Tulland’s leg slipped forward as silently as he could, landing just inside the queen’s throne room with no more noise than a mouse. It might have mattered had the queen really been unaware of his presence. She was not. She knew he was there, something that became incredibly apparent as she turned her massive body on a dime towards him and started moving forward, mandibles clacking.

  Both of Tulland’s hands flashed as he threw flowers out at the queen. His agility stat might not have been linked up to any combat skills, but it also wasn’t anything to scoff at anymore. He had just spent an entire week practicing throwing things too, something that really helped as he now chucked two mud-weighted flowers at the queen’s antennae stalks. They both pounded their targets with precision, putting a cloud of yellow dust directly into the tools the queen needed to see him.

  That may have blinded her, but it definitely did not disable the tough old girl. She was a fast and angry animal, one with massive grasping jaws moving through the room methodically trying to get their target by either luck or brute force searching. Tulland gulped down the bile rising in his throat as he heard ants coming down the tunnels behind him and surged forward, chucking flowers as fast as he could get them into action.

  His plan was to go under the queen, something that was possible given how wildly she was swinging her head. But it was a close thing. There were opportunities that disappeared just as quickly as they appeared. He moved into the range he would need to slide under her before his body told him there was no way that was happening. The sheer fear of that maneuver was enough for his legs just to deliver a strong, flat-out no and refuse to take another step.

  He pulled back. His spirit might have been willing, but his flesh was weak. He wasn’t going to get past the ant without a better plan. Unfortunately, he had none. He was just going to have to try a Hail Mary. He dodged a few more swings from the jaws of the ant, then rushed it again. This time, though, he flung one of his arms forwards at the same time he told the briar on that arm it was okay to strike. It sailed through the air, landing where the ant's shoulder blades would be if it had them.

  Of course, there was no chance the briars would actually hurt the behemoth. But they did distract her. Now that something was crawling all over her back, she had a target. Her head immediately arced up and back in a vain attempt to reach the vine, which gave just enough guaranteed room for a moment that Tulland was finally able to convince himself to move forward.

  The head came down as he was moving through, but not quite fast enough. It hit him, sending him tumbling hard across the dirt and into one of the ant’s legs, but failed to crush him or cut him like it should have. The hit was shallow enough that despite the overall banged-up-and-bruised damage it caused, he could still function.

  Tulland sprung to his feet, steadied himself, and stabbed down at the lowest joint of one of the legs. It hit and sunk in, causing a reflexive attack from the queen in revenge. He was already gone, stabbing into a foot on the other side of the body, moving, and stabbing another.

  He’d never kill the ant, but he also wouldn’t get away if it got so much as an inkling of where he was while still able to move around at full speed. But if there was one thing he knew, it was that this ant was specialized specifically for being a ruler, for being big enough, strong enough, and wreathed enough in glory as ants went, that its rule wouldn’t ever be questioned.

  And with that came a lot of weight. He had only just pulled away from the third stab when he heard a cracking from one of the legs he hadn’t attacked yet. The queen had been favoring the injured limbs, which had worked until the work they weren’t doing built up on her uninjured joints and began to strain the exoskeleton itself. By the time he stabbed the fourth leg, the cracks in the remaining two healthy leg’s chitin were visible from across the room.

  And then something unexpected happened. As Tulland went to stab the fifth leg, the room filled with a pheromone so strong he could actually smell it with his pathetic human nose, something so powerful he doubted there was an ant in the badlands that wouldn’t know after it had a few minutes to spread.

  Without any delay, the ants nearby did notice. And went absolutely mad. Tulland couldn’t see them doing it, but he could feel it in the soil itself as he heard them begin to slam against walls in a blind rage, all as one. A tremor like an earthquake reverberated through the entire structure as dust and stones began to rain down all around him.

  And what could be the point of this, The Infinite? Of an attack that kills the queen’s attacker at the cost of her life?

  Tulland wasn’t entirely certain that the entire hill would collapse, but he also wasn’t going to wait around to find out if that really was the intent. He wheeled around, ducking through a pair of legs and streaking like a bolt of lightning towards the gate. This time, both his spirit and body were willing.

  Almost in time to make a difference, the vision of the queen ant seemed to clear. She wheeled around and rushed forward, ignoring the damage she was doing to her own legs to slam her mandibles shut just behind Tulland, then once more a bit closer. On the third bite, when she really would have got him, her jaws closed tight not around his weak human body but an indestructible stone gate to another place entirely. Even the acid on her jaws couldn’t hurt him then. He was through.

  —

  This kind of room was not unknown to Tulland. It was mentioned in books. In the histories of his world, there were several documented times when people found themselves delayed between areas in the local-to-his-world dungeons. He had always imagined them as glowing, floating sorts of places, where one might fly around unencumbered by the weight of physical things.

  This, counter to his expectations, was a room of floors, ceiling and walls all built of the same dull gray brick. It was clean, but there wasn’t a single interesting to see in the space besides himself. He was admittedly bizarre in a briar-covered farmer sort of way, but he was pretty used to how he looked by now.

  It was just now occurring to Tulland that Necia had actually seen him several times in his fully-briared get-up, and how that might have looked to her. As he dove into his notifications, it was as much to forget the embarrassment of that as it was to see his rewards.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The first two appeared to be standard-issue system rewards for clearing the area. Each was good, but nothing mind blowing.

  Each of his skills had gained a whole level up, including his new crafting skill. He was entirely unsure what leveling that skill would do, but at the very least it wouldn’t hurt to have a slightly better blanket or better-built spear. The two level ups didn’t hurt either. He immediately dumped five stats into the two magical stats he bothered to level, and continued on with his reading.

  Tulland was much happier about these seeds than he should have been. He had been eating nothing but raw briar fruits since he got there. While this had made him more healthy than he had ever been in his entire life, he was more sick of the fruits than he would have imagined he could be of anything.

  The stats and levels were very welcome, more than equipment would have been. He couldn’t get much use out of any particular piece of clothing anyway.

  But the real gift was coming soon.

  Go on. Gloat.

  “I might. Why shouldn’t I?”

  You should. There should have been no way for you to get through that challenge. Do you know that I’ve seen thousands upon thousands of class-enhanced warriors fall to less, simply due to fear or hesitance? Simply because they were careless, or would not try?

  Tulland was taken aback. This sounded suspiciously like praise.

  “No. I didn’t.”

  I have. And yet, you did not. You figured out a way to make it possible, took your chances when they were available, conquered your fear, and then saw everything through. It was… not too bad of a performance.

  “Thanks, I suppose.” Tulland was cautious now. “So what happens to you? Now that I’ve won. If I choose to take the prize, I mean.”

  There is no choice whether or not to take the prize, just as there’s no choice on my part whether or not to give it. We entered into a covenant, one which The Infinite will now enforce.

  “Ah. Sorry.”

  Don’t be. You triumphed. And to answer your question, The Infinite will now strip me of a great deal of power. More than I spent to get you here. I’ll be weakened, perhaps more than I would gain even if you fell on this next floor.

  “A potential net loss then?” Tulland asked. The System talking casually about Tulland’s death gave him back a little of his footing. This was an enemy of his. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be worth more.”

  Oh, you may yet be. As I said, you’ve overperformed most expectations. Centuries ago, when I was in control of your world? What a warrior I would have made of you.

  Tulland cut the communications. He could tell the System was just about done, and he wasn’t sure he could tolerate much more of this conversation. There was something off-putting about what was happening now, like he had won a bet with a friend and now had to cut off his friend’s arm. It was too much.

  And just like the System had said, his reward was coming to him whether he wanted it or not.

  Tulland leaned back and shut his eyes. This seemed weak at first glance. But he knew more than anyone else how much he had been stumbling in the dark with his farms, praying that he wouldn’t find himself on unfamiliar ground where he’d be unable to grow anything at all.

  This skill not only promised to fix that, but it also seemed to have the chance of guiding him towards more and better plant species, to the extent he could create them. Those were great sources of experience, if nothing else, and none had so far proved to be outright useless to him.

  For someone who had come into the dungeon not knowing the first thing about farming beyond half-remembered information anyone would know, this skill wasn’t just a crutch. It was like getting the chance to grow an entirely new, healthy leg to replace his own disability. Put short, it was the best news he had since he came to this place.

  Tulland put his head back on the boring, nondescript brick wall and took a deep breath. And once he had that breath safely in his lungs, The Infinite’s Dungeon System seemed to decide for him that his time in that room was done. The gray faded away to nothing as the new world of the third floor was suddenly visible to him in all its terrible, thundering glory.

  A note from R.C. Joshua

  

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