Aelin looked at the massive beast as it roared in fury, a furry with the same roots as his own anger, namely that Oliver, the idiot madman, of all people had saved him, Aelin Alethnor, twice in only two weeks was infuriating to Aelin, even if his fury was only directed at himself.

“RUN!” Aelin roared, turning immediately and following his own orders.

Aelin would have normally beaten any hunter stupid enough to turn his back on a predator, but this new world had new rules, and one of them were that any living creature could see the level of any other with gaze of observation. At least, he thought they could, and after the rabbits of this bizarre forest suddenly turned fearful when the madman and he reached the fourth level, even though they had been aggressive up until that point, it was practically certain.

But that didn’t matter at the moment, because nothing other than running mattered at the moment, not when there was a creature at the seventeenth level chasing them through its natural terrain. He needed to focus on the situation, because even if they were contending with a beast they had no hope of defeating. Even if it was simply a question of how long it would take for it to kill them all. even if the monstrosity behind them could kill them at any moment, then he would fight for every moment of time in this vessel he could scrounge from the cold draw of the final veil.

So, he ran, his feet tearing up a storm of leaves with each step, his legs forcing him forwards until he was side by side with Emma and the madman, and even further beyond them as though they only moved with the speed he could muster before the system. Which was strange. Oliver was only so fast, but Emma? She was the physically strongest between all of them, as proven by their trip here. She could not possibly think that they all had a chance to survive this flight for safety, she had proven herself somewhat saner than the madman in her realism towards plans, at the very least.

Which could only mean that she planned to die with her friend. Which was not his problem. The madman had chosen to be a brain, he had chosen the wrong path and now he would die for his mistake, just as any other hunter who made such a blunder. It was not his responsibility. Even if he had saved him, the life debts he carried only demanded that he help him achieve what he wanted to the best of his ability, and he did not have the ability to save them even if he turned to confront the beast immediately. Aelin glanced back in the direction of the madman, to see how far there was between himself and the beast.

The beast was moving swiftly after their group, its long front legs shooting forwards to embed its curved claws into the bark far ahead of it. before it sprung forwards on its broad, slightly shorter hind legs as it simultaneously pulled itself forwards with its front legs, giving it a pouncing gate. It was a mere ten meters behind the others, and yet, even so, it didn’t pounce on their backs as it would if it were merely chasing down its prey. But no, this beast was clearly hunting not only for its food but also for the hunt itself.

Then he made the foolish mistake of looking into the eyes of that damned madman, but he didn’t call out to demand he halt and distract the creature as any halfwit would at the very least attempt, even if it wouldn’t work. No, instead he simply showed him an encouraging smile and nodded at him as if to tell him to go on and leave them behind, in fact, Aelin could practically hear the spirits damned moron in his mind telling him to leave and find safety on his own. And the voice was right! He should leave, he should try and survive, he should forget about the delusional moron and his stupid belief in the power of hope, because even the madman would betray him at some point.

Aelin growled and cursed as he slowed his sprint through the leaves to run beside the two morons.

“Wha- what are y- you doing?” the madman panted from beside him.

“Stop talking, you’re the weakest link, you need to save your energy if we want any chance for survival” Aelin puffed

“Aelin, while I agree that Oliver should stop talking, I really don’t think stamina is the way we are going to survive this” Emma said as she behind them at the steadily breathing beast which chased them.

Aelin wanted to agree, but if he said that stamina wasn’t the way for them to survive, that would imply that there was any way for them to live, which seemed far less likely than stamina being said way. But, even if they were doomed to die, he could at least spite the beast by trying to survive for as long as he could, even if he had to jump to a lower branch to do so.

“Emma, that animal can catch us any moment it wants to, it’s playing with us, so if we want to stay alive, we need to keep the game interesting, so grab his left arm and help me carry him,” Aelin said as he grabbed Oliver’s right arm, and Emma did the same on his left. “and now, we keep sprinting as fast as we can, faster than it can, until we either die of exhaustion or it gets bored and decides to let us be”

their game with the beast continued as they dashed across the branches, sending up a storm of leaves behind them as they ran fast enough to force the beast to strain itself to follow them. They jumped from branch to branch, going deeper and deeper into the endless layers of the forest until they only had the light of dusk to see by even in the afternoon.

“I honestly would have thought it would have lost interest at a certain point, I mean, it has to have wasted more recourses trying to chase us down than it could possibly get through eating us, so how probable do you think it is that it has fallen victim to the sunk cost fallacy?” The madman asked from where he hung between the two of them, comfortably considering stupid, meaningless questions of no importance to the situation at hand.

Aelin’s eyes flicked to look at Emma, his lungs heaving for breath as they worked harder than any bellows he had ever seen. Emma, meanwhile, only panted for breath even as he heaved, so she nodded in recognition of her duty, as the less exhausted of the two, to deal with the madman.

“Why?” was all she could manage to say, the single word escaping her as more of a staggered grunt than a real word, as it was immediately cut off when her lungs protesting that she wasted time and air on speaking which could be used trying to breathe.

“Glad you asked, you see, I have been trying to create an estimate of the attributes of the grasping sloth currently chasing us, for you see, if it really does possess the mental acuity to experience the sunk cost fallacy, a trait only observed in humans unto this point, then it might be more intelligent than we initially assumed” The madman said, smiling curiously as they ran themselves to exhaustion to save them.

“Weaker?” Emma pushed out from her surely screaming lungs, a hopeful note to her exhausted voice, and even Aelin could not stop himself from feeling a new swell of determination at the idea that they could actually kill the beast.

“I assume you mean ‘does it reduced physical attributes to accommodate its greater mental capacity?’ and the to that is, possibly? What I mean to say is that I don’t think so, because if that was the case then all animals would be sentient within a few levels, and that seems unlikely to produce a sustainable world. After all, most sentient creatures would take offence at being the meal of another, and then the prey animals would use their newfound intellect to gather and kill the attacker in vengeance. Which would eventually lead to a world either without prey or without predators, which, if you know even the slightest bit about biology, you know is non-sustainable"

“Then why?” Emma wheezed.

“Well, it’s important to know your enemies, right Aelin? Now, the way I actually think intelligence and wisdom work is by enhancing what is already there. I cannot be sure how each work individually since I have gained all my increases in both simultaneously, but suffice to say that it makes me better at abstract thought because I can already comprehend it, but a random animal cannot, and thus will not be able to no matter its attributes”

Aelin looked back at the beast as it chased after them, the look in its eyes as it ran behind them very recognizable, an emotion he had seen far too many times in the eyes of those who hunted him. It was the gaze of someone willing to die before giving up on their prey. Aelin silently prayed for all the spirits around him to reveal themselves if only to kill him, silently, because he recognised that he did not have enough air to spare on cursing aloud.

“We need plan” Aelin croaked, feeling as though his legs had caught fire and all of the smoke of their fire was gathering in his lungs.

“Well that much seems clear, the only question is what form will our approach to escaping the grasping sloth be this time, any ideas?” Aelin glanced up at Oliver, sweat getting in his eyes as he glared at the fully grown, taller, man he carried while running for three hours “you know what? Why don’t I come up with an idea for now?”

Aelin continued to run through the leaves even as his legs and lungs burned, he forced himself to relish in the pain, because as long as his legs burned and his lungs screamed for breath than he was alive. And as long as he survived then that meant he was succeeding, that he was alive and going against all the bastards and morons out there who thought they could kill him. But he would prove them wrong, he would survive and grow stronger until he could-

He was pulled out of his thoughts as the madman started trying to climb up their arms and stand on their shoulders.

“What are-” Aelin tried to ask, but before he could manage to hiss out more than two words he stopped, knowing that his lungs would fail him if he didn’t. He called forth his status effects.

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Status effects

Exhausted

Do you ever just want to lie down and die? No? Well, that is too bad, because it seems to be the only option you have at the moment. At least, the only one where you lie down, because you certainly can't lie down and live.

Sore

What a brave attempt at preparing yourself to be the perfect meal for any cannibal wandering by, but, sadly, it is hopeless, because muscles burning from exertion don't acctually cook... even if it does feel like it.

Breathless

You are breathtaking! Wait, no, you wish you were breathtaking because you have none!

Cracked shin

You know, there are other activities just as fun as what you've been doing recently, such as hitting your shin with a hammer. It's a way faster way to break your shin than jumping from large heights at any rate.

Evaluation: Does it really matter? You're either dying to the grasping sloth or to exhaustion

Aelin wanted to growl at the damned messages of the system and their mocking words, but he had nowhere near the energy or air to do so.

“I need a better vantage point, so if you could do your best to run in tandem, that would be quite helpful,” The madman said as he crouched on their shoulders with a hand on top of each of their heads for support.

The madman swiftly straightened his back and legs until they were only slightly bent, and looked out at their surroundings. The branch they were currently on was wide as many chasms were deep, at least ten meters, if not more, and while Aelin wasn’t completely sure whether it was simply a trick of the dim light, dancing spots, and darkness creeping in at the edges of his vision, but he was almost certain that it was crossing over a branch soon.

“Guys! I am pretty sure I saw a fox running on the branch underneath us, under the branch we are on, and those foxes are pretty big, so that means there is a gap between them, and those foxes are most definitely large enough for us to fit wherever it fits! Let's go!” The madman yelled as he smiled down at them as though he hadn’t just told them to jump to their deaths. On the other hand, the madman’s ideas, as mad as they were, had yet to fail, and his idea got them to this point, so he may as well try it. Like his evaluation said, did it really matter? He would either be dying to the grasping sloth or to exhaustion if nothing changed.

The madman jumped from their shoulders and ran to the edge, actually arriving before them due to him sprinting as fast as he could, then he slid down the side and kicked off just before he would lose control. It was... surprisingly graceful, far more so than anything he had ever seen him do before. Then, a second later, a yell of pain was heard from below before the madman called out to them.

“Make sure to roll properly, I sort of hurt my shoulder because I... well, didn’t”

Aelin made it to the edge and looked down at the madman holding his shoulder and stumbling towards the supposed gap. He spared a brief glance back as he hesitated, only to be thoroughly convinced as he saw the beast only seconds away from him. He growled a curse at the madman before dropping down to slide until he no longer had control and jumped through the air, hands and hair waving in the wind behind him as he dropped, closer and closer to the ground.

For a single moment, he felt as free as he imagined the madman to feel as he flew through the air, his body angled forwards to channel his momentum into a roll instead of his legs. Not that it made a large difference as a second later he hit the branch below and his cracked shin snapped in half before he fell into a sloppy roll, leaving him lying on the ground, sore, exhausted, breathless and broken. He looked at the bone jutting out from his skin as for a mere moment before blood obscured. He quickly tore his eyes from his own bone, a sight no one was meant to see, as he refused to go into shock. He knew that the beast’s claws let it climb quickly, it would only be a matter of seconds before it reached their new branch, and he needed to be gone by then.

The madman wasn’t looking at him, and even if he were they would simply both die if the madman tried to help him, he was too slow. But that didn’t matter, because even if there was no hope, he would keep going, even if his own stubborn determination to spite whoever was trying to kill him was the only reason he did so. He just needed something, a stick, something to lean on as he made his way to the split where they could hide.

Something long and straight clattered to the ground next to him, but when his eyes instantly flicked to it from where he lay on his stomach, and when he saw it, he realized that it was not just a stick, it was the heartwood splinter. Arms wrapped around his stomach before he was heaved onto Emma’s shoulder with a groan from both of them, him from the jostling to his leg, her from the exertion of lifting him even in her battered and weary state.

“what are you doing? That is the only tool and weapon we have” Aelin asked in confusion.

Emma continued to stagger forwards in an odd rhythm, two quick strides before a short pause, clearly meant to spare one leg from strain. “doesn’t matter” she ground out slowly, each word strained “you’re the only you we have, and I don’t leave friends behind” she finally made it to the gap, where she rolled him off her shoulder and onto the ground, before pulling him in behind her.

Aelin wondered all the while whether his companions’ obsession with friendship was a universal aspect of humanity.

The beast prowled and growled outside of their hiding place, looking in at them with its beady black eyes and attempting to reach them with its long front legs.

Aelin let out a scream of agony as something suddenly pulled and twisted on his broken leg, before the sound of cloth tearing barely reached his ears. He looked down and saw that Emma had set his bone and bound it with cloth she had torn from the madman’s significantly less sweat-soaked shirt, the white cloth at fist a stark contrast to his skin, before quickly soaking with blood and becoming more natural looking. Aelin remarked to himself that he was actually quite happy when it became more in line with the rest of his dark skin, though something told him he shouldn’t be.

“guys, I think I have a plan, now, do you see those branches over there” he gestured to a thin branch, only a handspan wide, two meters to the side of the branch they were on, somewhere to the right of the beast, “I think, that so long as we run really fast, we might be able to get past the grasping sloth and jump to it and shimmy along until we get away” the mad- actually, that sounded like a fine idea to Aelin, maybe he should stop calling him a madman? But what was his name?

“Aelin is hurt, Oliver” that was it “and even if he wasn’t, the branch couldn’t bear all of our weight” Emma said, sighing for some reason. Aelin still thought it could work.

“But it’s heartwood, it could hold us, just look at it, study the idea for ten minutes, we need to rest either way” Oliver pleaded with a hopeful smile, and Emma rolled her eyes but turned to look at it either way. What was she doing again? Hu- humu- humouring! That was it, Aelin remembered doing that too, once, though he could not quite remember why. The people he humoured were all fools.

Aelin tried to do as Oliver asked, to consider his plan, and after looking for a while, he had to admit that perhaps Emma was correct, but, Oliver had asked them to look for ten minutes, so he looked. Well, he tried to, but Emma wasn’t looking either, not really, so he eventually also stopped doing so.

Then he noticed something strange. “Emma, where- where is the sloth?”

Emma’s eyes went wide as she frantically looked around, only to see that it was no longer looking at them through the gap.

“Oliver, did you see where it went?” she turned to look at Oliver, but Aelin had gone back to looking at the branch.

That is, until a panicked scream burned through the cobwebs in his mind as Emma screamed “OLIVER, NO!” and Aelin snapped his head to look back where she was looking.

A white dress shirt and t-shirt were lying on the bark behind them, bundled loosely before being thrown to the ground, and beyond them there was nothing for some distance as that side of the branch seemed to be sheltered from the leaves. But, most striking of all, was the bare-chested figure sprinting from the surprisingly silent beast as it streaked after him, his golden hair clearly visible, and his scarf a bright, blood red against his pale skin.

“Don’t worry, I have a plan! And Aelin, remember your debt!” came faintly from the distance, and while Aelin wasn’t completely sure, he was fairly certain that Oliver smiled over his shoulder.

Emma started to scramble towards Oliver from where she was, furthest toward the side they landed on, in order to treat his leg as quickly as she could. He closed his eyes briefly as she was just about to come within arm's reach. He had promised to help Oliver gain what he wanted. He wanted Emma to survive.

When Emma’s head was just past where she could see Aelin, he reached out and grasped her neck, easily pulling her surprised and exhausted body into a chokehold. She scrambled to free herself, clawing at his arms, leaving long, bloody scratches where her jagged nails passed. They both looked on as Oliver tried to run in circles around the beast, and as it cut him off whenever he tried to escape. He managed to dodge it, a few times, with more grace and finesse than Aelin would have thought he possessed.

But the beast was simply too strong, it was only playing with him, and soon enough Oliver was cornered against the empty abyss. Emma only grew more frantic, thrashing both with increasing desperation and decreasing strength. Oliver turned to them from where he stood before the beast, with no hope of escape, and waved to them with a smile. Emma reached out with her hand, desperately reaching out for him as if enough conviction would let her pull him to safety. But just as Oliver’s belief in the power of hope could do nothing, neither could her conviction. Oliver turned and looked behind him, and five long meters behind him and two above ran a branch the width of his torso.

He did not even hesitate as he grasped his scarf with his uninjured arm and leapt, bringing his scarf forwards as though it was a whip. And for one glorious moment, it moved. It looked like a snake come alive in his hand as the scarf stretched through the air, inch by inch becoming rigid as it reached for their final hope. It was as though some unknown force was moving from Oliver's hand and through the scarf. But it wasn’t enough, the scarf reached the branch but did not wrap around it.

Oliver fell into the abyss between the branches of the ever-fall forest, and no one could survive such a fall. Emma went slack in his arms, from grief or his chokehold he wasn’t sure, but he hurried to settle her down onto the ground and cover her in a film of leaves before lying next to her and covering himself. The beast eventually came and looked under the branch for them, but left when it saw nothing.

Aelin looked out at the forest through the crack of light available to him. He could see none of the beauty Oliver could see, but perhaps he could try, once again, to at least glimpse the world as he saw it.

“Goodbye, Oliver Antonova, may your next vessel be born in a place where your hope and kindness will be appreciated by the world, instead of punished, and may the eye of Aianathon watch your journey back to the whole, for surely you, if any, will be worthy of his favour, pale may your skin be” Aelin muttered into the forest, the rustling of leaves his only answer.

Sometime later, far, far below, sky blue eyes shot open, yet saw nothing but the darkness that lay at the bottom of the ever-fall forest.