I held my bleeding arm, crouching out of sight as quietly as possible as I peeked out into the dark rocky passageway with a sharp eye, my body tense. My breaths came out slowly and carefully.

I had no idea whether I would even survive this. But despite my fear, I kept quiet and made as little movement as possible.

The wait felt excruciating. Every second felt like an eternity. Every breath I took could have been my last.

The worst part was the uncanny feeling of deja vu.

Like I’d already lived through this exact situation. Like I’d had these exact thoughts already. And I didn’t even know how it would all end. The dream hadn’t even had the courtesy to show me whether I would survive or not.

I clenched my teeth to stop them from clattering and remained crouched.

And then… it came. The thing I had been waiting for. The damn spider… Or Mana Gorger, as Casey had called it.

I kept waiting, my muscles tensing more and more with each passing second as sweat poured over me.

The creature prowled, searching for its prey, its legs clicking on the rocks, its many eyes looking around… And then it reached the middle, stopped, and crouched, inspecting the shuriken I’d left on the ground. When it brought up one of its legs to poke it, I knew the distraction had worked.

“Now!” I yelled.

The beast immediately reacted to the sound and whipped around, scanning its surroundings for the source, but it didn’t matter. Responding to my command, the entire cavern reverberated with the rough sound of stone grinding against stone.

… And then I had a horrible feeling. Like I was in a roller coaster cart headed for an inevitable crash. Like I needed to move right now or I would die.

Just as the monster finally spotted me, my vision shook as a deafening crash slammed into my senses and my eyes threatened to close shut.

But the horrible feeling kept me from doing so. I powered through it, opened my eyes as wide as I could and took in the sight of the rockslide making its way down right on top of the spider. The beast in question opened its maw and aimed it in my direction.

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I used all of my strength fling myself out of my hiding spot in the direction of the tunnel. Despite my best efforts, the acid spray still caught my healthy leg, making me rasp in pain.

I landed on my last uninjured limb and immediately tried to crawl away as the cavern continued to shake and rocks fell all around me.

I chanced a look behind me and saw the beast struggling to get itself from under the rocks that had buried it. Its maw was wide open and I could see it vibrating. Belatedly, I realized that my ears were ringing and I couldn’t hear anything.

It didn’t matter though. I just needed to get out of here while it was occupied. As long as I lived, healing potions could fix me up. I just needed to live.

The ground wasn’t shaking as much anymore. The cave-in had to have been fairly limited. The only entrance to this place had remained open as well. No rocks had fallen in front of it.

I could get out of this alive. No, I would get out of this alive.

But then, I felt more vibrations as I dragged myself closer to the tunnel. I snapped my head back and to my horror, the spider had managed to free itself and now was charging in my direction with a murderous glare.

Just as I thought I was a goner, a blast of magic slammed into it from above, stopping it in its tracks. And then another, and another.

I didn’t waste any time looking up at my saviors and redoubled my efforts to get closer to the tunnel even as my vision got blurry.

Then a giant green spider leg pierced the ground a hair’s breadth away from my face and my heart stopped.

I was so stupid.

Why had I even bothered with these portals?

Why couldn’t I leave them alone?

Why had I chased after Wi?

Why had I sacrificed myself for her?

WhywhywyhhywhatamidoingthisisstupidpleasenoIdontwannadie –

A beam of yellow light tore through the air above me split second after the spider leg landed and launched the looming arachnoid threat away from me.

I looked up through my slowly fading vision and saw two figures. A guy with bull horns holding a sword and a shield… and a hooded blond-haired woman with long ears grasping a large staff. The crystal resting on top of the staff radiated a menacing yellow light.

Cavalry's here.

With those thoughts, I couldn’t help but let out a mental sigh of relief.

I didn’t pass out, though. I couldn’t. Not yet.

I felt myself being gently picked up by someone as a vial of nasty liquid got shoved into my mouth. It was utterly vile and I choked on it, but still did my best to gulp it down.

I felt the familiar sensation of the ice cold scorching burn on all my wounds as it momentarily replaced the pain from before.

From the corner of my bleary vision, I saw the blond woman – Elyssa – blast the shit out of the spider while Wi and Casey provided support fire from above.

Ah, of course. Even if the wiki didn’t have that much information about her, there was no way the person teaching hundreds of players the true form skill could be weak, was there?

“Renee! Renee!” Frank’s distorted voice kept shouting as my eyelids drooped down.

I briefly met his eyes as all the tension and adrenaline finally drained from my body.

“You’re late,” I muttered a moment before unconsciousness took me.