The bus rumbled through the dust of the Arizona desert, a tumbleweed blowing past in the high wind. The dust storm off the freeway was whipping around it, and the bus was fighting against it valiantly as they drove through the chaos. They were nearly on the other side, and everyone on the bus was on their phones. Icarus March was the only exception, yarn twisted between his fingers as his crochet needle moved at a breakneck pace.

“Did you hear about Jesse Phillips and Aiden March?” someone asked, and Icarus glanced up. Two of the men sitting in the back of the bus were speaking in low tones, and Icarus frowned. “They’re saying there was a fight.”

“If they actually got in a fight, half of Phoenix would be leveled by now,” said the other man with a snort.

“Well, not a fight fight, but they nearly came to blows,” the first man said, and Icarus drew up his knee to his chin and braced his head on it as he crocheted a little amigurumi. Well. It was none of his business what Aiden got up to. Not anymore. A sigh escaped his lips, and the bus rolled to a halt.

“Alright, let’s go, boys!” the foreman said and clapped his hands together, and Icarus came to his feet and pulled up his gas mask, making sure it was properly sealed over his face and leaving behind his crochet. The sparse hair he was growing pricked at the mask, and he made a mental note to shave when he got a chance.

The bus doors hissed open, and Icarus turned by As If It’s Your Last by BLACKPINK on his headphones as he stepped out into the desert. His scuffed Doc Martens left indents in the sand, and he shuffled forward with the rest of the men and stared up at the dungeon doors.

They were big and wide, wrought iron, and standing open to betray the carnage inside. The team from Highlight Guild were making the way back to their tour bus, talking and laughing, and Icarus rubbed his hand over his buzzcut, dyed bright pink in an effort to distance himself and his red hair from his brother.

Dungeons had appeared three decades ago, and things hadn’t gotten better in that time. They were subspaces where monsters existed, and hunters, people that were blessed by the system, were tasked with clearing them out before they ‘broke’ and let the monsters invade the surrounding area. There were different ranks to hunters, and Icarus was the lowest rank, F. He wasn’t all that upset about it. You had to be a hunter to enter the dungeon, and picking paid well.

Picking was basically breaking down the monsters and harvesting them for materials. They boasted a wide variety of benefits, and the economy hadn’t been this good in decades. The hunter economy was a booming one, and Icarus was a picker, tasked with hacking monsters into pieces and pulling out their valuable artifacts: mana stones. Each monster bore a mana stone, and they went for thousands of dollars. This was an S rank dungeon, and all of the monsters within would be high quality. At least B rank.

Icarus rolled out his shoulders as he drew his knife and spun it around idly between his fingers. It was time to break down the monsters, and he was excited for it. As a subcontractor, he got paid about 25 an hour. It was nothing like the dedicated pickers for each guild got paid, easily 50 dollars an hour, but as a 20 year old, 25 an hour was nothing to sneeze at. And he needed it desperately, because he needed to pay for his weekly testosterone injections. He was saving up money for his top surgery, and he was three months on T now. He still kind of looked like a girl, but in a confusing way, and you couldn’t tell when he had his layers and gas mask on.

He stepped through the open doors to the dungeon, looking around at the dismantled lizard warriors laying around. The team had done a number on them, and he got a tarp and laid it down to start breaking down the first lizard.

“Icarus!” someone called, and he looked up. “Can you start near the boss room?”

“Yeah, sure,” he replied and got back up. He was typically the fastest picker, so he got asked to start at the boss room frequently.

Icarus made his way through the twisting halls. They were laid out in a fairly confusing way, and sense of direction was useless in a dungeon. Compasses just spun in circles in here, but it was fine. He sort of knew where he was going.

There was extra hazard pay for this job, because Highlight Guild didn’t trigger the boss room before they let the pickers in. The bosses typically got loose after 48 hours on their own, but those 48 hours were vital to making sure the meat stayed fresh. There were higher yields, and Jesse Phillips, the head hunter and guild owner, was greedy. So, Icarus took the hazard pay.

He reached the boss room and stared up at it before he went on one knee, cutting open the chieftain lizard and spilling out his organs on the tarp. He pulled on his gloves and started rooting around in the organs, pulling out a fat mana stone with muscle and blood clinging to it. Upon first inspection, it was clearly an A rank mana stone. Nice. Only bosses yielded S rank stones, but that was as high as it got otherwise.

He set the stone aside and started packing up the organs, wrapping them in butcher paper and stacking them to the side before he started to break down the lizard chieftain into pieces. Idly, he wondered what the boss in this dungeon was going to be. Probably a lizard king. That seemed about right. If he recalled right, those breathed fire.

There was a creak behind him, and he froze.

That was a concerning noise, he thought as Shut Down by BLACKPINK played over his speakers. Slowly, he turned around and stared at the door to the boss room. It was hanging open, just barely ajar, and he triggered his radio.

“Uh… Boss?” he asked. “The boss room is open.”

“... What?”

“Should I evacuate?” Icarus asked faintly, and there was a curse on the other end.

“Yes, kid, you should fucking evacuate!” he bellowed, and Icarus stumbled to his feet and bolted down the hallway just as the door opened further. His cargo joggers flapped against his legs, Doc Martens pounding on the floor, and he slid around a corner just as there was a roar. Heat hit his back, and he looked back with wide eyes at the fire hitting the wall. A high pitched, girlish scream escaped his lips, and he bolted down the hallway. There were distant thuds behind him of footfalls, and there was the boss.

Just as he suspected, it was a lizard king, and he tripped over a body and fell to the ground. He scrambled back, hitting another body, got to his feet, and kept running. Heat blasted at him, and he dropped and rolled in a puddle of blood as his flannel caught on fire. He dropped the shirt, and then---

Pain blasted him in the face, and he let out a scream of pain. There was movement in his pocket, and he scrambled back through the blood and viscera on the floor as the mushroom amigurumi in his pocket crawled out. What? Since when did he have a skill---

Fuck.

Was he re-awakening right now?

He didn’t want to re-awaken!

The lizard king, bright red with fire flickering around its mouth, pulled to a stop at the sight of the amigurumi. Its teeth were protruding, and the mushroom amigurumi stared up at it. Icarus swept up the little stuffed toy and took several staggering steps before he fell forward. The amigurumi went bouncing across the floor, rolling forward before it straightened up again, and then it seemed to look up at the lizard king.

Warning! Came a warning from the system. Imminent mana crash incoming!

Wait, what?

Icarus stumbled to his feet and stared down the lizard king, resigned to his death. He was going to die, and he wasn’t even going to go out with a bang. Pain was wracking his body, unbelievable pain, and he spread his arms, because if he was going to go out, he was going to go out T-posing.

Then, suddenly, he felt the mana drain out of his body. The lizard king stared down at him, swaying in place, and suddenly, began to weep blood. Blood slipped out of his ear holes, and it coughed, splattering Icarus in blood. Icarus swayed, watching the mana bar drain down to nothing, and… What? Seriously, what?

What was happening?

He fell forward, unable to move, his body in horrific pain, mana drained, and the lizard king fell back, slamming into the ground with a boom! What just---

There was a clatter of armor behind him, and he weakly lifted his head. Team A from Highlight Guild came sliding around the corner, and they all collectively stopped and stared. Icarus’s eyes fluttered shut, and Jesse stepped forward and scooped his arms under him.

“Check and make sure it’s dead,” he ordered, and Icarus was out.