Simara was getting frustrated.

"I don't understand. What resource?"

"Well... there's a resource I usually offer to advanced players. It's a kind of salvation aid, a gesture of grace, called 'Divine Help' and you only have three helps..." The devil spoke with a persuasive tone. "I can grant you one help now, but if I do, you'll only have two more left for the rest of the game."

"Meaning... if I'm on the verge of death, I can ask for Divine Help?" Hope and enthusiasm began to grow in Simara until the devil denied it with his index finger.

"No, it doesn't work that way. Bringing a dead person back as a non-living being is one thing, but you can't negotiate with death if you're dying. Not even ‘Divine Help’ can do that, give you more life."

Although she felt discouraged, Simara continued trying to find a way to become stronger. "Can I ask for a weapon as ‘Divine Help’?"

"Is that all you're going to ask for?" The devil was surprised. "Anyway, you can ask for ‘Divine Help’, but you can't tell me what to help you with, I decide that. Now, I could give you a crude weapon or I could really help you and turn your small team into an emerging team..." Simara was dying to know what would happen.

"I just need your cat's consent," the corpse pointed at Viko.

"Viko? What's going on with him?"

"I could make Viko more powerful..." Simara looked at the cat on the floor, almost begging with her face for Viko to accept. The cat simply meowed, staring at her with his two round eyes, and exclaimed mentally. "I've always wanted to be more powerful, it wouldn't hurt. I accept."

Before Simara could say anything, the devil exclaimed with joy.

"Perfect! Let's upgrade your little friend!"

Suddenly, Viko began to grow in size. His small and thin legs began to become thick and heavy, his body began to become tall, and his head began to be bigger than Simara's, with enormous fangs with which he could easily kill anything. In just a few seconds, Viko was a huge black feline, with horrible fangs and claws. Simara looked at him with her eyes wide open and took a step back, scared.

"Viko?..." The giant and menacing feline looked at her with his green eyes and purred, slightly moving his tail.

"I feel very good!" Viko repeated, humming.

"Let's start the game," the devil said, and when Simara looked at him, he had a gold coin in his hand, which he held with two fingers. "I call this coin the 'Monster's Coin,' and it will determine which being you'll face."

Simara felt her organs churning as the devil flipped the coin, which shone under the red light and caught it with his other hand.

"Well, you got 'heads,' and that means, little Simara, that you'll face a human," Simara trembled with tension as the devil spoke. "I advise you to give it your all. This human is someone like you who's betting their entire life on this game and will fight to kill you. It would be a nuisance if you died on your first mission."

The devil hid the coin in his tunic and pulled out two dice that shone with a powerful and vivid green light.

"These are the 'Environment Dice,' eight-sided, and they will decide where your first mission will take place." The devil rolled the dice, which left two green trails behind them as they rolled in the air in front of Simara until they came to a stop.

"What excitement, Simara!" the devil shouted. "You got a three of 'Crystal' and an eight of 'Darkness'! What a beautiful role! Now, the last thing." Simara was paralyzed with terror, barely taking in the danger she was in.

The devil put away both dice and pulled out another die that shone with a bright yellow light.

"This six-sided die, the 'Intensity Die,' will decide how strong you'll have to fight, how difficult the fight will be." He rolled the intensely yellow die, which danced in the air until it showed the number three on top.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Three is 'Significant Intensity.' I think you've been lucky," the devil said, making the yellow die float back to him. He put it away. As Simara trembled, the devil looked at her and smiled.

"I wish you success in obtaining the Noxumbria Dagger in the dimension of Akra." And he disappeared, just like the cemetery around Simara disappeared while Viko jumped in surprise because the cemetery was replaced by a peculiar environment.

Everywhere Simara looked, there was a deep darkness, and she felt a horrible cold, worse than the cold of the Snowy Valley. She wouldn't have even been able to see Viko, in his giant feline form, if it weren't for the white light radiating from her own heart and Viko's. Both of them were illuminated by that light coming from their chests, surrounding them like a halo, and thanks to that, they could see each other. Beyond that light, everything was icy darkness.

Simara felt that she shouldn't make any noise.

"Viko..." she called out to the cat in very low whispers and saw how the feline slowly approached her.

"Simara... the floor. The floor cuts," the cat told her when he arrived by her side, and Simara clung to his black fur. She looked down and saw, with difficulty, that the floor seemed to be made of glass with uneven edges.

Simara was wearing leather shoes, so she wasn't cut, but Viko had the pads of his paws directly on the edge. "Three of 'Crystal' and eight of 'Darkness,'" Simara remembered the devil's rough voice.

"Stay still, don't move..." Simara whispered to Viko. "The floor is made of crystal."

She had barely finished speaking. Suddenly, Simara felt Viko move quickly and push her violently to the side, and then she fell hard against the glass edges, which cut her hands, elbows, and knees through her woolen clothes. Simara screamed, letting out wails of pain from her throat.

Under her body, she saw again the disgusting blood that stained the glass, the same glass that was embedding itself in her skin. Her face also hurt, which had scraped against the floor. As she lay on the glass, hurt, Simara felt cold hands coming out of the surface to grab her legs and arms. She screamed and saw that from underneath, beings made of white skeletons inside black shadows, with red eyes and sharp white teeth, were swimming under the glass and stretching out their hands to grab her and pull her towards where they were.

One of Simara's feet had already begun to give way through the glass, which seemed to be turning into water for her to sink.

No! She had to get up!

As she struggled with her pain, she heard Viko growl, and that was all she needed. Simara stood up, ignoring the pain, pulled her hands free from the ones holding her, trying not to look at the red-eyed skeletons so they wouldn't scare her, and looked at Viko, who was growling and showing his enormous, carnivorous fangs, bristling all his fur and pulling his ears back towards what seemed to be a man, with pants and worn-out burlap clothing, and a metal mask with pins that surrounded his entire head.

The dark iron mask had two slits for the eyes, which she could only see because of the white light radiating from the man's chest. Viko was keeping him at bay, keeping him away from her. Simara looked at him with horror, but something inside her had ignited, an energy to fight, and maybe that energy had been sparked by knowing that the masked man wanted to kill her.

She stood up straight, matching the height of the masked man and looked at him with determination while trembling with something very different from fear.

"I know you want to kill me," Simara shouted at the masked man. "Come and try it."

At that moment, the man spoke to her in a deep, tense voice.

"Maybe I'll do it after I get the dagger."

Then the man pulled out a bow that Simara hadn't seen because of the dim light, an arrow from the quiver he also carried on his back, and shot it straight at Viko's chest. Simara screamed and ran without thinking until she was in front of Viko, who had fallen onto his four paws while whimpering in pain.

The blood flowing from the arrow wound in Viko's chest mixed with the red liquid from the cuts on his paws on the glass floor. Simara tried to remove the arrow from Viko's chest, but she was scared by his whimpers and stopped trying.

"Don't turn your back on him!" Viko shouted.

Simara turned around, pressing herself against Viko's chest, to face her opponent head-on. She stretched out her arms to her sides to shield the giant cat while her head began to work at top speed, thinking and thinking.

Even though he had had several seconds to attack her from behind, the man hadn't done it, and he still wasn't doing it; he just kept looking at her, and Simara noticed that the arrow pointing at her was trembling in his hands.

Simara prayed to her mother for him not to finish her off before she could think of what to do. She had to divert his attention to protect herself and think about how to attack. What if she attacked him? No, she couldn't attack him. He had the advantage of the bow and arrows, while she and Viko were defenseless. It had even been stupid to invite him to attack her. She had no long-range weapon, her hands were empty, and Viko was wounded.

No. She had no way to defend herself, but the man looked irrational and scared; she could feel the man's fear, his growing indecision, his doubt about attacking her directly.

She had to deceive him. She had to play with his fear or gain his trust.