I overheard an adventurer party discussing an easy money assignment they'd received to kill an infant hydra. I warned every adventurer I know to avoid this party like the combined plagues. Any adventurer using the words infant hydra and easy to kill in the same sentence is a complete dung brain whose stupidity will kill them and possibly anyone foolish enough to be nearby when it happens.

  Hydra, unlike dragons, have no maternal instincts. They lay a clutch of six to ten eggs and leave, never to return. The infant hydras hatch and eat each other, leaving one large infant hydra with a ravenous appetite.

  An infant hydra's poison miasma mist, though more limited in range than an adult's, is far more toxic. The infant hydra also regenerates faster than an adult. This is besides its nine fire-breathing heads, all focused on eating anything in its path.

  Infant hydras have killed even experienced high-level adventurers, and killing one should never be attempted lightly.

  Excerpt from scholar Ze Cante's treatise on the dungeon universe.

  Jeremy ran from the giant scorpion — that is, giant by giant scorpion standards.

  “You were the one telling me not to!” Jeremy shouted at Flint between breaths. “You keep saying, 'kill them with your bare hands while wearing a blindfold!'”

  “About that. I wasn't expecting such a huge scorpion to show up. Suppose you could hide in a safe room until it goes away?”

  “That's okay,” Jeremy said. “I have a plan.” He kept running from the monstrous scorpion. “Squeak! You know what to do.”

  “Squeak!” The shadow beast was on the job.

  Squeak attached itself to the giant monster scorpion and started feeding Jeremy health.

  The monster chased Jeremy around the desert as he used his smaller size and maneuverability to evade the semi-truck-sized scorpion. It turned into a battle of endurance.

  Jeremy eventually climbed the rock outcropping to his home and grabbed his weapons. He hoped the giant scorpion would follow him up the outcrop as the others had, but this one was too large and too smart to let Jeremy throw it off. It hung back. Jeremy fired all his arrows, blinding its eight eyes, but doing little else. It somehow sensed him well enough to continue following him.

  He climbed every outcropping in this section of the dungeon and pushed small boulders down on top of the scorpion whenever he could. After a day of fighting, he broke one of its legs with a boulder.

  In the end, so exhausted he could barely move, Jeremy shouted at the scorpion and backed away from it.

  As it charged him, he braced his spear against a rock outcropping, aiming it carefully. The point penetrated a section of its breastplate armor he'd damaged earlier with a boulder. He felt the spear slide into the monster's chest and penetrate its heart.

  It died.

  Finally.

  This fight took over two days and most of the third night.

  Early the next morning, the last fake sun sank beneath the fake horizon as Jeremy lay next to the dead scorpion, laughing.

  “Every once in a long while, you surprise me with your abilities, Jeremy,” Flint said from where he sat on top of the dead scorpion. “But what is so funny?”

  “I'm in a magical dungeon, living in a bizarre multi-sunned desert, and I just killed a giant monster scorpion.”

  Flint vanished from his perch on top of the scorpion and appeared next to Jeremy. “And that's funny?”

  “Hilarious. This universe is so insane. If I told someone from my world about this, they'd lock me in a crazy house.”

  “You gained another level, over two thousand dungeon coin, a gold potion of greater healing, and some pieces of scorpion shell, used for unknown crafting purposes. I'd say you've had a productive few days. But since that giant scorpion had no name, it wasn't a dungeon boss.”

  “So where is the dungeon boss?” Jeremy relaxed and stared up at the stars, remembering what his late friend Urg told him about the different stars of her world, a lifetime ago. This world's stars were very different, tiny and mist-like. They clumped together in parts of the fake night sky while being scattered in others, many so faint that he could barely see them. One of these faint star clusters resembled a scorpion. Another resembled the rocky outcropping Jeremy and the scorpion were next to...

  Wait... He looked at the entire sky and saw more outcroppings, all of this section's landmarks. The stars were a map of this section of the dungeon! How could he not have noticed before! All except the special stationary star.

  He started laughing again. That's what Book meant when it said it might be right in front of him, but that he was too stupid to realize it. The short period of darkness would end soon. One of the four suns was on the horizon, threatening to rise.

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  The special nonmoving star rested at the center of a triangle of stars that resembled three small, unremarkable boulders in a distant corner of this dungeon section. If he didn't know this section like the back of his hand, he'd never have been able to recognize them. He'd found the location of the treasure!

  He committed the location to memory as the rising sun made the stars vanish. Jeremy was exhausted, but he needed to see the treasure he'd spent so long searching for. He trudged to the secret location, a barren, uninteresting part of the desert, and started digging in the sand. He unearthed a stone trapdoor, ten paces long and five paces across.

  “Before you open that...” Flint said.

  “Obviously. I'm not opening the door until we prepare for what is down there,” Jeremy responded. “Now the question is, what are we likely to encounter? And what do we do about it?”

  “Knowing this dungeon, we could encounter anything. And remember what happened the last time you went into one of these secret locations and came very close to failing your sacred mission.”

  “Sure,” Jeremy said, staring at the large trapdoor. “Let us suppose I open this door and a scorpion boss comes out. What do I do?”

  “It's times like these that having a fighter around would come in handy,” Flint said.

  “Squeak!” Squeak said for emphasis.

  “Squeak is a fighter,” Jeremy said, causing his familiar to puff up with pride. “But if I changed my class to fighter, the universe would end by the time I leveled up my enhanced attack skill enough to be useful,” Jeremy said. “So, I'm going to try something else. Let us assume that when I open this trapdoor, a boss monster comes out. What will I do?”

  ***

  Over the next several days, he stuffed the largest rocks he could into his bag of holding. He surrounded the area with traps he could use against this dungeon monster or monsters. Then, using the stones, his magic rope, and his magic spear, he created an elaborate trap above the trapdoor. He'd be able to avoid the rope, but a larger being hitting the rope would dislodge an enormous pile of stones that was set up to (hopefully) fall through the trapdoor if disturbed. The rocks and rope supported his charmed spear, so it hung directly above the trapdoor, ready to impale anything coming out. In addition, Jeremy coated the point of his spear with poison.

  Jeremy even went to the last safe room on this floor of the dungeon in hopes Banxi would sell him more arrows, but the garden-gnome creature didn't show.

  In his leather armor, sword at his side, holding his bow and all the arrows he could recover after killing the last giant monster scorpion, Jeremy opened the trapdoor.

  Nothing came out.

  The trapdoor opened onto a dark passageway with stairs going down. Detect Danger revealed nothing.

  Jeremy cast a light into the passageway, which revealed nothing — just more passageway.

  He sent Squeak to scout. His shadow-beast familiar slipped down the passageway until it encountered a large stone door.

  Not knowing what else to do, Jeremy crept down the passageway and carefully pulled open the door, prepared to run at the slightest sign of trouble.

  The door opened into blinding sunlight and a blazing, scorching desert that made the one he'd been living in seem cool.

  Once his eyes adjusted, he looked out and saw nothing but sand. He watched for movement and saw none. Curious, he threw a dungeon ration bar as far into the desert as he could. The ration bar vanished, sucked into the sand.

  A minute later, something under the sand spat out pieces of the ration bar, as if it had tried the ration and hated it. “Hmmph,” Jeremy whispered. It's good for you. It has strength bonuses.

  “I believe walking out onto that sand would be a terrible idea,” Flint said.

  “I never would have suspected,” Jeremy responded.

  “That's why I'm here,” Flint said.

  “I suspect whatever is out there is pretty big, probably the Boss, and fighting this thing in the sand would be suicide.”

  Jeremy wedged the stone door open just wide enough for him to squeeze through, then pulled tons of stone from his bag of holding to block it from opening any further.

  Jeremy pulled a pebble from his bag of holding and threw it as far out into the desert sand as he could. Something rippled under the sand, apparently determined that the stone wasn't edible, and the sand became still again.

  “I suspect that's all the reaction we're going to get. It's smart enough to know the difference between a stone and a living being,” Flint said.

  “I want you to go out there and lure the monster out,” Jeremy said.

  “Well, the thing is...” Flint said.

  “Yeah, I know, you have no body,” Jeremy said. “Just kidding.” He jumped a few feet into the desert sand and instantly jumped back again.

  This monster was fast. Very fast. Tentacles exploded from the sand, one cutting through his armor as he dove through the door. The monster smashed into the door, creating a thunderous boom as Jeremy ran up the stairs and out the trapdoor, slamming it behind him and retreating to the nearest stone outcropping.

  A rumbling noise shook the desert as the monster emerged from the passageway.

  Stones from his trap and spear glanced harmlessly off the monster as it burst through the trapdoor.

  It was a sand monarch. He recognized it from Anda's memories.

  Identify gave him Azzekis, the Sand Monarch. Few have seen her; fewer have survived to tell the tale.

  Uh, oh. The Sand Monarch looked like a cross between the monster scorpion he'd just killed and a giant moray eel. His skill book and shared memories told him the Sand Monarch was quick and hard to kill. The Children of Assp feared her for good reason. Her armor was much better than that of the monster scorpions. And in addition to her stinger and pincers, her mouth contained tentacles to grab things and pull them in to be torn apart by rows of sharp teeth.

  The Sand Monarch's vision was poor, her hearing and smell average, but her ability to detect the slightest vibration or movement around her was phenomenal. The Children of Assp believed a Sand Monarch could sense the tiniest insect crawling through her territory.

  Thanks to The Child's Way of the Sand Monarch skill book he'd absorbed, he knew that for a long time, the Children of Assps' trade was conducted solely by flying creatures or airships because venturing into their desert was suicide.

  The Sand Monarch, however, had a weak spot. Taking advantage of it, though, would be problematic.

  Fortunately, Jeremy had an ally.

  “Squeak!” The shadow beast floated over the rocks, carrying Jeremy's spear.

  “Thanks, Squeak, you're the best.” Jeremy pulled a pair of shoes from his bag of holding and explained to his familiar what he wanted.

  The Sand Monarch raised her head, tentacles extended, sniffing the air. It was only a matter of time before she found Jeremy.