David gave the branded imp corpse a speculative look. Poking it seemed more productive than debating their odds of survival, which were approximately a decimal above zero, or perhaps below it. He slashed his sword against the imp's shoulder with speed. The skin resisted with a toughness that felt all wrong for something that used to be alive. He had to lean his full weight into the blade before it punched through with a wet, unsatisfying pop. He made a mental note: demonic fluids probably stained, and he only had the one outfit.

  So, the imp's hide was absurdly durable. Check.

  He glanced at his immediate circle. Mara’s face was a shade greener, her arms crossed tightly. Theo watched with an unbothered slouch that didn’t hide the tension in his jaw. Evans and Corbin observed like seasoned professionals, though Corbin’s hand hadn’t strayed far from his sidearm.

  The wider group, though, was a festival of dismay. Henderson and his university friends stared with open-mouthed horror, huddling together as if David were the main attraction in a nightmare. Which, he supposed, was fair—but he wasn’t the one with a branded shoulder and a desire to turn them into souvenirs.

  Well, well, David mused, look at me, calmly stabbing a corpse in an impossible dimension. And I’m worrying about stains. A week ago, the most daring thing I did was microwave fish in the kitchen. He filed the thought away for future existential panic. There would be time.

  “If this is too much for your delicate sensibilities, feel free to go identify some poisonous berries,” David said, not looking up. No one moved, but Henderson let out a choked gasp that was almost impressive.

  David switched tactics, hefting his sword and bringing the pommel down on the imp’s arm with a solid thud. The impact vibrated up his wrist, but the bone held firm. “Built to last. They’re the luxury sedans of the demon world—over-evolved and ugly.”

  He moved to the head, prying open a lidless eye. The pupil was a vertical slit, wide and black. “Eyes like a cat. I suppose we can look forward to these things seeing us perfectly in the dark.” So much for sneaking around after sunset.

  Next, he examined the hands and mouth. “Sharp nails, even sharper teeth. And I’d give odds a bite from these things comes with a side of incurable sepsis.” A quick pat-down of the imp’s loincloth yielded nothing—no tools, no keys, not even a suspicious coupon. “And no loot. The demon realm’s economy is in the toilet.”

  “Right, that’s enough field biology for today,” David announced, wiping his blade on a patch of grass. “The CliffsNotes: they’re tough, strong, see in the dark, can only be stabbed, and come with built-in shivs. Try not to engage in hand-to-hand combat. Or worst case, someone distracted them while someone else stabs a leg or the head from behind. Slows them down either way.”

  Internally, his mind buzzed with unanswered questions. What did they eat? How did they organize? Did they have demonic coffee breaks? But pursuing those answers would require more time, more corpses, and a stomach he wasn’t sure he had yet. Maybe next time.

  Deciding action was better than contemplation, David allocated a few stat points to Constitution. No sense delaying the inevitable—being slightly harder to kill seemed a solid investment. Constitution meant he could take more hits, and if rations ran low, could avoid illness, and he’d last longer before resorting to cannibalism. Maybe it would reduce his need for sleep? That seemed a far fetch yet reasonable assumption. Mana wasn’t exactly tempting, it seemed like a foolish play in the face of impossible odds. You couldn’t cast spells if you were dead.

  Demonic energy had saved his life twice, he had inhaled it, stolen it from the creatures, and the energy had drastically boosted his strength, speed—everything. He would have been dead without the edge it gave him, but held too many unanswered questions.

  Of course, he had no doubt that power here came with a price. Nothing was ever free, especially in a dimension that rated your survival as “impossible.”

  It started with Henderson grumbling, his voice strained. "God, these things are heavy." But he surprised David by lurching to his feet, his face a mask of effort. "Let's just... get it over with." He hauled the imp corpse, his arms trembling visibly, a sharp hiss escaping his clenched teeth.

  And the award for 'Most Points Dumped into Strength' goes to..., David thought, hefting his own imp with a controlled exertion. He felt the dense, unnatural weight, but his breathing remained steady. Constitution for the win. Let's see if muscle-boy here pops a blood vessel. He made sure his sword hand was free, the rust-flecked steel feeling like the only sane thing in this insane forest.

  Mara lifted her imp with a focused, athletic grace, the burden clearly significant but manageable for her.

  Evans, his face all grim business, nodded. "Move out. I’ll take rear guard." He held his sidearm ready and gestured to Corbin, who held both a sidearm and a sharpened shard of demon-metal in his other hand. Corbin gave him a nod.

  Evans gave a stoic nod in return, already moving, his eyes constantly scanning the oppressive, magenta-hued trees.

  The wind picked up, making the twisted branches creak and the leaves rustle with a sound like dry, scraping bones. Every snap of a twig, every distant groan from the forest, made someone flinch. David didn't feel the same bone-deep fatigue as before, just the persistent, gnawing emptiness in his stomach. He glanced at the imp on his shoulder. The leathery skin and sulfur stench instantly killed his appetite. Yet.

  When they finally dumped the bodies into a fissure, Henderson was panting, sweat plastering his hair to his forehead. Mara was breathing heavily, but controlled. Yep, David concluded. All strength, no stamina. A classic blunder.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  On the tense walk back, moving faster but feeling more exposed, the silence was a heavier burden than the corpses had been. When the mangled fuselage of the plane came into view, a collective, silent relief passed through the group. It wasn't safety, but it was a landmark in this hell.

  As the others clustered together, David stepped away, leaning against a petrified, blood-red tree. He focused inward, and his stats appeared before his mind's eye.

  [Name: David Carter

  Level 4

  Demonic Realm: Floor 1/???

  Difficulty: Impossible

  Time left until forced ejection: 4y 364d 19h 24m 32s.

  Primary Class: Locked

  Sub-class: Locked

  Strength: 9

  Dexterity: 7

  Constitution: 16

  Mana: 11

  Demonic Energy: 13

  Skills: Battle Sense Lvl 3, Calm Mind Lvl 1, Energy Affinity Lvl 2,

  Free points: 0]

  David delegated the macabre chores to Corbin and the others, watching them wrestle with imp corpses that seemed to weigh as much as compact cars. He settled himself against the plane’s massive, treadless tire, the solid rubber a comforting anchor in a world of psychic trees and demonic vermin.

  A breeze, unnervingly gentle, stirred his hair. He closed his eyes and inhaled. The air held a bizarre, floral sweetness, like perfume sprayed on a battlefield. Chanel No. 5 for the damned, he thought. A nice touch.

  The sun’s warmth on his skin felt real, but the silence was a presence in itself—a thick, smothering blanket devoid of the civilized white noise of humanity. No distant sirens, no buzzing power lines. Just the quiet rustle of leaves that probably secreted acid.

  The First Floor, his mind echoed, the term suddenly feeling absurd. Is the sky a painted dome? Are we in a cosmic dollhouse? And if this is the ground floor, what’s in the basement? A lava level? A boss room with a nine-headed sales manager?

  The whimsy curdled as he considered the coming night. Reduced visibility was bad. Huddling around a beacon of a campfire was worse. It would be like sending a formal invitation to every hungry thing in this forest, complete with a little map. “Haaa…” he exhaled, the sound swallowed by the oppressive quiet.

  We’ve been lucky, he admitted to himself. Our resume so far: one malnourished hell-beast and a trio of imps that probably failed basic training. The next group won’t be the B-team.

  His eyes slid back to the shattered plane. He could hear the muffled, frantic arguing from inside. Damon’s voice, sharp with panic, rose above the others. Leaving was a tempting fantasy, but a stupid one.

  The pros and cons list, he began, his internal voice taking on the dry tone of a particularly cynical strategist. Pro: I don’t have to listen to undergrads debate survival tactics. Con: I’d get my throat slit by a spider-cat while I slept. Pro: Unhindered personal growth. Con: Being utterly, hopelessly alone with my sparkling personality in a dimension that wants me dead.

  He needed watchers. Corbin, for all his near-death experience, had a firearm and a semblance of woodland know-how. The man was a resource. The others, even the panicky students, were walking data points. Their stat allocations, their latent skills, their inevitable, spectacular failures—it was all valuable intelligence for the five-year tour of duty he hadn't signed up for.

  He didn’t know how to skin an animal, build a shelter, or even start a fire without a lighter. Striking it out alone was an elaborate form of suicide.

  So he stayed, leaning against the window, a spectator to the chaos, already taking notes, prepared to learn.

  The crunch of footsteps on the strange, violet-hued grass signaled Mara’s approach. She came to a stop near the tire, her gaze sweeping the treeline before she leaned back against the scorched metal of the fuselage. She pulled a crumpled packet of airline cookies and a small bottle of water from her cargo pocket.

  She drank the water with a focused slowness, as if each sip were a measured resource she might never find again. David watched from his spot on the ground. The five-star cuisine of the damned, he thought, the snark a quiet buffer against the silence. Compliments of the chef, who probably has horns and a forked tail.

  “David,” she said, her voice steady, but quiet. She kept her eyes on him. “I saw what you did for Henderson today. Both times.” The unspoken question hung in the air between them.

  He held her gaze. His own survival was the bedrock of every decision now. But a single action, if it cost him nothing? A moment of assistance in a place that offered none?

  He gave a single, concise nod.

  She didn’t react, instead, she settled on the ground a few feet from David, not looking at him, her attention captured by the grim task of cleaning demonic grime from her sword with a ragged piece of cloth.

  She worked in silence for a minute, the rhythmic scraping of cloth on steel a small, defiant noise against the forest's quiet. Finally, she spoke, her voice low and conversational, as if they were discussing the weather. "I studied geology. For four years. I could tell you about tectonic shifts, sedimentary layers, the composition of igneous rock." She gestured with her chin toward the towering, blood-red trees and the unnaturally magenta undergrowth. "None of it applies here. The soil is wrong. The tree rings, if they have any, would probably spell out curses. It's like the universe is mocking my student loans."

  David glanced at her, acknowledging her words. A rock scholar, he mused internally. Good. I’ll need someone to accurately describe the composition of the cliff we're about to be thrown from.

  She ate half a cookie, the motion deliberate, then carefully rewrapped the packet and sealed it away. The silence that settled between them was different from the forest’s oppressive quiet; this was a human silence, filled with things unsaid.

  After a few minutes, she spoke, her voice low. “I had a vineyard. Well, I was building one. Backbreaking work for five years. Planting, grafting, fighting off pests and bad weather.” She gave a soft, hollow chuckle. “I was supposed to get my first real harvest this autumn. Now I’m here, and the only thing purple is these nightmare trees.”

  David said nothing. He just listened. It was a small thing to offer.

  “Do you think that makes it all pointless?” she asked, finally glancing down at him. “Working that hard for something you never get to see?”

  David met her eyes. The question was too big for this place. His philosophy had been forcibly simplified to ‘breathe in, breathe out, don’t die.’ He offered a slight shrug, a gesture that conceded the tragedy without engaging the philosophy.

  She nodded, as if she’d expected that. She pushed off from the plane, but paused.

  "Evans thinks he's figured out a piece of the system. If you speak the phrase 'quest window' aloud, it triggers something. He didn't elaborate, but he wasn't frothing at the mouth afterward, so I count that as a positive data point." She pushed herself to her feet in one fluid motion. "Figured you'd want to know. Data is data."

  With a final, appraising look at the hellish landscape, she turned and walked back toward the wreckage, leaving him with the one useful thing anyone had said all day.

  Data was data. David waited until she was gone, then let his head tilt back against the cold tire.

  "Quest window," he said to the waiting air.