I didn't dream.
If I did, I don't remember it.
One moment there was darkness, fear, and pain.The next, there was more darkness, more fear, and extra pain.
So, you know. Progress.
My eyes opened to the same faint glow of blue-green mushrooms outside my little root cave. The light hadn't changed much, but my body had one clear announcement:
I was starving.
Not the "oh no, I skipped lunch" kind of starving.The "my stomach is trying to digest my spine" kind.
It growled so loud I flinched.
"Shh!" I hissed at my own abdomen. "You're gonna get us killed."
It answered with another loud, wet groan.
Traitor.
I rolled onto my back and immediately regretted moving. Every muscle had stiffened while I slept, turning my body into one big cramp with bones in it.
"Okay… okay… status report," I muttered, staring at the roots overhead.
Ribs: hurt.Leg: hurts more.Throat: dry as sand.Head: pounding.Mood: negative ten out of ten.
"Good morning, Floor 75," I whispered. "I hate you."
I took a slow, careful breath and listened.
Silence.
Not complete silence—if I really focused, I could hear the faint drip of water somewhere far away, and the occasional soft creak of roots shifting overhead—but close enough to make my own heartbeat sound obnoxiously loud.
I didn't know how long I'd been out. An hour? Ten? No sun, no sky, no clue.
All I knew was that my body was screaming for water and food.
"Right," I muttered. "Priorities."
I pushed myself upright, gritting my teeth as pain flared through my leg.
"Water first. Food second. Not dying… third."
I peeked through the curtain of roots.
The cavern looked the same as before. Giant roots, patches of glowing fungus, shadows big enough to hide nightmares in. No visible monsters nearby.
Which meant one of two things:
They weren't around.
They were around, but better at hiding than me.
Considering where I was, I put my money on option two.
I slid out from my little shelter, keeping low, one hand pressed to the wall for balance. Every step was a negotiation between "move quietly" and "don't scream from pain."
My throat burned. I licked my lips and got the delightful taste of dirt and regret.
I glanced back toward the tunnel where the underground river had spit me out.
The memory of crashing through the water, slamming into rock, choking and spinning flashed through my head.
"Yeah," I muttered. "We're not doing that again."
Fast water + broken body + monsters = bad combo.
But there had to be water somewhere else, right?
Drips echoed around the cavern, teasing me. I swallowed and my throat protested.
"I get it," I told my own body. "You're dying. Very dramatic. Please shut up."
I moved along the wall, keeping my breathing shallow, listening for anything bigger than me.
The floor wasn't flat. In some places, it dipped into shallow depressions filled with slimy muck. In others, jagged rock jutted up like broken teeth.
Twice, my foot nearly slipped on something slick.
The third time, it did.
"Sh—!"
I clamped my teeth shut before the curse escaped, arms flailing as I caught myself on a root.
A small rock skittered away into the darkness.
It kept rolling.
Rolled… rolled… rolled…
Then fell.
I didn't hear it hit bottom.
"That's encouraging," I whispered shakily. "Random bottomless pits. Great feature."
I carefully stepped around the edge, heart hammering.
As I moved, the air shifted slightly—colder, with a faint metallic tang. The dripping sound grew a little clearer.
"Water?" I murmured.
I followed the sound, moving slowly, the way I'd move through the barn at night trying not to wake Grandpa.
After what felt like an eternity, the wall curved inward and revealed a narrow, uneven depression in the stone. Water trickled down from somewhere up high, forming a shallow puddle.
It was tiny. Muddy. Ringed with dark green slime.
It was also the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.
I nearly cried.
Instead, I kneeled down beside it, ignoring the stabbing pain in my leg, and stared at the water like it might bite me.
"…If this kills me," I muttered, "I swear I'm haunting this dungeon."
I cupped my hands and scooped a small amount into my mouth.
Cold.
Metallic.
A little gritty.
Possibly full of microscopic evil.
I swallowed anyway.
My body screamed "YES" so loudly my knees trembled.
I forced myself to wait a few seconds.
No immediate burning. No itching. No sudden urge to vomit.
Promising.
I drank again. Slowly, in small sips. Enough to soothe my throat and stop my tongue from feeling like sandpaper, but not enough to chug it like an idiot.
"Okay," I whispered after a while, leaning back. "Water. Partial success. I'm not dead yet. Nice."
The hunger, unfortunately, felt even worse now that the thirst had eased a little.
My stomach growled so loudly I flinched again.
"Can you not?!" I hissed.
The sound echoed.
I froze.
A soft pebble shifted in the darkness to my right.
I pressed myself flat against the wall, eyes scanning the cavern.
Nothing.
No glowing eyes.
No movement.
Just shadows.
I waited.
Ten seconds.
Thirty.
A full minute.
Nothing.
"…Paranoid," I muttered under my breath. "Totally healthy response. Absolutely not losing my mind."
My stomach growled again, quieter this time, like even it had learned to be afraid.
I scanned the ground.
Roots. Rocks. Fungus.
I eyed a particularly plump mushroom.
Blue, softly glowing, dome-shaped. It looked… almost cute.
I narrowed my eyes at it.
"You look poisonous," I told it. "Don't try acting innocent. I've read this story before."
I briefly imagined biting into it and immediately dissolving into a puddle of regret and internal bleeding.
Yeah. No.
"Okay… no mushrooms. No moss. No licking rocks. Got it," I muttered.
If I wanted food, that left exactly one realistic option:
Monster.
I stared into the dark.
A sensible person would've said: "No thanks, I'd rather die."
Unfortunately, my body had already put in a vote, and it was very pro-"Eat something or collapse."
"…I hate this plan," I whispered. "But I hate starving more."
I started moving again, sticking to the wall, looking for anything that looked like… remains.
If there were monsters, there had to be prey. If there was prey, there had to be carcasses. Scavengers. Bones.
I remembered how the giant wolf had walked past my hiding spot like it owned the world.
Something like that needed to eat a lot.
I just had to find whatever it left behind.
Simple. Terrible. But simple.
As I crept along, time blurred. The cavern felt endless — like walking through a nightmare that refused to change scenery.
My leg throbbed with every step. My head felt light. At one point, spots danced at the edge of my vision.
"Don't you dare pass out," I whispered. "You pass out, you wake up as monster poop."
The smell hit me before anything else did.
Rot.
Not fresh. Not fully decayed. That thick, meaty stench of something dead… but recently dead.
I gagged.
Then my stomach, traitorous organ that it was, growled hard enough to cramp.
The scent came from a low dip in the floor, partially hidden by crossing roots.
I crouched down and gently moved a hanging vine aside.
There it was.
A corpse.
Or, what was left of one.
Some kind of deer-like creature with too many eyes and patches of bone visible along its ribs. One of its legs had been torn clean off. Its stomach was ripped open. Flies would've been swarming it on the surface. Down here, it was just… sitting.
Part of the flesh had been stripped away. Claw marks raked through the muscle.
Whatever killed it had eaten its fill and walked away.
Leaving… leftovers.
My stomach made a sound that was somewhere between a growl and a whine.
I swallowed.
Hard.
"That's disgusting," I whispered. "That's… actually disgusting."
I stared at the exposed red and purple meat.
It smelled awful.
It probably tasted worse.
It could absolutely be toxic.
I also absolutely did not have anything else to eat.
I sat there for a solid thirty seconds, arguing with myself in my head.
Brain: "Do not eat that."Stomach: "Eat that."Survival instinct: "Maybe… a little?"
"Okay," I muttered. "New plan. We… test it. Carefully. Like a responsible, horrified, starving idiot."
The problem: I didn't have a knife.
Or gloves.
Or anything, really, except hands that very much did not want to touch that thing.
I looked around, eyes scanning the nearby floor.
Rock.
Rock.
Root.
…Bone.
A shard of something white and sharp jutted out near the corpse, half-buried in dirt.
I reached out and tugged it free.
Not rock.
Definitely bone.
Probably from something that died here before.
The edge was jagged and uneven, but one side looked like it could stab or slice with enough force.
"Hello, disgusting new friend," I whispered. "Congratulations, you've been promoted to 'cutting tool.'"
I shuffled closer to the carcass, gagging as the smell intensified. My eyes watered.
Up close, the creature looked even less appetizing. Its tongue lolled out of its mouth. One of its eyes had been punctured.
"This is the worst buffet I've ever been to," I muttered.
I steeled myself, grabbed a strip of flesh near what used to be the flank, and sawed at it with the bone shard.
It took a while. The meat was tougher than I expected, and my hands shook from weakness and disgust.
Eventually, I managed to carve loose a ragged chunk about the size of my palm.
It jiggled slightly when I lifted it.
I almost threw up.
"Okay," I said out loud, because silence felt heavier. "Testing procedure: we take a tiny bite, we wait, we see if we die. If we don't die, we… probably still regret it, but at least we don't die."
My hand shook as I lifted the meat closer to my face.
It smelled… wrong.
Sour and metallic and wild.
"I can't believe I left the farm for this," I whispered.
I took a breath.
Another.
Then, very slowly, I tore off the smallest possible piece with my teeth.
I didn't chew.
Just let it sit on my tongue for a second.
The flavor hit me like a punch.
Rot.
Iron.
Bitterness.
Something sharp and almost electric.
My whole body shuddered.
I forced myself to swallow, resisting every instinct that told me to spit it out and scrub my tongue off on the floor.
The piece slid down my throat like sludge.
I waited.
Ten seconds.
Thirty.
A minute.
At first, nothing happened.
Then my stomach cramped.
Not violently, but enough to make me wince.
A faint burning crawled up my chest.
"Okay," I rasped. "Data collected. Results:… unpleasant."
The pain didn't spike further, though. It settled into a low, constant ache.
Not good.
But not instant death.
"I hate that this qualifies as 'acceptable risk,'" I muttered.
I sat back on my heels, staring at the rest of the carcass.
That one tiny bite had done almost nothing for my hunger. The emptiness still gnawed at me.
If I didn't eat more, I'd stay weak. If I ate too much, I might poison myself to death.
Great choices all around.
"Welcome to Floor 75," I told myself. "We have two menu options: slow starvation and possible toxic meat. Please choose."
I lifted the ragged chunk of flesh again.
My hand shook harder this time.
"Just a little more," I whispered.
I didn't notice the second scent until that moment.
It wafted in from somewhere behind me.
Fainter than the rot.Sharper.Hotter.Fur. Musk. Blood.
I froze.
Very slowly, I turned my head.
High above, on a ledge of rock not too far away, two dim red eyes watched me.
The giant wolf stood there, silent, as if it had always been part of the shadows and just decided to step forward.
Its gaze flicked from me… to the carcass… back to me.
Understanding sank into my gut like a stone.
I wasn't the only one who considered this thing food.
I was stealing from something that could swallow me whole.
The wolf's lips curled, just slightly, revealing a line of sharp teeth.
I stayed kneeling.
Meat in my hand.
Bone shard at my side.
Heart hammering.
Very slowly, very quietly, I thought:
"I've made a terrible mistake."
The wolf stepped down from the ledge.
One heavy paw at a time.
No rush.
No roar.
Just calm, inevitable movement.
Like it knew I couldn't run.
Like it knew this was its floor, its kill, its rules.
And I was just something that had wandered in by accident.
My fingers tightened around the meat and the bone shard.
I licked my dry lips.
My brain screamed:
"Don't move. Don't blink. Don't breathe too loud."
My stomach, unhelpfully, growled.
The wolf's eyes locked onto me, glowing a little brighter.
And it kept walking.
Closer.
And closer.
And closer.