A monster slammed into my chest, hitting me hard enough to knock me back into the mud. It remained on top of me, opening it’s mouth the wrong way so that it’s head seemed to split in half vertically, revealing row after row of tiny sharp teeth.

“Damn hairy ball sack,” I snarled as I struggled to push the monster off me.

The monster was only about the size of a basketball and nearly as round, though it was dense and very heavy. It’s entire body seemed to consist of a main part that was both torso and head, with a pair of powerful leaping legs, and a small tail. And of course, the whole thing was hairy.

Stine kicked the monster like it was a soccer ball, sending it flying through the air until Frank’s axe came down and sliced the thing completely in half. Then, he held out a hand and helped me to my feet.

“Thanks,” I told him, feeling self-conscious at having needed the help.

“It was nothing,” Stine responded before turning to deal with another monster.

I watched him for a moment, admiring the way his muscles shifted and moved. Then I shook my head, bent down to retrieve my dropped staff, and then began looking around to see where I could help.

At the moment, I was covered in mud because of that monster, but I wasn’t hurt. In fact, that monster hadn’t left so much as a bruise on me, in spite of how hard it hit.

As I’d already discovered, my ‘Armor of the Enchantress’ had unlocked a great new feature. It had a force field. It didn’t seem to be especially strong and it could only block a limited amount of damage before it went down and needed to recharge, but it was there, and it was a lot better than just the armor itself.

Ever since I’d unlocked this new feature, I’d been mentally poking and prodding at the armor, trying to figure out how it worked. Between that and a few monster encounters, I now had a pretty good idea.

My armor seemed to work a bit like a staff, storing some of my power and using it to charge this built-in boon. However, unlike the staff, my armor seemed to charge on its own rather than requiring me to intentionally store power. Grayson thought that it was doing this by tapping into my aura, which meant that if I increased my presence, I could probably make this shield stronger too.

“I definitely need to slot more presence to see if that works,” I quietly mused to myself. But after being hit by that monster, I also wanted to add a few points to my agility. Being fast enough to avoid being hit was probably even better than just shrugging off the blow. “Too many things I want to increase, not enough free points.”

I didn’t have time to dwell on my build and future points at the moment. Instead, I needed to focus on the fight.

There were dozens of monsters around us, all of them like that big hairy testicle I’d already had the displeasure of meeting, though they varied in size between softball and beach ball. Seven of them were currently caught in my ‘Cursed Ground’ while the rest were leaping around like coked up frogs.

Stine punched a monster and it splattered on his fist. Frank swung her axe and cleaved another in half. Jag appeared to be in six different places at once while the real illusionist moved around and stabbed at monsters with her knives.

Giles swung his halberd, not even bothering to use any of his abilities. We’d been overrun by the hairy testicles before he could get his shield up, and it was pointless to activate it now that so many would be trapped inside with us.

Lenore had conjured her fancy armor and was just standing there, taking careful aim with her bow and shooting at the monsters. One shot. Then another. She was being careful not to hit any of us, for which I was grateful.

Grayson was moving about the area as gracefully as a dancer trying to perform in a muddy field. He was fast and graceful, but there was only so much he could do on that slippery ground.

“Hairy little meatballs, aren’t they?” Grayson asked as he slammed one of the monsters with his shield, then swung around and sliced through another with his sword.

“I am a bit surprised that their hair isn’t matted through with the mud,” Frank commented in a casual tone.

“They keep leaping between rocks,” Giles pointed out, swinging his halberd and missing. “They’re avoiding the muddy parts as much as possible.”

“And why aren’t we doing that?” Lenore asked.

“Do you have enough agility to do that?” I asked.

Then I fired a ‘Hex’ at one of the monsters that was caught in my ‘Cursed Ground’. Nobody else was bothering with those ones since I’d effectively removed them from the immediate fight, but I liked stacking my enchantments to boost the damage, so this was like shooting fish in a barrel.

“Or shooting testicles in a mud pit,” I muttered.

But in spite of the fact that my ‘Cursed Ground’ made the ‘Hex’ stronger, this didn’t have any effect on the rest of the fight. Those particular monsters were already out of the real fight, so I was wasting my time by picking them off. When ‘Hex’ was ready again, I blasted one of the larger monsters that was trying to charge at Giles. My bane caused it to abruptly go off course and miss the invoker, giving him a chance to finish it off.

Once the rest of the monsters had been dealt with, everyone turned their attention to the ones that were still inside the ‘Cursed Ground’. By this point, my bane was about to wear off, so nobody wasted any time in killing them.

A minute later, I looked around the area, taking note of all the hairy little testicle monsters that we’d left scattered about. This was quite a disgusting mess, and I was thankful that I didn’t have to clean it up. Instead, the Labyrinth would take care of that for us. Soon, the bodies would melt away until there was nothing left.

“This place has some of the weirdest monsters,” I said with a shake of my head.

“No kidding,” Lenore agreed. She spat at one of the bodies. “Fucking disgusting.”

“We’ve seen worse, Miss Donna,” Giles told me with a sigh.

I nodded at that, thinking about all the strange creatures that we’d seen inside the Labyrinth…and all the odd landscapes. There were so many and they were all different.

“You know,” I thought aloud. “I was just thinking about that area that used to be in Canada…”

“We’ll report that as soon as we’re back,” Grayson assured me. “I don’t think we’re too far away from an entrance.”

“We aren’t,” Frank and Giles both answered.

I nodded at that. “And I was thinking of the monsters there. Those giant rabbits.”

“A waste of good fur and meat,” Stine said with a shake of his head.

“Anyway,” I continued. “It makes me think…”

“Does it hurt?” Lenore teased me.

“Looking at your face does enough of that,” I shot back, earning a chuckle. “Anyway, it made me think about all these other places in the Labyrinth. I mean, as weird and fucked up as all these monsters are, I can’t help but wonder if they’re based off real animals…like those rabbits were. You know…like twisted and roided up copies.”

“I doubt it,” Grayson told me, though he had a thoughtful look on his face. “But that area used to be part of the outside world, so maybe these other areas and monsters originally came from somewhere else too.”

“That’s a stupid ass idea,” Jag spat out. “I think we would have heard if there were places with metal trees…” She gestured off to the side where a small cluster of twisted metal trees grew from the ground. “This shit doesn’t exist in the real world.”

“No,” Grayson agreed pleasantly. “Not in OUR world.”

No one really said anything to that. Instead, everyone just turned away from the monsters and began checking their gear, making sure that it was clean of monster blood and still usable.

I looked down at myself, at my armor which was now covered with mud. I gave it a look of disgust, wishing that I could just go and find a hot shower to clean up in. However, that wasn’t meant to be.

“My clothes will be clean soon enough,” I reminded myself. I’d already seen that much on several occasions, and had no doubt that my armor would be able to clean off even this layer of mud. “In an hour or so, it will look brand new.”

Unfortunately, clean clothes would only help so much. And my hair… I had to look like a mess about now. I was suddenly self-conscious about that, though I tried not to show it.

Just then, everyone else started marching down the trail again. I let out a sigh, adjusted my grip on my staff, and began following after. I just hoped that we didn’t run into any more monsters again for awhile, because my armor needed to recharge a bit before it could protect me again.