After doling out a bit of their food and water to Kelima and Dusk, Terry refused to let himself be sidetracked. He spread out his blankets, ignored the hard stone beneath them, and went to sleep. After all, Kelima had gone wandering around and not been attacked. That seemed like sufficient evidence that they were safe. Well, they were probably safe-ish. Safe enough that sleeping wasn't likely to get either of them killed. When he woke up several hours later with his metabolic functions intact, he felt vindicated in that belief. Dusk must have forgiven him at some point, because he found the kitten curled up and sleeping behind his knees.

He glanced around and saw Kelima writing in a small notebook. He just assumed she was taking notes on the dungeon. That was true right up until the moment she noticed him and tried to hide the notebook. Her cheeks even went a little pink. He thought about what she'd said earlier and shook his head at her in disapproval.

"You're actually writing that story about fighting a mud goblin named Terry, aren't you?" he asked.

"No," she said while staring fixedly at a piece of tunnel wall.

"Uh-huh. Well, I get a piece of the profits if you ever make any money on it."

"What? Why?"

"Because you're obviously basing the mud goblin on me. I can't stop you from publicly mocking me in a book, but you don't get to do it for free. I get a piece of the profits."

Kelima exhaled and said, "Fine."

"Twenty percent," said Terry.

"What? That's outrageous!"

"Is it, though? I mean, maybe if I had dragged you out into the wilderness against your will, that would be outrageous. But since you basically forced your company on me, after which I've repeatedly been called on to save your life, twenty percent feels downright reasonable to me. Now that I think about it, maybe I should ask for more. I'm sure if I discussed it with your parents—"

"Alright!" shouted Kelima. "Twenty percent. Just don't get my parents involved."

If Kelima had thought it through, she'd have realized that he would never, ever actually do that. He had about as much interest in talking with her mother again as he did in dumping boiling oil down his pants. Fortunately, Kelima had enough ingrained anxiety about her parents that she couldn't see past it. At least, that would hold true as long as he didn't pull out that trump card too often. If he got too enthusiastic with using that threat, she'd call his bluff sooner or later. Then, when he inevitably didn't follow through, he'd never be able to use it again. Nope. Far better to save it for really important things, and, occasionally, for his own amusement.

Before he could work up the motivation to go to the next floor, Dusk crawled up into his lap and demanded attention. Terry performed his human-slave duties for several minutes while the kitten purred loud enough to be heard. Whenever she acted like this, it was so easy for him to ignore all the warning signs. Plus, at the end of the day, she'd never done anything bad to him or the people around him. What she might one day do to everyone else was, Terry decided right then and there, not really his problem. Besides, they'd probably have it coming.

"Who's a good elder thing?" Terry cooed to the kitten. "Dusk is. That's right."

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When he started talking, the kitten looked up at him and, just for a second, he was certain he spotted amusement in her kitten eyes.

"Did you just call your cat an elder thing?" asked Kelima, staring at him with an expression akin to horror.

Terry gave her a bland look and said, "Why would I do that? You're clearly letting your imagination get the better of you. Now, go back to writing your libel and let me pet my cat in peace."

Kelima gave him a look of deep suspicion before she did, in fact, go back to writing her libel. Terry resumed petting what might or might not be some unspeakable denizen of the void masquerading as a harmless kitten-shaped creature with tiny toe beans. Not that it mattered. She was his cat. The cat that rode around on his shoulder or curled up in his pack. The cat that sat on his lap and demanded love or, just as likely, acted like he didn't even exist. She did all the things a cat was supposed to do. Didn't that mean that she was a cat by all the meaningful metrics?

Even Terry was willing to admit, if only to himself, just how weak that argument sounded. So, he decided to fall back on a version of a different argument he'd heard a stand-up comedian use once upon a time. Fuck off. I like my cat. As arguments went, it lacked a certain intellectual polish, but it had the elegance of simplicity. When his feline overlord decided she'd had enough obeisance, Terry stuffed his blankets into his pack and settled the kitten on top of them. He'd been tempted to put the entire pack into his storage ring, but he wasn't sure what he'd do with Dusk. It wasn't like he could carry her in his arms all the time.

"Okay," he said to Kelima. "Pack up your stuff. It's time to get moving. I'd like to get out of this dungeon today if at all possible."

She shot him a look and hastily scribbled a few more words before closing the little notebook. It only took her about a minute to get her stuff packed up. They walked into the still haze-filled boss room. There was something decidedly off about that, but Terry resolutely put that mystery out of his mind. He suspected the only way he was going to solve that problem was by spending a lot of time in the dungeon. Something he had zero intention of doing. Gesturing for Kelima to stay where she was, he took a couple of steps forward. He repeated his clap trick from the day before, but reduced it to around half the speed and strength. There was still an almighty noise. The haze was pushed back, but nothing went flying. Little victories, Terry told himself.

He and Kelima hurried to the back of the room, where a door had opened in the wall and exposed some stairs leading down. As soon as they stepped onto the stairs, the wall sealed up behind them. They descended the stairs for what Terry felt was an unreasonable amount of time just to get between floors. He knew that part of it was just that he'd come from a world where the heights of rooms were fairly standard. That made the amount of time for trips between floors fairly predictable. Sure, you'd run across slow elevators sometimes, but even that was within certain norms.

With the dungeon, a trip between floors might take thirty seconds, or it might mean walking for ten minutes. The variance bothered Terry at some fundamental level. He didn't know if it was his personality or some remnant of the programmer in him that craved consistency. They finally reached another open door and, with little other choice, stepped through. They found themselves in a dank, swampy location that had clouds obscuring what would have passed for the sky. That was something else that Terry hated about the dungeon. The way it could mimic the outside world, right down to replicating a sky.

He was convinced that doing such things ought to come with an outlandish energy cost that should make it impossible. Of course, most of what he'd experienced since being isekai-ed into this world could probably be described with the word impossible. Even so, there was something about the dungeon that felt more wrong than anything else he'd been through. He didn't know what it was. He just knew he hated it right down to his core. Not that he got to dwell on that for long. Within a minute of stepping through the door, things started to rise out of the swamp soup. They looked familiar.

"Oh no," said Kelima.

"What?" demanded Terry, glaring at her.

"Those are mud goblins."

Terry kept glaring at her.

"I know. I know! This is my fault," said the noble girl.

Terry looked around and realized something terrible.

"God damn it."

"What?" asked Kelima, her eyes locked on the approaching mud goblins.

"There are no rocks here," complained Terry. "I'm going to have to kill these things the hard way."

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