Museum Core Chapter 78: Schadenfreude

Thomas was busily messing around with some of his creatures, watching painted dog puppies play and run around below his core, playing tug of war with the various toys he’d sprinkled around.

And then someone said something stupid. 

Well, less “lacking intelligence,” more “easy to tease about,” but that didn’t matter. 

“And now, we start our Dark Souls training arc,” Granger had jokingly commented. “Where we die a dozen times to learn how to land a single blow until we can defeat the strongest enemy in our underwear, without it ever landing a hit.”

Thomas sniggered, accidentally broadcasting his amusement to Elias, who flitted over, already looking intrigued. He, of course, knew what “Dark Souls” was, a famously difficult video game franchise that was impossible to beat through button mashing alone, but also trained any players that refused to quit to the point where they could pull some real “dancing between raindrops” martial arts movies nonsense, to the point where one could be forgiven for assuming it was a some kind of automated program steering the player character, rather than a human being. 

But would Daedalus, Dungeon Core Extraordinaire, know? How might he react? And, more importantly, what would freak the humans at the door out the most without damaging his relationship with them?

Hm … over in the “office,” the highest point in the tower above the entrance, Jan the superpowered spider monkey thoughtfully tapped his chin, in place of Thomas himself. He could be mean here, really mean, but that hardly fulfilled the second requirement. 

Thomas sighed internally. He’d used the “trust me, I’ll live for long enough that there are zero circumstances under which fucking you over would be worth it” argument a lot, and it usually worked in his favor. 

But sadly, that cut both ways, making an overly crass joke could haunt him for literally centuries. 

So he wound up reining himself in, and merely sent over a single one of his ambassadorial raptors, one whose plumage was a mixture of dark blues and blacks. It seemed appropriate, considering the situation. 

The little critter snuck over as thoroughly as it could without making it obvious that it was, in fact, hiding, and popped out behind the newcomers in as nonchalant a manner as he could make it. 

“Oh, if you can revive yourselves, do you still need the ‘training wheels contract’? How are you pulling it off?” 

A perfectly “innocent” question from the point of the humans, a “legitimate” one considering what Granger had just said, and one that contained no threat whatsoever, instead seeming “helpful” when you considered that the “training wheels mode” did lessen the gains … yet the chaos is caused was beautiful to behold as everyone fell over themselves to correct the missunderstanding. 

“Uh, that’s not what he …”

“… a video game …” 

“… keep things the way you prepared, please.” 

And so on, until a sudden tremendous clang shut it all off and everyone, including Thomas’ field of view, whirled towards the massive orc who’d been standing at the rear of the formation, and was currently shrinking back to his normal size, hands transforming back into flesh from the steel they’d been when he’d banged them together. 

Harjaz was another Anima Monk, except unlike the humans accompanying him, the orc had been able to choose from a range of supernatural creatures as well since, well, they’d existed in his homeworld. It was some kind of metal bear-thing called a steelborn, which was exactly as tough as the name would indicate. 

Now that he’d cut the others off, he stepped forward, looking Thomas’ avatar in the eyes. 

“This is a matter of cultural differences, I believe Mr. Granger was referring to some kind of game; his statements have no bearing upon our deal. Please, let things remain as they are.”

Then, Harjaz stepped to the side to reveal two more orcs, which seemed like children compared to him, though that wasn’t a hard comparison to make, considering how big he was, even for an orc. 

One was familiar, Vretkag, the Warden of Truth, who’d helped with the contracts last time, but the other wasn’t. 

“This is Kilug,” Vretkag introduced his companion, who Thomas was now realizing actually was a child. Or, at the very least, much younger than any orc he’d ever seen. 

“He started to walk the path of the Warden of Truth yesterday, and I would like to train with him in the area you designated as ‘the Cradle’ once all the ‘paperwork’ has been settled. We will be available when the newcomers arrive.”

“Newcomers?” Thomas asked, the raptor serving as his mouthpiece, rounding on Henderson when the big marine scratched awkwardly at his neck. 

He sighed. 

“We’ve got a joint German-French delegation coming in a couple of hours, which I was going to tell you about, but, well …” he glared at Granger. “… We got interrupted.” 

Henderson cleared his throat. “As per your treaty with the United Kingdom government, we’re allowing access to other nations as long as there aren’t active hostilities, and we’re allied with France and Germany. This was supposed to take longer, but considering the circumstances, things were fast-tracked.”

Translation: they were afraid Thomas would be dead before things finally came to a conclusion, the “normal” way. 

“Frye wanted to tell you himself, but considering what just happened, he got swamped with meetings and the other directors aren’t back yet.”

“Gotcha,” Thomas acknowledged. “So, contracts?” 

***

Ten minutes later, contracts had been signed, and everyone was starting their dungeon runs secure in the knowledge that, for once, their deaths would be an unintended accident on Thomas’ part. 

Deep down, the idea of not confronting delvers with an actual threat irritated him, some fundamental part that was still all dungeon core, yet the human part of him enjoyed this. 

Being generous felt good, for one, even if the amount of care he extended to most of the individuals out there was effectively zero. 

But there was one thing that he loved about all this. When the risk of death was taken away, or at least heavily negated, people were actually willing to jump over their own shadow, to delve beyond the area they could guarantee their own safety in, and much more of his dungeon would see use than normal.  

It was give and take. Slight irritation, in exchange for actual fun. The situation weirdly reminded him of playing a video game that couldn’t be paused with a full bladder. Yeah, you were having fun … but there was a ceaseless irritation putting a constant damper on things. 

But he tried to put that out of his mind as best he could. 

Now that there were no nasty invaders threatening to kill him, the delvers could actually enjoy the beauty of the entrance hall, the crystal-clear waters slopping around the stone that served as a pathway, mosaics and engravings both above and below the water explaining the origin of life. 

Well, it started out with multiple possibilities for how things could have gotten started, including the idea that lightning might have catalyzed the creation of early complex organic molecules, or that these things had instead grown on pyrite crystals. Evidence existed for many theories, but not in such quantity that one could declare one “victorious” above all others. 

So he’d included them all, but things had rapidly coalesced into the linear “story” of evolution, of multicelled organisms eventually coming into being and rapidly taking on truly horrifying forms. 

Sure, trilobites were kinda cute, and Thomas had put a handful of unranked ones in the water for aesthetics, but looking through his collection of books, he’d come across one covering the Ordovician period that had revealed the fact that sea scorpions existed. Those things would fit right into the Halloween Event without requiring any modification whatsoever. 

The wishlist of things he wanted to get in exchange for accelerated training grew by one. 

It was at this point that the delvers got close to the first boss room after having torn their way straight through the dinosaur section. 

Not that that was much of a surprise, Thomas hadn’t added the stronger dinos he’d gotten after the invasion, and while the first group might only consist of the normal five people, Granger, Harjaz, and Henderson were a part of it, and all three were D-Rank. Slightly overpowered for the area. 

“Alright, we know no one’s going to die if we fail here, but that’s no reason to get sloppy,” Henderson announced. “We don’t normally fight Cheshire with just five people, but we make up for that with power. We also know her well, and we’ve got a good plan. You all know what to do, now kick her ass!”

Yeah … if Cheshire had still been the first boss, things would likely have gone about as well as Henderson expected. 

If. 

The trick was generally simple: walk out into the room, keep his center of gravity low while already partially shifting to increase his weight, ensuring that the initial impact pushed him away rather than bowling him over, then start wrestling with the giant cat. 

But this was no longer the old room, sitting at the end of a short corridor whose walls were covered with painted grassy plains. Instead, there was sand glued to the ground and in the corners, while Joshua tree branches covered the ceiling. It was a bit of a mismatch as those plants were related to a different species of ground sloth, but it was the best Thomas had been able to arrange for on short notice. 

“Wait!” Granger cried out suddenly, trying to bring Henderson back with telekinesis. 

The young man had clearly realized that something was wrong, most likely because Frye had shared Thomas’ statement of “all changes will be obvious,” and reacted accordingly. 

But it wasn’t enough. Telekinesis was easily the weakest of all the spells the Worldstrider tribe had cataloged and shared with the BPA, and was less effective on anything alive and further weakened by the rank of the target. Trying to move the former Royal Marine would invariably have ended badly. 

And Henderson was a big guy, part grizzly bear, part dinosaur. 

Metaphysically powerful, near-impossible to move if he didn’t want to, irrespective of whether or not the force impacting him should have been enough to hurl him across the room according to the rules of physics. And considering his mass when even slightly transformed, it was a lot of force that was needed. 

Like, for example, the fist of a giant sloth that could warp the very concept of “mass” to increase the strength of its blows beyond all sanity. 

Knowing just how tough the former Marine was, Thomas had ordered Dexter to not hold back in the slightest, the only precaution being the order not to strike with his claws. 

Instead, a battering ram of muscle and bone hammered into Henderson’s chest and flung him back out of the boss room, where he slammed into his comrades and scattered them like bowling pins. 

The giant sloth then glanced through the entrance and then started walking away from it, taking up a position at the far side of the room, watching and waiting. 

“How did you know?” Henderson asked with a groan as he got back to his feet, then pulled up Granger. 

“Changes to the room mean ...” The young mage cut himself off with a hiss of pain as he briefly set his foot down only to yank it back up.

Broken leg? Terrible sprain? Unfortunate bruise? 

“Retreat?” Harjaz asked. 

Granger waved him off while he instructed Henderson to let him back down. 

“Don’t worry about me, it’s not like Daedalus is going to do anything, or let anyone else pull somethi- … fuck, that’s definitely broken,” he swore as he tried to find a more comfortable position on the floor. 

Ordinarily, advancing while leaving an injured comrade behind would have been risky, immoral, and just plain wrong, an easy way to wind up with a dead comrade if even a single monster was overlooked and managed to make its way to their location. The moment someone was incapacitated beyond in-dungeon healing, you retreated, or so Elias described the general protocol for that sort of thing.

Especially when you considered that any even remotely intelligent core would likely have had the foresight to create a way to send its creatures places without being seen. 

Though Thomas assumed that the BPA’s protocols were effectively just a copy of what the Worldstrider tribe did, albeit put into a more official format. 

But with the deal in place, those considerations didn’t really matter. 

Should he reassure them, though, maybe jump right in and offer the promised potion? 

Actually, no. Because it perhaps wasn’t the best to remind the delvers that they were endlessly being watched by an alien intelligence. They knew he was there, of course, but popping out the second something went wrong would likely get weird, right quick. 

So they adjusted, Henderson in the lead in a transformation that much more heavily leaned into his grizzly size, rather than the ankylosaurus, optimized for mobility over durability. 

Harjaz behind him, far smaller as he was only drawing on the “steel” part of his first bond, enhanced with his D-Rank Ancient Bond. Seeing as he’d ranked up on Earth, he’d had access to Earth’s flora, and he’d selected a Siberian tiger, further increasing his already prodigious strength while boosting his agility and granting him the ability to add claws onto his transformed form. 

And in the back, there were two more humans, whose names Thomas didn’t know. A second Logos Mage, and one armed with an assault rifle, who he assumed was using the regular police class. Though she looked surprisingly young, maybe twenty at the most. He’d have expected someone older to be given a power leveling slot. 

And then he did recognize her. Murray, that was her surname, he’d absolutely forgotten her first name, even though she’d introduced herself. Came from a family of police officers, had grown up wanting to be a police officer, an “obsession” that had allowed her to create the BPA’s cop class. 

Of course, a cop shouldn’t get experience for marching into a “house” and killing those within, as it wasn’t a part of the job description, regardless of whether it happened occasionally. 

But that was where the magic of Dungeons came in. It didn’t matter who you were, what your goal was, or which energy you needed to advance, you’d grow by delving. 

In fact, just about the only thing Thomas couldn’t enhance, or fix for that matter, was a cultivator’s foundations, which tended to be the main bottleneck for that style of advancement. 

Though for even that, there was a workaround. After all, the rare and exceedingly valuable natural treasures needed to empower one’s foundations could be replicated by a dungeon core. The issue with making that happen was that a cultivator needed to first find something like that, then find a dungeon capable of replicating it, and feed the treasure to the core, and finally cross the biggest hurdle of all, making the dungeon cough up the replica(s).

Thomas had several such treasures in his own catalog of loot, courtesy of Alaxia’s stockpile, and wouldn’t be making any of those, because they were ex-pen-sive as all get out. 

Although if there were any more cultivators causing trouble, he could probably create an event with some vital resource as the capstone prize and draw them in to get their ass kicked. 

Granted, he’d had an epically terrible introduction to cultivators in general; they may not all be awful people, but based on what he’d heard from several outworlders, his impression was largely correct. 

It was the Monopoly Experiment all over again. That had involved two people playing Monopoly, with one having vast advantages in terms of the rules, such as more starting capital, receiving more money when going over Go, and so on. The one with the advantages obviously won, but it was obvious to everyone except them as to why that victory had been achieved, in the majority of cases. 

People who reached the top liked to think it was all through their own efforts, things like good fortune or luck of birth seemingly not existing in their minds. So then again, was it really a surprise that in a system where so many got stuck at bottlenecks, the “winners” were mostly arrogant jackasses?

Anywho, mind back in the game. Thomas dispatched a capuchin with a potion to fix Granger’s leg, not seeing the need to keep him in pain longer than necessary, and then just watched. Not the young man with the busted leg, but the battle between the others and the dungeon boss. 

Dexter had taken position at the exit to his room, three legs planted firmly on the ground, right arm already being raised to punch someone’s lights out. 

And then he threw the mother of all haymakers, straight at Henderson, who threw himself to the side, taking advantage of the near-frictionless nature of the floor to carry him to the side. 

The mage and Murray dodged as well, but Harjaz launched himself onto the arm while it was at its furthest point of extension, trying to tie it down, but he wasn’t quite heavy enough, so when Dexter cancelled the extension, the orc simply found himself getting reeled in while barely managing to keep his feet under him … at least until Dexter used his third power to raise a small pillar right in the man’s path. 

Harjaz wound up being dragged straight into what was, in essence, a ten-centimeter-tall platform, tripped, and inadvertently slammed both shins into the pillar the sloth had raised behind the first one, at just the right height to hurt.

Thomas winced. Okay that, he hadn’t taught Dexter, he’d figured that out all on his own. 

At the same time, raising smaller pillars under the feet of the ranged combatants disrupted their footing, and larger ones placed between them and him ruined their lines of fire. 

But that was when Henderson launched himself at the giant sloth from the corner into which he’d slid, attacking on all fours to better keep his balance as he used himself as a human battering ram. Well, “human” was debatable, considering that right now, he was ninety percent armor-plated dinosaur, but the point stood. 

If it had been a matter of a normal ankylosaurus slamming into a regular megatherium’s legs, the matter would have resolved itself right then and there. The dinosaur was simply a third again the weight of the mammal, and built to take a beating. 

But Dexter was a giant among giants, massively larger than any of his “kind,” further differentiated from all other giant sloths by the numerous upgrades Thomas had given him during his elevation to champion. 

So when Henderson cannonballed into Dexter’s right shin, he was able to force the leg back, but he was stopped dead in the process, in just the right spot for the monster to bring a fist down right on his spine. A lethal mistake, had this been a normal run … 

Or at least that was how Thomas would have expected it to go; he’d have thought he’d have to stop this here and then wind up in some bizarrely frustrating “but I had him” argument. 

But Henderson dropped his entire transformation in an instant, suddenly presenting a much smaller target and the titanic fist missed by a matter of inches … which had apparently been a part of his plan from the start, as he managed to twist around on the slippery ground, grab the arm even as his feet were already flying out from under him, and transformed. 

Into a grizzly this time, smaller but still massive, and sank his claws in, ripping at Dexter’s arm. 

And then the giant sloth’s other arm slammed into his side and flung the marine away like the world’s angriest teddy bear. 

But before the dungeon boss could capitalize on that, Harjaz slammed into the same leg that Henderson had targeted earlier, using the same maneuver, with one crucial difference. He made sure that his metal-shod fist made first contact and cracked straight into his target’s knee. Which promptly bent the other way, resulting in Dexter collapsing on top of the orc with a pained roar. 

Harjaz was a veteran fighter, however, someone who’d gradually leveled up over time, slowly gaining power while growing his skills. Unlike Henderson, who’d rapidly gained strength while retaining far too much of his previous, mundane-centered mindset.  

The orc’s form expanded over the course of five seconds, transforming almost completely and forcing Dexter’s body up, then dropping the shift in an instant and kicking himself free before the giant sloth could fall on him. Again. 

And at the same time, the two ranged fighters were finally able to get a bead on Dexter. 

He tried to hurl another punch to crush them, but that was when Henderson slammed into his side, once again an ankylosaurus. It did about as effective as the first strike, damage-wise, but damage hadn’t been the point. Disorientation was. 

And before Dexter could crush him like a cockroach, Harjaz managed to break his second hind leg. 

What followed was … well, the world’s slowest execution. 

Both of the group’s tanks took turns hurling themselves across the room, using their momentum to do damage, only to escape or be “saved” by another attacker who struck at just the right moment to throw off one of the giant sloth’s devastating punches. 

The delvers would “win,” that was almost inevitable with how they were playing it, but Thomas could tell that they wouldn’t be in very good shape by the end of it. The mage was currently in a cycle of running dry on mana, recovering enough to cast a single magic missile, and then waiting while his newly bottomed-out mana pool recovered. 

And judging by how Murray was digging around her belt, she’d just run out of ammo and not realized it. 

Also, she was paying too much attention to her belt to notice that Dexter had realized her inattention. 

The punch was thrown without any mass manipulation, and slow to boot, but it was still a punch from a titan of prehistory. Even with Henderson throwing off the aim, and it only landing a glancing blow, she still spun like a top before winding up splayed out across the ground, looking like she’d been side-swiped by a truck. 

So she was out too. Though before Thomas could get her out of the field of fire, Granger used telekinesis to drag her out of the room, the near-frictionless floor making that much more doable than his ill-fated attempt at rescuing Henderson.

And a couple of minutes after that, the mage went down too, leaving just the two Anima Monks hammering into the boss, wearing it down bit by bloody bit. 

Until eventually, the cracked and battered ribs of the giant sloth finally broke, bending inwards and piercing through vital organs. 

Neither Harjaz or Henderson took it easy as a result, however, keeping up their battering until Dexter’s body finally dissolved into nothingness … which left Harjaz careening across the room and slamming into the far wall, while Henderson’s attempt to catch his balance resulted in a spectacular wipeout that left him belly-sliding into the corner and unwittingly kissing the marble. 

Thomas sniggered. 

“Good tactics, spectacular finish,” Granger commented dryly from his position at the entrance as he dragged them out using the tendrils from his bracers. Being F-Rank, the legendary item was no longer anywhere near strong enough to be used in combat, but it still had plenty of utility applications. Especially now that the people getting pulled across the floor were actively helping that along. 

Henderson tried to get onto his feet, but found himself sitting down hard when his boots slipped. Granger waved his hand, cast a cleaning spell, and removed all the engine oil that had covered the ground of the boss room. 

The marine swore under his breath, expanding Thomas’ vocabulary of four-letter words significantly. 

But after a few seconds, he finally managed to stand up and ceased his cussing. 

“So, does anyone feel up to going deeper?” Henderson asked. He sounded tired. 

After a long moment, Harjaz finally answered. “I don’t think that would be for the best.” 

Granger nodded. He didn’t look tired, having been taken out of “the game” right at the start, but he understood. 

“So, we all know we wouldn’t have won that if it had been a real delve, right?” Murray finally asked. 

“If it had been a real delve, we wouldn’t have stuck around with three people injured to the point of being out of the fight,” Henderson replied. “But yeah, we know.” 

Together, they headed out of the dungeon, looking like walking wounded despite having already been fixed up by potions. Clearly, it did absolutely nothing for the emotional side of things. 

They walked in silence, until they got to the entrance. 

“Hey, Daedalus, can I fight that thing again?” Henderson asked, pointing towards Dexter’s boss room, sounding surprisingly eager. “I know it’s powerful, but I really want to try and take it down on my own now that I have the chance.”

Now that warranted a direct response from Thomas. 

“I mean, if you want and no one else is using the Dungeon … yeah, you can have your one-on-one with Dexter.”

It’d take a bit, Thomas certainly wouldn’t shut down operations for the sake of one man, but if he was willing to march into a certain ass whooping over and over again, who was he to stand in Henderson’s way? 

***

Lucas Henderson bowed to no one, be they man or demon. 

But that thing, that fucking megatherium named after a fictional serial killer, it made him bow. 

Or at least that was the name association he had with that name, now, though he had no reason to believe that Daedalus knew enough about Earth culture to make the reference. 

But after getting his ass handed to him so many times in a row, that was the only thing that came to mind when he heard “Dexter.” Or even thought it. 

So powerful. So damn powerful. 

Fighting it one-on-one had been a mistake, in hindsight, and he was doing so badly that his level hadn’t budged once … yet this all was doing wonders for his skills. 

And, admittedly, he wasn’t willing to back down just yet. He would sacrifice pride for the sake of his comrades, his own life too, for that matter … but no one would die here. And as such, he had no excuse to retreat.

So he just kept throwing himself into the meat grinder, over and over again, coming out the other side bruised and battered, only to get healed right back up and march back into that room and the giant sloth’s fist. 

Yet every time something went wrong, he learned another lesson, and another attack or trick became marginally easier to see through. 

Granger’s quip about Dark Souls had been ill-timed and wrong to boot, there were to well-telegraphed moves you could read into the way you could with a video game boss, but there were patterns. 

Dexter could throw regular punches, yes, but those goddamn “zoom punches” didn’t work the same way, anything that went beyond his unenhanced reach had to be done on raw momentum. The mass enhancement on the fists helped with that, but that didn’t change the fact that the super-long attacks couldn’t be thrown as simple jabs, the giant sloth needed to actually cock his fists back. That was something he could look out for. 

And the same went for those bloody pillars. They could emerge from any point on the floor, at seemingly any point in time, but it still required some focus, and couldn’t be done randomly while fully involved in a brawl. 

Throwing punches and raising pillars? That worked. 

And so did repositioning and manipulating the ground. 

But while actively engaged in fisticuffs, moving around, and precisely controlling the movement of pillars? That wouldn’t work. 

And so on, and so forth. Yet even with all these observations, this was still a living being he was fighting, not a computer program. He’d come by his realizations five ass-whoopings ago, but was yet to get even close to winning. 

But would that stop him? No, absolutely not. At least not yet. 

He got into a more classic sprinter’s pose, and kicked off to launch himself into the boss room, easily clearing a height of two meters at the apex of his leap before twisting in midair and transforming, slamming into Dexter’s gut shoulder first, the full mass of an ankylosaurus managing to unbalance the sloth which had just been rearing back in preparation to throw a punch. The same way it always did. 

As the giant monster toppled backwards, Henderson shifted back into the far smaller form of a grizzly before he wound up on his back like a turtle, and when the boss hit the ground, he went sliding away. But not before he managed to carve a massive slash across the sloth’s neck. Not an immediately fatal wound, but definitely a good start. 

He felt his rear slam into the wall as he came to a stop. This was the part where this got dangerous. Playing this like a game of pinball, or maybe pool, kicking off the walls to bodily hit the monster, that worked in theory. 

But in practice … predictable direction, hostile ground manipulation that could nigh-guarantee a painful wipeout, and the fact that the longer he kept it up, the more he’d wind up covering in whatever crap made the ground so damn slippery and the less he’d be in control of himself. 

So he waited, eyes fixed on his enemy as the sloth grew another pillar out of the floor and used it to haul itself to its feet, blood already painting the fur on its chest. 

And then, the punches started flying. 

Henderson ducked under one, and avoided a second by shrinking to his fully human form, but only managed to turn the third punch into a glancing blow that crushed his shoulder against the wall. That’d definitely bruise, but he transformed as little as he could while still manifesting his claws and started to rake his right hand across the limb, pinning him to the wall, aiming at the part he’d seen bleed the most in the previous fights. 

But, of course, the monster yanked its hand back and he slid to the ground, shoulder feeling like it was on fire. 

Henderson grinned. He’d have expected to be more injured by this point. 

For the first time, he used his “human pinball” move to go sliding between the monster’s legs even as it raised a fist to crush him into the ground, avoiding the attack and, at the very last possible second, transformed into as large a form as he could manage. At that point, he was tall enough that even on all fours, his armored backside slammed straight into the boss monster’s unmentionables. Monster or not, that had to hurt.  

A split second after impact, he shifted back into his human form to avoid getting stuck, grabbed a fistful of fur, and yanked himself out from under his opponent (he wasn’t letting himself get smothered under it again). 

And from there, he yanked himself onto its back and shifted into his full hybrid form. Nearly as large as an ankylosaurus, but far more limber, an armor-plated bear with claws shot through with solid bone, and a heavy tail with a massive club on its tail, dragged on the floor, though it could be surprisingly helpful when it came to keeping his balance when required. 

From that point, it was time to start ripping open the giant sloth’s back, going straight at every point he’d noticed was a good target, slicing apart important muscles, tearing apart tendons and overall crippling it as thoroughly as he coud before … 

Dexter bucked beneath him, and Henderson became fully human to jump off, the one thing large animals couldn’t really do being jumping. 

… well, before that happened.  

He landed on a large ledge over the door, waiting. It wasn’t quite obvious what it had been for, but it certainly served him well. Both as an escape, and a springboard for his next attack.

Henderson waited until the giant sloth had fully turned back around to him and drew back its fist in preparation for another attack, something whose timing he had down pat … after having taken it straight in the teeth half a dozen times. 

Then, he launched himself straight at the giant sloth’s neck, half-transformed, claws extended, and ripped a massive gash down its front before hitting the ground. Something that immediately turned into a belly-flop as his limbs slid off the floor. 

Blood filled his mouth as, after a split second, he realized that not only had his chin cracked into the floor, but he’d also bitten his tongue. And before he could react, a fist slammed into his side and threw him across the room. 

Lost again … how many times has it been now? 

Henderson was struggling to get back into a sitting position, getting back onto his feet would be hard, and staying up would be nigh impossible … but he’d try anyway. Keep going until he heard the damn bell, proverbial as it may be. 

But even as he blinked away the blurriness clouding his vision, he saw the body of the monster on the floor, dissolving into nothingness. 

***

Over and over, Henderson had marched into the boss room and was thrown out on his ass. Eventually, it had gotten to the point where he didn’t even bother fully untransforming before he returned to the fray, though judging by his reaction to Granger laughing at him just having a pair of fuzzy bear ears on top of his head, it hadn’t been an entirely conscious decision. 

Thomas had laughed too.

Henderson was slowly entering the category of people he’d be genuinely sad if they died, but that didn’t mean that watching the big man get his ass whopped on an endless loop wasn’t hella entertaining.

But eventually seeing him win, even if it was against one of Thomas’ own champions, was damn satisfying as well. 

Perhaps he could come up with something new, along the same lines. A “challenge mode” that didn’t conflict with his core purpose of providing an actual, you know, challenge. 

So maybe a different name was in order, but, perhaps, he could create something new that let him watch people actually fight powerful monsters by reducing the danger. An arena, maybe? 

Either way, that had been fun. Things might have been crazy earlier, but they seemed to have calmed down since. Perhaps … no, he categorically refused to finish that thought, though he’d likely already jinxed himself, hadn’t he?