Dear Diary,

  How much punishment can one dungeon take before it throws up its metaphorical hands, declares union rules have been violated, and slinks off to hide in a dark corner with a cup of tea and a thousand-yard stare? Annabell Smith, professional nuisance and part-time chaos gremlin, was hellbent on finding out.

  ***

  If you were to gather a hundred reasonably sane people in a room and show them a plunger, most would agree that it is not, on balance, a particularly frightening weapon.

  It's just a stick with a rubbery mushroom on the end, usually found in bathrooms and rarely associated with mortal peril. That’s the official stance.

  These people, of course, have never had their entire field of vision abruptly replaced with a squelching thwop. Nor have they experienced the unpleasant sensation of being violently yanked forward by such a plunger, only to be folded in half over an aggressive knee.

  For reference, the correct reaction in such a situation is not to scream, but to wheeze like a concertina with a puncture.

  This quickly became Annabell's lethal One-Two combo as she danced down the street. The “One” being sudden suffocation-by-sanitation-tool, the “Two” being an impromptu meeting between undead ribs and Gremlin knee.

  And if the situation was feeling particularly festive, she'd throw in a “Three”—a follow-up jab with a toilet brush that seemed to operate under the same metaphysical laws as a cursed blade. It inflicted a rotating buffet of ailments, including (but not limited to) Mild Infection, Nausea, and an olfactory phenomenon known only as Haunting Stench.

  Over and over again, her plunger would find a new victim to suck in and dispose of, all the while Annabell bounced and cartwheeled across the scene with the grace of a slightly deranged, and very drunk janitor.

  A very drunk janitor who had just discovered a very silly, very effective combination of moves and was now determined to use it until the developers patched her out of reality.

  Whenever two zombies managed to flank Annabell in their own interpretation of the classic shamble-and-lurch combo, she would promptly spin away with the poise of a caffeinated raccoon.

  Then—plunger at the ready—she’d snag one from what could only be described as an unreasonable distance, yank them off their undead feet, fold them over her knee, and deposit them neatly into one of the street’s many smouldering craters. Or a burning trash bin. Or up against exposed rebar that greeted them like a fork greets the meatball.

  The street had, at some point, become something of a patchwork quilt of bad decisions and minor explosions.

  Now, when she was flanked by three zombies—well, that was the signal for a Tactical Retreat?.

  This usually involved leaping over a scorched car bonnet, vaulting across a conveniently placed piece of rubble, or executing a cartwheel so gratuitously gymnastic that gravity just gave up and waited for her to be done. (It should be noted that a gentle sidestep would have sufficed in most cases, but you didn’t unlock Chaotic Acrobatics without a certain flair for the unnecessary.)

  On her way out of these larger congregations, Annabell was known to leave little parting gifts.

  These included, but were not limited to, a sizzling canister of Bad Times—a rude cylinder with a short temper—or a bottle of Stay Away!, which was essentially a chic Molotov cocktail with social anxiety.

  And should a single zombie be unlucky enough to catch her, the result was not so much a fight as a lesson, involving a toilet brush, a lot of deep cleaning, and a growing sense of personal regret.

  It wasn’t just overkill. It was vengeance.

  In general, the scene mostly resembled a blurry, pink fury with floppy ears bouncing and rolling (tactically) across the street, leaving explosions and sprouting fires in her wake as the undead struggled to catch up.

  And yet, despite the acrobatic chaos, the dashing about, the mid-air detonations, and the fact that Annabell could be accurately described as a walking demolition incident, the horde was adapting.

  When three zombies weren’t enough, four showed up. When six fell, seven more clawed their way out of potholes and decorative shrubbery.

  Soon, it was no longer a skirmish—it was choreography.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Every time Annabell dodged, ducked, dipped, dived, and detonated, a new wave of undead somethings emerged, some crawling through dumpsters, others performing aerial ambushes from second-story windows with the grace of a dropped refrigerator.

  Every time she snagged one with the plunger, more would dive for her like poorly coordinated rugby players. Some she fended off with a toilet brush jammed into places brushes were never meant to go. Others required the liberal application of fire, or the kind of explosion that made the local pigeons pack up and emigrate.

  Before long, her pink hoodie looked like it had been through a blender. Her face was streaked with soot, grime, and the universal symbol for “perhaps today wasn’t the best day to get out of bed.” Her HP gauge was blinking ominously, with that tone of digital concern normally reserved for medical emergencies or low batteries.

  But something else was happening, too.

  Each time a bomb went off, each time a building trembled under the weight of reckless acrobatics and borderline war crimes, the dungeon creaked. It felt.

  Hairline cracks danced across concrete that had survived centuries. Doorframes, even those untouched by the mayhem, sagged. Entire buildings shuddered, unsure if they were still supposed to be here.

  The fabric of the dungeon itself—stitched together with ancient magic, chewing gum, and good intentions—began to fray.

  Because, when you send a Gremlin into a dungeon, what you get isn’t a hero.

  You get entropy with contractual snack breaks.

  ***

  Had Lionel been paying the appropriate amount of attention—which is to say, the kind of attention one reserves for ticking time bombs, life-changing contracts, and all-you-can-eat buffets with an asterisk—he might have noticed that the Dungeon Right he’d carefully tucked into his inner pocket was beginning to fray at the edges.

  Not metaphorically. Quite literally. Little seams of reality unpicking themselves, like an old coat being worn by a universe that didn’t care.

  But Lionel was occupied staring at his System interface. More specifically, at the message from Cassandra that’d just caused it to flare up.

  Now, one might imagine a message from a childhood friend (not per Lionel’s own choice, mind you)—or an old rival, or the unholy lovechild of both—would contain something sweet. A "Hope you're doing well!" perhaps, or a "Good luck!" Or even a carefully neutral “I see you’re still alive.” Instead, what Lionel received was:

  "How are things going your end?"

  Which, on paper, might have seemed benign. Polite, even. But it came with a picture, and that picture said more than any words ever could. A high-rise apartment with floor-to-ceiling windows. A gleaming wall of achievements polished to the point of smugness. Gift baskets the size of small economies. Somewhere under the pile was a sofa. Probably. It was hard to tell.

  Last week, her Delver group—New Dawn, a rising star in the dungeon broadcast scene—had reached Megapolis on the Third Layer. Mere months ago, barely anyone had known who they were, yet now, they were progressing at a pace that made them impossible to ignore.

  Besides some of the legacy groups returning for the new season of Delving and Dungeoneering, few forum posts, highlight reels, or speculative discussions about secret love lines or wealthy backers, had received quite as many likes as those concerning New Dawn.

  Their run on the second level had been legendary.

  And Cassandra—oh, Cassandra—had personally overseen their rise. She was now the sort of person who sent messages not to connect, but to gloat with plausible deniability.

  “How are things going your end?” was, in the ancient and sacred language of interpersonal one-upmanship, roughly translated as:

  “Remember the life you could have had? Remember me? I have matching towels now.”

  But Lionel wasn’t biting. Not this time.

  He raised a hand to the Dungeon Right, safely tucked away against his chest. It was slightly warm, faintly twitching, and smelled ever so faintly of fate set in motion. And, most importantly, it was his.

  It hadn’t been handed to him by anyone. It hadn’t been signed off by Cassandra. It didn’t come gift-wrapped with expectations and smug smiles and the soft, choking scent of secondhand success.

  And, most importantly, it was as far away from the plans his family had made for him as physically possible.

  And by the gods—old, new, or pending litigation—he was going to make it work.

  With this, he could finally—

  The elevator pinged, and the doors slid open with the smugness of something that knew it had just ruined the dramatic timing of an inner monologue.

  Lionel might have felt offended by it, if not for the voice that accompanied it.

  “Heading back already?” came the dulcet tone of Mira—elevator operator by trade and certified mess by choice.

  The young half-troll looked, as usual, like someone halfway through being mugged by reality.

  Unlike most of her kin, she wasn’t the big and burly type. Tall, yes, but also lanky like a reed, a bit of a hunch to her back, and with tusks that were just a shrug above fangs. Her blue hair had lost the will to be hair and was now simply there, and her uniform bore the unmistakable creases of someone who had attempted to iron it and been physically assaulted by the steam.

  “Heading up, actually,” Lionel replied, thumb still resting against the outline of his Dungeon Right yet mind elsewhere.

  Mira eyes lit up. “You found something good, then?”

  Lionel allowed himself a smirk. Not a large one. Just the kind of smirk that suggested that somewhere, in the near future, someone he didn’t like was about to have a very bad day.

  “Yeah,” he said, letting those words sink in. She is going to hate this. “I just might have.”

  He hit send.

  “Things are going great! See you next season.”

  A simple message. Clean. Polite. Civil, even.

  And, to someone like Cassandra, more enraging than a thousand-word thesis on her insecurities delivered via singing telegram.

  Lionel was already mentally preparing himself to ignore the storm that would follow. The messages. The calls. The inevitable passive-aggressive status updates.

  He’d been dodging her for months now. But today, just today, a response felt right.

  This Dungeon Right was his one-way ticket out. Out of the legacy. Out of the shadows. Out of her orbit.

  And Lionel? Lionel wasn’t looking back.

  He was going up.