Nothing that big and gloopy should have been that fast, but the entire cube slid forward in one horrible, frictionless glide that covered twice the distance Greg expected.

  The front face bulged out toward them like a liquid fist.

  The system chimed redundantly.

  Surprised!

  You are surprised.

  There has to be a way to turn these things off, Greg thought.

  He moved to guard Elowen on instinct. Doran charged the problem head-on. His boots thudded against stone as he barreled in, axe raised.

  VORACIOUS JELLY CUBE used ENGULF

  Target: [Doran]

  With an awful, slurping lick, the jelly slapped across the floor where they’d just been standing, then snapped back. A smear of stone dust vanished as it passed.

  Greg stepped up, his Giant Fucking Sword coming around in a hard, reflexive slash. The blade carved through the outer layer of jelly with a wet, slurping sound. A line opened… then sealed itself, the jelly knitting back together in an instant.

  VORACIOUS JELLY CUBE takes…

  1 Slashing Damage, 6 Fire Damage

  Constructs and objects are resistant to slashing damage.

  Volatile Resonance (Greg ≠ Vault)

  Greg took 3 Fire Damage.

  Rage ended.

  “Great,” Greg sputtered. “I’m out of ideas.”

  “Wait—” Elowen started.

  Too late.

  The silhouette of the dwarf thrashed inside, slower than it should have been, as if the jelly were dragging at his movements. Little streams of bubbles trailed from him as the acid began to bite.

  Violet and Nars stopped, holding their actions. For a moment, no one knew what to do.

  “I’ve got him,” Elowen said. She lifted her hand and a faint halo of light sprang up around herself and then Greg, Nars, Violet—even Doran, a thin golden veil shimmering like sunlight through gauze.

  Elowen used Minor Sun Ward

  Effect: +50% Damage Resistance, +Cool Glow

  “I have bought us some time,” she rasped. “But Doran will not last long.”

  "Don't let it lick you!" Violet shouted.

  Nars had already retreated to the edge of the room, trading swords for one of his short bows. “Right,” he muttered. “New plan: stabbing, but from over here.”

  He drew and loosed in one smooth motion. The arrow hissed through the air and vanished into the cube with a faint blup. Inside, it slowed to a lazy drift.

  VORACIOUS JELLY CUBE is unimpressed by your poking from afar.

  Constructs and objects are resistant to piercing damage.

  “I’ve got an idea!” Violet shouted.

  She’d dropped to one knee, fingers flying through the contents of her satchel. Vials clinked. Powder bags rustled. She tore the stopper off a squat flask with her teeth and spat the cork aside, then poured a stream of shimmering liquid onto a palmful of dull gray dust.

  The mix hissed and smoked, throwing off tiny sparks of light.

  “Keep it busy!” she said, eyes fixed on the swirling mess in her hands. “I’ve got a recipe for an extinction-level degreaser, but we’re going to need A LOT of it!”

  Inside the cube, Doran’s muffled bellow vibrated through the jelly.

  Greg tightened his grip on the Giant Fucking Sword and stepped forward, the faint warmth of Elowen’s ward humming against his skin.

  “Alright,” he growled at the cube. “Spit out my dwarf.”

  Greg swung.

  The sword hit with a sound like someone body-slamming a kiddie pool. Jelly dented inward in a neat, sword-shaped wedge, then oozed back out, flinging little droplets that hissed on the floor.

  VORACIOUS JELLY CUBE takes 1 slashing damage.

  Constructs and objects are resistant to slashing damage.

  The cube shivered, then slid toward him in another horrible, frictionless rush.

  Greg backpedaled, keeping just out of reach, using the sword’s length like a cattle prod. Slash, step. Slash, pivot. Every time he thought he’d bought a little space, it poured itself after him, edges deforming and reforming with grotesque eagerness.

  “Greg,” Elowen called, voice tight, “keep it moving, don’t let it settle!”

  “It's going to get bored with me quick,” Greg panted. “Sustained DPS is not really my bag, I’m more for burst damage.”

  He darted in for another strike, sweeping at the side this time, hoping to slice a corner off. The blade met resistance halfway through, like hitting thick mud, momentum bleeding away. It came free with a sucking noise that made his skin crawl.

  The cube flowed with the blow, its side bulging out, trying to wrap around the sword. Greg yanked it back just in time, the jelly snapping shut a hair’s breadth from his fingers.

  He imagined what it would feel like to be inside that stuff.

  Doran didn’t have to imagine.

  The dwarf’s form drifted a little deeper into the cube, still thrashing. Greg could see him clearly from this angle: armor slowly pitting, beard hair floating free like copper seaweed. Doran was trying to brace his boots against nothing, muscles straining in slow motion.

  “Hold on!” Greg shouted, like there was anything else Doran could be doing.

  Elowen moved in closer, staying just at the edge of the cube’s reach. She extended her hand, palm out, fingers splayed. Light gathered there; soft at first, then brighter, a gentle gold that made the acid fumes look thinner for a heartbeat.

  “Totth,” she whispered, voice hoarse. “Hear my prayer. May your Light eat the Darkness!”

  She thrust her hand forward. The light leapt from her palm, streaming toward Doran like liquid dawn.

  It hit the cube’s surface and… warped.

  Instead of piercing through, the light bent sideways, sliding along the jelly’s skin, refracting around Doran like he was behind thick glass. Some of it reached him but most of the glow skittered away, harmless.

  Elowen staggered, hissing between her teeth. “It’s diffusing,” she said. “The acid’s scattering the focus. I can blunt what’s hurting him, not pull him free.”

  “Blunt harder!” Greg snapped, batting away another bulging pseudopod. It splashed across Elowen’s ward and sloughed to the ground, leaving a smoking smear.

  Elowen gritted her teeth, reshaping the spell, dialing the light down from a piercing beam to a steady, low radiance that soaked into the cube’s outer layer. The fizzing where Doran touched the jelly lessened—slightly.

  “His armor will hold longer,” she said. “Not forever.”

  Nars loosed another arrow. It zipped in, slowed to a pathetic crawl, and drifted past Doran’s ear like a lazy fish.

  “This is pointless,” Nars muttered. “His head is exposed. That breastplate will still be good long after we’ve seen his brains.”

  “You’re doing fine,” Violet snapped without looking up. The mix in her hands had thickened, churning in colors Greg did not trust. “Keep the surface agitated, vulnerable.”

  Greg’s lungs burned. He’d been dancing around the cube for what felt like hours but was probably under a minute, every muscle working to keep him just out of its embrace. The sword was heavy in his hands in a way that had nothing to do with its actual weight.

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  He could end this.

  The thought slid in slick and tempting. If he let the Rage loose, if he cracked it open the way he’d cracked the Warden, he could carve this thing into salad. Just stop holding back and let the anger do what it wanted. Break. Smash. Tear. Doran needed him. The others needed him. The cube was big and in the way and it would feel so good to stop dancing and just hit—

  A thought stopped him cold; the Rage may not be satisfied with just slicing up the jelly. Even if it was, Doran was inside the monstrous thing. Greg might end up leaving just as many carved pieces of dwarf on the ground by the time it was over.

  PRIMAL RAGE – Ready

  Use Now? [Y/N]

  Warning: Recent instability detected.

  [N].

  He ground his teeth and forced the skill notification back into the corner of his mind. Not now. Becoming a Barbarian had given him more than Just Rage—he had the skills and training of a seasoned warrior, as well as great speed and strength.

  Slash, step. Slash, step.

  The cube lunged again, faster this time, its gelatinous body rippling as if it had finally worked out his rhythm. The front face bulged, reaching for him.

  Greg twisted, barely avoiding the edge. The cube’s surface brushed his bracer; the ward flared, golden light hissing as acid tested it.

  “Elowen,” he grunted. “You sure this protection is going to hold?”

  “I’m maintaining three shields and warding off a cube full of acid,” she snapped. “No, it's not going to hold.”

  Minor Sun Ward Integrity: 71%

  Do not pester the caster.

  Greg narrowly dodged another swipe from an amorphous phalange that dissolved as suddenly as it materialized. “I appreciate the transparency!”

  Another arrow plooped uselessly through the jelly.

  “Violet,” Nars called. “Whatever you’re cooking up back there, now would be an excellent time.”

  “Almost,” she said through gritted teeth. The mixture in her hands had settled into a dangerously calm swirl, little sparks of pale blue chasing each other through murky gold. “I need fifteen more seconds and no one doing anything catastrophically stupid.”

  The cube shuddered again, pulling Doran deeper, as if it had heard her and taken that as a challenge.

  Greg kept moving. Footwork, he reminded himself. Don’t think, just footwork. Unfortunately, thinking was what he did when he was terrified, and he was getting a lot of practice.

  He could feel the Rage pacing in its cage, claws trailing along the inside of his ribs. It didn’t like being told “no.” Not after the mural. Not after seeing himself on a wall as “death, destroyer of all worlds” in helpful elven bullet points.

  You’re a walking bomb, it whispered. Why not go off?

  He sucked in a breath that tasted like acid and torch smoke. Because I don’t know what else blows up with me, he thought. Because every time I lean on you, the world turns red and something dies. Because I shouldn’t even be here.

  The cube surged; he slashed. More jelly, more hissing droplets, more nothing.

  Explain that to them, said the traitorous part of his brain. Go on. Tell your new friends that the miracle barbarian might literally be a system glitch from another universe.

  He tried to imagine it, starting with Violet.

  “Hey, Violet,” he said in his head, ducking under another wet, reaching bulge. “So, funny story, this is all a game where I’m from. None of this is real and you’re technically an NPC.”

  In his mind, she stopped mid-rant, goggles sliding up. “Fascinating,” she’d breathe. Then: “Hold still,” and he’d wake up strapped to a slab while she tried to unscrew his soul with a wrench. Ten minutes later she’d be trying to reverse-engineer his Rage with scalpels and a hand-bound notebook titled Greg: Patch Notes.

  He almost laughed, a short, hysterical bark. The cube swiped where his head had been.

  Doran next. Greg pictured telling him around some imaginary campfire, in the serious tone you reserved for bad news. “I’m not from here. Where I come from, this world is… entertainment. You’re code. Numbers on a piece of paper, or a computer maybe.”

  In his head, Doran just stared at him for a long, uncomfortable stretch. Then shrugged. “A world is the world while you’re in it,” the dwarf would say. “Either the stone breaks your bones, or it doesn’t. Doesn’t matter what name you give to it.” And then he’d go back to sharpening his axe, silently adjusting which side of Greg he stood on in a fight.

  Another step, another slash. Greg’s calves burned.

  Nars, though.

  “Oh, that explains so much,” Nars would say without missing a beat, loosing another useless arrow as punctuation. “Mysterious outsider, destined hero, reality-breaking powers—honestly, we all kind of assumed you were still drunk on whatever potion made you like… this. This ‘game’ thing is adorably on brand.” Then he’d smile that sharp smile and add, quieter, “Good to know you don’t think the rest of us are real, though. Very comforting. Really encourages trust.”

  Greg’s grip tightened on the sword. Trust. Right.

  The cube slammed a pseudopod down where he’d just been; stone sizzled, newly cleaned.

  And Elowen.

  The thought alone made his chest hurt worse than the running. He imagined sitting her down, somewhere quiet and safe that didn’t exist yet, hands twisting in his lap as he tried to find words that didn’t sound insane.

  “This isn’t my world,” he’d tell her. “I’m from a fascist corporate dystopia called Earth. I work as an indentured servant. I fell asleep pounding tacos and woke up here. Where I’m from, magic is stories. You’re just… a story. This whole world, everything you know, it’s just a game to me.”

  In his head, she listened the way she always did, eyes steady, weighing every word. “And you believe that means I’m less real,” she’d say softly. Not angry. Disappointed. Somehow worse.

  He’d try to backpedal. “No, I— I don’t want you to be less real, I’m saying—”

  “Just that my pain, my choices, my faith are functions in a system,” her imaginary voice would say. “Some stupid game. That you’re the only one whose life isn’t… scripted. We’re all just a game to you.”

  The Rage twisted at that, furious on her behalf and his, because it didn’t feel scripted when you were the one bleeding.

  The cube lunged again, jolting him back into the present. He parried on instinct, blade carving another useless slice through goo.

  “Greg!” Violet shouted. “Get your head in the game! It’s time to find out how bad I suck at math.”

  He forced his focus back to the fight and pretended the only thing trying to dissolve him was the jelly. Not the prophecy. Not the truth he didn’t dare to hand to any of them. Not yet.

  “NOW!” Violet yelled.

  Greg didn’t ask what. He did what he was good at: he swung.

  He faked high, then hacked low, smashing the cube’s “front” edge aside just enough to make it slosh and turn toward him, its bulk shifting away from Doran. It flowed greedily after the nearest idiot. Him.

  “Okay,” Violet muttered, voice suddenly very calm. “Phase One: Goo…”

  She hurled the churning mass in her hands.

  The flask hit the cube dead center and vanished inside with a wet plorp.

  For half a heartbeat, nothing happened.

  Then the entire cube shivered.

  VORACIOUS JELLY CUBE is affected by: CUSTOM REAGENT

  Update: Molecular Structure Compromised!

  (that’s never what you wanna hear)

  “…Phase Two: Gone!” Violet roared triumphantly.

  The cube’s surface went from smooth to violently fizzy. Tiny bubbles raced through it, popping in rapid-fire. Its edges blurred. Then, with a sound like a thousand people simultaneously spitting, it blew apart.

  Not outward, not in a blast; just gone, its bulk collapsing into a cloud of a million tiny droplets that hung in the air, each one glistening and wobbling in place like someone had hit pause.

  For one surreal second, Doran hung there too, mid-float, suspended in a shimmering sphere of half-dissolved murder jelly.

  The droplets rained down in a sticky, harmless drizzle. Doran dropped with them, hitting the stone on his knees and hands, hacking and coughing, beard smoking faintly.

  New Spell Crafted: Goo Gone! (provisional name, ? conflict) – SUCCESS

  Effect: Target temporarily atomized into micro-droplets.

  Acidity: Neutralized.

  “Ha!” Violet crowed, already scribbling in her mental notebook. “I am a genius.”

  The droplets shivered, as if in protest, and began crawling back together across the floor, drawn by some disgusting surface-tension instinct.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” Elowen said.

  She stepped forward, planting her feet, hands rising. Light gathered between her palms in a harsh, focused spear, white-gold and angry.

  “Totth,” she whispered, no gentle ward this time, “cleanse this abomination.”

  She thrust her hands out. The spear of light slammed into the half-reformed mass.

  Elowen used Radiant Burst

  Target: [Voracious Jelly Cube]

  The cube detonated in a flare of holy light and a WOOSH of displaced air. For a moment, Greg saw its interior structure: veins of corrosive magic, little trapped bones, outlined in stark detail. Then it all went away in a rain of inert, jellylike sludge.

  VORACIOUS JELLY CUBE — SLAIN

  XP gained: 100

  Loot: Gelatinous Residue x[99] (extremely gross, not useful for crafting)

  Goo hit them like warm, horrible rain.

  Greg sputtered, wiping slime out of his eyes. “I’m starting to hate this place,” he said.

  “It’s not… burning,” Doran rasped, patting at his armor. “Just… insulting.”

  “See?” Violet said, beaming, hair plastered to her cheeks. “Not just dead, inert. Genius.”

  Greg opened his mouth to answer but the Rage inside him erupted like vomit.

  No warning chime this time. No helpful little [Y/N] prompt. It surged up from his core like something that had been waiting for the exact moment he relaxed.

  PRIMAL RAGE – FORCED TRIGGER

  Source: Volatile Resonance (Core Proximity)

  Consent Override Engaged:

  Greg smash.

  His vision snapped into hard lines and high contrast. The world shrank to the fading remains of the cube and the stone beneath it, the lingering stink of acid, the echo of Elowen’s imaginary disappointment from inside his head.

  Before he could stop himself, Greg roared and brought the Giant Fucking Sword down; as if by lag, moments after the cube was vanquished, right where it once had been.

  The blade hit stone with the force of an executioner’s axe. The impact boomed through the chamber, a shockwave of force and raw, unfocused Rage.

  The floor fractured.

  Cracks shot out from the impact point in a jagged web. For an instant they glowed: first gold, then silver, then a sickly mix of both, as if the Vault itself were gasping. Then the stone simply… let go.

  “Down!” Doran bellowed, grabbing for whoever was closest.

  The entire slab under them dropped.

  They fell in a chaos of slime, dust, and shouting, the world reduced to tumbling bodies and spinning fragments of light. Greg had just enough time to register a widening shaft below, flickers of machinery, and a pulsing radiance like a gigantic heartbeat…

  …and then they crashed through a final layer of brittle stone and slammed onto a new surface, harder and colder than any they’d touched yet.

  Above them, the hole they’d punched gaped like a dark, open sky inside the Vault.

  Around them, in the dim, throbbing glow, stood the impossible.

  Chains of light and shadow stretched overhead into darkness. Vast, interlocking machines of stone and metal turned in slow, grinding harmony. And at the chamber’s center, suspended in a lattice of sun-gold and moon-silver, a colossal crystal heart pulsed, each beat sending a shudder through the world.

  The system chimed.

  DUNGEON CORE DISCOVERED