Five military military cargo vehicles barreled down a street in Portland, all of them in a single file. The path before them was clear of abandoned and destroyed cars along with any corpses haphazardly laid out on the concrete street, allowing them to drive peacefully without any interruptions or obstructions.

Just then the ground below the began to tremble, as if an earthquake was happening. Feeling the shaking ground, all five vehicles came to an abrupt start, their wheels screeching while sliding against the stone street.

Once all of them were all put in park, several individuals jumped out of the cargo back and looked in the direction of where the commotion was coming from. These individuals were players.

“The hell was that...?” One of the players questioned, rubbing his head while staring ahead of them. He wore a leather jacket with metal-plated shoulder pads on both sides and big clunky metal gauntlets in each hand.

“It felt like an Earthquake,” Another player answered, this one a female wearing a nicely tailored ocean-blue magician's robe and wielding a tall gnarled staff with a blue gem. “But knowing how different our world has become, I honestly doubt that to be the case.”

As the rest of the players exited their respective vehicles to survey their surroundings, a loud screech could be heard in the distance. Loud enough to where all of them were forced to cover their ears to block out as much of the noise as possible.

“W-what the...?!”

“Ah...my ears!”

The screeching lasted for a few moments before finally stopping, leaving the group in silence once more. The players stood there stunned, having no clue about what just happened or where that noise even came from.

“Holy shit that was loud...” The player with the gauntlets grunted, rubbing his ear to try and get rid of the ringing in them. “What was that?”

“My guess is that whatever made that loud screech just now was also part of that massive Earthquake,” The magic robe-wearing player surmised. “And if I’m right, we might be dealing with a Sub-Boss level monster. Maybe even a Boss level one.”

The brawler swung his head to face the mage, doubtful at her suggestion. “Come on. There’s no way we could run into something like that when we haven’t even finished the integration period yet. Not all the players have returned to this world, so what would be the point for the system to even try something like this?”

“You got a better idea, then?” The mage turned to glare at the Brawler, unamused by his statement.

While what the mage said was possible, the Brawler was correct to assume that they couldn’t be up against some kind of Boss-level monster so early when their newly merged world wasn’t even past its integration period.

And yet, there was something powerful enough to shake the ground they stood on and expel a loud screech that threatened to take away their hearing permanently. This was one simple fact that they couldn’t ignore.

Especially with the risk of this commotion possibly getting near their current base of operations. With such a looming threat ahead of them, none of the players could sit still and ignore it.

Not even their leader.

“What do you think we should do, Zoe?” The mage asked, looking at a player standing before them, staring in the same direction as the rest of them.

She had long, flowing blond hair that trailed down to the middle of her back and wore a few metal armor pieces like a chest plate, bracers, and greaves with a sword strapped to her hip. The player, known as Zoe, stayed silent for a moment as if musing over what to do.

A moment later, she spun around to face the group, revealing her beautiful face that could have come from a model or popular actor. Her beauty was only intensified as her Azure-blue eyes stared at the other players; filled with determination and an urge to investigate the situation.

“Whatever it is could end up becoming a threat in the future,” She stated. “I believe we should investigate the manner to see what we could be up against.” She then turned to face another player. “What do you think, John?”

The other player, John, who wore a green military uniform with an assault rifle strapped to his waist along with a sword, took a moment to think. “Hmm...for now, I think we should investigate it as well. The noise seemed to have come from Congress and Temple Street, or at least, that’s what I’m assuming anyway. I’m still having trouble navigating around this damn place.”

Zoe nodded after listening to John before facing the rest of the players. “Alright, then. You know your current objectives now. We’re going to investigate the source of the noise, if it’s a threat we can handle, then we handle it. And if not, then we improvise.”

“I’ll head over there and get a look at what we’re dealing with,” The Brawler declared, taking a couple of steps before getting stopped by the mage.

“You shouldn’t be going off on your own,” She said while narrowing her eyes. “If you get caught by whatever is there, that’ll only make things difficult for us.”

The brawler waved her off. “It’ll be fine.” He said before shifting his attention to Zoe. “I can go, right, Zoe?”

The Knight stood there for a moment, contemplating his question before declaring her response. “Yes, you can go. You’ll act as recon for us, alright?”

The brawler smiled while giving the knight a thumbs-up. “You got it! I’ll be off now! I’ll tell you guys what’s happening out there!”

Once he received permission, he then turned his back to the mage and the rest of his team before sprinting off in the direction of the commotion, following his directive to act as recon to see what was happening out there.

The mage sighed deeply while turning around to head back to the vehicles. Zoe did the same and walked beside the mage as if trying to comfort her.

“He’s going to get hurt...” The mage grumbled.

Zoe softly laughed. “Hopefully, that won’t be the case. But just to be safe, we should hurry and make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“Alright, everyone, let’s move out!” John shouted, rousing the other players into action.

A chorus of yells erupted from the players as all of them then marched back over to the cargo vehicles. Once everyone was inside, the five vehicles then drove off toward the source of the commotion, determined to know what they were facing.

...

“You just had to test your little spell, didn’t you?!” Astrid snapped at the witch as she carried her while jumping from rooftop to rooftop.

“How was I supposed to know that the spell would spread beyond the car?! That’s never happened before!”

“So, you just try and experiment with an unknown spell without any safety precautions? In the middle of a city that was already slowly crumbling due to the planetary merging? Is that what I’m hearing right now?”

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“I thought it would be fine since I only wanted to affect the car!”

“That doesn’t excuse our current situation, dammit!”

As the two players continued to argue, a swarm of spider monsters chased after them like an ocean flooding a city. There were so many of them that it reminded Hazel of the Fractured Horde back in their Tutorial Dungeon. Only much worse.

Astrid continued to jump from rooftop to rooftop, doing her best to escape from the swarm, but they were getting nowhere close to losing them. If anything, the spider army was slowly gaining on them as they spoke.

While being carried, Hazel adjusted herself so that she could face the spiders down below, watching them eerily crawl toward them at a rapid pace. While observing them using Astral Eye, she willed the spell to get a closer look so Hazel could see what they looked like. And she immediately regretted doing so.

As soon as her Astral Eye got a better view of the spiders, Hazel internally grimaced upon seeing them. The spiders chasing them were as black as the night around the size of a Direwolf. They possessed eight crimson eyes that hauntingly stared in the Astral Eye’s general direction, which gave her the creeps.

When she tried to identify them, Hazel learned that a good majority of the spiders chasing them were called Infant Spiders. The same ones that she killed before. Unintentionally, mind you. They were also incredibly weak, barely even making it past Level four or five.

Not only that, but Hazel also discovered that these spiders weren’t players, which meant they likely remained on either Earth or Astrid’s world. Her guess was Astrid’s world since there weren’t any spiders this large on Earth. And if there were, then Hazel would’ve known and been off this planet even before the System arrived and sent her away.

The spider army continued to march in droves, determined to slay the enemies that destroyed their nest. In this case, Hazel.

“Use your spells to kill them!” Astrid shouted in a panic. “Since I’m carrying you while running, I can’t fight at the moment!”

“...I got a better idea.”

Hazel reached for her blindfold to pull it off. Astrid noticed what she was doing and fell into a panic.

“What are you doing?! If you take off that blindfold, I’ll be affected too!”

“You won’t as long as I don’t look at you, alright?” Hazel snapped while adjusting herself once more, shifting her body to where she was properly facing the spiders below them.

Using her Evil Eye skill was their best hope of survival. If she could keep the spiders in place for long enough, that’d give Astrid enough time to escape the swarm.

As soon as she grabbed her blindfold, Hazel then pulled it off her face, revealing her glowing purple eyes. She stared down at the spider army, letting her Evil Eyes run wild against the swarm of monsters chasing them.

The spiders were within her range of sight, and immediately a good majority of the horde stopped in their tracks. They were unable to proceed with their march due to them being under the gaze of Hazel’s evil eye.

Seeing this, Hazel’s lips began to form a slight grin. But that smile soon faded when her eyes started burning like mad. It hurt so bad that she hastily shut them while blinking away tears building up in her ducts.

“A-agh?!” She yelled, reeling her head back in pain and vigorously clutching her eyes.

“Hazel?! What’s wrong?”

“My eyes...their burning...!”

Hazel had no idea why her eyes felt like they were on fire, but for some reason, the sensation felt a bit similar to when she first obtained her Evil Eyes. Which she wasn’t certain if that was a good or bad thing. At the moment, it certainly felt like the latter.

Despite having her eyes closed, somehow, a panel materialized in the darkness of her vision.

[Evil Eyes have been overloaded due to the excess number of targets being seen.]

“O-overload?!” She said with a panicked tone. “What the hell does that mean?!”

This was her first time coming across something like this. Then again, Hazel only had her Evil Eyes ability for several hours. In fact, it hadn’t even been a day yet, so there wasn’t much she knew about this skill at the moment.

However, she wished that she hadn’t discovered these kinds of things regarding her skills when she was stuck in life-or-death situations. Hazel struggled to endure the pain, frantically rubbing her eyes to wipe away the tears streaming down her face.

“D-dammit...I can’t see anything!”

She could barely keep her eyes open because of the overload of her Evil Eyes. Thankfully, although her real eyes were burning, her Astral Eyes still worked and she immediately switched perspectives. The black void filling her eyes was soon replaced with the black sea of spiders continuing their chase.

Hazel was startled by the sudden appearance of the spider horde before remembering where she put her Astral Eye. No longer desiring to be so close to the horrid creatures, she mentally ordered the Astral Eye to fly back over to her.

“Any more bright ideas, Thatcher?!” Astrid shouted, her breathing becoming shallower than before.

The dark elf couldn’t keep this up for long. Hazel knew that, but she was helpless to come up with a solution. Their best chance to escape was her Evil Eyes, but that wasn’t possible due to them being overloaded from trying to affect all of those monsters.

Telekinesis was also out of the question. For one thing, she wouldn’t be able to control all of them before her mana drained completely. That and she could only have eight or so under the effects of Telekinesis, which was far too little to do anything considering the number of creepy crawlers currently on their tail.

Her other spells were a no-go as well. Even with her cursed spears along with Telekinesis, she wouldn’t be able to kill a lot of those monsters. The same went for Mana Bolt.

The last spell would be Entropy Sickle, but after what happened with her other Entropy spell, she wouldn’t even dare cast it. The worst-case scenario would be that she could potentially cause more sinkholes or worse.

So, what could she do? Running away was not working and she couldn’t come up with an idea to fight back against the Horde. It was one thing with the Fractured humans since they moved around like zombies. But these Spider monsters were different.

They aren’t slow. If Hazel and Astrid even stopped for a moment in an attempt to fight back against the horde, they would be overwhelmed in seconds. But they also couldn’t keep running like this. Once Astrid ran out of stamina, they were toast.

Hazel’s mind raced, trying to formulate a plan to make it out of this predicament, but she was drawing a blank. She couldn’t think of anything to save them.

“S-shit...!” Astrid grunted, suddenly stopping in her tracks.

Hazel was confused and alarmed by this. To see what was happening, she adjusted her Astral Eye to look in Astrid’s direction. And what she saw surprised her.

Several spiders that should’ve been behind them were now standing before them. They were crawling up the edge of the roof, blocking their path to escape. But how did they do that?

There was no way for them to catch up to them so fast. At least, not to the point where they were able to cut them off like that.

“Damn...!”

Astrid hastily placed Hazel down while pulling out her bow and arrow. She then activated her [Rapid Shot] skill and fired several arrows at the Spiders. The projectiles zipped through the air and then struck the eight-legged creatures’ heads in rapid succession before they fell to the ground down.

“We need to keep moving or we’ll get swarmed!” Hazel shouted, spinning her Astral Eye around to spare a glance at the upcoming horde.

But as soon as she saw them, it was already too late. She looked down at the building they were on and witnessed the horde of spiders already beginning to climb. Even if they attempted to jump to the next building, they likely wouldn’t make it before the spiders caught up and surrounded them once more.

Seeing the spiders rapidly climb up the building, Hazel’s heart pounded against her chest with fear. If she or Astrid didn’t do something soon, they were going to die.

“Astrid...!”

“Yeah, I know...”

The dark elf already had more arrows drawn, prepared to send in another volley. Hazel tried to prepare as well, twitching her fingers as she was about to conjure her cursed spears. Just then, more spiders crawled on top of the roof, surrounding the players.

Hazel and Astrid stood back-to-back, covering each other’s blind spot. The two players stood before the monsters, ready to take them on.

The spiders closed in on the pair, letting out violent hisses as they glared at them. But before the monsters attacked, they suddenly stopped and looked above them. Hazel and Astrid were confused by this and looked up as well.

That was when they saw a figure above them, descending from the sky. They then watched the figure land and crush one of the spiders before them, sending green blood and black body parts everywhere.

When the two players stared at the figure, they realized that it was a human. He had short brown hair, wore a leather jacket and jeans, and wielded two bulky metal gauntlets around her hands.

After smashing the spider under his foot, the figure then clanged his gauntlets together, making a daring smile, as if challenging the spider monsters.

“Alright then...” He said, glaring at his opponents. “Come at me, you bastards!”

Seeing the figure go up against the spider monsters, Hazel could only guess that this person was like them.

He was a player...