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Eerie was the silence that accompanied us with each twist and turns. Before, danger was a veil merely waiting to be unmasked and make itself known.

The exploring of every path uncharted, now that the stakes have been revealed, came with it an uneasiness like no other.

Danger had finally reared its ugly head and it sure wasn't pretty.

Tayuma's message instilled a sense of hostility in the darkness of every passageway. Each corner, bracing myself for another deadly encounter with a raving lunatic. It hadn't happened yet, but it was only a matter of chance and time.

We left the NPC with the shortsword bounded with a thick rope that Background Character B conveniently had in his inventory. I didn't question it but was instead grateful for it.

I responded to Tayuma's message with an inquiry of where he was. I got back in a haste, a reply that stated he was fine and was making his way to the exit of the dungeon with a bunch of other players.

Perfect. That was the goal to strive for now. If countless numbers of hostile NPCs are running amok around the place, then it was time to book it. Say goodbye. Go home time.

The dilemma, which before was a mild worry with a party of five, was now the singular factor hinging our survival within the boundaries of life and death.

Left, right, up, down, backward, forward, horizontal, vertical, diagonal. The criss-cross dilemma.

"Where are we?!" I shouted, vocalizing the panic swelling within me, turning to my only sole companion sharing this unfortunate conundrum.

Background Character B only responded with a helpless flail of his arms, equally as befuddled.

The screaming promptly started again, as if someone merely flipped the switch to the jarring melody of death back on.

Where there were the sounds of terror, we steered to the exact opposite.

Desperate pleas from the distant left, cries of fears from the neighboring right. The unfortunate ones that have inadvertently stumbled on to their doom, their agonizing screams serving as grim omens of routes that shouldn't be taken.

It could happen. Poor judgment, a miscalculation, and we too could end up like them. All it would take was just a group of them, a bundle of madness charging towards us to simply reduce us to dwindling digits displayed atop a board.

"Keep running, keep running," I muttered aloud to no one in particular, trying and failing to stifle the bubbling terror overflowing inside me.

So stricken was my senses, that I failed to even pay heed to anything that didn't have to do with escaping, consequently becoming victim to my own disregard as I collided hard with something that came streaking fast from the right, ultimately sending me crashing to the ground.

Disoriented, I sat up, breathing myself back to a sense of reality and saw through blurred vision that the 'something' I hit, was actually a 'someone'.

Level 14 and already scrambling upright, clumsily grasping for his weapon that was sent sprawling by the fall.

He picked it up, glancing at us once, unified by the same feeling of terror etched in each of our expressions, and immediately broke into another run.

"Hey, hey!" I called out after him, watching his figure be consumed by the distant darkness, "How many NPCs did you bring?! How many are there?!"

I heard my voice bounce across the desolated air, heard it be met by more screams and cries resonating in a gruesome unison, then finally heard it be replied by a shout, more desperate, more deranged, than my own.

"Too many!"

Then, approaching fast from where he came, was the sinister growls of a dozen. They advanced, twelve in line, replicating the madness of one another's action, all carriers of weapons and armors of the many they have slain.

With another demented cry, they sprinted towards us.

Already we knew fighting proved futile. The NPC from before we tied up and left her there, we only did so because no blade we tried could pierce through her skin. An invisible forcefield hovering invisibly just above the point of contact made it impossible to harm them. They were essentially immortal.

Urgency surged my body upwards, sharing briefly a knowing fearful glance with Background Character B, and soon we found ourselves running, with the twelve NPCs hot on our heels.

It all made sense now, the long stretches of endless chasms absent of their monstrous denizens. The game didn't need to bother itself on replacing any of the slain mobs if there were already other perilous threats readily available to begin with.

The NPCs proved themselves as capable enough menaces to jeopardize the raiding party that originally came to use them as fodder. How the turns have tabled.

Stolen novel; please report.

But what was the root cause of this? What turned these benevolent entities coded solely for the benefit and aid of the players into ravenous husks of destruction? Something in their programming had been altered and I'm fairly certain faulty coding isn't to blame for this.

I glanced back just in time to see a dagger soaring through the air, barely managing to deflect it to the ground, fleeting sparks erupting, with a swing from my sword.

One attack thwarted out of the many still with their arms raised, ready to fling their weapons towards us.

"They're throwing shit at us!" I shouted, catching Background Character B's eyes. "You better have something, cause I got nothing!"

He nodded, grasping the imminent danger, and swiftly materialized shields in both his hands, one he flung over to my arm in reach.

I could have cried then and there. He actually pulled through. Ah man, I'll never call you irrelevant again.

We both raised our shields, pacing faster to compensate for the increase in weight and endured the relentless hammering pounding through our arms as countless projectiles pelted our only line of defense.

A petrified scream to the left diverted us to the right, straying helplessly away from any form of composure, stepping through a random mixture of routes, hoping to have eluded the ones chasing us.

Desperate decisions done at the expense of our whittling stamina - all in vain.

They were there, and they were gaining.

"Left, keep left here," I said through deep gulps of air, driving us to another gamble of choices.

A gamble that did not fall in our favor.

Far to the front of us, appearing so suddenly from the enshrouding darkness, another large horde of NPCs came charging at us with deafening shrieks of madness, weapons ready and deadly.

Seeing them, plummeted a feeling of despair within us, and our momentum slowed, but upon hearing the growing stampede from right behind, left no other choice but to maintain a constant acceleration.

This narrow corridor was a deadlock with no conceivable alternative for escape. Enemies from the front, enemies from the back, what do we do?!

Background Character B looked at me with the most forlorn of expression, asking, almost begging, for an answer to the jaws of death we were fast approaching.

My heaving breaths, the droplets of desperation trickling down my frenzied look were all I had to offer.

But then, an aching sensation, the heavy throbbing of my arm straining the shield's heft brought with it a pallid chance of survival.

I met his eyes again. "Shields… face them forward - keep charging and don't stop. We might just make it."

Horror brimmed his pupils full, and his mouth hung ajar, but I spoke before he could.

"Look, you charge those guys with all you got, understand? You slow down for even one second and you're done - you hear me? Done! Now, shield up and keep your eyes front."

The air I exhaled ushered away all sense of rationality I once had. With a heavy stiffness, I brought my shield to the forefront and braced with both hands in a tight grip, teeth clenched, jaw clamped.

"NOW!" I barked at him, spurring his hesitancy to motion, having him replicate my actions.

Ten meters… five meters… two… one.

I held my breath.

A brutal tremor with no equal, an unrelenting torrent of resistance and force. Kept pushing. The grating of grinding metal, the clangouring of many swords permeating to the open air, orchestrating a painful dissonance with the roars and shrieks contesting beyond our metal shields.

A push and a breath, a push and a breath. Stumbling all the way through the onslaught, like pins in a bowling alley.

Heavy pressure, insurmountable pressure until there finally wasn't anymore. My legs were free to run unhindered, no opposition slamming against my shield.

It actually worked. Holy shit.

I could have laughed out in joy right then, and I would have… had I failed to notice a presence that wasn't with me anymore.

A ear-piercing scream distinct from the growls I already left far behind me froze me to the spot.

I turned, heart heavy, to be the involuntary witness to a swarm of NPCs gathered around a figure laying sprawled, mercilessly stabbing every exposed bit of skin through the gaps of his armor.

"No, stop - STOP IT," I yelled, ready to dive into the horde and drag him out there.

But a movement, a wild senseless gesture halted me in place. Through the mass of limbs that surrounded him, his hand reached through, facing towards me - palm outstretched.

(Stop.)

His hand shook once, as if in insistence.

(Just go.)

He waved at me.

(It's alright.)

His hand fell to the hard floor, laying limp.

I stood there, hands in a closed fist, feeling my fingernails burrow through skin.

Two different options, two choices in a conflict. One spurring me to the left, where escape was still feasible. The other, pleading for me to go right, where death was an open certainty.

Each portion of his health bar was like a tick of a stopwatch, counting away to an eventual end, his end.

What was it I said before?

'You can't save everyone'

So why is it when presented with such a situation, aren't I able to follow through with it? It was so simple to do so back then… when they were just digits plastered across a virtual board.

Tayuma came to mind. Him and his goody noble ways, how foolish I thought it was. So stupid. I still think it was.

Guess a hypocrite does as a hypocrite do.

The shield fell from my hand, a flimsy sword fell from the other. Swiftly, the menu screen appeared before me with a swipe.

A scroll, a touch and it dissipated from sight.

In its place, indistinguishable from any other beginner weapon you'd find, gleamed the edges of the sword hovering before me. Ready for the burden, I reached for the leather hilt.

Immediately it pummeled to the stone floor like a pile of bricks, forming small fissures from the point of impact.

A warning flashed on screen, four words, the same four words each and every time the sword finds itself in my grasp, when choices are gone, when options are none.

<>

"Fuck you," I muttered.

I ran towards the amalgamation of terror, dragging the sword with me across the ground, feeling it burden the joints of my virtual bones.

Within reach. Two hands, a cry of all effort, a straining past limits beyond broken, all just to heave the sword off the ground, to weave it across the air towards its target.

One heavy horizontal slash.

Everything that even resembled a threat was immediately blown back, billowing through the corridor - one after another, colliding with each other like dominoes.

The resonating slam of an innumerable amount of bodies filled the pathway, quiet, unmoving, before the blue shimmering of death reduced all their bodies to dissolving shards of data.

A sliver was left… that small pixelated bit of green was all that was keeping him in the world of the living. Unconscious, probably from shock, still - he was alive.

Relief began coursing through me, and so did a slight smile, "You see that? You watching, Sukuinote? Still... alive."

It was a good feeling, but it wasn't enough to overcome the fading sensation gripping my senses. Everything was beginning to feel like nothing, breathing didn't feel like breathing. I was gonna pass out.

Before absolute fatigue drifted me away to unconsciousness, I had time to look at it, to see my repercussions taking form. That small number indicating my level etched just slightly atop my health bar.

See that number 4 reverting back to a measly 1.

Finally, I fell to the ground.

Background Character B… you owe me big for this.