Fighting on unfamiliar terrain, generally, was a poor idea. In this case, however, most of the terrain was flat. The forest around the city had been cut away in order to see enemies when approaching, and not give monsters breeding grounds.

This also meant that the city guard saw us coming. It was a strange feeling, my perspective shifting as I moved. It was quite a long, uncomfortable run, too. More of a jog, given that the Edians had to keep up.

Despite that, it took some adjusting. When we got close to the monsters, my sight changed. More reflective surfaces entered my range - chitin plates, armor from the guard, and dozens of sets of eyes, and my sight changed, shifted and morphed.

‘Cass?’

[On it.]

The disorientation disappeared a moment later, with the extra vision settling into my head like… a minimap? It brought a small smile to my face.

[Taking quite a bit of processing power. Won’t be able to trigger any abilities for you.]

‘Got it,’ I nodded along. A glimpse at the minimap, which was still somewhat surreal, revealed the amount of monsters in the full scope. My lungs ached. My chest hurt. A grin spread on my face.

My grip on my spear tightened. I spun it in my hand for a moment. Then, the tide of monsters crashed into us.

From one moment to another, my world became a whirlwind of blood and violence. With a rapid flick of my wrist, a bornin was torn in half. A moment later, I cut a torin apart. Magic soared over my head, icicles and fireballs and blocks of stone.

Matt had turned into a whirlwind of death, massacring dozens of weaker monsters with storms of petals. Emilia sent blasts of stone up, spearing monsters and funnelling them away from the weaker fighters. Marie controlled the battlefield by creating thorny patches of vines and sending out exploding arrows.

I decided to quickly put my companions in the back of my mind, focusing on my own fight. This was going to be a test of endurance - I needed to conserve resources. With barely any exertion, I started cycling a consistent, small amount of Qi. Enough for my wellspring to consistently regenerate as much.

The energy coursed through my veins with newfound Skill, giving my skin a metallic sheen. My vision shifted slightly again as it did so, and I smirked as everything within a few meters of me was now within my immediate vision. Apparently that much was possible for my brain to handle.

From behind me, refugees stabbed forward with spears, and I made sure to leave enough room for them to stab, but not enough for monsters to get through.

The second wave of the hoard fell on us, then. Drytz came up from the ground, and were swiftly dispatched by Emilia and our mages’ stone spells. I focused on enemies on the ground, stabbing and slashing and smashing wherever possible.

Some of the monsters got close to me, and with my armor already in tatters, they managed to bite my skin. I didn’t bother to dodge or avoid them. Their fangs slid off my enhanced skin, boosted by my resilience and the power of my [Golden Body]. It was kind of funny, watching a bornin shut its teeth, then open its eyes in confusion when i swung it from my forearm like a club into the other monsters.

My breathing soon grew laboured and I felt my chest burning, but my endurance kept me going. I supplemented for lack of oxygen due to lowered lung capacity with more Qi. Now, my wellspring couldn’t quite keep up anymore, and my capacity would slowly be draining, but that was fine.

I weaved in more [Reflections] into my fighting, to use both my wells to their full potential, marks of claws and fangs appearing on monsters. My Qi coursed through my spear, enhancing it, resonating with it, elongating the blade whenever needed.

With supernatural speed, the weapon stabbed forth, cleaving apart fur, flesh and chitin alike. The tide broke against my steel.

And we kept running. Forward, always forward, into an unending slew of enemies. I cut apart weaker monsters and stronger ones. Scorions began appearing, having come inland from the black sands, and wielding weapons infused with Qi.

Stopping one of their clubs was my first true injury. It was necessary - if I hadn’t the weapon would have slammed down on the Edians behind me, so I raised my spear to block it, digging my feet into the ground, but the shock it sent to my shoulder hurt.

I gritted my teeth with fury, quickly lashing out with the butt of my spear, using golden Qi to simulate a metal spike at its end. It stabbed deep into the scorion’s side, but the things were more sturdy. It took another half dozen exchanges before the giant chimera gave me a chance to carve deeply into it.

But I did it. I defeated one by myself, with only a couple bruises to show for it. If it had been the me of even a few months ago? I could not have won that fight on my own. Now it was a challenge, but not an insurmountable one - even while injured.

The grin on my face grew as I stormed further forwards, keeping pace with the group. Matt and Emilia followed along with my stride, thinning the horde. The city walls were in sight, but we still had plenty of monsters to go through.

Projectiles, magical and mundane, flew overhead. I cut and thrust and broke the monsters approaching me, one after another. Bornins and zurulen and torins, but also the bull headed flying fish like gyuki, that were more common locally, broke against my weapon.

Sometimes, ones passed by me. It was unavoidable. I was… honestly glad that the roaring of monsters drowned out any possible human screeches. My breathing was laboured and my heart beat heavily against my chest. All my organs were reinforced by Qi, too, to handle the blood pressure.

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That familiar weight of burning muscles and exertion settled onto my body, growing more heavy each moment, yet it was not uncomfortable. Familiar, really. Not easy, but… this was an everyday fight. This was doable. Possible.

Up until it suddenly wasn’t anymore.

It began with the trembling of the ground. The earth shaking beneath my feet. I turned to look at Emilia, and she shook her head, moving her mouth. I knew what she was trying to say, “Not me, princess!”, she probably yelled. I didn’t hear it against the monsters.

Then, I looked around. The notion was still useful, despite my ability to tap into other people’s sight. My own was the most familiar. But there was nothing around that should have made the ground shake.

But it happened again, of course it did. More intensely. Then, in an instant, my world suddenly spun.

Now, that… was a strange experience. One moment I stood on stable ground, the next, the world was all sideways. The ground had broken apart into fragments of stone and dirt. Suddenly, I felt multiple pulls on my senses.

First, a simple visual sensation. My body was spinning uncontrollably in the air. Like someone had turned a blender on high settings, except I was the spinning blades. The wind rushing by my ears was almost loud enough to cover up the earth shattering noise of… earth being shattered. Everything was suddenly disoriented.

Secondly, a much more ethereal pull on [Lost and Found]. There was a gateway fragment beneath me, ever so close, only a fingertip away. Only hidden beneath layers and layers of monster skin.

Thirdly… the ground wasn’t coming closer the right way. I was falling upwards. Accelerating upwards.

[Gravity shift detected on you.]

I bit my lips. That confirmed it then.

With a twist of effort I manifested platforms of gold above my feet, soon crashing into them. A shock went through my knees, sending them aching as I caught the momentum of my spin and leapt to the side and down in a desperate maneuver.

Not a moment too late, since a second later, the monstrous maw of an enormous worm closed on my previous location.

Matt and Emilia, too, had been thrown into the air, most of the Edians being launched backwards. I was glad for that. The thing had eyes, a dozen of them in a ring around the maw. Each of them burnt red with fury and hatred, each one glistened with hunger.

I saw Ann in the distance, and a spell settled on me. Suddenly, the pull of the new gravity was less oppressive. I was almost weightless, really, hovering in the air. I smiled.

The usurped below me was already getting closer to the ground again, and with it, gravity on me flipped once more. I was falling now, the gravity affecting me growing heavier and heavier. It increased beyond normal, despite the spell, and a moment later I was plummeting to the ground feeling thrice as heavy as I usually did.

‘Fuck it, COMMIT!!’ I thought, pushing the thought into Qi and towards Matt and Emilia crudely.

Thinking back on it, that might not have been necessary. The battle maniac swordsman was already falling down on the worm with a hungry glint in his eye, and Emilia was falling with her shield in front of her, ready to smash the worm into the ground.

I sent a monumental wave of Qi into my spear, burning through truly prodigious amounts of power in my golden well, turning the blade enormous, twice as long as I was tall, and half that wide again.

A moment later, the three of us crashed into the ground.

Matt landed on top of the worm, his sword stabbing in, and his petals bouncing off. Emilia, on the other hand, landed below, but the ground underneath her turned soft and springy, then she bounced right back up, slamming the rim of her shield into the worm hard enough to make it reel.

I landed last, having been flung up the furthest, cleaving my spear towards the worm. Sudden sideways gravity tore my swing off target, leading to a glancing blow, as the worm’s jaws opened again.

Without any hesitation, I spawned platforms to catch my momentum as the world suddenly flipped sideways again, my eyes and brain struggling to make things match. Suddenly, the floor was like a wall in front of me, a wall full of jaws.

But the bite never came. Instead, sharp stone rose from the ground as tendrils to stab at me. I barely reacted, sidestepping some of them, with Marie blowing one up with an arrow. The explosion pushed me out of the way of yet another, the fight suddenly chaotic.

Then, gravity flipped again for me, just as Matt and Emilia were hacking into the thing. The world spun, and I fell upwards, catching myself and leaping for the worm, which was suddenly rising into the sky.

Once again, jaws approached me. I braced for a bite, when the thing screeched.

My ears instantly bled as splitting pain assaulted my head. My sense of orientation suffered more, setting the world spinning. Then it shifted even more, gravity flipping to the point where the ground was the ground again, with me falling into the still open, still screeching jaws.

With a desperate leap, I jumped to the side, triggering [Reflection] just to be safe and suddenly burning through a quarter of my mirror Qi as a stone spike I hadn’t noticed was returned into the giant worm’s flesh, breaking upon its carapace.

A moment later, I slammed into the ground alongside the creature, Matt still latched onto it, holding onto his sword, his body fluttering like a flag in the wind as gravity acting on him constantly shifted.

Emilia was already waiting below, making each step heavily and with exertion, but when I threatened to land on my back, she caught me in her arms, grunting with the effort. Still, she shot me a grin.

“Didn’t expect to end up carrying you here,” she said, or so Cass relayed to me. She was using my own vision to analyze her lip movements, since I could barely focus enough for it.

Instead, I relied on my combat instincts, spinning in the air, and somehow placing a foot against Emilia’s hand. With a wide grin, the amazoness tossed me, against the force of much more than tripled gravity, at the worm.

Once again, wind rushed against my ears, and I moved too quickly for gravity changes to matter, swinging my spear and imbuing it with yet another massive chunk of Qi.

The worm tried to wrangle its body out of the way, but failed, shadows wrapping around it for a moment and digging into its stone hard skin. Then, my blow made contact.

Stone shattered against my metal, the enormously enlarged weapon gouging deep into the worm’s flesh. The thing screeched again, giving me a splitting headache, but I simply drew back and swung again, shaping my Qi as a glaive and cutting deep into the thing.

More of its power focused on me, my body suddenly falling sideways, unstable, then plummeting downwards hard enough to crack the ground as I smashed into it. With a gasp all air was driven from my pitiful lungs. Rocks dug into my open wounds and I felt blood pool in my mouth again.

Then, there was an enormous crash and a light so bright it seared my eyes. I knew it, instantly. A howling firestorm raged across the worm, with Matt in its centre, his petals joining in.

Blazing flames and razor sharp petals simultaneously assaulted the worm, digging into its hard exterior, slowly tearing it apart. But it wasn’t perfect. The gouges I had left suddenly became exploitable, both fire and petals digging into the wounds, turning clean cuts jagged and burnt.

It only lasted for a few moments, but I would’ve sworn the fire was so hot it burnt white rather than red. The moment it was gone, Emilia jumped in again. Her own mace was reinforced with the power of stone, slamming into the creature’s maw and shattering part of it entirely, the damaged stone breaking apart under her manipulation.

A warm hand laid itself on my shoulder, then I could suddenly breathe again, and hear again. The next moment I was on my feet once more. Another spell wove into the first one, this one making me stronger and faster, alongside the Qi burning through my veins. Another second later, I was racing at the worm again.