“Up! Up! Up!” Kur shouted the next morning. “I warned you guys that there would be no sleeping in.”

A chorus of groans and half-woken mutters met his words.

“Come on, come on!” Kur said. “We’ve got another amazing day of walking through these same corridors we’ve been in for the past month, and fighting some more crazy, deadly guardians that will kill us at the slightest slip up!”

Ugh… Really? That’s your way of getting us up?

Nar pushed himself up into a seating position.

His heart pounded on his temples, and he watched Kur shaking Tuk with an evil grin, as though it was someone else watching the scene.

“Five more minutes?” Jul asked, from next to him.

Kur heard her and stalked over. For a moment, his devious smile faltered.

Jul had laughed and talked quite a bit during the previous night’s celebrations. She had still been the quietest, not considering Viy, but the difference between her now and a few months past was astonishing.

“No, sorry Jul, up we go,” Kur said, leaning down to gently tap her forehead.

“Okay, okay! I’m getting up!” she said, swatting his hand away.

Kur chuckled and moved along. A couple seconds later, Mul swore and threatened Kur with pushing his fist up where the yellow arrows didn’t shine. Knuckle dusters and everything.

Nar closed his eyes and considered laying back down. The extra minute or two he might get before Kur came around sounded worth it. Regardless of what Kur might do to him.

“Up!” Jul shouted, a grumpy look to her half-open eyes. “Up!”

Nar frowned at her.

“Alright. Alright. Damn. How’d you change sides so fast? Brown nose.”

She kicked him.

“No! Guardians!”

He went from shocked and mildly amused that she had actually found it in herself to kick him, to bolting upright, sword in hand, in the space of a heartbeat.

“Guardians!” he shouted, louder than her. “Get up!”

That got everyone’s attention.

“Which way?” Nar asked her. His heartbeat galloped in his chest, blowing away the last vestiges of sleep.

“From the front!”

Nar dashed forward. He passed by Gad, who was still getting up.

“I’ll be there in a second!” she shouted.

But they didn’t have a second.

Bolts flew at the party, and Nar jumped into them. He parried, and twisted, and reached, but he missed a good number of them. More than usual.

What in the pile? he thought, finding it strange.

“Watch out!” Jul cried in warning.

The party, who had been in the middle of getting up, flattened back down out of force of habit.

“Nar?” Kur asked.

But Nar didn’t have time to reply. Another volley came at him and he dashed to stop it. Again, he missed a good number.

Hold on, how many was that?

“Nar? We can’t get up!” Kur shouted again.

Another volley whistled from the darkness, barely a second of difference from the previous one. That solidified his suspicion.

“There's more than one!” he shouted. “There’s too many bolts!”

“Cen!” Kur shouted.

Cen didn’t reply. She got up, risking a bolt through the head, and focused. Kur crawled to her, and lifted his shield to give her some cover.

More bolts flew at them, and Nar did his best. He moved even faster than he had before, faster than he had thought possible, pushed by necessity and the images of the entire party being put under by the endless stream of bolts.

“Nar, cover me! I’ll join you!” Gad shouted.

“No! Too many! Even with the shield!” he shouted back.

They couldn’t risk Gad, of all people, going down in the middle of a fight.

“I’m ready!” Cen shouted.

“Nar, on the count of three you drop!”

Nar didn’t reply. The bolts were relentless and it felt like there were even more of them now.

“One!”

Nar spun and twisted like a madman, throwing his sword right and left, up and down. No finesse, no technique. Just pure desperation, [Instinct] and [Reflex].

“Two!”

The [Speed] at which he was going was beyond what he had ever gone. His own sword was a blur to his own eyes, but somehow, it was a blur that made sense to him.

“Three!”

Bolts whistled above his head as Nar dropped.

Cen’s [Aura Projectile] shone past him and Nar followed it to see what in the Nexus was attacking them.

That split-second of light before the explosion made his stomach twist.

“Nar!” Kur shouted, once the explosion shockwaves had passed them. “What did you see?”

“There’s a soldier blocking the way!” he shouted. “It was covering the poisoners behind it.”

“So I only hit the soldier?” Cen asked.

“I think so!”

If only the damn notifications told me the kills as they happened!

Bolts flew over him, ending any doubts.

“They looked bigger too,” Nar continued. “They shoot more and faster! And there’s lots of the little guys! The whole floor was covered with them!”

“Crystal…” Kur muttered.

“Fucking figures!” Mul shouted. “Just when we’d gotten the hang of things, the fucking System needs to be an asshole!”

“Mul!” Cen shouted. “Not helping!”

“Bah!”

“What do we do?” Nar asked.

The bolts kept coming, and he had no doubt that soon the poisoners would aim at the floor and hit them.

“Tuk, you’re up!” Kur shouted. “Gad, cover him! And be careful! Nar, stop as many as you can!”

Nar bolted upright in the slim space between volleys, and was ready to get to work on the one following behind it.

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He didn’t know if the bolts were faster, or if it was just the continuous pace and increased numbers that made parrying them more difficult. He tried to not overthink it, and it wasn’t hard. He barely had time to catch a breath in between volleys, before he was on the move again to face the next.

Without warning, Tuk’s ring silently glided past him. Nar held onto his focus and ignored it, and two seconds later, the sound of breaking metal reached his ears.

“You got one!” Jul shouted.

But before they could celebrate, Nar heard the sound of a lot of legs. A sound that grew dimmer.

“They’re running away!” he shouted.

“Quick! After them!” Kur ordered. “We can’t let them join up with another group!”

“Behind us!” Jul shouted.

Luckily, Gad was already up, otherwise the rolling soldier would’ve pulverized the entire party.

“Agh!”

She pushed the shield against the rolling guardian, matching her [Strength] against the machine’s.

[Instinct] prickled the back of his neck and Nar spun to parry the volley that came at them. It was a lot of bolts to stop. Too many.

“Another one has joined in!” Nar shouted. It was the only explanation. And they were shooting from even farther than before.

The party was trapped.

“We need to get out of here!” Kur said.

With so much happening, it was only a matter of time before someone got hit. And that soldier guardian would wait for the perfect moment to trigger its anti-aggro ability. So far, they hadn’t come up with a good solution for it, especially with Nar, their secondary tank, tied in with the bolts.

“Nar, you need to stop those poisoners. Take Jul and Tuk with you!”

“You’ll have no senses!” Jul said.

“We’ll have the arrows! They won’t be able to see anything without you!”

Nar heard Tuk come up to him.

“Right behind you. Where do you need me?”

“Just shoot and stay right behind me!” Nar shouted, parrying more bolts. “Aim low! You’ll hit something!”

Tuk bent down and threw his ring knee high. The disc of light flew into the darkness and Nar heard the sound of things breaking above that of the frenzy of the adjutants reloading and the poisoners shooting.

“You hit something! Keep it up!”

But the guardians ran back again.

“It’s too far!” Tuk said.

“Jul?”

“I’m here!”

“We have to get in there!” Nar shouted, pointing at the darkness with his sword.

“Just go! I'll guide you!” she said.

Nar ran forward, followed closely by the other two. For a few seconds, they ran unimpeded, and the darkness swallowed them.

It didn’t last long though, and his [Instinct] let him know that the guardians had taken up a new position and were resuming their attack.

“Get behind me!”

If he only needed to cover a smaller area, he was confident that he could stop every bolt that mattered, even as his [Sight] faded away, and he was forced to rely on his [Hearing] and [Instinct] to sustain his [Reflex].

Behind him, Jul blasted Tuk with instructions, and soon, his ring was flying again, shining down the corridor. This time, the breaking sounds were lower and lesser. The bolts kept coming, which meant he had missed.

“Damn it!” Tuk said.

“It moved at the last second!” Jul told him. “Do it again, a bit more to the left!”

The ring hit true this time, and once again the guardians withdrew.

“Let’s go!” Tuk shouted.

“No, wait!” Nar said.

He looked behind him. The light of the path was just a vague impression behind them, the sounds of the others fighting reaching them from afar.

“If we go too far, we could lose them!” Nar warned.

“Shit! What do we do?” Tuk asked.

The guardians shot them again.

“Damn it! No choice!” Nar said.

The trio dashed through the darkness.

“Watch out!” Jul said. “Broken bits!”

Both Nar and Tuk tripped and almost went down, but somehow, they managed to keep going, and Nar managed to keep them alive.

This time, the guardian didn’t wait for Tuk to shoot back. They turned and ran for it just as they were getting into range again.

“They’re dragging us farther and farther!” Nar said.

“Maybe we should go back?” Tuk asked. “They could get behind us and attack the others!”

Nar gasped. “I didn’t think of that!”

Jul gripped his arm and stopped him from turning back.

“Wait! I sense something…”

“What is it?” Nar asked.

His heart hammered and his feet itched to run. Tuk had been absolutely right. Splitting the party could’ve been the guardians’ plan all along. Poisoners might be attacking the others right at that very moment. Or a soldier guardian could be waiting in the dark, silently, to surprise them, as they got farther and farther from the others.

And he knew he couldn’t hold back one of those big guardians like Gad did. Not yet.

He tried to break free from her grip, but she held him tight.

“Jul…”

“Wait! Wait! It’s important!” she hissed at him. “Don’t you trust me?”

The accusation cooled his panic, and some rational thought managed to take hold.

“I’m sorry… I was just…”

“I know, me too! But this is something really important,” she said.

“What is it?” Tuk asked, out of breath.

“I don’t know. I just have this strong feeling that we need to keep going. No! I’m sure of it!”

Her grip grew tighter on Nar’s arm, hurting him.

“There’s something up ahead, and we need to get there! We can’t let the guardians stop us, or it's all over!”

The strength of her conviction and all the times she had guided them true, made the decision easy for him.

“Ok! Let’s go!”

“Just like that?” Tuk asked. “What about the others?”

“Every time we ignore Jul, shit happens,” Nar said. “We’re going!”

He patted her hand to make her let go.

“I trust you! Come on!”

“My Crystal, have mercy on us!” Tuk said, as he ran after the two of them.

The poisoners kept shooting them. They would stop, fire, then run again.

Tuk threw his ring at them, again and again, but he had no luck. It was harder for him to attack while running, and he couldn’t get a good read on the guardians’ movements in that pitch darkness, even with Jul’s guidance. Plus, he couldn’t channel his [Aura] as well while on the move either.

Suddenly, the bolts flying at Nar increased.

“There’s more!” Jul shouted before he could. “Two more!”

“I can’t keep this up forever!” Nar said, in between gritted teeth.

“Tuk, shoot! They’re hanging from the ceiling too! You’ll hit something!” Jul said.

Tuk filled his ring with [Aura] and launched it again. Nar didn’t know what he did, or how he threw the ring, but this time, a lot of things broke.

“You got two! One on the floor and one on the ceiling!” Jul said. “And a lot of the little guys!”

“Yeah!” Tuk shouted.

Jul slapped Nar’s back.

“Come on, keep going! We’re almost there!”

Nar ran at the confusion of guardians. The bolts had stopped coming, and he assumed that getting their broken comrades to drop on top of them had caught them by surprise.

He leaped the rest of the way, his sword raised far behind him. He heard the quick panicked sounds of metal scraping on metal, of things falling and tumbling.

His [Instinct] remained silent.

He took the gamble.

He pulled the sword back in, on a wide arc, pouring all of his [Strength] into it. His left foot crunched on something, and [Instinct] blared. He was committed now, however. He twisted his front foot, and the one in the back lifted off the floor as his weight shifted. His torso caught the movement of his legs and he spun with it, transferring the momentum of his charge into his arm.

The sword sliced hard and fast, from one end of the corridor to the other. He barely registered any resistance. It felt like cutting through a cracker.

“You-You got them!” Jul shouted, her tone astonished.

But Nar still heard the adjutants scuttling around him. He shouted and bashed them with the sword. The adjutants were bigger than the baby guardians had been, so he couldn’t just stomp on them. However, he easily made quick work of them with his sword, hammering down on them without pause.

At some point, he found himself screaming at the top of his lungs, as things broke around him, splattering him in hot goo.

“Stop!” Jul shouted. “Stop! They’re running away! Come on! We’re almost there!”

The sound of their hard breathing filled the corridor, together with the scuttle of the small guardians fleeing before them.

Suddenly more bolts flew at them.

“Argh! When is this going to end!” Nar shouted after the volley.

“Don’t stop!” Jul said. “I can see the light!”

Light?

How was that possible?

The question spurred Nar to run even faster, headlong into the bolts flying non-stop at them.

He gasped.

I see it too!

It was vague, but it was growing.

Soon, the light had formed a bright square that beckoned them out of the darkness.

“I see them!” Tuk said, as the silhouettes of the poisoners became visible in the light. “Let me shoot them!”

They stopped and Tuk charged his ring. His charging time was much faster than Cen’s, and in a second, the ring flew out ahead of them. It went through one of the poisoners first, and then, after curving gracefully backwards, it went through the other.

Tuk grabbed it from the air, slipping it straight into his finger, never stopping the spinning motion of it. He did it with a confidence that had been hard earned.

“Come on! Let’s see what’s ahead!” he said.

They ran the last few hundred feet.

The light grew and grew, forcing Nar to half-close his eyes.

Sounds roared down the corridor to them. Sounds that Nar recognized.

“Is that a fight?” Tuk asked.

A prompt appeared.

You have found an in-progress quest!

You have joined the quest, Cross the Chasm.

They burst into the light, and the fight that raged within it.

It was a big and almost completely circular room. On the circular wall, twenty equal looking corridors opened onto the room, and on the smaller, flat side, a line of maybe three dozen people stood against five soldier guardians.

Behind the soldiers, with their backs to Nar, was a mass of poisoners and adjutants, firing into the front line. Above them was a tube. It was maybe 10-feet in diameter, and looked to be made of the same material as the walls.

“By the Crystal!” Tuk shouted, “Those are Climbers!”

The window went away, and another one replaced it.

Cross the Chasm

Common

Reward: Access to the Mid-Levels of the Between Nexus

You’ve made it past the gauntlet!

Only the chasm blocks your progress from the Upper Depths and into the Mid-Levels of the Between Nexus.

Join the other Climbers and cross the bridge! You will be one step closer to your goal!

This is the only way up!

You cannot decline this quest.

Nar sucked in his breath.

The Mid-Levels! This is…

Explosions filled the air.

Flames rose behind the line of Climbers, and desperate, pain-filled screams reached them, hinting at the presence of many more Climbers, hidden from view.

“What in the pile is going on back there?” Tuk whispered.

“Hey, you there! You three!”

A voice called out from the defenders and Nar searched for its source.

A woman, a human, with dull light red hair, waved her scepter at them.

“Yes! You!” she said. “Don’t just stand there! Do something about those poisoners!”

Nar blinked.

“Is-Is she talking to us?” he asked the others.

“I… Think so?” Tuk asked, just as stunned as he was.

“Hey! Can’t you hear me?” she shouted again.

“What do we do?” Jul asked.

Nar shook his head. “I have no idea…”