Chapter 321

The lizards never stopped coming.

They came in fours and fives, sliding out of cracks in the cavern walls that Grid hadn't known were there. Every fight took twenty or thirty minutes. They were too tough to kill fast and too smart to fall for the same trick twice, and Grid wouldn't have had it any other way.

He charged into every pack with Failure swinging, traded hits instead of dodging them, and threw his sword dances the second they came off cooldown. Linked Kill to crack the scales. Pinnacle Kill to drive through the crack. Flower Revolve to mark the whole pack, so that every bite aimed at him came straight back at them. Transcended Link when two of them lined up in front of him, twenty strikes tearing down the line.

[You have dealt 74,200 damage.]

[You have received 11,860 damage.]

[You have resisted the abnormal condition 'Demonic Corrosion'.]

The corrosion line flashed past so often that he stopped seeing it. Any normal player would have had their armor eaten away and their defense melted to nothing after the first few bites. On him, it just left a smoking stain that faded a moment later.

Noe hovered overhead through every fight, going through the motion of swallowing the lizards whole while only their souls slid down his throat, and every 30 seconds he transferred 2000+ Strength to Grid for three seconds.

"These ones are really tasty, Nyang," Noe complained, every single time.

And Randy got better.

At first, she was always a step behind, striking where Grid had already struck, getting caught by the tails he had dodged. But fight after fight, she watched him. She learned when he was about to go reckless and charge straight in, and she started going in a half-second ahead of him, taking the first bite on her copied armor so that he could hit the opening it left. When a lizard reared up to breathe, she was already shouting in his voice, "Left!", and they split apart together. By the end of the second day, she would flicker out of his shape between fights, a little girl again, sitting on a rock and swinging her legs, and then blur back into him the moment the scraping sounds started.

"You're getting good at this," Grid told her once, panting.

Randy beamed with his own face. It was very strange.

Every six hours, Grid logged out. His real body needed food, water, some exercise , a shower and a few hours of proper sleep.

The first time he logged out, he sent Lauel a text.

I'm somewhere underground. Can't whisper, can't see the map. Grinding here for now. Don't panic.

Lauel's reply arrived eleven seconds later. It was mostly capital letters. Grid put his phone face down, did his push-ups, and went to sleep.

Then he logged in again, and the lizards were waiting.

[You have killed a Demonic Underground Lizard!]

[You have gained 8,520,000 experience!]

[Level up!]

The worst part was the potions.

Super Health Potions. Fifty-two gold each. Grid drank them like water, because the way he fought didn't leave room for anything else. And every time he uncorked another one, it felt like he was pouring gold coins straight down his own throat.

"Fifty-two," he muttered between fights. "A hundred and four. A hundred and fifty-six..."

"Master is counting again, Nyang," Noe told Randy.

Randy, sitting on her rock, nodded solemnly.

But the levels kept coming. Two hundred and ninety. Two hundred and ninety-three. Two hundred and ninety-six. The blue light of dead lizards drifted up into the dark so often that the cave seemed to snow upward. His inventory filled with black scales.

And while chasing a wounded lizard deeper than he'd ever gone, he found the door.

It was set into the far wall of a huge round chamber, so tall that its top was lost in the darkness. Smooth black stone, seamless, covered edge to edge in thin carved lines that twisted and looped into shapes he didn't recognize. They weren't letters. They weren't pictures. Something halfway between the two.

There was no handle. No keyhole. No gap.

Grid pushed it. Nothing. He put his shoulder into it. Nothing.

So he hit it.

"Pinnacle Kill!"

Clang!

The blade bounced off so hard that his arms went numb to the elbow. The black stone didn't have a scratch on it.

"Oh, so that's how it is." Grid cracked his neck. "Fine. Linked Kill!"

Nothing. Transcended Link. Nothing. Randy copied every strike at the same time. Nothing. Noe clawed at it until he got bored and sat down.

The door didn't even notice.

Grid sat on the floor in front of it, breathing hard, and glared up at the carvings.

It was the only door he had found anywhere in this place. If there was a way out, it was behind this door. And he couldn't break it.

Not yet, he thought.

He was Level 297. At three hundred, he would get his third stat awakening. Every point he had would be worth more. His Strength was already over three thousand. With the awakening on top of it, he would hit harder than he ever had in his life.

And if that didn't work, then he would have to hoard multiple of these lizards and have Noe eat them and transfer as much Strength stats as possible and use the buffed period to break it.

"Three more levels," he told Noe and Randy. "Then we come back."

They headed back toward the lizard grounds.

Halfway there, the floor moved.

It rose under his boots, slowly, then all at once. The tunnel walls cracked. Dust poured from the ceiling. Then the ground in front of them exploded, and Grid was thrown backward through a storm of broken rock.

He rolled to his feet with Failure already raised, just in time to see it rise out of the hole it had torn in the earth.

It filled the tunnel from wall to wall and still had to hunch to fit. Thick plates of black and brown stone covered its body like armor, with molten red light glowing in the gaps between them. Four legs as thick as castle towers. A long, heavy tail that dragged furrows through solid rock. Two short, ragged wings folded against its back, sharpened along the edges like blades. A wedge-shaped head with two curved horns and a jaw full of teeth as long as Grid's sword.

['Gorvathul, the Demonic Earth Drake' has appeared!]

[Level: 420]

[Due to Gorvathul's presence, the surrounding area has turned to 'Scorched Earth'.]

[Movement Speed is reduced by 15%!]

[You have resisted!]

[Stamina recovery is reduced by 40%!]

[100 Health is lost every second.]

[You have resisted!]

The air turned thick and hot. Grid felt the heat sink into his lungs and felt the other effects slide off him one after another. All except one. A dull weight settled into his limbs, the sign that his stamina would now recover far more slowly.

Thirty-five levels above even the strongest lizard. A drake. A real one, born in the earth and soaked in demonic energy.

Grid stared up at it.

And then he started to grin.

He had played Satisfy for a long time. He had fought monsters that were far too strong for him before. The awakened guardian of the forest. The Doppelganger of the Mysterious Forest, who was standing next to him right now. The Frostlight Orc Chief. Every one of them had been bigger than him, stronger than him, a monster that shouldn't have died to a single player. Every one of them had died anyway.

"A named boss," Grid said, and his voice was shaking, but not from fear. "A real one. Noe! Randy! We're killing a drake!"

"Master," Noe said, fur standing straight up, "I don't think it's a weak drake, Nyang~"

"Even better!"

Gorvathul opened its jaws. The back of its throat began to glow.

One second, Grid thought. Just like the lizards.

"Randy! Split!"

Randy blurred into his shape and threw herself left as Grid threw himself right. The breath came out as a river of liquid rock, white-hot, pouring through the tunnel and turning thirty meters of floor into a bubbling orange lake. The heat washed over him even from the side.

[You have received 22,300 damage.]

That was just from being near it.

Grid laughed out loud and charged straight at its front leg.

"Blacksmith's Rage!"

[Blacksmith's Rage has been activated.]

He slid under a stomping claw, came up on the inside of its leg, and swung at the joint where two stone plates met.

Clang!

[You have dealt 13,900 damage.]

The drake's health bar didn't move at all.

"You're tough! Good! Linked Kill!"

Five strikes hammered the same joint. The plates there cracked.

[You have dealt 66,100 damage.]

[You have dealt 64,800 damage.]

The tail came around. Grid saw it far too late, because he hadn't been looking for it. He'd been looking at the crack. It caught him across the whole left side of his body and he crashed into the tunnel wall.

[You have received 35,400 damage.]

His health bar dropped by more than a third. He spat, drank a potion, and was running again before the empty bottle hit the ground.

The fight went on. Five minutes. Ten. Fifteen. Grid didn't step back once. Every time Gorvathul hit him, he went straight back in. And every time, he watched a little more closely. The drake's shoulders dropped right before it bit. Its back legs planted right before the tail. Its weight shifted to one side right before a stomp. And before the breath, the throat always glowed for one second.

It has a rhythm, Grid realized, his heart pounding. It's the same every time.

"Randy! Get in front of it! Make it look at you!"

Randy charged in, his face snarling, his sword raised. Gorvathul's eyes flicked between them. Two identical men in identical armor, holding identical blue swords. For half a second, it couldn't tell which was which.

That was all Grid needed.

"Noe! The eyes!"

Noe swelled into his true form and dropped onto the drake's head, claws raking across its left eye. Gorvathul reared back with a roar that shook dust from the whole tunnel. Its chin lifted.

Under its jaw, where the stone plates of its neck met, a narrow seam glowed red.

The same seam the lizards had.

"FOUND YOU! Pinnacle Kill!"

Failure plunged straight up into the seam and curved deeper mid-strike.

[Critical!]

[You have dealt 612,800 damage.]

Gorvathul screamed. The health bar finally moved. A thin sliver of red disappeared from one end.

Grid landed, chest heaving, and stared at it. His best single strike, on the weak point, a critical hit. Barely four percent.

He didn't feel discouraged. He felt like laughing again.

"Only twenty-four more of those," he panted. "Easy."

Gorvathul lowered its head. Its one good eye fixed on him, and something in it changed. It wasn't annoyed anymore.

The molten light between its stone plates flared brighter. Then the plates themselves began to crack along every seam, and something bright and terrible started to shine through.

"...Noe," Grid said. "What's it doing?"

"I don't know, Master," Noe said, and for the first time since they had arrived, the little cat sounded worried. "But I think it was only playing until now, Nyang."