I tagged the worm with my Lore - Demonology skill:

Lore – Demonology – Bladed Tombworm

A bladed tombworm is a burrowing rock worm that has been corrupted by a demonstone and haphazardly fused with metal scraps. It attacks its prey by pinning them under its great bulk, then crushing them while also cutting them to pieces.

A bladed tombworm has low psychic resistance and high physical resistance. They are fairly unintelligent, but will follow the commands of more powerful demons without regard for self-preservation.

“Keep it busy!” Kontor shouted, running straight for the explosive barrels.

The worm shrieked. It began to move toward me, but then Cuby intercepted it, dealing a sliver of damage with a dagger blow, then striking it again, now with the glowing effect that I knew to be her blind ability.

Nothing happened to indicate that it had been affected by the attack at all, and a moment later it dove at her, thousands of pounds of rocky worm-thing bearing down on her in an instant. She rolled back, dodging the attack, then threw her weapon as she began to back away. My second Magic Arrow struck the worm, but it was now too focused on Cuby: it thrashed, striking her with a sidelong motion of its head and sending her tumbling to the ground a few meters away, taking a few damage off her 190 HP as the Mana Shield shattered.

Not good. We had healing potions, but Cuby didn’t look like she’d have much time to damage it if its attacks were going to throw her around. Worse, if it actually managed to pin her like the description said, I doubted she’d be able to get out.

And all I could do was spam Magic Arrows. I cut its health down bit by bit, but Cuby wasn’t doing better: she would throw her dagger from the ground, get up, and promptly get smashed again. When the worm reared up to bear down on her with all its weight, she’d roll or spring out of the way with a sudden blitz of movement that I knew came from her dodge ability.

Cuby hit half hit points when the worm hadn’t even reached two-thirds, but I didn’t know what to do—I had only a few usable abilities, and re-casting Mana Shield wouldn’t save her HP more than killing this thing by casting Magic Arrow would.

Then the unthinkable happened: the worm used its body slam twice in a row, and Cuby had no dodge. I watched her disappear under the thing, taking massive damage and completely disappearing from view.

The worm began to shift and roll around. Cuby dropped from 25% HP to 20%.

I started casting Mana Shield on her.

15%... my Mana Shield was half-done. 10%... almost finished—it was going to make it…

The Mana Shield finished just after Cuby hit 6 or 7 percent HP.

I began to charge the worm, moving my feet as fast as I could to reach its side. As I ran, I stared in terror, hoping the barrier would work as I’d wanted it to. I watched the barrier buff on her take damage, almost enough to break it in one go… but a moment later Cuby rolled out from under the worm, the miniscule added distance it made between her and its body apparently enough to give her the room to escape by using her dodge ability.

She came out on my side, and threw herself behind me, materializing a healing potion just before she slipped out of view. I’d been casting a Magic Arrow as I ran, and I finished it and loosed it into the worm’s face, which really got its attention.

Whatever burst of inspired, heroic action had driven me up to that point deflated instantly as the worm reared up before me, an armored, bladed monster that probably weighed as much as my car. I knew, intellectually, that my HP, at 123 / 170, would protect me from taking any real damage to my body. But a far more sensible-sounding part of my brain was telling me, in no uncertain terms, that the bladed automobile-sized demon worm was definitely going to kill me a half a second from now.

I tried to leap back as it swung its head at me sidelong, hoping that my 8 agility would—

—the worm slapped me so hard that my ears rang as I tumbled end over end, the floor of the cave becoming a whirling plane in my vision, spinning as I rolled to a halt.

Ow.

I scrambled to my feet, then a terrible thought occurred to me: what exactly was my plan to avoid being crushed under this thing?

The worm was already closing with me, and sure enough, as soon it came within range it reared up, ready to crush me.

An enormously loud sound filled the cavern, a boom so loud it hurt my ears.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

The worm hesitated a moment, then turned as Cuby’s dagger hit it in the head.

“Hey! You!” she shouted. “I think I killed your babies!” Then she added: “And they had soft skin!”

The worm lurched in the other direction, where Cuby stood on the other side of it, just out of its melee range. She’d drunk her healing potion and was now at just over 100—but the worm was still at half.

That was when I noticed that she was leading it back toward Kontor and two of the barrels. He’d rolled two of the four barrels away from the rest, and now stood back with the torch at the ready, poised over a line of black dust and surrounded by dark smoke from the prior explosion.

I cast a Mana Shield on Cuby as the worm advanced, being led backward until they were both just next to the barrels. When it reared up to slam its weight down on her, Kontor ignited the trail of powder and shouted: “Now!”

Cuby rolled, avoiding the slam as the worm brought itself down, but she didn’t come to her feet: instead she came out of the maneuver lying down, her hands covering her head. I threw myself to the ground….

A deafening noise filled the cavern and a wave of pain and power struck my ears. When I saw that I’d taken a few damage from the blast, I scrambled to my feet, rushing to Cuby—who was now at 31 / 170. I produced one of my two healing potions, pressed it into her palm as she sat up, then turned to the worm, casting a Magic Arrow.

The worm was still alive, but barely. It thrashed in place, seeming disoriented by the explosion, with bits of its rocky skin blown off completely—though this was only just discernible through a huge cloud of black smoke that had been produced by the explosion.

My Magic Arrow finished it off.

The experience wasn’t enough to level us up to 4.

“Shit,” I muttered. The player-killers were no doubt coming.

“Sounds about right to me,” said Cuby, standing. “Worms don’t have vital organs like lizards do,” she said plaintively. “As such, I think we need a tank for them.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe you’re right about that.”

“You still have a potion, right?”

I looked down at my HP. 54 / 170. The explosion and the attack from the worm had taken their toll.

“Not for long,” I said, pulling out the potion and guzzling it down. It tasted very citrus-y. Not bad for the last thing I might ever drink.

“Think I can loot this thing’s corpse?” I asked. I answered my question a moment later when the system told me I didn’t have the space. “Let me see…” I said, bringing up my inventory.

I had two slots devoted to demonstones, a slot devoted to derunite scales, two slots devoted to stacks of great machine scraps that I’d picked up along the way, a slot devoted to glowstones, eight slots devoted to chunks of ore, which took four per stack, and four slots devoted to a beamling corpse—a souvenir for my first monster kill, I guess.

And I had my legendary card.

I moved over toward some barrels near where we’d entered—the unexplosive variety. Some already had some derunite ore in them, and there was more than enough space to dump my inventory. I let the beamling corpse fall to the ground, not intending to keep it.

Cuby frowned at it. “Seriously?”

“What?” I asked. “Space is free. It might’ve come in handy.”

She laughed.

I kept looking at the legendary card. People were coming to kill us, and we were low resources—wasn’t it time? I mean, the explosive barrels and the chance to set a trap would definitely help us, but they wouldn’t assure victory.

Just show me something, I thought, approaching the worm. Give us something to make me think we’re almost sure to win. God, I don’t want to spend all my time here warding off assassins.

But there was another thing: Cuby. That was what was really holding me back. She’d been so helpful to me. She was even a bit of fun. But she was also… kind of a psycho. I didn’t know if it was her, or just an alien morality, but I didn’t trust her to do anything but put a knife in my back the moment she realized it would gain her my chosen boon.

This time when I tried to loot the rock worm corpse, I succeeded: the massive, elongated form of the worm appeared in my inventory, taking up a whopping [28 / 40] slots.

A demonstone fell to the ground from where its head had been, along with several fragments of metal that had been embedded in its body, and with—most interesting of all—a crystalline rock formation the size of a pumpkin.

I looted all of these. The demonstone was of a higher rarity than the others we’d looted, but the pieces of metal were apparently more great machine scraps. The crystal, however:

Uncommon Item - Mature Rock Worm Heart

This crystalline heart can be found only in the bodies of the most dangerous of rock worms and can be put to use in many different crafting professions.

“Interesting stuff,” I said. “But nothing to help with the upcoming fight for our lives.”

Cuby came to stand beside me. “Do you think the player-killers heard the sound of the cacophonous explosion?”

I briefly closed my eyes. “Yeah,” I said, answering even though I didn’t need to.

“We should probably get ready,” said Cuby.

I nodded, but the fact that we’d stopped short of level four made my stomach fill with dread. We were outnumbered, didn’t out-level them, and we’d just come out of a deadly encounter—neither of us had full health.

Worst of all, I was almost certain that using my legendary card would only turn the fight into a 4 versus 1.

“Yeah,” I said, starting to feel sick. “Let’s get ready.”