“Greg! Take us towards the Warden! He should be around here somewhere!” I yelled.

  [AYE AYE, VICE CAPTAIN!] the Humanbus obeyed.

  Bee tugged me on my left sleeve, “Gambit! We’ve got a bunch of new upgrades available to us now, because of all the passengers.”

  “Anything useful to us right this moment?” I asked.

  “If you give me 300 Coins, then I can afford an upgrade that makes Greg capable of eating unintelligent non-boss monsters to gain coins. It’s only 1 per monster, but it should be good.”

  That would leave me with just 178.01 coins left, but since it was fairly clear that merchants weren’t going to show up until after the first Event, then it didn’t matter. I was sure I’d find a way to make a lot more, especially if Panda were willing to give me a bunch of easy Benefactor quests.

  I looked out through the front window at the many purple prisoners that the guards and Isabella were tearing apart with ballista bolts. A lot of them were still making it to the front of the bus, only for Greg to chomp on them and spit them back out. The bus was bouncing up and down as his many feet trampled the corpses on the highway.

  “Let’s do it,” I said and gave her the coins.

  A sound like snapping metal came from the front of the Humanbus.

  [YUMMY-YUMMY, AT LAST I CAN FEAST AGAIN!]

  The next zombie to get close was immediately crunched and chewed under what I imagined from the sounds of it were a new set of razor-sharp dentures.

  “It’s working!” Bee exclaimed. “We just got a coin from that.”

  “Can we cash them out later?” I asked.

  “No,” Panda answered. “Safe Zones are meant to have ways to passively earn coins, but Players can’t take them out, only use them to pay for stuff directly connected to the Safe Zone.”

  “I’m sure Gambit will find a way to break that rule,” Bee said.

  I grinned at her faith in me.

  Greg did an exaggerated sniff as we continued down the road, zombies charging for us. [I SMELL THE WARDEN!]

  “Take us there,” Isabella said, suddenly standing next to us. “We can’t have these zombies roaming the place. They’ll swarm Madeville if left unchecked.”

  Greg didn’t even acknowledge her order until Bee repeated it.

  [AYE AYE, CAPTAIN!]

  Everyone on the bus had to brace themselves as the Humanbus suddenly veered off the side of the highway, blasting through the guardrails and out into the shrubbery and trees lining the sides of the road. Thanks to the fact that Greg ran on feet instead of wheels, he was extremely adept at traversing the rough terrain.

  The zombies stormed after us, but Greg quickly outpaced them, leaving just a few scattered around the fields and small forests we surged through. Isabella’s guards shot down every last one of them, but the Humanbus was still able to munch on their corpses to get coins.

  Then, suddenly, the Warden was there, standing next to a small pond with a wooden hut, his arms raised into the air and electricity shooting out around him.

  Greg didn’t even slow down and opened his mouth to swallow the boss.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  The Warden appeared inside the bus, right behind where the three of us were standing.

  Bee, Isabella, and I whirled around to look at him. Everyone else scrambled out of the way and the guards in the turrets looked like they wanted to crawl out onto the roof of the bus.

  “Uh,” I muttered, confused.

  Greg immediately skidded to a halt, his feet tearing up the ground and grass.

  [OH NO, I HAVE A STOMACHACHE!]

  Isabella had her weapons in hand immediately and charged the boss.

  The Warden had purple skin like the prisoners, but he wore a normal white suit with a dark-blue tie and dark-blue dress pants, which looked odd, given that his head had grown larger and had two massive screws sticking out on either side from his temples. His scalp was completely gone, leaving an open hole and flappy skin, with light shining out from where his brain should’ve been. It was quite similar to how the Police Fiends had looked.

  Electricity surged out from the boss as he prepared an attack, but it quickly died down as though it had misfired.

  Then the Warden was suddenly just a mist of blood and clumps of flesh as Bee used her Moth Dash to move right through him.

  Isabella stopped mid-charge and just gaped at the remains of the boss.

  “That ability is pretty scary too,” Panda muttered.

  “I didn’t even get to do anything,” I said with a frown.

  The creepy Dust-and-Grime Destroyer 8k came over and started licking up all the remains of the boss, and then an achievement hit us.

  [Congratulations! You have unlocked an achievement! x ]

  ‘The Warden’s Funhouse First Clear?’

  Cleared The Warden’s Funhouse for the first time.

  It’s funny how angry everyone gets when you don’t follow their rules and Dungeon designs.

  It’s almost like they didn’t plan for someone having the ability to eject monsters from a Dungeon and use a mobile Safe Zone to glitch the Boss so that he couldn’t use his powers.

  The real reason they’re upset, I think, is that they have to have a very basic criteria for what counts as clearing a Dungeon: defeating its Boss.

  This doesn’t apply to all Dungeons, though most are set up this way.

  But because of this criteria, you are quite well-suited to breaking their carefully-laid traps.

  I don’t think the audience really cares though. They just like blood and carnage, which you fulfilled.

  Reward: ‘Warden’s Screw’

  Everyone inside the bus, not just Isabella, Bee, and me, received the dungeon reward, which was definitely some kind of exploit.

  [‘Warden’s Screw’ x ]

  Item

  Apply directly to the forehead!

  Actually, you can insert this wherever you want, to unlock its power.

  Humans have a very convenient socket on their belly I’ve recently discovered.

  That’s where I’d insert it, personally.

  Weight: Approximately one

  Isabella frowned. “What am I meant to do with this?”

  Bee had Greg return us to the road as the other passengers came up to us, wondering the same thing.

  I briefly explained how to use such items to get more skills, mentioning that Billee recommended we insert it into our bellybuttons.

  “What if I have an outie instead of an innie?” Cooper asked.

  A few people nodded, having the same question.

  I shrugged. “You could just screw it into your ear.”

  “Screw it up yer arse!” Brock shouted belligerently. He was probably upset about not getting to punch anything.

  “The person narrating the item description told me that he hopes that screwing it into my head will kill me,” Isabella said.

  “Mine too,” said a guard.

  “I think they’re just upset that we defeated the Dungeon in an unconventional way,” Bee explained.

  Nobody was jumping on the chance to use the item, so I decided to lead by example and screwed it into my left ear canal.

  It turned out that the screw was actually a soft rubbery material, and it was uncomfortably pleasant the way it cleaned out my ear gunk.

  “Why are you making that face?” Isabella asked with a look of disgust.

  One of the big MLP Society members immediately copied me, groaning loudly from the sensation.

  Within seconds, all the big pony-lovers were inserting the screws into their ears and groaning.

  “I’ve never hated having the ability to hear, until now,” Panda muttered in a mix of horror and disgust.