“Mike.”

“That’s my name, don’t wear it out.”

“Odd name for a felid, isn’t it?”

“Full name’s Mikh’ladia Del-Re, but I was giving you the version you can pronounce in Common.”

“Oh.”

The cloaked, long hat-wearing felid glanced at the group with curious eyes and twitching ears along with a sharp-toothed grin that Amelia could have sworn had a threatening aura. Their long tail swayed in a rhythm that seemed prepped for a pounce. A hand over the holster of their flintlock gave off even more warning sirens within Amelia’s mind—not the actual system, but the part of her mind that was actually her.

And yet, she made no sudden motion to escalate the tensions. No move to protect her friends with her life, even if that was what she was sworn to do. But that was because this felid posed no threat. Her soul said yes, but this Mike’s words said exactly the opposite, and she decided to trust them. Trust, but verify that they were absolutely telling the

“You want to join up with us?” Mino asked, seemingly oblivious to the tension flowing around her. Her swooning crush had likely clouded her emotions. “But you’re a pro, aren’t you? We’re just down here.”

“Just down here? After what you did to all those mels near the entrance?” Then Mike gestured, with their hat slanting over, to the slimy, eyeless four-legged animal that sniffed curiously at this new glossal presence. “You got an olm, too. Pros if I’ve ever seen them. And I have.”

Phelia shook her head profusely. “No way. I’m barely anything at all, yet. I want to be the best, but I’m nowhere near it. I’m just... Wow, Mike. You’re... so awesome.”

“I haven’t even done anything,” they said. “How do you know I’m not just some con artist in an elaborate costume? Can’t trust anyone down in Manadhmeth.”

Mike was making themself seem less trustworthy to prove a point? What in the world was the endgame here? Amelia pondered this for precisely two seconds before Mike themself gave the answer.

“But I guess I’ll show you.” First, they unholstered both of their flintlocks, calmly, without threat. They held them up in the air and pulled them open to reveal no bullets in place. With safety confirmed, they began their little act. Then, slowly, they put the flintlocks back and smirked for their little display to begin. “Let’s go.”

In a strike of movement so quick, so brief that Amelia hardly even registered it, they drew both weapons, the flintlocks jumping up from their holsters into the air as if they had always been there to begin with. Mike spun them around by the grips, rapidly and more rapidly until they moved with metallic fluidity.

They flicked their wrists and the flintlocks soared through the air, but only for a brief second before they caught them again with the opposite hands, and promptly began to spin them once more.

They stopped, froze for a flash, the flintlocks set in place pointing upward in opposite directions. Then, again, furious twirling.

Amelia’s eye darted rapidly around the felid, looking for something to center its vision on, something to stabilize what clearly should have been two firearms but instead were multicolored blurs. No luck.

Then the flintlocks stopped once more, both pointed directly at Amelia’s chest. Mike smirked.

Amelia pulled back, flinched, raised her right arm in the air, activated [Slice]—

Then remembered an instant later that the flintlocks were unloaded. Her blade already held up to Mike’s neck. Bo spikes clutched in her left hand, ready to toss. A moment of absolute stillness.

Mike’s smirk widened even further. “You’re fast,” they said.

“You’re in,” Amelia said.

“Glad I proved myself worthy of your company.” They turned and winked at Mino, who only raised a suspicious eyebrow.

“Lay off,” Amelia said.

“I’m just admiring your friend,” they said. “She’s beautiful.”

“Lay off.”

Mino rolled her eyes. “Why do I feel like you two are going to duel over my honor if this stretches on too long?”

Amelia deactivated [Slice] and put the spikes back around her belt. “No worries.”

Mike holstered their flintlocks. “Can’t fight a legendary beast if your purple-eyed friend is dead, after all,” they said, a statement that earned another glare from all three women. “Just kidding.”

Amelia would have ended them right here if she did not think it would be too messy.

Phelia stammered out, “W-well, I for one am, um, extremely happy you’ve decided to...” She suppressed a very obvious squeal of delight that nearly came out of her mouth. “Mike, you’re really cool.”

“And you, little kobold, look like you haven’t completed your three quests yet. That why you’re down here?”

Phelia’s eyes popped, and she wordlessly affirmed their question with a slow nod.

“Thought so. What an interesting group, indeed. A gorgeous elven mage, a feisty kobold fighter, a baby olm with a bite, and... a warrior. Add in a healer and we’ve got ourselves a full traveling party.”

“You know anything about the legendary beast?” Amelia asked.

“Yep.” Mike’s smirk refused to leave their face, as if glued on there permanently. “I’ve been tracking it all day. Think I know exactly which beast it is. Ktalos.” They made a strange guttural sound, something nearly impossible to pronounce in Common, then corrected to, “Ki-Talos. That’s the easier way to say it.”

“Kkkt... Kuhtah... Ki-talos...” Phelia said, resigned to the easier Common pronunciation. Amelia realized that Phelia spoke perfectly unaccented Common, despite not even being from the same part of the world as the Saxonian Dominion. She wondered whether the language stretched that far south, or if Phelia simply made a real go of it to practice her speech.

“Ktalos? Why the weird name?” Mino asked. “That’s not even Imduin.”

They shrugged. “Probably named after the first people who discovered it... and survived. Felid colonists explored the dungeon a long time before the North Sunwell Company came along, so maybe it’s from that.” For some reason, they seemed to beam with pride as they said this, as if sun elves had not already been living in the Fleettwixt area for thousands of years. “Ktalos is famous for destroying adventurers without a second thought. It loves weapons and armor, anything shiny, and loves to stick them onto its flesh to make itself louder and fiercer. Six arms, but it barely even uses them because it’s always holding things. Usually, just two arms at a time, and it drags the rest of its body around in the ground.”

“...Agh.” Mino squirmed. “That sounds so weird.”

“We’re about to see it in person,” Mike said.

“Well, as long as we destroy it quickly.”

“We have to, because that’s what I’m being paid for.” A tip of the hat. “Mage enforcers are way too busy with that Dimples fellow, who’s been on a real big spree lately. Them and Fleet’s Pride, and all that synth drug everywhere. A giant monster in Floor 3’s going to kill a lot of wildlife and adventurers, but it barely hurts the colony’s bottom line. A concern only for the foolish and the skilled. Luckily, we’re all the latter.”

Phelia nodded. “Let’s defeat this Ktalos!”

“Good spunk. Follow me, and we’ll get it in half an hour.”

That was how three women and an olm set off with a stranger they had met just minutes prior.

Phelia and Mike hit it off immediately. The kobold was extremely eager to ask all sorts of questions about exploring, combat, and the whole adventuring lifestyle. And the felid was more than willing to talk about themself in as much detail as glossally possible.

“It’s actually adorable,” Mino said, with Amelia by her side as was becoming extremely common everywhere they went on this dungeon dive. Amelia wondered somewhat if she was letting herself engineer these one-on-one chats by stepping back from the rest of the group. If she was, Mino did not seem to notice.

“Phelia’s very cute,” Amelia said. Then she eyed her and said, “But what about Mike?”

Mino shrugged. “They’re okay.”

“That’s all?”

She understood the insinuation. “From a distance, I thought they were really cute. But I thought they were... You know. A woman.”

“You only like women?”

“Yeah, I know. I’m kind of picky. Nothing against other genders, but...” Then Mino blushed deeply. “It’s uncomfortable to talk about this stuff. I guess you know why. It’s a bit private for me.”

Amelia looked her in the eyes with a reassuring gaze. “I get it. Be as private as you want. I’m your friend, not your lover, right?”

Her blush only increased from here. “Am-Amelia, maybe now’s not the best—Uh—We can discuss this after the monster hunt... If you want...?”

And then Amelia gulped, realizing that she just shoved her foot in her mouth all with one stupid line.

Luckily, Otto was here to bring Mino a present in the form of a dead bat in his mouth. One shriek and some laughter from the others later, and that very dangerous line of conversation finally disappeared.

And very soon after, they found Ktalos, the legendary beast, in all its putrid glory. They were up on a small canyon, with the beast rumbling on the ground below.

Just like Mike described it, it was grotesque.

Gigantic. A long, worm-like body, but with light-skinned flesh. A human-esque torso, and six limbs, three on each side. It crawled around on the ground, slithering with only two limbs in any sort of use. Its confusing-to-track prints now made a lot more sense.

In its other four limbs, large, shining swords, held high as if to strike anything nearby. Ktalos had all sorts of weapons and pieces of armor attached to itself, and some of it looked positively ancient. This was exactly the sort of items that an adventurer like Phelia would be looking viciously to obtain for greater glory. It was exactly the kind of challenge that set Amelia on edge.

Dozens of melanoids had the beast surrounded, lashing out at the beast as if they could take it down. It seemed to barely even notice their existence, and their attacks did little to slow it down.

“It only woke up extremely recently,” Mike explained, voice quieter now. “It’s probably still half-dreaming. That’s what happens when you’re asleep for three or four hundred years, after all.”

“What happens if it comes all the way awake?” Phelia asked.

“We run.” Mike smiled. “Shouldn’t happen for another couple days, anyway. Now’s our chance.”

As they said this, Ktalos apparently had enough of the mindless melanoids attempting to feast on it. It began to smash its arms down on the ground. All those swords it held, not used as anything but blunt weapons, but effective all the same as the monsters were crushed.

Ktalos rumbled a deep, guttural sound like a throat scratching itself into uselessness. The party, Otto excepted, flinched. Otto, on the other hand, raised its head to the sky and howled—until Mino snapped at him to shut up.

“Well, are we ready?” Mike asked.

Phelia nodded. “I’m slaying this beast, and that’s that.” She shook, either with anticipation or fear. Impossible to tell which.

“Then let’s figure out a plan. We corner this thing, we avoid all the mels, and we bash it in until it stops moving altogether.”

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Whew, the past week has been real tough for me and writing thanks to constant intrusions of real life stuff. Sadly, my goal of writing a new chapter almost every single day has failed... But the Writathon is still on, which means I gotta pass 25,000 words by the end of 11/15, and so far it's a little less than 10,000 words. You know what that means... Sigh, 3-4 chapters a day for the next 72 hours as I rapidly write new stuff over the weekend. Sorry in advance for the deluge, but also this is gonna accelerate the story a lot, which I hope you're ready for.

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Real-life question to readers: A lot of people have issues with sleeping too little, but does anyone know how to deal with going to sleep too EARLY? The past couple weeks, I've gotten home after work and, just feeling super drowsy, I turn in for the night routinely at 8pm, 7pm, and even 6:30pm in a couple cases. I went through the same thing last year this time, and I guess it's due to the weather cooling and the sky getting dark at about 4:30pm, but I really hate it. Caffeine isn't helping, either. So I ask my readers for help because if I can fix this, it will probably mean more chapters faster lol

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Today's shoutout: Scrap: An End, A Beginning. Sci-fi, space, mechas, and LGBTs. Take a dive in this new book and leave lots of comments to encourage the author to keep updating!