He swore he heard something. Something dragging across the floor. Or falling. Or a breath.

Was he imagining things?

“Nar,” Tas called. “Come on, don’t fall…”

“Shut up!”

The words sliced through the party as if he used his sword and not his mouth.

Tas frowned at him in surprise. “What?”

Kur inhaled sharply and puffed up his chest. “Nar, what are you…”

Nar turned his baleful gaze on the party leader. Though former party leader might have been a more apt description. “I said, shut up. I heard something.”

Tas stepped forward.

“After everything I…”

Kur stopped him with a hand.

“Wait. Let him listen.”

Nar almost hugged him. For a moment, Kur was Kur again. Standing tall. Serious. In control. Leading.

Nar closed his eyes and focused.

He resisted the urge to shout at Wik to stop tapping his foot, and instead, went deeper into his [Hearing].

He listened for a while, letting the seconds drag by, in tandem with that tapping foot. But he didn’t care. He was going to make sure of what he had, or not had, heard.

He waited.

And waited.

He didn’t hear anything. But he sensed… Something.

It wasn’t [Instinct]. Or at least, it wasn’t the part of his [Instinct] that he had access to, if that even made any sense. However, the more he focused on that feeling, the less willing he was to let go.

“Nar?” Kur asked.

Without asking anyone first, Nar gently shook Jul.

“Jul? Jul, wake up.”

Jul mumbled in his ear.

“What are you doing?” Tas shouted. He pushed past Kur and stomped towards him. “I’ve had it with you!”

“Jul! Wake up! I need you to wake up!”

Her eyes flared open and she gasped.

“Ca-Cannibals!” she breathed.

“Cannibals!” Nar repeated, louder, pointing ahead.

Weapons were in hands in the blink of an eye.

Tuk didn’t even wait for a plan or direction.

A solitary ring shone into the dark ahead of them, and the pile came tumbling loose.

Cannibals screamed in pain. Some yelled and ran at the party, only to be mowed down by Cen’s [Aura Projectile]s.

“Formation!” Kur shouted. “Tuk, don’t stop!”

Nar lowered Jul to the floor and got out his weapon.

As he did, he noticed that Rel was frozen on the spot. She didn’t even have her bow out. She caught him staring and her eyes widened. She stammered something, trying to speak.

Nar felt for her, but right now he didn’t have the time to help her.

However, as he was turning around to check how things were going, Jul grabbed his leg.

“Wait! They’re running away!” she said. “And there’s more behind us!”

Nar whirled to face the back of the party.

“They’re running away too!” Jul said.

“They’re behind us too!” Nar shouted to the others. “But they’re running away! They’re all running away!”

“Tuk, Cen, stop!” Kur shouted. “Gad walk a bit forward. Nar you do the same! Viy, Wik, behind Gad. Mul, go with Nar. Tuk, forward, Cen, back! Jul, come here!”

They scrambled with a certainty of movement and speed they hadn't had in days. There was no hesitation, no thinking, no confusion. Kur spoke, and Nar stepped into the dark, not caring what was in it.

The party leader had spoken.

Finally, he thought. I missed this.

Tas tried to get a word in, but Kur simply raised a hand at his face, silencing him with just that gesture.

“Nar? Jul?” Kur asked.

“Nothing here,” Nar said, scanning the darkness with his full [Sight].

“They’re gone,” Jul confirmed. “They’ve moved beyond my senses.”

“What happened? What did you sense?” Kur asked her.

“There were cannibals in front of us. And behind us. And there were more, on the corridors we’ve just passed. There were a lot of them. So many…”

“Crystal… I-That’s…” Kur stammered, then he took a deep breath. “That’s okay, you did well. They won’t dare come near us, now that we know they’re there. Tuk and Cen won’t allow it.”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Damn right, we won’t!” Tuk said. His tone was dark and grim though, rather than cheering.

“And Nar, good job and good call,” Kur said. “You’ve just saved us all.”

Nar nodded and stared at Kur. “Look at her, she can barely stand.”

“I know. I… See that,” Kur said as he reached out a hand to steady the scout. “You’ll have a good night’s sleep today, Jul. I promise.”

Jul managed a weak smile in response and Kur patted her shoulder.

“What?” Tas asked. “We’re clearly being hunted! They were waiting for us! We need her to…”

“Tas, we’ll speak later,” Kur told him, his tone sharpening.

“But…”

“Later, Tas. I know you’re scared for your party. But we need to keep our heads.”

Tas swallowed hard and stepped back. His shirt was dark with sweat, more than the rest of them in that boiling strange corridor, and the red party leader was panting, and looking about him with wide dark eyes. He looked at Wik, and his face contorted with terror.

Nar felt a pang of solidarity to the guy. It didn’t erase what Nar felt about him, but it at least shifted the anger he felt for the zeibar into an annoyance at himself, Kur, and the others, for having allowed Tas’ fear to infect and affect them all like it had.

“Kur, what do we do?” Gad asked.

Nar almost cried with relief. The tank hadn’t spoken in days! It was like she hadn’t even been there. But now, her shield, her mace, her proud stance at the head of the group, protecting them… He felt his jaw unclench. His frown ease. His shoulders drop.

Maybe, this was the moment they took back control of themselves.

“I don’t know yet,” Kur said. “But Tas is right. This can’t be a coincidence. The cannibals are trying to get us.”

“Let them fucking try,” Mul muttered.

“I think for now, our best option is to keep going forward,” Kur said. “The corridors don’t just follow along with the path. The ones in front of us might still be able to track our path, but we might be able to lose the ones behind us. What do you think?”

He looked at Gad when he asked the question. Not at Tas. And it wasn’t a what should we do question, but what do you think of my plan as a party member type of question.

“I agree,” Gad said. “Seems like our best bet.”

“We’ll do that then,” Kur said quickly, before Tas could interject again. “Jul, I’m sorry, I need to ask you to watch over us until we stop for the night. Or until we can have some certainty that we’ve at least lost the ones behind us.”

“Of course! I’ll do it!” Jul said.

“Thank you, Jul. I’ll be right next to you and I’ll carry you if you get too tired. Tell me how much stamina you have left?”

Nar entrusted Jul into Kur’s care and faced the darkness behind him.

A shiver ran down his spine.

It was good that their party was making a show of getting put back together. But the thought of all those cannibals in the dark. Hungry. Silent. Stalking them and waiting for their chance…

He gripped his sword tighter.

He had been distracted. It had been by pure chance that he had caught on that soft, barely audible sound.

How many more sounds like that did I miss? Or that strange feeling? A crowd like that doesn't move in complete silence! Especially not when they get that close!

He tightened his jaw and held the sword so tight it shook.

I was distracted again! Damn it! Just… Damn it all!

He had sworn he wouldn’t let it happen again, after he had caught himself that one time, days after their big battle to protect the cubeplant. And that was after he had berated himself for allowing it to happen multiple times during the tutorial.

I need to keep my [Hearing] and [Sight] on at all times. That might be the only way of always paying attention. Not at the max, of course, but just enough to know what’s going on around us. I’ll talk with Kur about it. I’m sure he’ll agree that the stamina use is worth it. As for my [Instinct]...

He had assumed thus far that he didn’t need to do anything about that attribute.

Before the mind knows, before the logic asserts, before the rationale is formed, you feel it. In your gut and in your soul. Ignore your instinct at your own danger.

From that, he had thought the attribute to be something apart from him. Something he couldn’t control. He had expected it to grow, to become better and stronger at alerting him of danger. But he hadn’t considered that maybe his [Instinct] was something like his [Sight] and [Hearing]. Something real, tied to his body and mind in the same way as his eyes and ears. Perhaps the connection went even deeper.

… and in your soul.

Perhaps, just like he could focus on his ears and eyes, he could also do the same with his [Instinct]. He just had no idea how.

Jul might know! She can sense from way beyond what I can, and much, much better too.

He almost slapped his forehead. To be fair, the attribute - or maybe he should start thinking of it as an ability, a real sense - was cryptic at best. After Gad had told them about passive skills, he had sort of unconsciously thrown his [Instinct] into that pile. Even during the brief stint of blind fighting he had tried, he had simply aimed at better understanding the attribute, not controlling it.

But now… Now they had almost died.

Now, they were being hunted.

He couldn’t afford to get distracted again. And Jul was exhausted after Tas's disastrous idea. She wouldn’t last long, and it would be up to him to look after the party then.

He knew Jul was important, but up until that point, he had never actually understood just how reliant they were on Jul. He had never stopped to think about what would happen if they couldn’t rely on her, in great part because she was so reliable and infallible. Plus, he had been so obsessed with his failing tanking and DPS prospects, that he had ignored completely that his senses were meant for more than just fighting.

There is a big difference between taking damage for the party and protecting the party.

The words Gad had spoken to him, right after the tutorial’s end, four months back, came to him.

I should’ve been using my senses to watch over us. To protect our party.

To take damage meant simply to stand between the party and a guardian, and let it batter him. But to protect the party meant to warn them when they were about to become food.

And he shouldn’t have allowed a stranger to affect them all like Tas had either.

Fuck! How do I keep messing up like this? He asked himself.

Every time he thought he knew the answer, that he was on the right path, he’d just discover that there was something else he had missed. Some other error he was making. And how many chances was he going to get, before his incompetence ended his Climb?

I need to talk to Kur more. I need to talk to Gad more, and Jul! I’ve been trying to figure this stuff out by myself and I’ve just been making a mess of it. And Tuk! Damn it! I need to talk to Tuk!

It had gone on long enough. He couldn’t deny that Tuk was still bothered by what had happened on that bridge. He had let it go on for far too long, thinking, no, telling himself that Tuk was fine. That he laughed and joked and nothing was amiss. That he just wasn’t tired because they barely had to fight these days. But it had all been an excuse.

He had failed Tuk.

He had seen the signs and had ignored them. Why? Was it for fear of getting too close? He thought he had already overcome that. Was it for having to choose between his dad and the party? It couldn’t be, he had also dealt with that, right? Or, in the end, was it still the old Clean versus Unclean situation? However, he thought he had also resolved that.

Those thoughts were a thing of the past. He had embraced the party. Become one of them. Fully. And he had decided that they, and they alone, mattered at the moment, and that there was nothing he could do for his dad now, nor for the next few years. He also hadn’t thought of them as Clean for a long while now.

So why, why had he not spoken to Tuk? Why had he been so quick to trust Tas? How had he allowed himself to be so blinded to what he was, inadvertently, doing to their party?

Had he just not been as full in as he thought? Was something else still holding him back?

He closed his eyes and shook his head.

Maybe he was being too hard on himself. Maybe he had just not spoken to Tuk because he didn’t know what to tell the trugger. Though maybe, as usual, he over complicated it. What Tuk needed was just someone to tell him it was not his fault, and that it was alright. And he should have told him so from the very beginning…

He took a deep breath.

I’ll talk with Tuk, and knock some sense into Kur, even if it seems like he’s aware of it now. This too is part of my duties to this party. And a way to protect them.

He exhaled, and turned his neck, loosening the tension that had built up on it.

He felt a little better.

He would do better.

He cared for them. For all of them. There really was no issue in that, and at last, he admitted to himself that he did care for them. A lot.

He wanted to get out with all of them. What came after the Climb, he didn’t know, but for now, he had to work hard alongside everyone to bring their party back together.