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I retreated into a narrow alcove I’d noticed earlier, tucked into the jagged walls of the passage leading to the Overlord’s cavern. The space was tight, barely enough to sit comfortably, but it was far enough from the main cavern that the oppressive growls and hisses faded to a dull background hum. I sank against the stone, its cold surface pressing into my back, and let out a long, shuddering breath.
The flicker of a torch broke the darkness as I lit it, setting it down beside me. The soft, wavering glow was a fragile comfort in the suffocating black, just enough to hold the shadows at bay without drawing too much attention. The tight space felt like a coffin, but it was a temporary reprieve—a pocket of stillness in this endless storm of monsters and madness.
My hands shook as I pulled out my diary, the worn leather cover a small anchor to sanity. It was battered, stained from countless encounters, but it held every plan, every strategy, every desperate scribble that had gotten me this far. I flipped to a blank page, gripping my pencil tightly.
“Alright, Lexi,” I murmured, steadying my breathing. “Think.”
I began by sketching a rough outline of the boss’s cave, marking the edges, trying to capture the scope of the space from memory. In the center, I drew the pillar, thick lines to represent the pulsing, ominous energy that radiated from it.
The Overlord was next, coiled around the base of the pillar like a nightmare come to life. I sketched a large skull over its figure, shading it heavily to capture its presence, its sheer size, its aura of authority and threat. Even on paper, the figure seemed to loom, larger than life, a reminder of what lay between me and my escape.
I paused, pressing the pencil’s point against the page as I mentally retraced my steps through the cavern.
About some distance out from the Overlord, I marked a smaller skull—one of the elites I’d seen clustered around, their heads tilted up, drinking in the energy like leeches. I circled the skull, drawing faint lines radiating outward, trying to capture the way those creatures.
With a grimace finally, I added dots to represent the swarming lesser monsters—the chaotic horde that filled every crevice of the cavern.
Finally, I extended a line from the pillar to the right side of the cavern, where I’d seen the trickling water. I marked the wall with an “X” to indicate where I believed the exit was hidden. I estimated the distance—maybe 200 meters from the Overlord, give or take a few, but I had no way of knowing for sure. It was a guess, based on little more than intuition and memory, but it would have to be close enough.
I sat back, staring at the map as the torchlight danced over it. My makeshift blueprint of hell.
“Fucking great,” I muttered, rubbing my temple. “How the hell am I supposed to get through that?”
“Yeah,” I muttered, almost to myself, a humorless smirk tugging at my lips. “I’m fucked.”
It was one thing to face down an elite in a narrow passage, to take on a monster that I could see, that I could measure and prepare for. But this? A cavern full of creatures, an Overlord coiled around a source of unimaginable power, and a maze of obstacles between me and the potential exit? It was a level of insanity I hadn’t expected.
But there was no going back. The thought of retreating, of cowering in this hollow until I was discovered, was even worse.
I’d been staring at the crude drawing pinned to the wall for what felt like hours, trying to pry some semblance of a workable plan from the chaotic lines and scribbled symbols.
I traced each mark with my eyes, over and over, testing every angle, every approach, racking my brain for a solution that didn’t end in my death. But no matter how I looked at it, every option circled back to one single, reckless idea—a plan so insane, so suicidal, that it seemed more like a whispered taunt in the back of my mind than an actual strategy.
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The kind of plan that would only work if everything went perfectly, if I moved with absolute precision if luck held just long enough to see me through. The kind of plan that’d leave no way back. Once I started, there’d be no second chances, no retreat, just a mad dash through the heart of a monster’s den with my life hanging by a thread.
I let out a low, bitter laugh, slumping against the wall as I ran a hand through my hair. It’s been almost a week, I thought, feeling the weight of each day pressing down on me.
A week of wandering through dark, twisting passages, of facing down creatures that should’ve killed me, of battling and scraping and surviving in this cursed labyrinth with no end in sight. My body was battered, and bruised, every muscle ached with a dull, relentless pain. I’d fought, bled, lost track of time and direction, and there hadn’t been a single hint of escape.
Every damn path seemed to lead deeper into the darkness, every tunnel spiraled down into another hellish encounter.
And even if I wanted to turn back, to retrace my steps, that wasn’t an option.
Sighing, I glanced back at the drawing pinned to the wall, the flickering torchlight casting shifting shadows across the page, making the marks dance and twist like mocking faces. I’d been here for at least five hours now—resting, eating, drinking what little water I had left, forcing myself to snatch brief, uneasy naps as my body screamed for respite.
I’d tried every trick I knew to come up with a better plan, something that wasn’t a suicide mission, but nothing else fit. Nothing else even came close.
This is madness, I thought, the words echoing in the back of my mind as I looked at the rough lines I’d drawn over and over.
A straight path, directly through the heart of the cavern, past the Overlord and his minions, weaving through a sea of monsters to reach the far wall and dive into the water, hoping that the hidden exit lay beneath its surface.
I leaned back, pressing the heels of my hands against my eyes, trying to clear my mind. The chance of death on this plan was higher than anything I’d faced so far, higher than any gamble I’d taken. But the longer I sat here, the more I felt the walls closing in around me, a relentless, crushing weight that reminded me with every breath that this place would kill me if I stayed. If I hesitated.
I’d survived battles that pushed me to my limit, and encounters with monsters that would haunt me long after I escaped. I’d clawed my way through, each step a reminder of my own mortality, each fight a battle against the odds.
And yet here I was, faced with the bleak reality that the only way forward, the only path to freedom, was a plan that bordered on suicide.
I clenched my fists, feeling a surge of frustration rise within me, raw, seething anger that burned away the exhaustion, if only for a moment. No escape, I thought bitterly. No mercy in this damned place.
It’s kill or be killed, survive or die forgotten in the dark.
I need to get out…even if it kills me.
With a weary sigh, I pulled out a fresh page from my journal and smoothed it against my knee, the edges already smudged with faint traces of soot and dirt. I held my pencil loosely, staring at the blank page as the enormity of what I was about to do sank in.
The plan, if it could even be called that, hovered in my mind—a series of reckless steps strung together with the desperate hope that maybe, somehow, I’d make it through in one piece. I took a deep breath and began writing, scratching out the words with a dry, humorless smirk.
> Mission: Stupid Lexi and His Mission Impossible.
>
> Goals:
1) Don’t Die
2) make way and reach the pillar while no dying to the boss and elites
3) Blow the energy pillar and not die to the boss while delivering the payload
4) Run like my ass is on fire, have around 200 meters to cross and blow the wall too.
5) survive the blast
6) survive the underwater pressure
7) live to see another day,...hopefully
“Alright, Lexi,” I muttered to myself, a wry smile tugging at my lips. “One death-defying step at a time.”
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