Standing in front of the massive, bone-reinforced doors of the Floor 5 Boss Room, I felt the familiar, cold sweat of a pending compliance audit.
"Review the itinerary one last time," I said, adjusting my glasses. They were sliding down my nose again. I really needed to craft a strap for these things.
Seraphina Vane leaned against the dungeon wall, looking bored. She was cleaning her fingernails with a dagger I had looted from a goblin two floors ago. "Arthur, you are repeating yourself. We go in. I hit the big ugly thing. We win. Simple."
"It is not simple," I snapped, tapping the clipboard I had fashioned out of a piece of slate and charcoal. "This is a Floor Boss. According to the pattern of the last four floors, the difficulty spike is exponential. This isn't a skirmish; it's a quarterly review with a CEO who wants to fire you. Literally."
We had spent the last twelve hours climbing. In that time, I had learned three things.
First, Seraphina was a combat genius with the attention span of a goldfish.
Second, my [Logistical Command] skill allowed me to see attack patterns about two seconds before they happened.
Third, my [Inventory] was becoming a problem.
I checked my HUD.
[Inventory Load: 98%]
[Status: Heavily Burdened]
I had picked up everything. Broken swords, goblin teeth, moss, rocks, a cracked helmet, and three hundred pounds of random dungeon debris. My "Tidy Up" skill was a compulsion. If I saw a mess, I vacuumed it into my dimensional pocket. I couldn't help it. A cluttered dungeon was an inefficient dungeon.
"Just remember the signal," I stressed. "If I yell 'Liquidation', you retreat. Immediately. No heroics."
Sera rolled her eyes, pushing off the wall. "You worry too much, butler. I am the Sword Saint. I don't retreat; I advance in a different direction."
"That is literally the definition of—"
She kicked the doors open.