatloads of stamina and mana, slowly growing the skill’s strength. A new line appeared, updating on her current bonuses.

  Embrace of Exhaustion bonus updated: +4 Strength, +4 Intelligence, +20 flat damage on standard attacks.

  With the skill granting all her attacks some extra oomph, Cal felt her strikes sinking deeper and dealing more than they ever had before.

  All in all, Cal thought it would have been an easy fight if not for the others. Periodically, she descended to cast a few heals, mostly on Tess. Verin was still awake if only in name, but she’d largely stopped casting by now. Thankfully, her glacier had regrown much of its previous size, keeping her from getting inadvertently trampled on as the hydra ran around like a headless chicken.

  For a while, Verin wondered if the battle would ever end. Were the necks not enough? Did she need to burrow into its body and take out its heart? She hoped not. Cal would hardly call herself squeamish, but excavating through its flesh sounded like a bad time, to put it lightly.

  Thankfully, Cal’s fears proved unfounded. Bit by bit, the hydra’s necks began to grow back slower and slower, first as the boss’s root-empowered healing wore off, and then as its natural recovery began to wane. Speeding the process along, Cal tore giant gashes down its back, hoping to bleed the beast out.

  By now, she’d long since been using Apex Shroud to make her “invisible from air-current detection,” effectively sealing off her sense of smell as the air refused to move into her nose. It was an imperfect solution, as unless she turned to gas, she still had to breathe now and then. Whenever she did, she was struck with the stench of iron and butchered meat.

  The end of the battle was characterized by a gradual decrease in speed. Both the hydra and its healing grew increasingly lethargic, with its wounds taking longer and longer to close and its steps turning into an awkward shuffle. When at last it stopped entirely, crashing to the ground as its legs gave out beneath it, all that was left was shaving off enough of its health to render it properly dead.

  In this, Cal took to her task with great gusto. Eager to be done with the slog of a fight, she empowered her blade to its maximum strength, stabbing into the prospective corpse and running down its back to form deep furrows.

  Only once the body was thoroughly striped, scored, and hashmarked did the much-awaited notification arrive.

  You have defeated an Adaptive Jungle Hydra!

  Despite the massive amounts of stamina her class skills were supplying her with, Cal still slumped to the ground with relief. The following notification only intensified that feeling.

  Quest completed: The Hungering Jungling

  You have slain the jungle’s warden, earning the right to escape from the region’s cage of vines. Based on your contribution and the method of completion, you have been granted additional loot and experience.

  +1500xp

  The room shook as a section of the far wall began to descend into the earth, tearing off a clump of roots as it opened up. Presumably, that was their exit into the next region. At the same time, a few vines rapidly grew from the center of the room, weaving themselves into a chest of sorts. While the prospect of loot was enticing, Cal hardly spared it a second thought.

  “Okay, you two! Time to get out of here.” Leaping down from the hydra’s corpse, Cal sauntered over to Verin’s glacier, knocking on it a few times to rouse its occupant.

  With a start, Verin jerked into wakefulness, cancelling her skill and cracking open the ice. “Oh. Lady Calilah. Is it over already? I could have sworn that-” The noble’s expression abruptly shifted into a stern frown. “Ah. The room is still filled with poison. How… unfortun…” With direct exposure to the soporific still lingering in the air, she then collapsed to the ground, out cold.

  Cal merely stared at her unconscious form for a while before muttering to herself. “You guys suck sometimes, you know that?”

  At first, the newly minted hydra-slayer was planning on dragging them back through the tunnel and healing them up in the junglings’ clearing. Belatedly, however, Cal realized that the hydra had fallen directly in front of the tunnel’s entrance. Short of carving through its stomach, there would be no returning that way.

  And so, in the end, there was only one real option.

  Complaining the entire time, Cal grabbed Verin’s arm with one hand before moving over to Tess and doing the same. Lacking another arm to spare, she kicked the chest of vines as she dragged the other two, slowly progressing to the newly formed exit. The entire time, she healed both of them, outpacing the poison running through their veins.

  Thankfully, they didn’t have long to go. The door led to a short tunnel -- untrapped, this time -- and from there, it spit them out into a fresh new region.

  At least, that’s what Cal assumed it was. Without a doubt, they were out of the jungle. Only, everything in front of her looked… strange. Indistinct and nondescript. Cal struggled to describe it even as she looked at it, but as best she could tell, it was a realm of total white.

  Not like snow. Nothing so simple. Instead, Cal wasn’t even sure what the ground beneath her was made out of, nor could she say what it felt like to walk on. If there was one word that came to mind, it was “empty,” although that wasn’t quite right either.

  Because there was one thing that stood out. There, just a short walk away, was a giant blue crystal. It was a beacon in this disconcerting, unknowable place, standing in stark contrast to the otherwise blurry space. A spell diagram surrounded it, though it was one far less complex than the imprisonment on Sett.

  With a start, Cal realized she knew what she was looking at.

  A mana collection site. One of the four they’d been sent off to destroy. Here it was, just standing out in the open. Cal finally let go of her burdensome companions, taking a few steps towards the crystal.

  “Hells. We finally made it. We’re here.” Leaving this place wasn’t just some pipe dream, a pleasant fantasy that they whispered to make themselves feel better.

  And it’s just sitting there. Unguarded. Cal nearly broke out into a fit of laughter. Were the mana-collection sites their own special thing? No surrounding biome. No boss to fight. Just like that? She couldn’t believe it.

  Cal was of half a mind to go smash the thing to bits right now, giving herself something extra to gloat about once the others woke up. She didn’t, of course, knowing that such a thing was reckless without the others. But she thought about it.

  No. I’ll just sit tight and wait for them to wake up.

  Cal spun about, hoping to heal the others again and maybe open up their rewards.

  When she turned, though, she didn’t spot them.

  No Tess. No Verin. No chest. Not even the door back to the jungle.

  Just emptiness. A void of white.

  Cal frantically twisted about, searching for any signs of her friends -- anything at all, really -- but came up short. There was nothing. Nothing but the crystal and the whiteness.

  A sudden fatigue started to overtake her, and for a brief moment, Cal wondered if the sleep poison had somehow kicked in. But that didn’t make sense, did it? Cal didn’t get tired, and she’d barely inhaled any of it in the first place.

  All the logic in the world didn’t change the truth, though. As Cal ran about, searching for any signs of the others, she slowly grew more and more tired.

  After a time, she gave up her hunt. What had she been looking for, anyway? That was strange. She couldn’t remember.

  Remember what? What had she been thinking about? She wasn’t sure.

  How odd. Was something wrong with her? A spark of clarity burst through the fog, prompting a single thought: Was she under attack?

  Hoping to hide herself away, Cal tried to activate the full version of Apex Shroud, only to realize that she… couldn’t remember how? She knew she had the skill. She knew she’d used it recently. For the life of her, though, she couldn’t figure out how to turn it on. A spike of dread began to fill her, dissipating just as quickly.

  Turn what on? What was I doing again? Man, standing was growing to be a pain. Wouldn’t lying down be nicer right now? That sounded pretty good.

  Cal lay down, the not-ground ground cushioning her comfortingly. As if spurred on by her inertness, her thoughts grew foggier and foggier.

  Shortly thereafter, and for the first time in her life without the aid of severe blood loss, Cal drifted off to sleep.

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