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well didn't expect that 7/10, solid, reminded me of...something I can't quite put finger on

The “getting the hell away” plan wasn’t turning out so great. Three shadows -- plus whatever the giant monster was doing -- was a lot to keep track of, and the former was only getting faster. As the monsters lunged at him, he spun around, swinging his sword in a wide arc with his arm outstretched, but it didn’t do anywhere near enough to deter the attack. Chris fell onto his back. Despite the futility, he still scrabbled and kicked wherever he could, wrenching his ankles away from the shadow’s grasping hands, but it only took a brush against their fingers for the next kick to get harder and harder to execute. Just when Chris had accepted that his strength was about to give out, it was over. Chris didn’t see the final blow, but the nightwalker groaned and collapsed for the final time. The ground shook, and all the other monsters collapsed into dust in the aftershock. Chris didn’t get up, though. Not right away, at least. If the dungeon didn’t compel him to get a move on, he might have stayed lying in the dirt a little while longer still. At the very least, if he hadn’t lost count in all the fighting, they were liable to get some treasure soon. Maybe that was motivation enough. Still, the compulsion to move didn’t exactly give his strength back, so it was slow going for a moment there until momentum -- the sheer act of moving -- kept Chris moving forward. The treasure was pretty cool, though. There were gold and potions and rings to go around. The ring Chris ended up with wasn’t as fancy as Lana’s, but it had some nice carvings on it, and some impressions in the middle of those carvings that looked like they might be able to hold something. It felt magical, anyway, even if he was too mundane to figure out what any of it meant. Which left only one enigma to deal with. Ziun was the first to say something about it. “What did you do, Chris?” he asked. Chris took a breath, weighing up options in his mind. “I mean, you know what I do for money outside of the dungeon, right?” he said. “Or, what I did do before we started doing daily runs?” But he knew this wasn’t a satisfying answer. The past tense part was also untrue -- he’d done that Fereis family job and alienated Estellise from the group well into their time together. But he had done all of that because of, well, because of the other reason. “I guess that that’s not a satisfying answer,” Chris said. “But my actual answer as to why the Kalo family specifically are mad at me is even less satisfying, because I promised not to say.” “To keep my trust in you,” Ziun had said. Well, if he was so willing to trust, hopefully he and Lana could do without. But that didn’t mean Chris didn’t feel bad about it, and so scrambled to find some sort of compromise. “I’ll give you this, though. It won’t satiate your curiosity, but as a measure of respect:” And so Chris told Lana and Ziun about his childhood, about his various escapades -- embarrassing though they were to look back on now -- and, finally, why he wasn’t still a part of that noble house, far away from any of this. “I don’t tell people, well, mostly for my family’s sake. I think I let my last name slip out a few floors up, though, and I think my friends, the people who’ve stuck with me for so long, deserve to know more, even if I can’t share everything about me just yet.”