Rhea, the half-giant bard, howled in fury as she swung at Stitch.

  Keeping her eyes on the nimble figure was a nightmare. The color-changing cloak blurred its outline, nothing like the easy-to-track shieldknights. Still, Rhea had longer legs, longer reach, and more mass behind every blow. She was faster than she looked, and each miss only fed her anger.

  Her strikes grew heavier as frustration boiled over.

  That wandering monster had destroyed her bagpipes.

  Her bagpipes!

  Rhea had no idea where she would even begin looking for a replacement. As far as she knew, she was the only half-giant bard in the entire game. She would need to find a master instrument maker willing to do custom work at her size, assuming such a specialist even existed.

  She gave voice to her rage. “Damn the realism of this bloody game!”

  Her next swing connected.

  The cloaked figure was smashed sideways like a rag doll. Before it could recover, Rhea was already there. One strike. Two. Three. She hammered it into the stone floor, each impact driving it deeper.

  It felt wrong.

  Not like the metal constructs elsewhere in the dungeon. More like the giant ox-monster she had fought on her last expedition outside. Like striking a sack filled with sawdust. The blow’s impact also made no sound. Neither did her enemy. No groan, no thump, no clank, nothing.

  Weird.

  The thing tried to roll away.

  It was still moving.

  Rhea snarled. She wasn’t as strong as she looked thanks to the stat compromises needed to function as a bard, but this was ridiculous. The thing had roughly the mass of their half-elf companion. That one usually went down after three good hits from a goblin’s club.

  Her attacks sped up, anger sharpening every swing.

  Then the creature dodged and made a strange motion with its hand. Toward its neck.

  Was it trying to fix a broken spine?

  The figure pulled back its hood. A mess of dark hair spilled free, threaded with a few pale blonde strands. The face was still hidden behind a cloth mask made of the same color shifting fabric.

  It lifted something from its neck.

  Her neck.

  Rhea hesitated.

  Was that… a woman?

  An adventurer? Some thief trying to steal from them?

  The woman or monster or whatever it was hurled something like a necklace far across the battlefield, then spoke for the first time.

  “Don’t kill me!”

  A young voice. Clearly female.

  Rhea barely stopped her next strike, hammer hovering as she stayed coiled to attack in case this was some kind of trap. “What are you?”

  “I’m just…” The voice crackled and cut out, like an old VR comm glitch.

  Rhea blinked once. Then understanding dawned.

  “You’re under a contract not to tell me, aren’t you?”

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  The woman nodded.

  Rhea huffed. “Figures. Some kind of quest.” She gestured with the hammer. “Take off the mask.”

  The woman obeyed.

  Her face was wrong.

  Stitched-together patches of skin in different tones formed her features. One side was badly bruised, but the damage was already fading. Flesh shifted and flowed, not like potion-based regeneration, but as if something beneath the skin was rearranging itself. New tissue surfaced. Old patches slid, merged, changed color.

  Her face subtly matured before Rhea’s eyes.

  The bard raised an eyebrow. Healing that aged the body? Or did it just change?

  Now that she had a moment to look properly, Rhea noticed the woman’s body shifting beneath the cloak as well. There was a lot to heal, as she’d given the girl quite a beating. But the bard didn’t let her guard down. “So, what am I supposed to do with you now?”

  “Let me go?” the woman said. “I just did my job.”

  Some of Rhea’s rage surged back instantly. “You destroyed my instrument!”

  The flesh-golem shrugged. “It was a clean cut. A simple Mending spell should fix it. There’s a repair shop right outside the dungeon.”

  Rhea stared down at her, hammer still half-raised, fury draining into irritation.

  Of course.

  A player.

  Some poor idiot who had tripped over one of the game’s stranger quest triggers.

  Rhea snorted. “Figures. Let me guess. You touched something you shouldn’t have.”

  The girl flinched. “I… what?”

  “You triggered hidden content. Experimental stuff. Probably dev-brained nonsense tied to dungeon behavior.” Rhea gestured around them. “This place stinks of it.”

  She lowered her weapon just enough to signal she wasn’t about to swing again. Not yet.

  “You move like a newbie,” Rhea went on, mostly to herself. “Bad reflexes. That cloak’s more cosmetic than useful. And you fight like someone who doesn’t know when to disengage.”

  The girl pushed herself onto one elbow, confusion plain on her face. The healing under her skin continued to crawl.

  Rhea watched now with open curiosity.

  “Let me guess,” she said. “Transformation debuff. And some temporary race override to turn you into a flesh-golem. A living objective. Maybe some kind of escort target.”

  The girl hesitated. Too long.

  Rhea sighed. “Yeah. Thought so.”

  She rolled her shoulders, the last of the fight draining from her posture. “Listen. I don’t know what your quest says, and I don’t care. But if it lets you wreck my instrument, whoever designed it deserves a beating.”

  “I didn’t mean to…”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Rhea waved it off. “This game loves meaningful consequences. Especially for bards.” Her mouth twisted. “Replacing half-giant gear is hellishly expensive. I really hope you’re right about repairs.”

  She studied the girl again. “Player to player. Are you stuck like this, or do you revert once the quest ends?”

  The girl opened her mouth.

  Closed it again.

  Rhea groaned. “Contract. Of course.”

  She straightened and glanced back toward the ongoing fight. “Alright. Either your quest wants you dead, captured, or escorted. Given the regeneration and the fact you’re still breathing, I’m guessing escorted.”

  She met the girl’s eyes. “Which means if I kill you, the dungeon probably escalates. And I am not in the mood for phase two.”

  Rhea lowered her hammer fully.

  “So here’s the deal. You stay down. You don’t touch my team. When this is over, you point me to that repair shop and pay for my bagpipes getting fixed.”

  She paused, grip tightening. “And if this turns out to be a grief-quest where I get punished for showing mercy…”

  Her voice hardened.

  “I finish the job next time.”

  Rhea turned and thundered back into the fray.

  The rhythm returned quickly. Step. Swing. Pivot. The familiar logic of combat drowned out her thoughts, at least for a moment. A shieldknight collapsed under her hammer, armor buckling with a satisfying crunch. Another staggered as Bambam slammed into it from the side.

  Good. Clean. Predictable.

  And yet.

  Something nagged at the back of her mind, like a note played just slightly off-key.

  She parried, twisted, struck again. The image of stitched skin and crawling flesh refused to fade. Beginners shouldn’t survive that kind of punishment. And that girl hadn’t been a veteran.

  Rhea smashed another construct aside and snarled, forcing her focus back.

  Regeneration builds existed. Experimental races too. She’d played long enough to know devs loved pushing boundaries, especially with dungeon-linked content.

  Still…

  She ducked under a blade, the motion automatic, and frowned.

  That girl hadn’t reacted like a player.

  No panicked menu gestures. In hindsight, the girl had seemed too confused by her statements. What if it wasn’t surprise about her guessing right?

  Rhea dropped to one knee and drove her hammer into a shieldknight Bambam had just toppled, cracking metal and stone alike.

  She exhaled sharply. “Focus.”

  Another enemy fell. The fight surged on. But her thoughts kept drifting.

  Entering a quest usually came with some kind of acknowledgment that the system was watching.

  That girl had nothing.

  Rhea blocked a strike too late, the impact rattling her arms. She shoved the construct away, jaw tightening.

  She’d fought griefers. Role-players. Full-immersion lunatics who refused to break character.

  None of them had looked at her like that.

  Another hammer blow. Another shattered enemy.

  “Dammit,” Rhea growled.

  If that wasn’t a player…

  Then who in the name of the servers had she just beaten half to death?

  Her gaze flicked back, just for a moment, to where she had left the flesh-golem.

  The stone floor was empty.

  The flesh-golem girl was gone.