The fume wyrm was slumbering in the air output fan, looking for all intents and purposes like my death. I had a flashback to the two trucks barreling straight toward me. I had managed to face that down with dignity—at least at the end. If I could die once, I could fight for my life. Maybe.

  I wanted to avoid damaging the pump if possible, as Foredrake Merri had asked. Mug had loaded a sphere rock slug, but I asked him to take it out and had him load an apple instead. Any slugs shot from the cannon could probably go straight through the fan; just the nails had left massive scars and indentations in the cavern walls on the levels before. With the apple, the shot would probably just wake it up. I sighed internally. One shot to the head while it slept would definitely be the easiest way; of course, we had opted for a challenge mode. It couldn’t be helped; when I was alive, I always played games on the hardest difficulty and took pride in getting those seemingly impossible achievements. This would be one more: No Maintenance Victory (win without damaging the objective).

  ‘Mr. Mug, fire when ready.’ Mug gulped and nodded. He took half a minute to ready his shot, then pulled the lever and fired. A bright red apple, impossibly perfect and juicy-looking, shot from the cannon and arced directly into the wyrm’s head. There was a moment when everything froze. I began to think that maybe, just maybe, that fruit was this thing's weakness, and the impact of the apple exploding on its head was enough to bring it down. Or, that Mug had hit a one-in-a-million shot and managed to kill it with an apple. Everyone knows one-in-a-million shots are basically guaranteed when it comes to stories.

  This was not a story.

  The wyrm reared up to its full length and shot out of the fan, hissing angrily and looking for the cause of its sudden pain. Its cold eyes found our tiny cart, and just like that, the fight was on. It roared once—a screeching, deafening noise, like nails on asphalt being played by a subwoofer—and then it charged us, its two legs propelling it on land faster than I had thought possible. I poured mana into the cart wheels, blasting us on an arc that swung us around the wyrm to give Mug time to reload and pressure to build up.

  We rolled faster than we had in any of the previous levels, narrowly dodging discarded tools and debris in our path. If we hit something and flipped the cart, we were definitely done for. As if to emphasize the point, the wyrm screamed and let loose a stream of condensed air, striking a pickaxe we had just managed to avoid. The pickaxe literally melted, going from a steel tool to a steaming lump in seconds. Mug was tough, but I didn’t really want to test how tough. Heck, I didn’t want to test how resilient I was, either. My Magic Defense stat was among my highest, but something told me this would give this trashcan body my first test of pain.

  The pressure built to critical levels, and I shouted at Mug to get ready. I spun the cart around rapidly, our speed and momentum so fast that for a second we were only on two wheels and Mug could practically reach out and touch the ground. Then he was firing, and the pushback from the cannon righted us again. His shot was good, but the wyrm was fast; it narrowly avoided the projectile at the last second by hopping to the side and opening its wings. Mug let out a wail of defeat, but I wasn’t ready to give up that easily.

  ‘It’s alright, Mug! We got this! It can’t dodge forever! Just keep firing, I’ll handle the rest!’ The words coming from my mind surprised even me. When had I ever been this dependable or resilient? If I had taken this attitude in life, what kind of existence would I have lived? Definitely not the mundane slog of a loser that I had. Another jet of hot steam jolted me from my moment of introspection. I needed to focus on the task at hand.

  The wyrm was directly behind us now, which was a problem because Mug only really had a 45-degree angle of fire centered in the front of the cart. Up ahead, there was a small pillar sticking straight out of the ground where it was bolted. I had an idea, but it was crazy; then again, so was everything else about this, so screw it, why not?

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  ‘Mug, see that pillar up ahead? I’m gonna make a chain, and you’re gonna use that to help turn us around! Got it?’ Mug screamed in anguish, but he didn’t say no. As we closed in on the pillar, I recycled about fifteen feet of chain, which Mug caught in midair. Without my prompting, he managed to throw one end around the pillar and catch the other while I turned the wheels as sharply as I could. It boomeranged us around, and now we were facing straight down the barrel of a dragon-shaped gun. Mug screamed again but fired, and this time our sudden change in direction caught it off guard, nailing its left leg with a sickening crack.

  It was a good shot, but not a killing blow, and now we were on a collision course with an angry green lizard. It had screamed from the pain, but it didn’t stop its advance, using its wings more now to assist with speed. As we played a deadly game of chicken, I saw its mouth open and another stream of superheated steam race toward us. I tried to gently steer toward my left to avoid it, but I couldn’t risk turning quickly to avoid flipping the cart. The steam only brushed our minecart and my body, but it melted both a little where it had hit.

  WARNING: 75% HEALTH REMAINING.

  Wait, what? It had barely touched me and it took a quarter of my health? I didn’t think it was possible, but this was more dangerous than I thought. Also, I had answered my own unasked question: I could definitely feel pain. I felt like the part where the steam had hit was breaking apart. It was strange feeling pain not as flesh and blood but as steel, and honestly, no words can do it justice. Let’s just say melting feels just like you would imagine, only way, way worse.

  The fume wyrm and I were still on a collision course, but it blinked first. It spread its massive wings and took to the air right before we collided, leaving us to zoom directly underneath it.

  “Master Lugenhelm, are you ok?” Mug managed to scream out. Bless his little heart, the vulnerable sack of organs and blood was worried about the steel cylinder. Truthfully, I wasn’t, but I didn’t want to worry him and lead to a distraction.

  ‘I’m fine, Mug! Really! Hardly even felt it! Did something even really happen? I feel like he just stripped the paint!’ I lied as convincingly as I could. The wyrm had turned around and was heading down toward us. I wanted to make sure Mug got a good shot off; the longer this took, the more dangerous it was for us. We had to get lucky every time, and it had to get lucky once. I turned in a sharp arc, taking us wide and behind some stacked crates about ten feet tall. I had another idea; it was bold, idiotic, and if it failed it would definitely get us killed. But if it worked, we were rolling out of here with everything still attached.

  ‘Mug, when we get behind those crates, I need you to lean back as hard as you can! We’re gonna tip the cart over and land on the back! Got it?’ Mug took a second to answer, which is how I know he had considered every angle and thought it was a bad idea.

  “Begging your pardon Master Lugenhelm! And I know it’s not the place of a goblin to question a mighty spirit such as yourself! But I can’t help but think that, if we tip the cart over, we will not be able to… to, you know! That’s gonna get us killed!” Well, at least he was being honest. I found myself laughing at his protests, for some strange reason. I guess the thrill of having my life on the line versus a killer dragon had been the thing to make me crack. So this was insanity; it wasn’t bad, really.

  ‘Mug, if you trust me, then help me knock this cart on its butt! If not, jump off and hide under the crates! I won’t force you, and I won’t hold it against you either way! But I think we can win!’ Mug didn’t answer. I meant what I said, but I hoped that he would trust me. He fired the cannon, after all.

  With a final burst of speed, we hit the area behind the crates. I immediately forced the cart wheels to reverse, and to my relief, Mug threw his weight backward instead of abandoning ship. If this worked, there was no way I was letting the little “goblin” go back to Edvald. Mug was my personal squire, butler, emissary, escort, bodyguard, bff, and any other title I could think of in perpetuity. The physics of our sudden maneuver had the desired effect, and the cart tipped backwards, placing Mug parallel to the ground and the cannon aiming directly at the ceiling. The wyrm did what any flying predator would do: completely ignored our ground-based path to take the shortest distance between two points.

  Meaning that he flew directly over us, and more importantly, our cannon.

  Mug didn’t have to be told what to do; as soon as the creature began to pass over us, he pulled the lever, firing a slug directly up and through its chest. It blew a grapefruit-sized hole in it on entry, showering us with green blood. Slowly, majestically, the wyrm crashed to the ground, dead before it even hit.

  We lay on the ground like that for at least a minute before both of us burst into insane laughter. We had beaten the fume wyrm.