We talked a lot as we explored. The bubble was devastated. Based on what Lacie was getting from elsewhere, once a burough boss from some class of creatures died, so did all of those creatures. It seemed likely that, between the two massive explosions, we'd wiped out everything in this region.

  Maybe we should have headed towards the center, but it seemed unlikely that the few routes through the rubble remained open after the latest blast. Thus, it was outwards, to climb the pile of loose rock that spilled into what had been a ring of water about the plateau. The water directly below, well there wasn't any. We headed out a bit, looking along the side and seeing nothing of note.

  As there was no obvious place to go, we split up. I skated left, she walked right. Eventually, I saw a safe room on my minimap, in the narrow slice of land that had so far been shielded from every blastwave. I was confused as to where until I realized it was below me. The land quadrant was the top of the plateau, the subterranean the interior, but the cliffs around the edge, including some distance inside them, were the water quadrant.

  It took a bit for us to find a good way down, but we did eventually get in there. It was a city, built into the face of the cliff, but not like one of those ancient cities you see that are mostly ruins. This city was a fortress, with massive cables and huge anchor-plates holding the massive stone walls straight.

  Facing off with the cliff-city was a huge warship. It was the size of a modern battleship but was shaped like a civil-war ironclad.

  I don't know what the correct route in was, but we were able to slip through a narrow window with an unmanned cannon and get inside. We ignored the complaints of a few locals who asked who we were and rushed to the safe room, hurrying straight through and into Lacie's personal space.

  For a while, we just sat on the edge of the bed and let our breathing settle.

  "You know," Lacie said, "you blacked out there. That probably means you failed that next run of sleeplessness."

  "Actually, the achievement's for continuing with the fatigue debuff active, and that hasn't faded at all."

  "Ah." That didn't seem to please her. "Cool. So that legendary is still on the horizon. Um, well, let's open boxes."

  "Everything fine?"

  She smiled, and it was almost entirely natural looking. "I'm tired, and that was all very scary. But... I fell asleep. I woke up in this total panic, and you were still just down there doing your thing."

  "So?"

  "I'm supposed to be helping."

  "You did help. I would have died without those buffs."

  Lacie was avoiding looking at me. "I just hid in a corner."

  I thought about it a minute, wishing I had better words. "I guess if it bothers you, it bothers you. It doesn't bother me, so I don't really know what to say."

  She leaned closer. "Thanks for that, I guess."

  I said, "Now, let's try this again. We have some nice boxes, right?"

  "Let's see your 100-dex option first. You should have it, now."

  "Oh yeah!" I put enough points in to hit 100.

  New Achievement! Oh so swift!

  Your base dexterity is now over 100.

  You could be a pole dancer!

  Reward: You've received an upgrade!

  Sleek. From now on, every one point of Dexterity you add as a result of a level-up stat point is actually two points. This is not retroactive, nor does it apply to equipment-based upgrades.

  Nimbly Bimbly. So very, very many flips. Why do people think doing flips is good for dodging things? You can designate a focused enemy, changing it after 5 minutes or after the target dies. Against your focused enemy, your dodge chance is increased by 25%.

  Black Swan. The best way to the top is through your enemies, unless your allies have better loot to steal. Your chance of a critical strike is doubled. Against surprised targets, it's quadrupled.

  "So, Nimbly Bimbly has a dumb name, but it's great, right?" I said.

  "No, no I think that's a trap option."

  I read it again. "Why?"

  "It sounds tempting—trap options always do—but it's single-target, and that's already your smallest concern. That one focuses on a single benefit, but your dexterity also helps increase your aim with thrown weapons, your acrobatic maneuvers, hiding and moving silently, and triggering your rupture and siphon effects. Nimbly Bimbly seems good, but it actually just works to keep your dexterity low. Now, if you were actually an assassin, Black Swan might be worth it, but you're not, so Sleek is best."

  I kept looking through them. "Are you sure?"

  "I'm not. This dungeon is weird, and I'm not sure. If you ever need to fight a country boss, Nimbly Bimbly is probably best. I just don't know if that's your biggest concern."

  I thought about it some more, way longer than I'd thought about most things in the dungeon so far. "Is it every 100 points?"

  She nodded.

  I selected sleek. Immediately, I felt different. My body just seemed tighter, more poised to move.

  "Dayum," Lacie said.

  I looked over, saw her staring at me, and blushed. I glanced down and saw that my muscles had gotten far more crisply defined. "Uh, alright. So, all the rest to dexterity, then?"

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  She nodded. "At doubled value, and with how much dex is the only thing you use, yeah. The other choices could be good if you weren't going all in on dex."

  I did as was suggested. "Wow, that times-two really makes a difference. I'm at 158 dexterity!"

  "That's awesome." Lacie was still looking me up and down.

  I hid my face behind my hands. "Just open your boxes already."

  Platinum Lucky Bastard Box

  EXTREME Big-Game Hunters Super-Spin Token.

  Gold Boss Box

  Anora's Choker of Aid.

  EXTREME Big-Game Hunters Super-Spin Token.

  Use in a boss fight to get a huge reward, for slightly more difficulty.

  "Well, that's fucking risky. I bet it can't actually elevate loot to celestial, either. So many of these item descriptions are incomplete or just wrong."

  "So if we did that today, we could have gotten even more than a gold boss box?" I asked.

  She nodded, not commenting as she moved on to Anora's choker. She read the description, smirked, and handed it my way.

  Anora's Choker of Aid

  Anora was the greatest of healers. Then she was pressed into service and continued to be the best of healers, protecting the champion of her army. She then died. Why didn't she run? Anora was a slave!

  That's right this is a slave collar. You remember when you leapt at the chance to have some big strong crocodile man protect you? He thought of you as a slave, and you were too dumb to realize it. They needed a conscription spell to enslave Anora, but you went all on your own. That's why you're getting Anora's collar.

  I realized that the choker did in fact have a big ring on it, like something was supposed to be clipped there. "Oh my God this awful AI must shut up!"

  "Ignore the flavor, check the modifiers."

  +15 Intelligence.

  +15% Intelligence.

  Mind control effects are more effective against you.

  "It's still disgusting."

  "It's an amazing collar, and it looks fucking hot." She put it on and posed. I couldn't argue. "Now open yours!"

  "My one good one." I also had a bunch of bronze and silver boxes, but they all had the expected mix of potions and junk.

  Gold Boss Box

  Whetstone of Khonte Yinan.

  Whetstone of Khonte Yinan

  The god of preparing others for war is a cruel and sadisitic being. He loves finding new ways to make people suffer. With this wonderful little gift, you can also find new ways to make people suffer. Or to make yourself suffer. You seem the type who goes in for abusing yourself.

  Apply to an edged weapon to upgrade it.

  Warning: This item has a short shelf life.

  "Well, I guess the AI agrees that this Extremely Sharp Knife is basically my whole character." I looked up. "Hey why are you always making sex jokes instead of jokes about me being a one-note extra or something?"

  "Instead of taunting the AI, just upgrade your knife. I want to see it get more shiny."

  I took out my Extremely Sharp Knife and ground the whetstone along the glass edge. The whetstone disappeared and the knife's description changed.

  Extremely Sharp Knife

  This item has been Upgraded three times.

  Oh look, the gooner who always bitches about getting crappy loot is having her entire personality improved by this one whetstone. Maybe next time you'll get something that only applies to heavy armor and you can just piss it away. Before this upgrade, your whole build was:

  +5 to Dexterity when wielded.

  Has the Pierce Through benefit.

  Has the Translucent benefit.

  Has the Returner benefit.

  0.25% chance to cause Rupture debuff per dexterity of the thrower.

  What are we adding?

  0.25% chance to cause Siphon debuff per dexterity of the thrower.

  Siphon. Can be applied to a creature or to a shield. When applied to a shield, it causes damage to the shield periodically. When applied to a creature, it periodically drains the target's mana. If the shield reaches 0 or the creature runs out of mana, the siphon effect ends.

  Spells and effects that repair shields and regain mana have a 50% chance to remove each siphon, or 15% per second if they are repairing the shield or regaining mana over time.

  "Damn. They really do want you to be an assassin."

  I sighed. "I really don't want to be an assassin."

  "Let me explain the sixth floor again. The people who made this game, who murdered most of the people on earth and trapped millions more in a dungeon, who killed almost everyone we've ever known, send hired killers and wealthy psychopaths in with incredible equipment so they can hunt down and kill the people they trapped in the dungeon. They are the definition of evil, and every one of them that dies is the life of an innocent earthling saved."

  I scowled.

  "What?"

  "I just, well, whenever something sounds like it's absolutely wrong and someone explains why it's actually right in this case, it feels like rationalizing away guilt. It's okay to lie, because it's for their own good. It's okay to hurt him, so he learns his lesson. It's okay to kill them, because they're bad." I'd basically just accused my girlfriend of justifying murder, and I couldn't meet her eyes. "Maybe I don't think you're wrong, but I don't like it."

  She leaned in, voice soft. "I love how much you care about being a good person. You don't have to hurt anyone you don't want to hurt. But you do have to spend an hour in the training room. And in an hour-thirty our fan boxes open, so it's dinner after training."

  "Alright. But do we still need find traps?"

  "I think we do."

  I shrugged and headed in. While I worked on find traps, she trained her Windswept Crag ability, as she'd finally seen how I fought big battles.

  After that, and after thirty minutes of giggling while we ate a burger from the safe room outside, we opened more boxes. Hers was lower quality than mine, for some reason.

  Gold Fan Box

  Old-English Wood Oil.

  "Are fan boxes always weird?" I asked.

  "Fans vote on them," Lacie explained. "I've checked around. It's usually stuff you can't get in-dungeon, but the quality varies a lot more. That said, I think this one's quite good, and fulfills those fans' dirty little fantasies."

  I groaned as she read it off, making sure to squeeze a lot of innuendo into her tone. "Old-English Wood Oil, for polishing your wood, nudge nudge wink wink. That's right, spend fifteen minutes rubbing this into your firm, wooden skin to give it a glorious shine that will stay rich through whatever make-up you wear. Applying Old-English Wood Oil grants the Highly Polished buff for 30 hours."

  She grinned at the lewd tone that had me blushing. "Highly Polished grants a chance to reflect spell attacks. So, probably really fucking good, see?"

  "I guess so. Seems real dirty, though."

  She pulled it into her inventory. "We're on a TV show now. I know we didn't exactly want to volunteer for it, but it's our life. You know why the stars always shine and glimmer during a beach scene? It's not the water, it's baby oil. This is just completely standard fan service."

  I didn't reply, opening my box instead.

  Platinum Fan Box

  Right Shadowed Nipple-Ring of the Midnight Ballroom.

  Enchanted Black Jewelry Chain.

  "Nope," I said, but the items automatically pulled into my inventory, so I saw the descriptions before I could throw them at Lacie.

  Right Shadowed Nipple-Ring of the Midnight Ballroom

  All nipple rings must be manually affixed the first time they are equipped.

  Wow, it's a matched pair. We all like nipple rings, and by we I mean the AI and the viewers, but we love matched pairs. Best worn with the Left Shadowed Nipple-Ring of the Midnight Ballroom.

  +10 Charisma.

  +4 to the Hide in Shadows skill.

  +4 to the Disguise skill.

  Requires at least 5 base Hide in Shadows skill to equip.

  Enchanted Black Jewelry Chain.

  Used to attach two nipple rings to each other. Be careful nobody grabs on. Unless you want them to.

  When attached to a matched pair of nipple rings, their bonuses are doubled.

  She chuckled as the little, dagger-shaped piece of jewelry hit her, followed shortly by the chain. "Your fans love giving you excellent equipment almost as much as they like making you blush, it would seem."

  I liked being around Lacie, but these fan gifts made me desperately want to go for a run. When we finished up and she gave me a quick kiss goodbye, I actually felt relieved.