He tripped forward into the darkness of the cave, running into a faintly shimmering barrier. As he passed through the thin membrane, it felt like diving into a perfectly still pond. The film worked its way up his body as he fell in slow motion. 

Landing on his hands and knees, he was glowing again. Taking a quick look around to check for immediate danger before he checked his notification, he saw that he was in a tunnel with a rather smooth-packed dirt floor. The cave was filled with an ambient red light that washed everything out, yet he could still make out the small cracks in the rock walls.

Seeing nothing in the tunnel, he pulled up the notification.

Welcome to The Breeding Grounds, a level-one dungeon. Objective: kill as many enemies as you can within the time limit.

That was all the information he was given. Blinking away the notification, he saw a timer in the corner of his vision counting down from what looked like two hours. 

Damn it, Alan! Great, now I just need to find out what enemies are here. He cursed. Pushing himself to his feet, he started walking down the passage through the red glow twirling the blade that Alan had given him. He felt like a kid waving around a stick again. Still, as he swished it around, he got a better idea of how light it was and how fast he could move it. Brett thought it still felt ridiculous. 

Brett didn't have much more time to think as he rounded a bend and found out what this dungeon was all about. In front of him, a veritable carpet of grubs wiggled its way toward him. The grubs weren't the tiny ones you would find under a rotting log. They weren't even the thumb-sized ones that people might find in the Amazon. No, these were the size of a loaf of bread. Looking more closely at the front ones, charging at him with the speed of a really unstable toddler, he noticed they had the same light toasted color of a loaf of white bread too.

Looking behind him, there were just a dead end a dozen paces behind him. It didn't really matter how fast they were advancing, as he had no escape. So taking the long knife in his hand, he bent down a little and stabbed one of the grubs as it got in range. Standing up, he backed away with the thing still wiggling on his blade.

It wasn't dead yet, and he wanted to test a couple things so he would know what he was getting into. Hesitantly he touched the gooey flesh. His finger was coated in a snot-like substance instantly. He didn't feel any pain or anything. Wiping his finger on his pants, he looked at them carefully, but nothing. He touched the blood running from it, which also did him no harm. The only danger these seemed to pose was from being buried alive and suffocated. They didn't even have a mouth. 

With a flick of his wrist, he sent the grub off his blade and into the wall, where it splattered and, with a slow squelch, slid down to the floor. 

For the first time, he anticipated the notification before it appeared, lighting up the cave. It was the first thing he had killed since coming to this side, after all.

Would you like to become a Pest Control Specialist?

Carefully, he selected no. He was a bit paranoid about getting a really shitty class and didn't want to accidentally accept something like that. It was a bit of a gamble since when he rejected a class, he would never have it offered again. Brett had no interest in Pest Control, though, so it wasn't an issue.

The only saving grace of the system was the functionally endless amount of classes, so he didn't really have to worry about not being able to find something suitable, even if he rejected a few promising options.

Starting forward again, he started to slash at the grubs, bisecting them. He still needed to back up, but since he didn't see the end of the wave, he wasn't about to try running through them. 

He slashed and stabbed for several minutes. Not every kill gave him a new class option, but they kept coming. He rejected them all, as none were any good. Brett didn't really think he was going to get a class out of this dungeon experience. Rather, he tried to focus on Alan's advice and find what worked for him.

As he got lost in slaughtering his way through the grubs, his mind wandered free. It started as a mechanical clearing, like sweeping the floor, but soon he was venting his pent-up fury from the past few days. He finally had some control over his actions. 

Without realizing it, Brett had stopped retreating and was killing them at the same rate they were coming forward. He didn't know what was happening to the bodies, but they weren't impeding his progress. Soon he was even yelling as he moved forward. The knife was too slow and small to be his only weapon. He stomped, kicked, and punched as well.

It was a slightly awkward angle to always be fighting something at knee height, but that didn't slow him down. He became a wave of bug-killing fury as he charged forward. As the mindless extermination continued, he started to detach from his body and achieved a clarity of mind that was so hard to find. Seeing what Alan and the rest had in power made him realize the level he needed to reach. Watching himself from the outside as he waded through grubs really put into perspective how far he had to go.

His fists were glowing as they pounded in the bugs' squishy bodies. There were a bunch of notifications waiting for him, but he had long since stopped turning down class offers. It was too distracting, and he needed to keep killing. When he reached the end of the grubs, he looked up and saw that exactly 24 minutes had passed. Did the grubs end because of the time or because he had killed all of them?

Looking around, he saw he was still in the stone passageway. He had gone around a few bends but never once seen a side tunnel. He could either continue on and find new enemies or stop and check through his notifications. His eyes are getting dry from keeping them open all the time. The light from his eyelids was blinding, but he really didn't want to go through his classes yet. He was hoping that Alan would be able to advise him, as he had no idea what would actually be a good class.

But if he was going to do that, he would need to make it the full 2 hours of the dungeon while glowing constantly. And that just didn't seem like a very good idea. He sat down and flipped up his notifications to scan through them. 

He was offered a lot of classes related to squishing bugs. Most of them were definitely things he didn't want, like the first class. Bug Stomper, Gurb Eater, Insect Queen, Smush, the list went on. He also didn't want to choose the Anteater class. That just seemed… wrong.

Brawler was something that he didn't particularly want, as it didn't seem to boast the killing potential that he might need to chase after Cherry's killers. He eventually rejected it. It sounded like a common enough class, and Brett was sure he could get something similar if he really wanted.

After a minute or so of rejecting more classes, he didn't find anything that was remotely interesting, and he had stopped glowing. So he blinked his eyes, rubbed them a little bit to get the liquid back, and stood up to continue forward.

Suddenly, as if he had triggered a tripwire across some threshold, the next wave began. He couldn't tell if it was time-based or location-based, but he didn't have much space to think about it. 

The next wave moved faster than the previous one. No longer were it grubs coming down the path, but little scarab beetles. They were around the same size as the grubs, but they didn't wiggle around but rather scampered on little stubby legs. Their translucent shells let him see their guts moving around in a really gross way.

When he slashed at the first one, he was worried about its carapace. However, he sliced right through it as if it wasn't even there. When his fist crashed into the next one, he understood why; the shells had not hardened. This wave was no more dangerous than the first one. The only difference was these moved faster and had less goo inside. Their little mandibles were bendy enough that they couldn't even try to bite him, either. Soon enough, he lost himself in the flow of the fight again, taking his feeling of helplessness out on the defenseless insects. 

The only thoughts running through his mind were those of Cherry. Not the last gruesome images, of course. But of her tending to the garden. Or enjoying the fancy restaurant he had taken her to for her birthday, the one that had cost him an entire paycheck. Of her warm breath in his ear as she whispered a secret joke to him.