“Ow,” I said.

  Then I touched the bump on my head. “Oww!”

  I was croug down on the sed floor ptform, both hands pressing down on a nice lump with my eyes closed. It took a while before the pain ebbed away and I dared to open my eyes and look down at just what had bonked my head.

  There ade on the ground, just sort of ying there, with a cross-shaped handle and a shaft made of a whitish wood. The metal bit at the end looked nid new and there was a big ‘J’ embossed oe.

  “Really?” I asked.

  The Dungeon was being very rude with its rewards. Still, a new... on of sorts was better than nothing. I wondered if it ted as makeshift? It was a good thing that my reward hadn’t been a mace.

  I picked up the spade and swung it around a little to test its weight and bance. I could tell from my experimental swings that I knew nothing about swinging any sort of on around. “Insight.”

  A Spade of Jacks, new.

  “Huh. Okay, so a sort of gift for finishing the st room by helping Jack. I wonder if clearing the room in other ways gives other rewards? Do you know, mister Menu?”

  The Insight information box popped aoor mister Menu was so shy.

  I shook my head and pulled up the s for Insight.

  InsightRank D - 100%The Ability to know something. The knowledge you gain is further increased.You have no General Skill Points! You ot increase Insight to Rank C!

  “What’s a general skill point?” I wondered aloud. It wasn’t a Css Skill Point. I had two of those just sitting around and trying to think about clig them to Insight just made my head feel fuzzy. So that wasn’t it. Oh well, a question to ask someone once I was out of here and found civilisation.

  “Well, onwards,” I said as I hiked my backpack ba.

  The path down was filled with mushy mushrooms to skip from. I was a little less careful this time since I was so close to the ground floor already. I retty sure that with Jumping at rank D I could survive the fall mostly unhurt, and each mushroom down made that a little more likely.

  Then a caterpilr stuck its head out from behind one of the mushrooms and blew a thick plume of pinkish smoke at me.

  I waved a hand before my face, but the thick smoggy smoke was already down my throat. That was one rude caterpilr.

  It pulled out a rge hookah and took an puff, cheeks ground big as it got ready to spray me again.

  Then I nded on its head.

  Ding! gratutions, you have smoked hookapilr, level 2!

  I the base of the Dungeon’s pilr coughing like mad. My first step missed the ground and when I stumbled and tried to reach the wall it was to find it a whole foot farther than I had thought. It didn’t help that everythi like it inning just a little bit, like one of those tea-cup rides at amusement parks but really slowly.

  “I-insight,” I said, aiming the skill onto myself.

  A very high amon Bun, level 3.

  I... I had taken drugs? Was this the peer pressure my family had warned me about. My mom would be... mildly disappoihat I had smoked something without taking the proper precautions. There was only so much disappoi a mostly-ex hippie could give when it came to the subject s. I’d seen my parents pictures of their time at Woodstock.

  Oh no, I was thinking in tas!

  Was it the drugs?

  Was I a deli now? I didn’t look good in bck, and wearing spikes would make me less huggable!

  “Menu!” I said and grabbed at the manu when it appeared. “Quick, I need a drug resistance power, quick!”

  The menu popped away with what I imagined, or hoped I imagined, was a huff of annoyance.

  It was okay, I could figure it out.

  I started pag the bottom of the dungeoing a circle around the small hill in the middle while taking big, huge gulps of air to clear my system. A few gnces here and there and the occasional snoop behind some of the sharp rocks surrounding the clearing didn’t reveal much at all. I decided that I might as well waste time productively and sat down with my back to the wall and took out my map making gear, which was mostly the same bit of coal and my dungeon map.

  Adding the additional rooms and some details ate up nearly half an hour.

  “Yep,” I said as I looked over my work. “That’s certainly almost a map.” I stuffed it away and sidered napping, but I had a strange sort of energy and was starting to be really hungry. “Insight.”

  A very buzzed amon Bun, level 3

  That would have to do.

  I got up, tossed my backpack ba and moved over to the archway set in the far wall. Carefully carved stones formed a delicate arch which was filled to the very brim with climbing vines and all sorts of pnts. They were so thi the passage that I couldn’t see more than a foot into the tunnel.

  Was I meant to hack my way through? That didn’t feel right. Every other challenge in the dungeon had a non-violent ao it. Maybe I was meant to use the shrinking potion?

  I poked at the wall of vines with my spade and watched, fasated, as they all receded away like curtains being pulled aside on a stage. It revealed a long, dark path. “Spooky,” I said.

  Lights began to appear iunnel, first in the distahen closer and closer, eaew point of light a little brighter until I could make out the flickering of torches tied to the walls. Soon, a pair of torches just a few meters into the tunnel lit up with a crag woosh.

  “.”

  I stepped into the passageway and walked along it, making sure to always have one foot on solid ground and keeping a for traps. I even took one of the torches out of its sd held it aloft like a real adventurer would, or at least those in my books.

  The long tunnel led into a room that reminded me a little of the dungeon’s main area, only there were no big colourful mushrooms here and the ceiling above was covered in sharp stones jutting downwards.

  In the ter of the room, monoliths loomed up in a circle that reminded me of Stonehehout the caps. The room smelled faintly like ammonia, but the stant breeze made the smell e and go even as it rustled the dry grass growiweeones on the ground.

  “Hello?” I asked aloud.

  The pce looked dangerous. A clear and obvious shift from the otherwise bright and almost cheery atmosphere of the rest of the dungeon.

  “Oh, my oh my, a te night snack.”

  I spun around, searg for the source of the voice but finding nothing.

  “I’m not over there,” came a whisper from behind me.

  I turned again and found only an e-ish whisp fading away so fast that I wasn’t sure I had actually seen anything. “Um, hi, my name is Broccoli,” I said.

  “Are you as scrumptious as your name implies?” the voice said. Every word came from a new dire and I gave up trying to trace it.

  “I’m not for eating, I’m for making friends with,” I told the person. “We could be friends too, if you stop with the weird voice thing. Unless you ’t? I’m sorry. If you ’t help yourself then we still be friends, I promise I won’t judge.”

  I slowly lowered my backpaext to one of the pilrs and stood with nothing but my spade in one hand, the tip poking into the grass between my feet.

  “Oh, you are a... treat.”

  Something bit my bum. Hard teeth sinking through the material of my skirt and into my skin before I shrieked and jumped five feet into the air.

  “So tasty, and those reas. Lovely!”

  This time I saw the thing, a quisight going off even as I pressed a hand to my butt and tried not to cry.

  It was a cat, or the head of a cat. It had one malevolent greehe other white and milky. Its huge mouth was twisted in a cruel smirk before it slipped into the shadows.

  The zombie of Cheshire, Boss, level 5

  Level five? But this was a level two to four dungeon? Had the prompt lied or was the Cheshire cat the end boss?

  “Y-you know, toug a girl like that without permission is exceptionally rude.”

  “Oh? Have I been rude?” the cat purred. The rumble was so deep I felt it in my chest.

  Something brushed past between my legs, soft and furry, like a cat begging for attention. I swung my spade around but hit oy air before teeth sank into my thigh.

  I screamed, my hand shooting out and firing a ing spell into the first thing I touched.

  “Tingly,” Cheshire said from the shadows, all the shadows. “But that only adds to the fvour, doesn’t it?”

  “S-stop hiding!” I screamed while my hand shakily took stoy wounds. Blood was flowing freely down my ihigh and into my socks. Not too much, but more than I ever wao see.

  “Hrmm, if the snack asks so politely,” Cheshire said.

  He appeared in the middle of the stone circle, a huge e furred cat covered in bck stripes with a rge cattish grin that looked like it could chew me whole.

  I jumped to the side a moment before the cat charged at me mouth wide open to take a nibble out of me. The jaed shut, and with that snap the cat disappeared like sand in the wind.

  I couldn’t do it. The cat was too big, the level difference way te. I looked to the exit and saw that the passage was still unblocked. It was just down a couple of hundred meters of narrow tuhat I was certai could shoot through with ease.

  “Darn it,” I said.

  A whisper of a rough tongue moving over lips was the only warning I had, but it was enough for me to duck out of the way of atempt from the huge cat to chow on me.

  I kicked upwards, putting all of my jumping skill into the act of kig the Cheshire only for the cat to spin out of the path of my kick as if I had annou days ago.

  “Such a slow little kitten,” the Cheshire said mogly. “Do tile though. I enjoy the game.”

  “I won’t let you eat me!” I swore at the cat. Rolling to my feet, I rao my backpad started rooting within, the task made harder by the spade in my hand.

  “More toys?” the cat asked.

  I pulled out the wrong thing, my magid instead of what I was looking for, but I still flung it at the e cat when it stuck its head out of the er.

  “Naughty naughty!” he said before slinking back.

  Then I found it.

  I tossed it into my left hand and held on tight as I started looking for the cat. “e at me, you unfunny Garfield wannabe!” I shouted. I... was still not very good at taunting. I bmed the wet throbbing of my thigh.

  The Cheshire giggled maniacally. “e at you? Very well.”

  The cat came around one of the pilrs and rushed right at me. My spade swished through the air, but all it did was bonk the cat on the head. Then I punched out with my left hand, right at the cat’s open mouth.

  I hit its rough toh a wet squeld probably didn’t so much as leave a bruise. Teeth, long and dagger-like, snapped around my shoulder and armpit.

  I screamed, my entire body trashing as the cat’s tongue ran over my arm and it made disgustingly pleased sounds. My spade came down again and again on its big ugly head but it didn’t seem to do anything. I wao unleash my magic, but had to keep it back, for just a little while.

  The potion bottle in my hand burst. I felt the juice of it mix with the cat’s saliva. My spade hit the ground with a ctter and I reached up to grab the cat by a fistfull of its fur.

  “You are not friend material!” I shouted as the cat’s eyes went wide and it began to shrink. The moried to go intangible, but my arm, still in its mouth, fired a tiny burst of ing magic at its zombie flesh and it returo normal.

  It shrunk and shrunk. I had to squeeze my arm out of its throat, but its slick saliva helped with that.

  It was no bigger than a kitten now, a ball e-bck fluff that I held by the scruff.

  “I will eat you!” it squeaked.

  I gred. “Eat this.”

  A burst, a full half of my remaining mana, shot into the kitty and it burst apart into a shower e motes.

  Ding! Ding! Ding! gratutions, you have defeated Dungeon Boss: Zombie Cheshire, level 5! For defeating an enemy above your level, bonus exp is gained! For defeating a Dungeon boss, bonus exp is gained!

  “Not now,” I told the menu. The pile of notifications faded away a moment ter, still there, but out of sight.

  I crashed to my knees and cried as I cradled my arm to my side. My thigh was er. It hurt, hurt more than anything I had ever felt before. But for all that it hurt it was an impotent pain, one I couldn’t do anything about.

  I pushed a bit of my mana into my body, and all that aplished was wiping the wounds and reopening them to the sting of fresh air.

  So I decided that the best thing to do was to have a sit and cry for a bit.