The light passed the edge of the rock, turning it into slag in the process. The scene from when the ant first appeared passed through my mind. This was that level of power. The kind I had been dreading until now. Standing in front of the ant I felt the irrepressible fear of death creep into me, I felt entirely powerless in front of this thing, even my desperate attacks were quickly repaired, what hope did I have to survive this?!

The moment the blast hit me, it felt like my whole body was going to break. The heat burnt my skin, causing pain to flood my brain. Every part of me was straining under the pressure, on the verge of being torn apart by it. This feeling only lasted for a moment before a loud snap sounded out, and it was replaced by the rushing of air as I was dashed along the ground.

The burning heat of the laser shocked me back to my senses. I thought I had done a pretty good job so far of dodging the attacks, but it looked like I might have finally run out of luck. Throwing my body to the side, I tried to ignore the burning pain and the feeling of loss on my right arm as I ran with all my might, trying to avoid further attacks, luckily the shield had saved me from death, but as it hung loosely around my limp arm, the imposing metal shattered and burnt I knew it would be no further use to me.

The room was sealed from all directions; there was no escape. But it didn’t matter. I had to escape somehow. I had to survive. That was it. Those thoughts kept rushing through my mind: survival, to live. The fear of death was all that kept me moving.

I dared not look over at my arm as the heat of another blast rocked my body. This one had grazed my leg, bringing another instance of searing heat into my brain. I held myself back from screaming in pain as I just kept moving. My eyes registered that I was soon coming to a dead end, a place blocked by fallen rubble, but I didn’t change any actions. My mind no longer held the sense to change, to do anything but run.

Suddenly, as I ran, I felt one of my feet give way as my strength fell away from me, sending me in a tumble to the stone floor. Looking down, my heel had been burnt badly by the lazar. I quickly looked away as I suppressed the urge to vomit at the sight. Strangely, I felt no pain. I was surprised the injury was so comparatively minor to the power displayed by the beam only moments before, I think the thing must have been hastily charged to fire so soon after the last.

Looking up, I saw it charging up another beam, making a bright illumination across the cave. I wanted to curse that it was unfair to spam these types of attacks!

Shielding my eyes as I dragged my body out of the way, just barely managing to move myself enough so that it only grazed the side of my chest. I guess I had really made it mad before, with how frantically it was firing off beams now. Looking down, I saw that my tattered armor had just barely managed to withstand the hastily changed laser, but the heat of it still had managed to char most of the afflicted spot, most likely my skin included.

Bending my head over, my brain throbbed with fear and hate for the being in front of me. The creature seemed to toy with me as it approached slowly, its glossy, unfocused eyes not even looking at me. Trying to at least raise my sword, I suddenly felt another series of stinging pains across my body as the strange glass-like strands wrapped around my hands and whipped at my face. I wasn’t able to dodge any of the attacks as I felt them slash across my face, causing one of my eyes to be covered with the hot flowing blood from the wound. Collapsing back to the ground, I desperately shielded my face from the continued assault by the wire-like threads from the ants, which led my arms to slowly be shredded. Each second felt like an eternity as I waited for the final blow that would take my life. I sort of was curious how it would feel to die for a second time. Would I get a chance to meet that crappy goddess again, I wondered, or maybe it’d just go black like I always thought it would? I guess I should be a bit happy at least I got a second chance, maybe it was more than I deserved anyway.

Instead of some gruesome end, I felt a slick and warm feeling as one of the thick tentacles of the ant wrapped around my body. It seemed to have stopped its attacks. Opening my eyes, I could see that it was still focusing on wrapping me in the strange tentacles. I tried to resist the coiling of the tentacles, but the pressure they exerted was too great for me to resist. The sword, even to this moment I had been clutching desperately, slipped from my grasp as my arms cried out in pain from the immense pressure of the squeezing tendrils. As the pressure increased, I feared that the ant was going to crush me, a fate I didn’t want to experience. The terrible thought had just crossed my mind, when the pressure began to decrease as all along my body I felt a series of stinging pains, as if I had been stung by something. Looking down, I saw the horrible sight of the hundreds of thin threads coming off the tentacles piercing into my body. As soon as they did, along with an urgent ding, an ominous notification popped into my view.

System:>

{WARNING FOREIGN BODY ATTEMPTING TO COMPROMISE SYSTEM INTEGRITY}

[Current System Integrity 100% (-3.5s) / Soul Integrity 3% (-0.02s)]

{Immediate action needed Quest: [Survive] failure imminent}

I honestly didn’t have much time to consider the system messages as my body was continuously rocked by the wriggling pain throughout every limb, but the warning did further cement the sense of dread in my heart. Struggling, I tried to free myself from the grasp of the ant, but each and every moment only brought with it more pain. Racking my quickly dwindling consciousness for an idea, I tried to open the shop to buy something that could save me, but of course, in the very moment I needed it most, the system failed me as no matter what I tried, nothing opened, only showing that foreboding warning in my vision.

The ant looked in my direction. Its gaze hovered over me as if it found it strange I hadn’t yet died to the tentacles surrounding my body. I could see it start to charge up another beam. Slowly, I could feel the heat in front of me rising, my arms falling limply to my side. I unsteadily raised my head only to see the ant right in front of me now, maybe only a meter away, charging up another blast, one which I knew would be my final one. As I looked over at what would become my killer, I couldn’t help but laugh, laying in a pile of my own blood, on rocks in a foreign space covered in strange threads,, I burst out laughing, laughing at the ridiculousness of it all, the sheer short absurdity of what was my second life. As my voice grew hoarse, choked half out of pain and half out of weakness, I closed my eyes, at this point almost ready to welcome the relief from the pain I was feeling. However, it never came. Opening my eyes, I saw the ant’s preternatural eyes staring off intently at the ceiling of the room before it suddenly jumped back, taking a defensive posture. As darkness slowly began to creep around my vision, I noticed that in the point it was standing only moments before, a strange golden light was shining. Before I could think any more of it, an enormous force rocked the room along with the cold voice of someone overhead:

Stolen story; please report.

[Selene]: “Hmm, you missed, but based on those movements it seems we’ve found the core monster,Gabriella you have the least kills right why don’t you take this one to ma. . . .?”

Suddenly, the grip of the tentacles slackened completely as they were pulled back rapidly by the ant. Though this gave some great relief to the pressure that was threatening to crush my body, the sudden movement pulled the great mass of vein-like threads out from my body, bringing with it a terrible deal of pain, causing me to let out a cry, which sounded more like a slight gasp as that’s all my throat could manage to let out. My brain almost failed to recognize the sounds let out overhead, but looking up, I saw a hole in the rubble which exposed the darkened silhouette of three people. I suppose at that moment my brain wasn’t functioning entirely correctly as I raised my hand and tried to call out half in warning and half as a desperate cry for help, though looking at how defensive the ant appeared, I don’t think any warning was needed.

As the tentacles were pulled away from me, I saw the system alert message disappear, replaced with a new series of urgently blinking prompts, ones I was just barely in the right state of mind to understand that they meant I was still helpless for a time.

System:

{Imminent system Failure averted, attempting to halt further corruption of the system, full operation will be halted till the lost energy is replaced}

I wasn’t even surprised at this point. Of course, the system wouldn’t be so kind as to offer me a way to save myself when I was about to die. Why wouldn’t it say I needed to restore the energy for it to work any further? What else did I expect? What, isn’t it greedy to expect to be saved here? I’m afraid I’m not so lenient to consider it so.

My eyes were clouded over with the dark lines of my fading consciousness and blood, so I could not make out who it was in front of me, nor could I hear them all too well. But I could at least make out the faint sounds of a voice and the recognizable shape of a human figure in the opening of the crack. But I couldn’t exactly tell how many there were. Regardless, the mere fact that they were human or at least close enough brought me such an immense amount of relief that I nearly gave up the little remaining strength I had been clinging onto and fell into unconsciousness. But despite my body urging me to just let go, I feared that if I did truly let go then I may not be able to gain the strength to wake up.

Desperately struggling to get a clearer look at the people above me, I frowned slightly as I was finally able to pull my hazy consciousness up enough to get a clear view of the ceiling, only to see the space that had been previously occupied by the people was now completely empty. Before I could even fully register where they had gone, I felt another wave of heat sweep across my face followed by a blinding flash and a loud bang. This was not like the lasers fired before but was more like someone had just thrown a grenade into the room. My ears rang continuously from the loud flash as my body was forced further against the rubble by the explosion.

Swinging my head over, what I saw shook me to the core. The ant, which had terrorized me so effortlessly, was half-charred, and it looked like one of its mandibles had been crushed. I

In the same moment, three figures landed some ways in front of me, almost effortlessly despite having come from what must have been ten or so meters above me. Still, I couldn’t clearly make out their figures, but I could tell they were chatting excitedly about something, and wearing what looked almost to be formal clothes, one wearing an outrageously ornate dress, which hardly seemed to be dirty at all despite the state of the place they were in, and the other two wearing what seemed to be a cross between a suit and some sort of armor. Despite their strange appearance, I felt too much relief to be fully surprised by them. Once again reaching out, I tried desperately to direct their attention to the place of rubble I had fallen against, but it didn’t seem like my hoarse groans reached them, as they didn’t show any reaction towards my way.

Almost mocking my slow movements, one of the figures made a move towards the ant with such speed that I doubted even if I was in better condition if I’d be able to track it with my eyes. A moment later, in the place where the ant was standing, there was a large hole that the figure was standing in front of, the ant nowhere to be seen. From the crater, a beam wildly shot out, which seemed to catch the figure by some surprise as they backed up slightly, allowing the ant to launch itself past them and towards my direction. The whole exchange was too fluid to follow in real time. I only realized what was happening as the ant landed in front of me and started to desperately stretch its tentacles in my direction. Looking at its body, I saw that it was almost split in half, with a large crack running down its midsection. Before its tentacle could encroach on my body again, it was suddenly hit by a force which sent it crashing away. Looking over, the figure from before had managed to leap from one end of the room to the other to land a kick on the ant. I really wanted to scream for them to just kill it already, but I could barely make a noise, much less ask for something so reasonable.

Much to my dismay, the kick sent the ant even closer to my direction, but luckily, it had also crippled the ant. The figure walked slowly over to me, or rather the ant, as suddenly it stopped dead in its tracks, as if surprised by something. Calling out strangely, they, or she, ran over to where I was lying crippled in the rubble and started calling out in a strained and concerned voice. I couldn’t make out what she was saying, but I did manage to bend my neck over enough, which gave them some relief that I was alive, as the other two figures also ran over to my direction, much to my horror, ignoring the still-moving ant behind them."

Almost in tune with my thoughts, the ant's head stuck up and began charging another beam. This one seemed far more powerful than the last, even scorching its own body with the energy it was attempting to summon. I supposed it was the type of desperate last attack that intended to take down the intruder at the cost of its own body. I really wanted to complain that this was a bit too extreme, and furthermore, that my saviors could be a little careless.

However, to my surprise, one of them, the one in the dress, who now being close appeared quite pretty in stark contrast to the environment around us, simply snapped her fingers, and the ant, which I thought for sure would have at least landed a blow on my three saviors, simply burst into flames in front of me. The heat, despite being only a meter or so away, did not feel hot. Though the ant itself would probably disagree, as it instantly broke off its attempts at charging the beam, frantically flinging its broken body in our direction. This scene of a crazed monster running at me from only a few meters away would have been more striking if it were not instantly skewered by a sword to the head, stopping it dead in its tracks. Still, it made it to the point where I felt that if I had enough strength, I could reach out and grab it, which was not at all a comforting distance for such a fearsome thing to be.

Despite the blade stuck through its skull, Its body managed to move slowly, towards me which served to give me, and I hope the three others with me, a good deal of shock. I really did hope it shocked them, as I really didn’t want to go back to a world where something like this is commonplace. It was hard to tell if the thing was even dead.The man Skewered it a few more times, still despite the repeated attacks like a zombie it continued on in an unnerving display of endurance.

This time, though, something felt different. Its slow movements toward me did not feel aggressive like it wanted to harm me. Rather, it felt like it was trying to just reach me at all costs. The three heroes in front of me luckily did seem a bit shaken, as the one in the dress quickly raised her hand to what I assume was to burn it, but her hand was quickly slapped down as one of the figures pointed to me, who was in such close proximity to the ant.

Just as one of them, a man with golden hair in a flashy outfit that seemed to match one of the women of the group, approached my half-broken body, attempting to move me. As he approached a new series of bright messages flashed in my vision from the system which up until now had been completely silent and unresponsive.

System:

{Suitable Energy source detected nearby}

{Raising reward for quest [Absorb Ant] [Positive Soul mutation 75% chance 3%+ soul integrity]

[Urgent: It is recommended that the host absorb the energy as soon as possible to conserve the life of the host]