Nora stopped in her tracks. Looking into his eyes made it quite obvious that he was thinking of something more extreme. “Anything!” she said slowly, not breaking eye contact. Her behavior was a pure, and direct, provocation to his address.

Gorn was surprised by her daring behavior. Usually, she leaned more to the quiet side. Then again, if he really thought about it, he didn’t know her that well. After all, the time they spent together was very little.

Judging from her expression, she clearly knew the meaning behind those words. ‘Man, this is starting to get really tough.’

The corners of his mouth widened, and Gorn started to laugh out-loud with great pleasure. On his right side of the neck appeared a few black lines that started to slowly grow. His shadow extended, grabbing Nora by the hands, and by the legs. At the same time, her mouth was also covered by the shadow as it gradually brought her body forward.

Gorn looked at Nora with a weird smile plastered across his face. Extending his hand, he touched her leg with one of his fingers, and slowly went up towards her belly, breasts, and collar bone. In the next moment, he grabbed her by the neck without applying any noticeable force.

Nora started to shake slightly, and her eyes betrayed fear. Gorn released the grip, and withdrew his shadow. She fell to the ground, then quickly retreated a few steps, alarm visible across her face, and body.

Silence.

A few bizarre moments followed. No one said anything, while eye contact was maintained at all time. The nearby vegetation was rustling under the force of the increasing wind, and sounds of distant monsters were present every few seconds. Unfortunately, all that had no power to break the current eerie atmosphere.

Suddenly, a large snake appeared next to them. It had sensed the intruders, and decided to check them up. With a length of six meters, and the thickness of a full-grown human male, the snake made quite the ruckus while it slithered closer and closer.

Gorn disappeared from Nora’s sight. In the next moment, he was above the snake’s head. His shadow moved at lightning speed, immobilizing the opponent. Using his bare fists, Gorn started to pummel the snake’s head with great force.

The creature trashed madly, trying to break free with everything it had. Sadly, its struggle became less, and less intense by the second. The body of the snake started to dry up at a speed visible to the naked eye. In just a few short moments, it became a motionless corpse.

Normally, the body of a snake would still twitch after its death. This one, however, came to a complete stop, resembling a mummy more than anything else.

‘What the hell is happening?!’ Nora was afraid, and panic started to kick in. She had absolutely no idea what was going on.

Gorn just stood there. ‘Calm down! Calm down! Calm down!’ the same words were repeated inside his head time and time again. He was trying his best to relax, and not do anything stupid. Blood was rapidly flowing throughout his entire body, and his heart was beating frantically. All his senses were heightened, and his emotions erratic.

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‘Should I run?’ thought Nora, unsure on what to do. With her current power level, the chances of survival were somewhat decent. ‘What about Gorn, what if he needs my help?’ she quickly gave up on the idea of running. Abandoning her benefactor was not an option she wanted to pick. Since she did not know what actions to take, Nora just stood there, paying extreme attention to everything that was happening in her surroundings. She was preparing to act if the situation required it.

Sure enough, after a few more minutes, another snake made its appearance. After briefly analyzing the situation, the reptile decided to attack. Since Gorn was the closest, it went for him.

Gorn was still struggling with his emotions, so he failed to notice the approaching danger.

“Look out!” yelled Nora. Her words, though, seemed to fall on deaf ears. “Shit!”

Almost instinctively, her body ran towards Gorn, slamming into him. The speed, and the force used, was enough to send the two of them tumbling tens of meters away, avoiding the snake’s attack.

“Are you ok?!” her words could not reach him still. Gorn was currently in a daze, seemingly unable to react to the outside. His eyes were unfocused, and his posture slightly bent.

Nora had no clues about what could be wrong with him, nor had she any time to ponder over that aspect. After a brief pause, the enormous snake turned and slithered towards them yet again.

The little free time that she had was spent trying to make Gorn snap out of his peculiar situation. Now, facing another attack, she could only grab his body and jump to the side yet again. Her hair had now multiple twigs, and leaves in it, making for quite the funny appearance.

That aside, this time, she seized Gorn’s body again, and like a sack of potatoes, threw it over her shoulder. Using the vast amounts of adrenaline, Nora took off towards the first enormous tree that was in her line of sight.

The snake was in hot-pursuit.

‘I don’t want to die!’ fear of death made her body perform at its peak capabilities. In spite of this, the snake was slightly faster, and it quickly caught up, attacking yet again.

Nora was forced to jump to the side vehemently. This allowed her to narrowly avoid the attacks. The downside was that she had very little control of the place where she landed at. To make it worse, due to the brutal way of evading, Gorn’s body would often fly away from her grasp.

‘No!’ yelled Nora inside her mind, seeing Gorn tumbling away a few dozen meters. With great urgency, she ran towards his direction, and grabbed him yet again, before resuming her mad attempt at escaping.

To make things worse, another snake made its appearance, and started to collaborate with the first one. At this point, despair came in full swing. Out of nowhere, things quickly escalated to this point.

Jumping yet again to the side, Nora evaded a direct attack. This time, however, with the appearance of another opponent, the situation became a little more than what she could handle. The second snake attacked from a different angle, taking full advantage of her bad positioning.

Seeing the huge mouth of that monster drawing closer, and closer, to her was an awful experience. ‘I can’t avoid it!’ was her only though at that moment.

Suddenly, Gorn’s shadow extended on its own, deflecting the surprise attack. The situation was very unexpected, nonetheless, Nora acted swiftly, taking this good chance to change her stance, and run away.

That tree seemed to be awfully far away. Dodging miserably, she kept running. When the situation appeared to be hopeless, the shadow acted independently, saving both of them from certain death.

The same situation happened multiple times until Nora finally reached the tree trunk, and started to madly climb it. Unfortunately, she could not hold Gorn in a very comfortable position. This time, she held him by one hand, his body colliding with the tree bark as she was going higher, and higher.

The snake duo followed them for a hundred meters upwards, before, finally, giving up. Apparently, they weren’t very fond of tree climbing, nor were their bodies designed for such feet.