Readers…

Have you ever eaten peanut butter? If you have, you’ll know how annoyingly sticky and hard to swallow it is.

And as the dark chasm of a gaping mouth opened up in front of me, I knew exactly what to do. I just didn’t know if I could. And if I couldn’t… I just hoped my end was fast.

I opened the skill panel and—

I hit the slimy, humid mouth with a thud and immediately my hands groped around for something to grab onto. My body flung around in the chaotic motions of the mouth and suddenly I felt my arm hit something hard and then—

CRUNCH

My mind blanked and I screamed uncontrollably.

I truly wanted to die and escape from this pain. I wanted to rage against whatever cruel fate had brought me here. I wanted to miraculously tear out of this mouth and slaughter with my bare hands whatever this giant creature was.

I couldn’t even focus on what was in front of me but I fought back the tears in my eyes and forced myself to ignore the crazing pain.

And once again, I was flung around in the mouth.

This time I could feel it. Just as one starts to get a feel for the space in a small, dark room, I too, could sense the space around me.

I could feel myself hurdling through the mouth and onto the teeth that had crushed my arm.

My body flew towards the teeth—

SLAM!

The sound of teeth slamming sounded inside the mouth, but I was completely fine.

The mouth and tongue tried in vain to push me here and there, but I was as sticky and hard to swallow as peanut butter, no, more than peanut butter.

[Skill: Crawler

Description: You can climb on flesh surfaces without getting tired and even if there is nothing to hold onto]

The skill panel hovered in front of me and I wanted to sigh in relief— but I had the irrational fear that if I did, I would die. With each passing moment I could feel my body growing weaker. Damn it. If I wasn’t going to get crushed by this mouth, I was going to die from blood loss.

The last skill slot hovered before me, and I knew what I wanted— a skill that could instantly heal my broken arm.

The gap between the thought and the skill was instantaneous, and I cursed the heavens for the skill that appeared.

[Skill: Anti-Hemorrhage

Description: You bleed out 75% slower]

I didn’t even have the energy to curse out, but I could feel the rate of my weakening slow dramatically.

The next step was completely obvious to me. I knew what I had to do the moment I thought of the phrase ‘peanut butter’.

Even when the mouth rocked and the tongue slapped the wind out of me, I climbed to the back of the giant mouth.

I couldn’t see a thing and had to rely purely on my sense of touch to navigate my fleshy prison. I felt the walls constrict and relax repeatedly around me as I crawled into the throat.

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Behind me, air whooshed into what I presumed to be a small hole and I knew immediately that I’d reached the flap in the throat that lead to the lungs— or its equivalent in this creature.

I wasn’t exactly sure how it worked in reality, but I repeatedly slammed my remaining fist into the flesh walls.

The difference was immediate— the air stopped periodically gushing through.

I could feel the flesh walls harden and I physically felt the increasing difference in air pressure— the growing silence in the air, as if building towards something—

And then I let go—

Immediately, the coming cough came with incredible force and I flew out of the throat and the humid mouth with the force of a cyclone.

I edited my skill just in the nick of time— before I slammed into the rock with a force enough to knock the wind out of me.

Even with my original crawler skill back, I almost slid off the stone.

The cool air of the hall shook and the stone rumbled. Debris fell on me from above and I heard the crushing quakes of rock colliding on rock sporadically around me.

The portal— where’s the portal? Where did I land?

The force of the cough apparently threw me all the way to the arm of the statue and as I I looked up and around, I instantly spotted the shining white portal just a few dozen feet away.

Without a beat of hesitation, and fighting the heavy tiredness that was setting in, I crawled up the stone with only a single arm and my feet.

And when my arm failed to carry me with enough speed, I used my legs to push me up, sliding up the rock like a slug.

A huge crash boomed below me and I didn’t even turn around to look— too scared of what I might see.

The statue itself shook and I winced. Tears streamed down my cheeks involuntarily and I could feel my eyes fiercely bulging out of my sockets. Like a rabid animal I scampered up the stone with such force and intensity that my pants were sanded through and my skin was starting to feel raw.

I didn’t mind.

The portal was right in front of me.

The hall trembled and came crashing down faster.

The screams and cackles became louder and fiercer.

The statue itself trembled and I knew it wouldn’t hold on for long.

CRASH

Something must have broken the statue’s legs— the arm I was running on started to tilt up slowly—

The arm slowly became horizontal and without even thinking, I got up on shaky footing and started to run—

The arm was tilting up faster and faster—

The portal was getting further and further away—

I jumped.

The world ticked by in slow motion.

I didn’t know this feeling was real.

And as I watched it tick by, my eyes grew wide in horror.

In the air, as I flew towards the portal—

I realized I had severely underestimated when I had to jump and had severely undershot it. Now instead of jumping through it, I could only scrape it with my arm.

No. There was still one last thing I could do.

If I could edit my skills I could also delete them. All my skill slots were being used right now so all I had to do was delete one and make a flying skill! Assumptions and limitations be damned.

The skill panel hovered in front of me in the slow motion world and the climber skill disappeared— replaced by another one.

And when I saw the skill that had appeared, I finally confirmed my earlier theory about the limitations of created skills.

All my efforts were in vain.

There was no point in even having tried. I was going to miss the portal with a hundred percent certainty, and there was nothing I could do about it.

I stretched my arm out to the portal. I don’t even know why I did. Maybe a part of me even then didn’t want to go down without a fight. Whatever part of me that was, I felt pity for it…

I had no more words.

No more thoughts.

I just watched my hand approach the warmth of the portal and touch it.

I know I said I had no more thoughts and words. But it seemed fate had other plans for me. Because the moment I touched the portal, the pain disappeared. My entire vision became white. And I was no longer falling.

Somehow, merely touching the portal counted as entering it, and I profusely thanked that part of me that reached out to the portal.

The world of white faded, and I landed on a soft bed of grass. Cloud-filled expanse of blue skies filled my vision.

Without a second thought— I closed my eyes and completely gave into the extreme fatigue and drowsiness, slipping into a world of black, completely uncaring about what happened next.