She pulled the dagger out of her arm.

  Penelope ignored the blood as she fished in her left pocket with her right hand for a Health Potion. The fingers on her left hand were numb, which forced her to use her teeth to open the vial, but once the spicy liquid was inside her, she started feeling better.

  “Drink a water too.”

  Penelope started to argue but dug around in the fallen robe until she found the potion sling and pulled the Infernal Water off and drank it.

  “Why did I do that?” Penelope wiped her face with the arm of the Shadow Caster’s robe.

  “Healing Potions force rapid healing. You really should eat something too, but your body can deal with some loss in mass. It can’t deal with dehydration, which is what a Health Potion can do after it fixes a wound that severe.” Jeru began looking her over.

  “Deal with... Are you calling me fat?” Penelope raised an eyebrow.

  “Not even for an Elf.” He didn’t miss a beat with his reply as he continued to inspect the damage done to her.

  “Nice save.” Penelope kept wiping herself off.

  “What?” Confusion spread across Jeru’s face as he stopped to look her in the eye.

  She turned away before their eyes could meet and turned it into shaking her head. “Nothing.” She picked up the pants.

  “I can’t put these on over my jeans, can I?”

  “Dungeon rules.” The blue Elf shrugged. “You don’t have to wear them if you don’t want the stats, but...”

  “It’s fine.” Ula’s group was over a thousand feet away, and she had on a robe. It took Penelope less than a minute to shuck her jeans and pull on the light fabric.

  She folded her clothes and brought the extra robe and belt over to her second stash.

  “I’m under half mana still, so since it’s going to take a little bit before my mana is back.” Penelope nodded at the monsters in 3E. “Can you tell me about those?”

  Jeru sighed. “I told you, I’m not a walking bestiary.”

  “That’s because you’re a floating one.” She grinned at his reaction.

  “Ha ha, very funny.” He crossed his arms. “But since we have time and you’re not going to eat..." Jeru turned to the square. “Grasshoppers are fast but fragile and don’t hit hard. Protect your neck, and they won’t be an issue. The Caster has water spells that will lower your Magic if they hit you, so don’t get hit.”

  He craned his neck. “The hidden monster for that column is a Demonic Mole. They’re not as armored as the Demonic Beetles, but their hide is almost as tough, so move as soon as you feel the ground tremble.”

  “See?” She shook her head. “If you had started giving me those summaries in the beginning, I wouldn’t have died so much.”

  “If I had given you those summaries in the beginning, then you wouldn’t be thinking about them on the deeper floors where there are more monsters with a wider range of attacks at their disposal. Resetting here doesn’t lose you as much time as it will there.”

  “Wait…” Penelope groaned. “Am I going to have to redo this entire floor when I die on the second one?”

  “You can.” Jeru waffled his head. “But I can create an anchor for you after you kill a Higher Demon.”

  “What’s that?”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Sometimes they have minions that can summon them, but most of the ones you’ll run into are what you’d call a floor boss.” The blue Elf pointed to the north.

  “So you’re saying that once I clear a floor, I can create a save?” Penelope tapped her cheek. “And I can start at whatever save I want—”

  “You can only have one anchor.” Jeru interrupted. “But you can revert to the beginning any time you want.”

  “Wait.” Penelope glared at the blue Elf. “Are you telling me that you can reset things at any time?”

  “Yes…” Jeru sighed. “So yes, I could have reset things before you died, but if I always did that, then you would stop trying to find a solution—”

  “It’s fine.” She didn’t think it was fine, but she understood the logic.

  “I heard that you know.”

  Penelope rolled her eyes. “Having you as a passenger in my head isn’t very fun.”

  “Imagine how I feel.” He knocked on the side of his head. “It’s always been there.”

  She chuckled at the bad joke. “What was it like?”

  Jeru raised an eyebrow. “What was what?”

  “Growing up somewhere else.” She sat down and tucked her legs to her side in an M.

  “Nope. Not doing that.” He waved his hand. “Memory Lane isn’t a trip I’m going to take with someone who can walk away.” The blue Elf turned around. “Think of something else to use as your attempt at bonding.”

  “I was…” Penelope had just been trying to keep the conversation going. There was time and while she was okay with silence, silence with someone else there without some project to focus on was unsettling. She shook her head. “You heard all of that.”

  “I did…” He turned back around to look at her. “He said you were different, but after forty-one minds, I thought I’d seen how everyone worked. Yours…” Jeru shrugged. “Is different.”

  “Okay-y…”

  “When the rest of them space out, they’re doing just that. But you…” He floated over and reached out to touch the side of her face.

  Penelope flinched away.

  “Sorry. I forgot.” He shook his head as he backed away. “Anyway. Your mind starts accelerating when you’re closed off from the world.” He snorted. “Reminds me of my dad.”

  “I remind you of your dad?” Penelope shook her head. “I thought I was bad at flirting.”

  “I’m not…” Jeru sighed. “At this point, I’m almost two thousand. You’re like a baby.” He floated away from her. “What would be the point of flirting when I’m a ghost anyway?”

  “I thought you said you weren’t a ghost.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Then—”

  Jeru held up his hand. “A ghost is the remains of a person whose soul doesn’t fully cross over. I’m still alive. And a ghost is able to interact with the real world. I can’t.”

  “You’re alive?” Disbelief wasn’t masked within the question.

  “I already told you that I wasn’t getting into the complexities of what I’ve done.” Jeru pointed at her chest. “Think of me as trapped within that card until you kill the ArchDemon leading this attack.”

  Penelope touched her chest, then looked up. “Wait, how are you able to touch me then?”

  “I’m inside you.” The blue Elf shrugged. “I just make your mind think that you’ve been touched there.” He wiggled his fingers. “After a few hundred years, you start getting good at the timing.”

  Penelope felt a pressure like someone had just booped her nose.

  “Hey!” She covered her face.

  “See? It’s one of the perks of being inside..." He shook his head. “You get the idea. But that’s how I also know that you’re going to have to eat sooner than it’s going to take you to get to the frogs.”

  “What if I gut my way there?” Penelope pointed north. “That would be three rooms.”

  Jeru looked in the direction that she pointed and thought for a minute. “There’s no way that you’re going to clear that in one run.” He turned back to her. “If you really won’t cook one of the bugs, then I can reset and you can try this fight again.”

  “What if you told me what to expect?”

  The blue Elf shook his head. “Telling you that the fourth row has Demonic Crows and Centipedes and that the fifth row is Demonic Frogs and Spiders isn’t going to help. You can see those from here. Just like you can see the Shadows from here too, but that doesn’t mean that you’re ready to deal with the Shadows and…”

  “Fine.” Penelope stood up and looked at the squares that she could see. “Row C looks like all Casters.”

  Jeru coughed into his hand.

  Penelope crossed her arms in front of her. “I’m guessing there’s a problem with that?”

  After looking at her for long enough to make her uncomfortable, the blue Elf went into teacher mode. “There are three different types of Casters. The Recovery based ones like this one are going to be the hardest for you to fight.”

  “Which row would be the easiest for me to do then?”

  Jeru shook his head. “D.”

  Penelope looked at the Shadow Demon in 3D. It held a giant mace that would take both her hands to lift. Its chest was bare except for the leather straps that crisscrossed to connect the shoulder pads to its belt. A yellow energy pulsed in the center of its chest, matching the yellow eyes that were fixated on her.

  “Jeru, I’m—” When Penelope turned back, the Elf was gone. While she knew that he could still hear her and was listening to her thoughts, she decided to give him the privacy that he seemed to be asking for.

  “Well…” She checked her mana. It read 60/62. “Close enough.” By the time she got to the middle of 3D, it’d be full.

  “Let’s go do what can’t be done.”

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