“So this doesn’t count…”

  I let my head rest against my makeshift barricade. The Checklist was unchanged. This place didn’t count as a foreign settlement.

  “What now?”

  It had been a few minutes since I sat down. My HP was still at zero. My stomach was growling. My throat was dry. I could feel my exhaustion more intensely now.

  “This is… what should be happening to a man who has been fighting one monster after another.”

  I pushed myself to my feet and looked around. It was a creepy place. A wooden bowl sat on a stone table along the edge of this round home, its contents long since rotted—but the spoon still rested in place, like someone had been mid-meal when they vanished. The remnants of the bed nearby too–still unmade. There were markings and mesmeric patterns on the wall, but this sort of wall art was common in my village, too. I was thankful for the ambient light levels due to all the glowing plant matter everywhere. Even when humans leave, cave plants thrive.

  I carefully walked over to the window hole and cracked open the wooden shutter, peeking into the village.

  A laundry line hung between two houses, with old, faded cloth still swaying slightly—even though there was no wind. Weird on Earth, but not weird down here. Phantom breeze is what the old folks in the village called it. It was possible for a breeze to blow into this underground nightmare on some days, but most times, it was still.

  A child’s toy sat abandoned near a doorway. A rag-and-stick doll–still sitting up, like it was waiting for its friend to come back.

  The doors stood slightly ajar, as if someone had left in a hurry. Some of the houses had collapsed roofs, but not many.

  The state of this place—it was like everyone had suddenly vanished… Did they vanish when the flame went out? I could imagine something horrific like that happening.

  A faint bang reached my ears. I thought I had heard it while I was barricading myself in here. Now I knew for sure I wasn’t hearing things. It was coming from deeper within the village.

  The stretch of silence between bangs was long, but there was a rhythm to it. The only good thing about this was that the banging sounded distant.

  I focused on one of the new gauges in my vision–the Gimmick Meter. New Arm’s gimmick activated when the meter was full. After being attacked by the Big Mouths and realizing that this was just going to keep happening, I kept New Arm on because dismissing it reset the meter.

  The meter now, after being out of battle, was slowly decreasing. Maybe in another twenty minutes, I would be back to zero.

  Now, would that be disadvantageous? The meter built up whenever I struck an enemy with New Arm. The more I comboed, that is–the more New Arm hit an enemy consecutively–the faster the meter would build.

  In the previous fight, I hadn’t really racked up combo hits often, so I only got a charge from one-off attacks. Preserving the meter would only save me a few strikes in the next fight.

  In other words, aside from hunger and thirst, I couldn’t think of any reason to be hasty…

  Well, if I was slowly being surrounded, then that would be a problem. There was one monster by the water, and the banging is most likely coming from another, to say nothing of any that might be in the forest.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  I sat there, leaning against the barricade, trying to catch my breath and steady my nerves. The faint banging in the distance was still there, rhythmic and unsettling, but it was far enough away that I could almost ignore it. I had to think through my options.

  If I was going out there again with my HP the way it was, I would be heavily relying on New Arm.

  Then I heard it—a faint creak. My eyes snapped to the window, and I held my breath. The window was so small–I wouldn’t be able to fit my shoulders through there.

  The wooden shutter I’d cracked open earlier was trembling, the hinges grinding as something pushed against it from the outside. My jaw tightened as I saw the first sign of the intruder—a foot.

  It was pale and gray, the skin stretched tight over bony, elongated toes. The nails were black and jagged, curling unnaturally like claws. The foot twisted and flexed as it pushed through the window, the joints bending in ways that made me wince. It was too long, too thin, and it moved with a grotesque, insect-like precision. The ankle followed, then the other foot, both of them probing the air like they were feelers.

  “No, this is my house now,” I muttered, getting on my feet.

  I smashed a stool, took the chair leg, and rushed toward the window.

  The creature was halfway through now, its grotesque feet planted on the floor as it wriggled its way inside. Its lower body was draped in what looked like a tattered ball gown, the fabric soaked wet and clinging to its thin frame.

  The skirt suddenly billowed unnaturally with a poof, as if filled with some unseen force, and the creaking of the window frame grew louder as the creature forced itself further in.

  I swung the chair leg at its feet. The wood connected with a sickening crack, and the creature let out a high-pitched scream from outside. Its feet twisted and spasmed, but it didn’t stop. The foot swung at me like a whip. I caught it by the foot with New Arm, yanked it, and then gripped it by the shin with my right. I twisted the foot and snapped it, exposing purple ichor and a velvety black bone.

  A shriek cut through the room like glass dragged on bone, the creature flailing as ichor sprayed from its ruined foot. I grabbed the broken foot and tried to push it out, but the other one kept whipping me. Taking the chair leg, I pierced the sole of the monster’s foot. Hand on the flat of the leg, I pushed. The leg pushed back hard. I stumbled backward, and the foot lashed out, catching me in the chest enough to wind me.

  The legs then flayed out, hooking on the walls of the home. I got back in there and sent New Arm flying into the dress. I hit what had to be the groin, gripped it, and twisted as I kept pushing.

  “It was the best thing I ever felt!” it shrieked from outside.

  The sudden declaration caught me off guard, but I kept twisting, punching, and pushing. Anything to get it to back out of this confrontation.

  Then I felt a force. I jerked my head to the side right before a jet of ichor flew out. It struck the wall, leaving a clean hole that left me astounded.

  Cracking sounds reached my ears. New Arm rattled as I kept feeling the pressure. I quickly ducked and released, letting the ichor jet fly.

  “Shit!” I yelled, noticing that New Arm’s palm had been chipped from holding the stream back. “If it’s got a projectile that can overcome New Arm’s defense…”

  I broke down my barricade and burst out of the house, the damp air hitting my face as I stumbled into the open. My chest heaved, my body ached, but I didn’t have time to catch my breath. The monster was still here, and if I was lucky, it was still in some awkward, creepy pose.

  I rounded the house, and there she was.

  The creature lay on her neck and shoulders, her grotesque, grey body sprawled awkwardly on the ground and against the wall. Her waist was about to enter the house, the skirt of that pseudo ball gown of hers looking like the top of a pumpkin being forced into a tiny hole. Her torso was a nightmare—three pairs of elongated breasts hung from her chest, each one swaying slightly as she writhed. Her arms were too long, the fingers ending in sharp, black claws that dug into the dirt as she tried to further invade the house in such a stupid way. Her face was like the other grey monsters—a hollowed-out mask with sunken, empty eyes and a jagged slit for a mouth that twisted into a grotesque smile.

  Her neck creaked. She turned her head. Her smile split wider than her face could hold, new seams tearing across her cheeks just to let the voice out.

  “It was the best thing I ever felt,” she whispered, her voice like a breeze through a graveyard.