As we walked out of town, ready to hurry east, Lacie stopped me, looked around a little nervously, and then produced some weird strappy thing.

  "Don't we need to be moving?" I asked.

  "For battles, you need to be free, but overland, we need speed. This might not work, but, uh, put it on."

  It was a tangle. "How?"

  She helped, and I realized it was a weird backpack. The I read the AI title. Biggie Bjorn. Are you sure your relationship isn't some weird fetish shit?

  "Wait, this is for you?"

  "I based it off a Baby Bjorn."

  "How is this better than you riding your bike?"

  "Firstly, still your bike, I just stole it. Secondly, for most of this floor, the roads won't be safe. There are already crawlers talking about traps all over the roads, but I can't bike off-road nearly well enough."

  "And if we get in a fight?"

  She pointed at a latch on my chest. "Hit the quick-release."

  I pulled, and the whole thing fell off. It took another two minutes to put it back on. I crouched down and she climbed in, her legs on my hips, just a slightly easier version of a piggyback ride.

  "I hate that this is going to work." I jogged for some initial speed, then started skating. "Doesn't looking this dumb wreck those social numbers you care so much about?"

  She leaned against my back and I could feel the sharp studs of the Midnight Ballroom piercings pressing against my back. Whispering in my ear, she said, "Oh, I think the views will be fine."

  My blushing every few minutes didn't help, but I could still manage almost fifty miles per hour while carrying her through the woods. We only had 19 hours until the hunters got out, and in that time we needed to get somewhere good, which meant high speed to the next town.

  Unlike the big names, we had some advantages against all these hunters: Nobody knew a ton about us, and nobody took us very seriously. We were underleveled, and based on some gossip from people who had social boards and got onto shows, we were assumed to have some powerful magic items giving us a leg-up.

  Generally, people knew what everyone had, but I was personally a mystery. Turns out, I'd skated through on a feature that resembled a bug. To avoid overwhelming everyone at the start, crawlers weren't all added to the viewing lists, outside of the professionals making compilations. No one was added to a list if they: Hadn't gained any XP; Hadn't received a platinum-or-higher reward box; Hadn't killed or been killed by a crawler; and Hadn't triggered anything on a list specific dungeon events.

  I had just been leveling skills, so nobody had been able to watch me until a rage elemental spawned off of my leg. There were people watching, from the other perspective, as those murderers tried to kill me at the entrance of floor two, but that's it.

  The assumption was that I'd gotten some combo of gold boxes for upgrades on some ring or other—I was wearing several—and it was actually the secret to my power. They could watch me play, but not check my internal UI, so as long as I never checked all my rings—I never checked anything, so that was easy—it was impossible for them to know everything I had.

  This contrasted with someone like Lucia or Carl, who had every single thing they had ever done documented.

  Thus, hunters would come, expecting something easy, and we intended to surprise them.

  Also, we'd gotten decent at coded conversation. It was obviously a code, but that's the nice thing about talking in references: nobody but the two of us had sat on Lacie's couch watching anime together, so nobody would know what happened in every scene we'd been watching when we said and did certain things.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  The big concern was that it was a massive gamble. Lacie thought that we needed to gamble or we'd die before the next floor, and I was always on board for pushing our limits. I certainly didn't speak my instinctive aphorism of, 'Gambling is how people who didn't train try to win games. Real athletes just win the games.'

  Most importantly of all, we needed to be somewhere with mobs that matched our builds. We stopped whenever we spotted something to try out—some oozes, a small dinosaur that drew more dinos and drove us off—until eventually we found what had to be the most messed up creature I had ever seen.

  As was our strategy anymore, when I spotted something I put on speed and got clear, then we headed back in more carefully. Finally getting a good look, I forgot we were sneaking around and said, "What on earth is that?"

  Lacie: Um, it looks like the bottom half of a mantaur.

  Half-Mantaur. Level 35.

  A beautiful creature with the body of a man and the head of a man, the half-mantaur roams through the deep woods, snatching fruit from trees and rooting for mushrooms on the forest floor.

  Just as a horse is the bestial lower half of a centaur, the half-mantaur is the bestial precursor to a mantaur. Unlike horses, the half-mantaur has become largely extinct, the chance to find one in the wild a real treat.

  Maddy: Neither your explanation nor that description can make that not look stupid.

  It was walking about on all fours like a wild beast, but with the hind legs of a man and the with oversized human arms as its forelegs. Instead of a neck protruding forward, it had a mannish head sticking almost perpendicular to its spine, although the head was so oversized it looked too large even on that body. It had wide-set eyes and an expression like a caricature of an idiot.

  Lacie: A mantaur has the body of a man and then an additional body of a man. They were the train-drivers on floor four.

  Maddy: This place is so weird.

  Lacie: Let's kill it.

  I started with a breaking knife that cut it three times and set two ruptures. It was surprisingly fast as it charged right past where Lacie was hidden. With all that gear they'd sent me for being an assassin, she could basically vanish into the ground.

  It was not fast enough to catch me as I skated backwards.

  The beast loped with an awkward slap of hands on dirt while letting out a deep bellow. The noise resembled mooing, or at least a person doing a good impression of a cow mooing.

  After a while of watching the rupture tick without slowing, I hurled a fastball at its head. That set it back another 10% and had enough knockback to flip it, but the thing was agile and caught a branch, barely slowing down.

  A few more fastballs as I led it past Lacie, who brushed her fingers across its flank. Within seconds it was down, her invasive growth far more powerful than any of my attacks.

  "So, I guess we're fighting half-mantaurs," I said.

  We headed to the local town, a bugbear town with funeral-bell guards, made sure we knew where everything was, and then split up. I was out mapping while Lacie talked to the people in town, trying to find whatever the local quests were.

  I had found a herd of half-mantaurs grinding their backs against the jackfruit trees like itchy bears when the quest popped up.

  New Quest! The half-mantaurs Are Wrecking Our Orchards.

  The orchards outside of Everdeen are being ruined by half-mantaurs. There have always been half-mantaurs up in the hills, but they've lately been coming into the lowlands and ruining the crops. Jackfruit shortages threaten the town.

  Exterminate the threat. Or maybe get them back in the hills. Figure out what's causing them to come down? Nobody really cares how you solve this problem.

  Reward: You will receive a Silver Quest Box!

  Lacie: Damnit. I was trying to find the mayor so we could seize the town, but apparently someone already did.

  Maddy: You can seize a town?

  Lacie: Yes, and give orders to the guards and so-forth. We could have taken that last town, but it wasn't worth slowing down there, as the region is terrible for our builds.

  Maddy: Alright. So, back to the quest.

  Lacie: We need to be settling in these next eleven hours. Clearing traps, ensuring we know the lay of the land, all that nonsense.

  Maddy: I mean, sure, but the herd of half-mantaurs is right here, so I could just get some experience now.

  Lacie: What?

  Maddy: I'm looking at, I dunno, two hundred half-mantaurs? Watching them in the orchard, they're like a mix between a bull and a bear in how they behave. The herd moves like cattle, but the individuals are all climbing and scratching and moving like bears. Also, really burly.

  Lacie: Don't attack a herd of 200 level 35 mobs!

  Maddy: Why not? I can outrun them. I get as many ruptures going as I can, head into the saferoom, get the kills. Makes sense to me. And your buffs are on, so you'll get partial credit. That's the whole idea of this grinding thing, right?

  Lacie: Wait, I just found the new owners. It's a party called "We Got Your Back". Leader's name is Carlita.

  Maddy: Run!