The heavy iron gates of the lower sanctum didn't just open; they groaned under the weight of Pebbles' sheer, unadulterated determination. Steam hissed from the seams of his tin-pot helmet, a rhythmic chug-chug-chug echoing through the damp corridor as he charged toward the boss chamber. He was late. He was small. But in his mind, he was the only hero capable of claiming the glory—and the inevitable princess—waiting within. He burst into the arena, a tiny metal whirlwind ready for battle, only to skid to a halt. The air wasn't filled with the roar of a beast, but with the calm, academic drone of a lecture. Standing in the center of the carnage was a figure in matte-black armor, the rough plating etched with glowing green runes. Marcus stood with his back to the entrance, his tattered green cape billowing in a draft that shouldn't have existed. He wasn't fighting; he was gesturing toward the ceiling with a black stone greatsword, his voice disturbingly polite. "Actually, if we consider the structural integrity of the upper vault, the falling velocity of the loot should be approximately..." Pebbles' train-whistle let out a confused, low-pitched puff. He looked past the leader and saw a mountain that had been given life. N-ARE stood like a cathedral made of white and gold, his shield—a literal castle door—propped casually against his knee. The giant knight wasn't even looking at the boss; he was holding a leather-bound tome in his massive gauntlets, squinting through the slit of his shark-toothed helmet. "A fair point, Captain," N-ARE rumbled, his voice like tectonic plates shifting. "Though you've failed to account for the air resistance of the gold coins. The drag coefficient is quite fascinating." But the dragon—the terrifying Great Drake of the Deep—was silent. It lay slumped, a mountain of dead scales and cooling smoke. Suddenly, the dragon's chest plate erupted. A gauntleted hand, slick with gore and glowing with green energy, punched through the ribs from the inside. It clutched the drake’s massive, pulsing heart for a single, cinematic second before squeezing. The heart burst in a spray of heat and ichor, and out stepped Melanie. She shook the blood from her black-and-green pauldrons, her heavy leather pouches rattling with the lethal clink of daggers and explosives. She didn't look tired; she looked bored. She wiped a smudge of soot from her face, her eyes immediately darting to Marcus with a look of pure, unventilated adoration. "Captain! I punched the heart like you said! Did you see the trajectory? Was it... was it mathematical?" Pebbles felt his internal boiler reach critical pressure. He didn't care about the dragon. He didn't care about the giant scholar or the polite nerd. He was staring at Melanie—the beautiful, violent, bomb-carrying brawler of his dreams. He began to chug forward, his heart-eyes literal glowing orbs behind his visor. Then, the world turned gold. With a thunderous crack, the ceiling vault gave way. A "fuck ton" of gold—thousands of heavy, gleaming coins—rained down like a solid waterfall. It buried the arena floor in seconds. Marcus adjusted his golden hilt, N-ARE protected his book from the debris with his cape, and Melanie laughed as she kicked a stray dragon tooth aside. And Pebbles? Pebbles was at the bottom of the pile, a single, muffled toot of a whistle escaping from beneath a mountain of treasure he didn't even want anymore.