Jacob charged against Dih, lighting up the chapel in red and white. Dih crossed her arms to protect herself. This time she received the attack without moving. The blow hardly did anything to her due to the effects of Resistance and Toughness.

Not rejoicing in her tenacity, she stepped to the right leaving a yellow trail and leaned on the ground with her left hand to execute a sweep at Jacob's heels. Dih gave him no chance to get up and leapt at him with her elbow imbued in red. The impact shook the ground. Even Jean who was more than 15 meters away felt her body vibrate after the floor sank a few centimeters.

“I have to get out of here. I'm no match for them!”

With Jacob taking a barrage of punches, Jean took the opportunity to rush towards the rift. It was quite difficult to keep her balance as she passed close to the powerful punches that cracked the floor tiles.

“Keep pushing! You almost got him!” shouted Al-Hek who had managed to advance a step.

However, the floor wasn't breaking from Dih's power. She was consuming the place to keep him at bay.

Jean felt selfish and cowardly. It was her fault that Jacob was there. But, what could she do against him? Her only hope was that by leaving, he would also disappear. Doubts grew just an inch from the rift. Would that really happen? What if she only condemned them?

Jacob turned his face to Jean and smiled. Dih didn't take that disdain very well. “Are you fucking kidding me?!!”

She began to strike him harder. The walls cracked and the huge chapel threatened to collapse.

Knowing that she had reached her limit, “DIE, DAMMIT! DIEEEEEEE!”

Jacob gradually lost his multiracial aspect and became more human. It was as if he had lost control. Dih strangled him with one hand while still beating him with the other. “This is your last chance, you bastard! Submit!”

“Oh, no! Don't stop, please!! Keep up the massage! You were doing great!”, he shouted, laughing.

Dih's anger mixed with the disappointment of realizing that Jean was trying to escape through the rift. Their gazes met. She seemed to expect much more from her. Why?

Suddenly, Dih began to spit blood. Jacob's right hand had transformed into something grotesque and sharp that easily pierced her abdomen before exiting through her back. Perhaps the black aura surrounding it had influenced its lethality.

Al-Hek's despair resonated with her already intense guilt. “LET HER GO OR I’LL KILL YOU!”

Al-Hek and everyone in her inventory began to fade as the outline of her arm blurred. What was that phenomenon? Was it caused by the rift?

Jacob rose to his feet, lifting the still impaled Dih. A large amount of blood rushed down her body only to evaporate before it touched the tiles.

The sight shook Jean to the core. She didn't know what to do. If she stayed... would she die? But what would happen to Dih if she left? Would Jacob vanish in time for her to survive? That was assuming she could recover. Her wounds looked fatal. Jean stared at the rift as guilt devoured her.

“Dinner is served!”, muttered Jacob as some sharp teeth appeared on his belly.

Those words brought two memories to her mind. The first was from long ago. Jean was still a teenager who was playing her favorite video game while her father burst into her room to tell her that dinner was served.

Her father was usually a very kind person. However, when he watched Jean furiously attack an in-game NPC, a child who had insulted her after she tried to mediate in an extortion with another child, his tone changed to one totally discordant with his usual calmness. “What are you doing?!”

She freezed while the guards in the game approached to beat her character from all directions.

At that time, Jean was having problems at school. Problems she never talked about with anyone, but which her father was beginning to sense. “The Jean I raised doesn't do that!”

“It's just a game, Dad.”

“The Jean I have raised doesn't succumb to the hatred of others, nor does she imitate it. The Jean I raised is unwavering!”

One of the guards in the game shouted at her character after finishing her off. “That's what you get for pretending to be a hero!”

Her father put his hand on her shoulder. “The Jean I raised is a good girl. She's brave and...”

The memory shattered as her soul screamed. “LIES!!”

Jean unconsciously clenched her fists. Those words triggered a memory she didn’t want to remember. Her mother was in front of her father's grave. “Thanks for nothing, stupid!” she muttered resentfully. “Thanks for leaving me with a mortgage and three girls! If you had thought about your daughters' future, you wouldn't have died for some nobodies... Was it so important to pretend to be a hero?”

Jean's soul screamed out again. “Enough! He went back to save his friends and the people caught in the damn fire! He was like that! He was brave! He...” The memory shattered into fragments after her fists began to glow purple.

Dih's screams of pain brought her back to the present. Jacob twisted the blade in Dih's abdomen as a grisly mouth opened in his chest.

Jean screamed full of rage. “Release her!!” She needed to drive away the tingling in her stomach. That uneasiness she had let take control. She wasn't going to let anything stop her.

Jacob tossed Dih aside. “Tch! What's the matter with you now? Weren't you leaving?”

Jean left the rift behind and charged at him. She gripped his right hand tightly and twisted it.

Jacob looked momentarily perplexed when he realized that the blade did not cut Jean's hands, but he quickly stepped back and transformed his other hand to attack her from the side. Sparks flew as Jean screamed like never before, but her body was unharmed. Not even a scratch.

Jean hit him in return with all her might. Each punch had an enormous weight. Al-Hek and some of the individuals in the shadows began to cheer for her, especially when they noticed that after each blow, they could move slightly.

Jean didn't worry about how it was possible that they had appeared there again, she just kept on punching. Especially when she saw Al-Hek in the air performing the same feat he first attacked her with. It looked like a whirlwind with daggers. That made her remember her second fight with him. Was that his true potential before he became a construct?

A fireball began to grow in the shadows. Everyone turned to see the enormous size of the sphere of flames.

Jean immediately ran out as she heard the gnome shout. “Remember me, Jacob?”

The maelstrom of flames landed like a whirlpool of death on Jacob. Even Jean was sent flying against the central column. That didn't bring the weakened structure any closer to collapse, but the small respite that Dih took to heal herself did. The stability of the entire building deteriorated to the point that the roof began to creak menacingly.

With both hands on the ground and enduring the terrible pain, Jean looked at her intact body. She then looked at Dih, crawling and trying to heal herself enough to be able to stand up. Why wasn't her body damaged like Dih's? What was different about her? Was it because she still had a real body waiting for her outside or was it because of her Resistance?

Jean stood up, dodging the roof tiles that were leaking through the holes. She ran towards Dih, who looked at her menacingly. Jean wasn't intimidated; she approached her with open hands in a sign of peace. Dih reluctantly agreed, giving her a reproachful look. “This is all your fault for not doing what you were supposed to, Daughter of Nimireth!!”

Jean felt slapped. “Would you rather I had run away?!”

Dih began to glow so much trying to heal that the structure began to collapse. “Stop! Hide while I look for a way to drag him through the rift!”

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“Running away even in this place? Wasn't it enough to abandon us when we needed you the most?”

Jean felt a shiver. What on earth was she talking about? Did she know someone who looked like her?

The roof crumbled and the building collapsed. Faced with the overwhelming feeling of not being able to escape, Jean protected Dih while her whole body glowed purple.

Jean closed her eyes as the huge rafters crashed around her loudly. Which one would end up crushing them? Trembling with her arms crossed over both of them, she focused on concentrating all her power to withstand the impact.

Incomprehensibly, everything suddenly ceased. Silence and darkness reigned until medieval folk music was heard. The bustle of multiple conversations and the clattering beer mugs made her realize her location. The inside of the tavern was still blurry, possibly due to all the shadows.

“It's been a long time since I've tasted such delicious beer!”, stated a male after a big sigh.

”Yeah! They're better than the ones at home!” added another man.

“Home? You mean Earth?!”

“My bad! It's a habit!”

The image around the table suddenly became clear. The floor was stone, and the tables and walls were made of wood. The atmosphere had a bittersweet aroma of food mixed with the light dirt noticeable both in the stains on the tables and on the floor.

Jean walked over to the table with the three shadows chatting among themselves. They were probably friends. Jean didn't feel envious of that. Even though she hadn't experienced anything remotely like it.

“You know what I've heard?” All looked at him expectantly. “A lot of players are going to White Chapel. They say you can get a lot of gold there!”

“Doesn't White Chapel belong to the order of the Guardians of the Nine?”

“They told me that you don't have to walk their path to fight by their side.”

“You got me! Give us more details!”

“They say strange things happen at night. We just have to get rid of those problems and that's it! Easy money!”

“And that's it? Define strange things.”

“Undead.”

“Really? Do such creatures exist in this world?”

“Apparently so!”

“I don't care if they are alive or not! As long as they can be purged to collect some good money, I’m in! By the way, who pays?”, asserted a young woman who hadn't spoken up until now.

“We could give it a try! What do you say, Dih?”

The three of them turned to a Dih who appeared out of nowhere. No one said anything about her huge abdominal wound despite Dih's desperate attempts to heal it. They simply stood waiting in silence, as if it were the unfinished sequence of a movie.

Dih eventually noticed Jean’s presence. Despite breathing heavily and being very pale, her gaze towards Jean was pure hatred.

Jean raised her hands in a sign of truce. “I'm really sorry for what happened before! Look, I wish I could help you, but I don't know how to do it!”

That didn't change the resentful look in her eyes. “It's simple, dammit! Do what you promised! Kill them! ... All of them!”

“Do we know each other from Earth? Because... I don't remember promising anything!”

Dih's eyes widened in puzzlement. “What?!” She clenched her teeth tightly. “Who the hell are you then?!”

She rose from the table and stepped away. The shadows around stopped talking and soon faded from sight. The walls, floor and the ceiling gradually shock while the clay jars and plates break upon impact with the floor.

Despite all that, Dih barely managed to heal. “Shit! Why isn't the wound closing?!”

The tavern was empty now. However, one more presence could be felt coming from a tiny spot in the corner of the establishment. A spot that began to tremble from the rupture of reality.

A pair of hands appeared to widen the rift from the inside. Thin men's hands that trembled from the brutal effort. Moments later, an eye that inspected the place came into view. It was even more black than the void behind.

Jean stepped in to protect Dih from what she presumed was Jacob.

Despite his apparent weakness, he forcibly widened the rift, creating a large shock wave that pushed them until they almost fell. His face was already showing. It was much thinner than before and it was seriously burned.

“Here they won't bother us! I can't wait to satiate this damn hunger!”

“It's your fault!!” Dih was beside herself.

Jean hurried to prevent him from entering the tavern. Still busy holding up the walls of the rift, Jacob couldn't block what was coming at him. A powerful blow with the right, then with the left, right, right, right and right again. Jean punched with all her might as her fists imbued with an increasingly intense purple glow. However, as blinding as her punches were, Jacob didn't recoil.

Fearing the worst, Dih tried to heal again. This time the tavern disintegrated. The floor, the walls, and of course, the roof, collapsed into an absolute void beneath her feet.

Jean clutched Jacob’s throat to avoid falling.. However, strangling him was not her priority. Dih's desperate cry made her consider jumping for her. More than the need to know who she had mistaken her for, it was to make amends.

She looked down and contemplated her dangling feet. “What's the plan, Jean? Fly down and pick her up like you're Superman? Don't be ridiculous!”

In her indecision, Jacob grabbed her by the neck and pulled her toward the rift. She tried to prevent it by placing her hands on either side of the rift, but he was pulling so hard that she thought he would tear her head off. The strangest part of the struggle was that from there she could hear the echoing of whispers and the spirit. She tried to concentrate on what they were saying, but she barely managed to make out a few words.

“[You can’t … anything … her. Let yourself ... dragged!]”

Jean stopped resisting. The darkness distressed her as the pain of her windpipe being crushed reached disturbing heights. It no longer felt like a hand was strangling her. The pressure became more concentrated and piercing.

A few grunts and the taste of blood running down her own throat woke her up. She opened her eyes and saw the ceiling of the tunnel bathed in the blue hue of souls.

“[What the hell are you waiting for? Take off Yusthor's accessories! HURRY!]”

Darkness enveloped her again, but that did not affect the visibility of the inventory. She equipped the dagger and thrust it in the direction of her own neck. She attacked insistently, but although the dagger plunged repeatedly, the tabaxi refused to loosen her bite. The reason, each of her attacks had been intercepted midway.

Jean overloaded her healing to see what was happening and avoided passing out from blood loss at the same time. The tabaxi protected her head with her arm.

Jean imbued the dagger with orange and yellow and went straight for the neck. However, she shielded herself with her shoulder this time. Jean tried again and again, but the tabaxi kept resisting. Her attacks were not powerful enough from such a limited position.

Feeling as if her life was being sucked out through the holes in her throat, Jean unequipped the dagger and imbued her fist with a quadruple effect. Red, white, orange, yellow. This time, her goal was different.

The impact on her ear was so strong that the tabaxi lost consciousness on the spot. Her mouth lay limply on Jean's neck now. Her head was not too heavy, but with such wounds on her neck, Jean didn’t want to move it and aggravate the wound. She opted for storing the body in her inventory, but nothing happened.

The whispers informed her that she couldn't store living things in her inventory. The absence of oxygen and the fact that time passed very slowly inside it prevented it.

“[Kill her!]”

“She's alive! I could help her with Jacob! He's the one controlling her, isn't he?”

“[The soul of the tabaxi has disappeared. There is nothing left. Jacob has taken control of her body and now he wants yours.]”

If there was nothing to save, the choice should be easy. Although it didn't feel that way.