We stumble upon a fortified camp. Palisades made of woven twigs block the path, thick as load-bearing beams at our scale. There are about twenty Porcis inside. They’re in tight formation, patrolling with military discipline.

  A General in black armor barks orders, smacking his troops with the flat of his blade to keep them moving. Right behind him, safely tucked behind the palisade, a Fire Mage juggles wisps of flame between his fingers, ready to torch anything that gets close.

  “Kim, the Mage is yours,” I whisper. “He doesn’t cast a single spell. If he shoots, we roast.”

  Kim adjusts her scope, face carved from marble. She calculates wind, distance, angle. “With pleasure.”

  She shoulders her Viper. The jungle falls dead silent.

  CLACK.

  A single bullet. The Mage’s skull pops in a spray of light before he can even raise his staff. Pure panic sweeps the camp.

  Chris pops up and triggers his [Worg Frenzy Totem]. It slams into the dirt with a dull thud, washing us in its red aura.

  “Charge!” I yell, hoisting my shovel.

  We rush the breach. The General tries to parry my swing with his axe. With my 74 Speed, I’m already behind him. I shatter his knees with a brutal sweep. Chris knocks him out cold with a shield bash, and Kim finishes the job with her knife. The twenty remaining soldiers get methodically slaughtered.

  The moment the last pig squeals, I wave the team forward. “Move out,” I order. “Clock is ticking.”

  We hit the trail again. The jungle closes in around us. The air grows heavier, dripping with moisture. Mental exhaustion starts setting in. The endless mob grinding, the heat, the sheer claustrophobia of this oversized greenhouse.

  Half an hour later, we hit a second camp. Bigger. Nastier. A Commander guards the entrance this time. He is two heads taller than the Generals, a mountain of pink muscle and scars surrounded by two Mages and a solid thirty elite soldiers.

  “Don’t stop!” I yell the second they spot us. “Chris, Cursed Swamp!”

  Chris slams his totem into the earth. The packed dirt in front of the camp instantly turns into a sticky, stinking bog. The charging Commander sinks right in. He tries to hoist his mace, but moves in slow motion, trapped in molasses.

  I jump, vaulting off his shield to gain some altitude, and trigger my weapon skill. “[THE ASCENDING SCOOP]!”

  My Excali-Spade shoots up in a devastating uppercut. It rips up a spray of dirt and pebbles that blinds the monster, then shatters his jaw with a sickening crack. He drops cold. We butcher him on the ground before his mages can even blink. Kim picks off the spellcasters with terrifying precision, turning the entire camp into a shooting gallery.

  “We’re machines,” Chris breathes, totally drunk on the power trip, wiping pig blood off his new armor.

  “Save your energy,” I dial him back, checking the map. “We’re reaching the objective.”

  The vegetation finally thins out. We emerge into a massive clearing dead center of the zone. We just found a full-blown fortress.

  Walls made of sapling trunks and massive pebbles surround the perimeter. Watchtowers built from rusted tin cans monitor the approaches. Hundreds of Porcis patrol the grounds. It's a legit army.

  Dead center, sitting on a throne made of an iridescent beetle shell, is a Porci Orc King. He is enormous, obese, dripping in crude gold jewelry. He radiates a familiar aura of power that rubs me the wrong way. He wears a crown of thorns and a red cape stitched from torn precious fabric.

  But the weirdest part is his headdress. Planted vertically in the top of his skull like a grotesque unicorn horn is a jagged, broken wooden cylinder. The King decorated it with gold rings and war paint, treating it like some sacred relic.

  “He’s got a… particular style,” Kim whispers. “What’s that piece of wood in his head? A local trend?”

  “Probably a tribal fetish,” I reply, brushing it off. “Kings always need to compensate for something.”

  I check the map. The green dot isn’t blinking on the King. It's pulsing over a specific structure right behind the throne, heavily guarded. A tent.

  A candy-pink tent. It looks like it's made from a giant tissue stretched over colossal toothpicks, complete with little decorative bows tied to the stakes. It clashes so hard with the barbaric filth of the pig camp it’s practically comical.

  “The target is inside the pink tent,” I whisper.

  “What is it?” Kim asks, squinting. “A weapon? A treasure?”

  “Given the color…” I grimace. “Either it’s a tea room, or a nuclear bomb disguised as candy. Either way, we’re going to have to step over the corpse of the King to find out.”

  We’re about to burst from the bushes to launch the assault when a synchronized double vibration freezes us in place. Chris and I bring our hands to our interfaces at the exact same time.

  [Notification: New message from [Empress Savina] in the chat thread]

  I hold my breath. We still can’t reply, but she keeps broadcasting into the void. I pop the window open.

  [Empress Savina]: @Ben @Chris Floor 13 reached. The pace is hellish, but we’re holding on. Still no news from you, but I’m not worried. I know you’re alive.

  Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

  [Empress Savina]: @Ben @Chris You know why I’m sure, Chris? Because your uncle is with you. He’s a cockroach. The world can collapse, bombs can fall, and Ben will crawl right out of the rubble dusting off his jacket, beer in hand. He’s too stubborn to die. Stick to him.

  [Empress Savina]: Don’t worry about me. I hit the jackpot in the lottery. I’ve got a totally broken Class and my group is incredibly competent. We’re steamrolling the dungeon. See you at the exit. Love you.

  Chris lets out a trembling sigh that seems to drain his lungs of all the anxiety he had stockpiled since this ordeal started. A massive smile lights up his mud-and-blood-smeared face. It instantly makes him look like a kid again, more alive.

  “Floor 13…” he repeats, savoring the number. “She’s okay. She is climbing insanely fast, but she’s okay!”

  I just stay stuck on one specific line, my eyes narrowed in a petty but inevitable wave of jealousy.

  “‘A totally broken Class’?” I repeat, outraged, glaring at the glowing text. “Seriously? She gets God Mode, a royal road to power, and I end up as a Garbage Man with a dance routine and a shovel?”

  I snap the window shut, burying my immense relief under my usual layer of annoyance. “A cockroach.” Coming from her, that is the highest compliment. It means I’m a tenacious pest who refuses to be squashed. I’ll take it.

  I turn to Kim and Chris. The vibe has shifted entirely. That cold, crushing pressure of fear has completely vanished from the kid’s eyes. He knows his mom is kicking ass up there. Now he just has to kick ass down here to join her on Earth. He isn’t a victim anymore. He is a man on a mission.

  I unscrew my flask with a fluid flick of the wrist and take a long swig. The cheap booze burns my soul and scours away the last lingering traces of doubt. I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, crack my knuckles, and let a smirk stretch across my face.

  “Okay. Family reunion is over,” I whisper, dropping into professional mode. “Mom is fine, she’s DPSing like a beast up there. Our turn to clean up the trash down here.”

  I point at the Porci King lounging on his shell throne in the center of the camp, rocking that ridiculous wooden peg in his skull. “We’ve got a pink tent to toss. And that pile of lard is in the way. Positions.”

  Chris doesn’t even tremble. He digs his heels into the soft dirt, anchoring his heavy boots. He takes a deep breath and slams his metal-gauntleted fist into the ground. “[CURSED SWAMP TOTEM]!” he roars.

  The magic hits instantly. The packed earth in front of the fortress ripples and liquefies. A brown shockwave turns the solid ground into a greenish, bubbling bog, spreading fast and trapping the feet of the closest patrols.

  “[WORG FRENZY TOTEM]!”

  A second totem, carved from screaming dark wood, bursts from the dirt behind us. It thumps with a dull beat, like a massive heart. The wooden wolf snaps its jaws. A blood-red aura wraps around us, dilating our pupils and spiking our heart rates. I feel the rage surge. The absolute need to hit fast and hit hard.

  I hoist my shovel. “FIRE AT WILL!”

  Kim kicks off the party. She doesn’t even bother with the scope. At this range, with her boosted stats and the adrenaline of the totem pumping through her, she just doesn’t miss. She has become a pure extension of her rifle.

  BRRRRT.

  Her [Rapid Bite] skill spits a five-round burst in a single second. The five Porcis holding the front line drop, their heads exploding like overripe watermelons.

  Panic tears through the camp like wildfire. The Porci King sees his troops faltering and screams a guttural command. The compact mass of three hundred surviving soldiers rushes us in a wave of suicidal despair.

  But this isn’t the desperate, suffocating brawl from Floor 5. This is an industrial, methodical, ice-cold slaughter.

  The pigs bog down in the cursed swamp, their speed tanked by 60%. They stumble, trip, and impale themselves on the weapons of each other, turning their own charge into a grotesque, confused pile-up.

  As for Chris, he drops all hesitation. He plows into the mob like an icebreaker. BOOM.

  The impact is brutal. He slams into the front line with his [Guardian’s Bulwark], launching monsters into the air like ragdolls. He doesn’t bother parrying. He just advances, an unstoppable force. The sloppy axe swings bounce off his gleaming plate armor with harmless metallic clinks, barely scratching the paint.

  “I’m untouchable!” he laughs, completely drunk on his own power, mowing down three enemies with a wide, whistling sword sweep.

  I slide right into his wake, gripping my Excali-Spade with both hands. I’m not just a garbage man anymore. I’m a high-speed, lethal shadow. One strike per target, but every hit is an absolute death sentence. The molecular edge slices through pink flesh and bone without a shred of resistance.

  SHLACK. SHLACK. SHLACK. It's rhythmic. Clean. Almost boring.

  The Porci King watches his army melt away and finally climbs down from his throne. He violently shoves his own bodyguards aside and charges straight at me, mace raised high, the ground quaking under his sheer mass.

  He is surprisingly fast for a walking pile of lard. “SQUEEEEEE!”

  He brings the mace down with enough force to powder solid stone. I dodge it with a fluid side-step, letting the heavy iron smash into the mud centimeters from my boots.

  I end up face to face with him, close enough to smell his rancid breath. I stare right into his eyes, looking for an opening, and that is when my gaze locks onto his weird crown.

  I recognize the wood grain. I recognize the jagged splinter at the top. It's the handle of my starting shovel. The exact one I snapped off inside the skull of the Orc King a few floors back.

  Time slows to a crawl as the realization hits me. “Wait…” I whisper, stunned. “It’s you?”

  The monster has the exact same attack pattern. The same blind rage. It's the exact same Boss, just recycled and reskinned with a pig texture. The System is so incredibly cheap it's literally reusing dead boss assets.

  A dark smirk stretches my lips. The King throws a desperate lateral swipe to knock me back. I duck right under it. I trigger [The Ascending Scoop].

  My Excali-Spade launches upward in a perfect arc, ripping up the dirt and slamming into his chin with the force of a divine uppercut. CRACK.

  The hit is devastating. But I don’t stop. I capitalize on the stun, jump, kick off his obese belly, and drive my blade right down into his skull, perfectly parallel to the old wooden handle.

  The Porci King freezes. He stares at me, a gleam of terrified recognition sparking in those pig eyes. It's like he suddenly remembered the shame, and the exact shovel that put him in the dirt the first time around.

  He collapses without a sound, flatlined by the trauma just as much as the steel.

  The battle stops dead. Like someone just yanked the power cord, the last few soldiers disintegrate the second their leader drops.

  [Combat Ended] [Zone Cleared]

  I land softly in the muck. “Too easy,” Kim comments. She blows a wisp of smoke off her rifle barrel, looking almost disappointed.

  Chris jogs over, not even slightly out of breath, resting his sword on his shoulder. “We won? It’s already over?”

  “The Boss was a refurbished model,” I reply, kicking the corpse right as it despawns into ash. “The System is recycling.”

  I pivot toward the back of the camp, where the real objective has been waiting for us this whole time. It sits completely untouched in the middle of the carnage, a flawless chromatic anomaly. The little decorative bows on the stakes haven’t budged a millimeter despite the war zone outside. A soft, almost fairy-tale light glows from within.

  “Alright,” I say, stepping up. “Let’s see what we just saved. The ultimate weapon? Grandma’s apple pie recipe? The TV remote for the dungeon?”

  Chris and Kim stack up right behind me, muscles locked, ready for the worst. I grab the tent flap. The fabric is stupidly soft, pure silk, a quality that has zero business existing in a camp full of sweaty pigs.

  “Ready?”

  I rip the curtain open with a sharp tug. I peek inside.

  My face freezes. My eyes go wide, then immediately narrow into a squint of pure, cosmic disappointment. I let the silk flap fall back into place, slow and heavy, like I’m closing the lid on a dumpster that smells way too ripe.

  “Oh… you gotta be kidding me…” I sigh, looking totally jaded. “Seriously? That’s the treasure?”