Charlemagne returned to his physical body just in time to see the squiggles’ latest notification.

  The rooster read the message carefully while going to town on one of the cows that he had slaughtered. He noticed that the animal’s succulent flesh was even tastier than the previous bovine’s, possibly due to the latest bonus provided by his Special Ability, Food for the Stomach and the Stomach for Food.

  But that wasn’t the only nice surprise hidden within Charlemagne’s breakfast. As he dug into the cow’s abdomen, he got a few mouthfuls of half-digested grass, which was rather tasteless but had a very pleasant texture. It was a perfect palate cleanser after having to work through several layers of skin, fat, and muscle to reach the cow’s delicate liver and kidneys. In just a few moments, Charlemagne had made a hole in the bovine large enough to accommodate his entire body, so he climbed in.

  It wasn’t long before he heard Bridget calling out to him.

  “Hey, boss, you look pretty busy with that cow. Can I have one of the others?”

  The rooster opened his mouth to answer, forgetting that his pharyngeal teeth were still working on a huge chunk of flesh. He closed his mouth and focused on not choking on his meal. After a few seconds, his airway finally cleared and he bawked his assent before diving right back into the cow carcass.

  After eating his fill of meat, Charlemagne broke open another of the cow’s stomachs and finished his meal with another big helping of cellulose. He pulled himself out of the cow’s body, his black plumage somehow completely pristine as it repelled all liquids. His beak and talons were completely red, however, giving the rooster a rather grim appearance. He shook the little flecks of gore that covered him like confetti off, nearly hitting Bridget with a large chunk of intestine. The mosquito was latched onto another of the dead cows and was still inflating like a crazy, blood-filled balloon. Forgetting that she was supposed to accompany him into the Dungeon, Charlemagne stalked over to the entrance and walked through the portal without his party member.

  The rooster felt space distort around him and then he was somewhere else. The room Charlemagne found himself in was made entirely of red brick: the walls, the floor, and even the ceiling. The only objects in the room not made from brick were Charlemagne, three torches that provided dim and uneven lighting, and an ornate metal door that looked completely out of place. Activating his Ember Core and reaching out with his mana sense, Charlemagne could not detect anything in the room. He was just about to start investigating the area when a new message appeared.

  Charlemagne considered the four options. The first three made sense as they all directly translated to a concept that was easily understood. Easy would likely result in the fewest rewards, since the Dungeon would be less difficult to handle. Normal was the mode that most creatures ended up choosing. Hard was above average in difficulty, but seemed like it would grant greater rewards than easy or normal. But the fourth difficulty, Hell, gave the bird some trouble. In fact, the rooster was convinced that hell difficulty seemed to be some sort of special mode, because the word “hell”, stripped of the subtext built upon thousands of years of human-centric theology, translated from the squiggles into Charlemagne’s mind as “a place of fire and darkness where the strong torment the weak”.

  Since that concept appealed to the rooster, Charlemagne chose the Hell difficulty setting without putting too much extra thought into the matter.

  “Hey boss, next time wait for me before you...wait, what?! What did you do?! No seriously, what just happened?! Did you pick Hell difficulty on purpose?!”

  “Bawk,” Charlemagne said, not bothering to look at his teammate.

  “No, it’s not going to be ‘fun’!” Bridget yelled, her voice sounding more panicked than usual. “I looked through the System User Guide last night while I was feeding. You’re level 25, but I’m only 21. Choosing Hard mode would have been a stretch at our levels. We’re doomed!”

  “Bawwak?” the rooster inquired.

  “The levels?” Bridget asked, the randomness of the question throwing her off guard to the point she forgot to yell for three whole sentences. “It’s part of the Party interface. We can see each other’s levels, a general idea of what roles they play in the party, and how injured they are. I think you might be able to add more options as the Party leader, but I didn’t look too deeply into that. But that’s not important! What’s important is that you selected a difficulty without even asking me! Why didn’t you ask me first?!”

  “Buck.”

  “Brilliant rebuttal, boss. Well, you got me into this, so I’m counting on you to get us out. Wait! That’s it, each Dungeon has rules on when you can leave it, right? So, let’s see the minimum that we need to do.”

  The squiggles must have detected the mosquito’s implicit question, because they sent a message in response.

  “We are so boned,” Bridget moaned as she read the notification.

  Further whining was forestalled as the heavy metal door at the front of the room swung open of its own volition, revealing a grassy plain that was almost identical to the one the two Champions had just left. A heavy gloom obscured the horizon, limiting the pair’s vision to a small radius in all directions. Charlemagne reached out with his Ember Core, hoping to use his special mana sense to pierce the darkness, but found his efforts rebuffed.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Bridget whispered, the whine of her wings somehow having disappeared, allowing the mosquito to fly about without attracting attention.

  “Bawk,” the rooster ordered.

  “Okay, I’ll fly ahead but I’m not going to go too far. If we get separated, there’s no telling how hard it will be to find each other again. I’ll come back as soon as I spot anything interesting.”

  Charlemagne watched as Bridget’s mana signature disappeared into oppressive darkness, idly wondering if he should wait for her or check in a different direction. He was just starting to head off in an entirely different direction when he heard a trio of angry bellows. The sound brought him up short.

  “It’s a cow Dungeon!” Bridget yelled as she made a beeline for Charlemagne’s position. “They are mad, and they are everywhere!”

  Charlemagne readied himself for combat against the incoming cattle, which he could hear but not see. Bridget buzzed into view first, as expected. But Charlemagne hadn’t expected what came next. Hot on the mosquito Champion’s heels was a trio of red-eyed, enraged cattle, running on their hind legs and brandishing a collection of gleaming polearms.

  The rooster was so shocked by the sight that he almost forgot to dodge a swipe from a bardiche swung directly toward his neck. Thankfully, his Meditation skill activated, snapping him back to his senses. Charlemagne ducked under the swipe and then side-stepped a follow-up kick that left the cow just a bit overextended. The other two cattle were hampered by their sheer bulk and were unable to bring their own weapons to bear against the much smaller rooster, and Charlemagne took advantage of this to press in, driving his beak forward in a fierce Strike that caught the enraged bovine right in the udder. The cow went down in a spurt of frothy pink milk and blood.

  Their companion’s death seemed to energize the other two cows, and they surged forward, trampling the body of their kin in their haste to avenge it. Bridget narrowly avoided being bifurcated by a battle scythe that was glowing with some sort of golden energy. The other cow swung her bec-de-corbin with the blade facing down. Charlemagne deflected the point with his beak, spinning with the movement and leaping into the air to counterattack with a razor-sharp spur. The attack cut deep into the cow’s neck, but she didn’t fall despite the bright red arterial blood spraying freely from her severed carotid artery. Still, the attack took its toll, and the cow appeared to be on her last legs.

  “I got this one!” Bridget called, suddenly accelerating and enlarging as she slammed into the wounded cow and engaged her proboscis. The bovine bellowed in rage and dropped its polearm, which was useless in such close quarters. But before it could crush the mosquito, the cow suddenly swayed and collapsed face first to the ground. Oddly enough, despite the creature’s massive weight, the ground beneath it remained intact, as if the grass itself was resistant to damage.

  Charlemagne barely had time to be annoyed at the blatant kill-stealing as he ducked under the last enemy’s battle scythe. This time, however, the cow didn’t attempt any fancy follow up, instead resetting her stance while staying out of the rooster’s attack range, which was odd behavior for an enraged animal. The rooster wondered if his opponent possessed a skill similar to Zenrage before remembering that he possessed the Monocle of Refinement. Charlemagne used the lull in combat to check out his opponent’s weak points.

  Forming a hasty plan based on the new information, the rooster surged forward to attack, rushing straight in without feinting. As he entered the cow’s range, which was considerable due to its height advantage and polearm, the cow brought her right leg forward as she began to swing. That was what Charlemagne had been expecting, and so he formed a mana shield at an angle just above the ground. Although not nearly as effective at stopping living creatures versus inanimate objects, the mana shield held just long enough to knock the cow off balance. The rooster used the opportunity to slip inside the cow’s guard and destroy its solar plexus with a well-aimed peck. The blow proved to be fatal, and the cow began to collapse. But, even as it fell, Charlemagne detected a huge surge of mana within the beast’s body. The rooster was surprised at the sudden build-up, since he had detected no core within any of his Party’s three opponents.

  Then the cow exploded, sending a powerful shockwave through the Dungeon and bombarding Charlemagne with shards of superheated bone. Although his feathers blocked most of the makeshift projectiles, some penetrated deep into his body, causing enormous internal damage as they bounced off the rooster’s bones. The pressure wave also burst Charlemagne’s eardrums, but they immediately healed, giving him a few seconds of much-needed advanced warning. Angry moos echoed throughout the Dungeon in the wake of the explosion, and the stomp of dozens of hoofs grew louder as a veritable stampede of angry bovines sought out the source of the disturbance.

  Charlemagne took a moment to check in with his body as the herd grew closer. His injuries were extensive but healing, and his new Ember Core was even more efficient at regrowing tissue than his Mana Core had been. His mana reserves were still almost fully topped off. But the number of enemies was troubling. If even one out of every ten cows exploded when they died, he would never be able to handle them all in close combat. There was only one thing to do.

  It took only a few seconds for the rooster to form a powerful mana ball in his open mouth, the intense light from the glowing orb temporarily banishing the gloom. Charlemagne saw dozens if not hundreds of cattle converging on his location, their red eyes fixated on him. They were faster than he had thought, since it took time for them to fully get their enormous bulks up to speed. The rooster realized that it was going to be close and diverted as much mana as he could away from nonessential function. Even his healing rate plummeted as Charlemagne put everything he had into preparing his ultimate attack.

  And yet, it wasn’t going to be enough. The herd was closing in already their various weapons raised high in anticipation of slicing through the rooster’s flesh and bones. Their bellows nearly deafened Charlemagne for a second time, while their hooves made even the immutable ground beneath them tremble. In just a moment, they would overrun the rooster. But the attack was not yet ready.

  “Hey! Over here!”

  A sudden shout somehow made itself heard over the cacophony of angry moos and the din of trampling hoofs. The vanguard of the herd hesitated for just a few moments, slowing down as their attention was drawn elsewhere. But those few moments of respite were all that Charlemagne needed.

  “Buck-kawk!” the rooster shouted as he released his mightiest attack. The glowing orb of mana, almost as large as the rooster himself, raced forward and slammed into the herd, altering its course a few degrees to strike where the cows were packed in the tightest. Anguished screams replaced the angry bellows as the ball of mana ate through flesh and metal alike, crashing through the front lines before detonating right in the middle of the herd.

  As the cattle died in droves, almost a fourth of them exploded, each blast doing enough damage that the process continued long after the attack had ended, the chain reaction reaching even the edges of the herd. By the time the last cow dropped to the ground, bleeding from hundreds of shrapnel wounds, the entire field was a bloody mess.

  Charlemagne looked upon the results of his efforts with no small pleasure. If Hell was a place where the strong tormented the weak, then it paid to be strong. The rooster’s self-indulgent thoughts continued in that vein for a few moments until a message from the squiggles arrived.