Sarah had been walking through the ruined city for quite a while now. And even though the sun wasn’t visible through the weirdly colorful sky, the natural light started to dim after a while. The strangest part was that even though there was barely any light anymore, everything was still perfectly visible. This place got stranger and stranger by the minute.

During her scouting, she hadn’t encountered even one living creature, not even a plant. She had sharpened her physical and magical senses to the extreme, but nothing popped up. The eerie silence of her surroundings started to get to her, and she started to imagine sounds in the distance. It was unnerving.

Every now and again, she would come by especially weird parts of the city. Some of the houses looked like they had been melted down and cooled again in only a few seconds. They twisted and bent into impossible shapes in the air. Some parts of them were even suspended in midair, as if they had forgotten to fall down. It looked straight out of a bad fever dream.

A loud humming sound assaulted her ears suddenly, and she tried hard to ignore it. These imaginary sounds got worse by the minute. As the sound got louder and more erratic, she noticed, that this wasn't what she imagined.

She looked around in alarm to see the source of it. But there was nothing around her. Because she couldn’t find anything, she looked up into the sky. And was once again flabbergasted.

The gently flowing strings of color started to bulge and twist above her, and an especially thick, red string started to slowly flow down. Only now the sky started to look three-dimensional.

The humming sound got more erratic and loud, and Sarah held her hands over her ears. The thick red string flowed lower and lower until it gently touched one of the buildings.

The color didn’t fully block her sight, and she could see what happened to the structure underneath it. The building started to twist and turn like it was alive. Now she knew what the heck had happened to these weirdly shaped structures. And the red string came lower by the second.

"This is not good." Sarah mumbled in shock and started to run away. But it was no use. The red string was huge and started to block out more and more of the sky.

Sarah slid to a halt and looked around her. "There!" She shouted and went over to a hole in the ground. There were better things in life than to delve into unstable constructions. But it was definitely better than being bent out of shape by a weird energy string.

Sarah looked up again, only to see that the string was even closer by now. Way too close. As there was no more time to lose, Sarah jumped inside the hole and slid out her claws.

She scratched over the surface, which tugged painfully at the roots of her claws. After a few seconds, she came to a grinding halt, and she clenched her teeth against the pain. But it wasn’t over yet. The humming got closer.

With shock, she saw that the red energy started to push inside the hole from above. With no other choice, Sarah started jumping from one wall to the next. It was very painful, and she more than once bumped into outcroppings.

After another leap, there was no wall anymore. Crying out in fright, she fell down and crashed to the ground. Sarah groaned in pain but forced herself to look up again. She could still see the red string through the hole in the ceiling, but it didn’t come down any further.

With a sigh of relief, she let the tension flow out of her body. And with it came the pain. She looked down at her body and saw several bruises and open wounds. It wasn’t very bad, but it was definitely painful.

The problem was her left hand. The claw on her thumb was more or less ripped out and was only slightly attached to her finger. She tried to retract it like her other claws, but was met with stinging pain.

"Fuck, this is horrible!" She groaned and gently grasped the useless claw with her other hand. She gritted her teeth, and ripped it out.

Searing pain erupted in her thumb, and she let out a small whimper. "Why do the fingers need to be so sensitive?" She mumbled through her gritted teeth and took a deep breath to calm herself again. After some time, the pain reduced a lot, and her finger didn’t even bleed anymore.

Sarah breathed out in exhaustion and started to take in her surroundings. There was life. Everywhere.

Her senses bombarded her with information about the different little creatures surrounding her. There was also a literal carpet of plants with dense magic inside of it. Her immediate surroundings were void of any life, though, probably due to their close proximity to the hole in the ceiling.

Thinking about the horrifying red string of twisting death, it made a lot of sense that nothing could live on the surface.

Still holding her injured finger, she inspected the life forms around her more closely. Every surface was covered in a turquoise moss-like plant, with glowing yellow flowers growing out of it here and there. On top of the moss, giant snails were crawling around and happily munching away at the moss. There were also lots of little flies flying from one flower to the next. Apart from these three life forms, there was nothing else here.

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Creeping closer, Sarah inspected the giant snails in more detail. Their shells came just below her waist, and their giant eyes were as big as her fists. They were gently glowing a brownish color, and she could even see parts of their organs through their semi-translucent flesh. A thick mucus covered their skin, and they left trails of it behind them.

Sarah’s face contorted a little. "Ugh, this looks so gross." But it was still necessary to test whether the system counted the snails as enemies. If so, then this quest would be very easy.

Because she didn’t want to touch the slimy things, she reached out with her mind. There was very little nerve activity in the snails, but trying couldn’t hurt. Sarah tried to mess with their brains and nerve systems, but the snails only shuddered a little in response. They didn’t even stop eating.

With a frustrated groan, Sarah got a little closer. More testing was needed. She opened her mouth wide and covered the snail in her acid breath. And then… nothing. The moss, the snails, and even the flies were completely unaffected by it. Sarah was getting worried by now. Two of her attack possibilities were rendered useless.

The next step was to test her poison. Her tail shot forward with lightning speed and punctured the snail in front of her, which finally showed some reaction. It quickly pulled itself inside its shell and closed the opening.

Sarah inspected the tip of her tail, only to see that it was slightly sizzling. Those snails seemed to be acidic. Just great.

Sarah waited for some time until blackened goo started to flow out underneath the shell. After some more time, the shell just fell to the side, and Sarah could see the shriveled remains of the snail inside. The once brownish, glowing flesh was now blackened, and the glow had faded. Looked pretty much dead to her. At least her poison was somewhat useful.

But contrary to her hopes, the system didn’t count the snail as an enemy. "It would have been too good to be true." She mumbled dejectedly and scooped up a bit of the blackened flesh. She gagged a little when she felt the slimy consistency of it, but she forced herself to take a bite.

She gagged some more when she tasted it. Not only was it sizzling wildly in her mouth, proving her assumption of it being acidic, but it even tasted unimaginably horrible. Not even Andrew’s cooking came close.

But as horrible as it tasted, it topped her MP off in one instance. These snails were practically walking… no slithering packs of magic power. The problem was that Melissa probably couldn’t eat this stuff. She even hurt herself a little while eating it. She had to find another source of food. And more importantly, water. But seeing as there was abundant life surrounding her, there had to be some source of water somewhere.

To get used to the horrible taste, Sarah started to eat more and more of the snail. She had hoped that the taste would become more bearable after a while. It didn’t.

Sarah looked at the system message with annoyance in her face. She would definitely not want to become slimy. It didn’t matter how strong it would make her; snail mutations were off the table.

Sarah shook off the disgust she felt and decided to just go somewhere at random. There were a total of five tunnel entrances at this place, and she had no way of knowing what she would encounter. So she just walked to where she was looking at the moment and started sneaking forward.

All her senses were on high alert, and the sheer amount of information her brain was battered with was almost too much to process. But only almost. This was the first time she had the magic sense activated for so long, as it was exhausting for her brain. But to her pleasant surprise, it felt more and more normal the longer she used it.

She walked through the winding tunnel for a long time, snacking on a snail here and there, until she got into some kind of cave. She wasn’t quite sure if this place was natural or not because everything was covered in moss. The only new organisms in this cavern were big mushrooms here and there. They would be big enough for her to sit on them.

"They look so soft and squishy." Sarah mumbled with a longing look in her eyes. They really looked softer than anything else she had experienced until now. Except maybe for Melissa’s hug.

While she basked in the precious memory, something big jumped at her from the ceiling. It was incredibly fast and stretched out its claws to dig into Sarah’s unprotected backside. To its surprise, its prey moved even faster than itself and stabbed something in its stomach.

Sarah punched the creature in the face with an evil grin on her face and pulled out the tail, which was still stuck in its stomach. It tried to lash out at her, but she swatted away its hand like a fly.

The creature sprang back a short distance and snarled at her. Only now Sarah had the time to take a closer look at it. The creature looked vaguely humanoid. It had black, slimy skin and looked at her with disgustingly big, yellow eyes. Its arms were way longer than its legs, and it stood hunched over on all fours. Its open mouth showed rows of sharp and long teeth.

"Disgusting." Sarah said with a contorted face. "Why does everything here have to be so gross? Can’t there be something tasty-looking?"

The creature seemed confused for a moment but pulled itself together and tried to run away. But it seemed to have trouble walking and stumbled every now and again.

Sarah grinned and leisurely started following it. It didn’t take long for it to reach a hidden tunnel behind a carpet of moss. But before it could enter, Sarah pounced on it.

"Is that where your friends are? Thanks for showing me." Sarah purred and started breaking its limbs one by one. The creature wanted to scream, but only a bubbling sound came out of it. It seemed like Sarah had hit right into its organs with her poison tail.

She turned it around and started studying it some more. It still tried to crawl away from her, but every time it got some distance away, she just dragged it back.

It was breathing haggardly by now, and yellow foam started to come out of its mouth. After some more time, it wasn’t able to crawl anymore and just looked at her with hate-filled eyes.

Sarah had concentrated on it for the whole time, all her senses on high alert. But she hadn’t felt anything. No indication of mind or soul invasion. Not even the smallest flare of magic power inside the hideous body.

Satisfied with her observation, she stomped on the throat of the creature and shattered its neck. Its body jerked up one last time and lay completely still afterwards.

Fire burned in Sarah’s eyes while she grinned her sharp-toothed smile. As hard as it was for her, she had to suppress her fighting fever for now. First, she had to make sure that Melissa wouldn’t starve to death. So she scratched a few marks into the tunnel and looked at the remains of her foe with a frown on her face.

"I guess I need to try eating you too."