For the next few in-game days, all Maria and her friends did was run away from the boss monster, but no matter how far they ran, the monster would always find them thanks to the [Mark of the Devourer] debuff that was on them.

The debuff was extremely annoying because they were practically running around the Underworld with a beacon on their backs. What more, the debuff was incredibly smelly, so the disgusting stench of Zechenoa, the Sunken Devourer, never left their noses even though the monster was nowhere near the girls. It eventually got to the point where they adapted to the smell and no longer found it bothersome, but that was exactly what was bad.

The fact that they got accustomed to such a stench meant that they had been in the Underworld for a long time now and they have made absolutely zero progress in returning to the first layer because whenever they tried to move in the general direction of the first layer, the Devourer would always intercept them and force them into a different direction. They didn't know it, but if they managed to get to the first layer, the [Mark of the Devourer] debuff would automatically disappear.

The AI behind Zechenoa was aware of this, so the monster always moved hastily to prevent them from going to the first layer if it sensed that the girls were trying to move in that direction. However, the chase was frustrating not only for the girls, but also for the monster because even after so long, it wasn't able to eat any of its prey. This caused it to rampage around even more which only made things a bit easier for Maria and the rest because its rampage forced the monsters on the second layer to stay even further away from their general position.

The debuff already forced the monsters on the second layer away from Maria and her party, but they would occasionally stumble upon some and even though the debuff was on them, the monsters they encountered would still try and attack their group because of the vast level disparity between them as monsters tended to be more aggressive if they sensed that a player's level was much lower than their own.

Thanks to the rampaging boss, the girls stopped randomly encountering monsters in the area, so this was a little bit of respite for them because if they had to deal with Zechenoa along with the monsters on the second layer, they didn't know how they'd be able to make it through this place.

What more, they even had to ask for a leave of absence from school because of the situation they were in because it was almost impossible for them to logout for prolonged periods of time unless they wanted their idle avatars to be devoured by Zechenoa when they were offline. At the moment, there was no safe haven in the Underworld except for Maria's city, so they couldn't log out safely anywhere else.

If they logged out, their avatars wouldn't disappear from the game but go into an idle state. Of course, this didn't mean that they could just remain in the game while they were stuck in the Underworld. The safety feature of the gaming capsule would kick in and forcefully log them out if they stayed in the capsule for more than 2 real-life days straight. So, the girls took turns logging out and resting.

Today was a weekend, so the girls all logged in the game together though their situation was still the same as before. They were still currently stuck in the middle of nowhere in the Underworld with seemingly no solution to their plight, but on the bright side, Amanda was mapping out the places that they had traveled through and managed to fill a large portion of their map for the Underworld's Second Layer.

They had completely mapped the area 40 kilometers around the first layer's entrance and noticed that the paths in the second layer were really chaotic. It was quite obvious that Zechenoa was the reason behind this since it could just create new paths whenever it wanted.

At the moment, the girls were all sitting down around a campfire that Maria made using the Edlvungr wood she had packed in her inventory. They were pretty far away from Zechenoa right now because there were no tremors that indicated its movement and that it was close to them. Even without any ability to track the monster, Zechenoa itself gave away its position with all the rumbling from the tunneling it was doing to get to them.

It was largely because of the tremors caused by the boss monster's movement that the girls were able to stay alive for so long and not get caught by it. Lizzy was currently sprawled on the ground with a jerky in her mouth. She had a blank look on her face as she turned to Emily and asked, “Ugh…how long has it been?”

“In-game or IRL?"

"In-game..."

"Weeks.”

“I haven’t seen the sun in so long…”

Maria, who was sitting on the side and combing her daughter's hair, quipped at her friend, “Quit whining, I was stuck in here even longer than now.”

"Yeah, Mary...but still..."

Amanda nudged her friend with her foot and said, "She's right, you know? Instead of whining, come here and help me think of something."

"Fine...but if we can't get rid of this damned mark, we can't get out of here!"

Maria and her friends had been marked by the Sunken Devourer, Zechenoa, who had been chasing after them since their first encounter in its nest. It was apparently a roaming world boss monster that could be found in the Underworld’s Second Layer, so the concept of aggro-range was completely lost on it. The nest that it had was merely a decoration and probably just a place for it to rest since it could literally wander through the entire second layer of the vast Underworld if it wanted to.

The odds of Maria and her friends running into it were supposed to be extremely low, but unfortunately, her bad luck kicked in and they just happened to come across it when it was making its way back to the nest. The path leading to the nest was supposed to be obscured by the rocky outcrop that Maria and her friends had been hiding behind when they first arrived in the Second Layer, so it was just really bad luck for them.

If they had chosen to go a different way, then they wouldn’t have encountered the Sunken Devourer and be chased through the Underworld’s second layer for days on end like this. Their situation was extremely frustrating so Lizzy had every right to whine about it, but it was better that they kept a positive mind instead or else they might really go mad.

Maria and her friends gathered around Amanda and began looking at the map she was holding. They had moved far away from the Sunken Devourer’s nest because of its persistent pursuit, so now it was practically impossible for them to go back to the first layer through the entrance that they came from, but thankfully, the Underworld's Second Layer had many other entrances that led to the first layer, they only had to find it.

However, since Zechenoa was constantly blocking them whenever they got too close to one such entrance, the party never encountered another one. The only reason why they knew that there were other entrances leading back to the first layer despite never encountering one themselves was because yesterday, the Underworlder Chieftain had informed Maria of them.

Since they knew about this, Amanda was able to deduce that the boss monster was actively preventing them from going back to the first layer after only a few days into the chase and she marked on the map the possible areas that they could find the entrances that led back to the first layer.

Naturally, Maria had to use her [Cartography] skill to map out the area while they were on the run, but that was only at the start. Amanda had been observing her and she quickly learned how to do it herself, so she took over the duty of being their cartographer. It wasn't that she didn't trust in her friend's skill, but since her friend was the strongest player in their party, it was better if they assigned her to a more important duty.

Maria was looking at her friend's map and noticed all the marks in the empty areas on it and asked, "Amanda, you said before that the boss is pushing us away from the areas that likely have a path back to the first layer, right?"

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"Yeah, and?"

"Hmmm, I think we can use that to our advantage somehow..."

"Do you have a plan?

"I'm still thinking about it, so give me a moment."

"Alright. I knew I could count on you, Mary."

"Un!"

Before Maria could continue thinking, she started feeling the cave around them subtly shake and immediately clicked her tongue because she knew what was causing it.

“Dammit, the tremors are here…The monster is coming from the west this time.”

“The bastard’s already here? Tch, this is so dumb. We’re stuck here because we can’t die and we can’t kill that thing!” Lizzy groaned and cursed, expressing her anger towards the persistent monster.

When the first few days had passed, the girls considered just dying to the monster, but Maria reminded them that dying wouldn’t mean that they could escape from this place. They’d only respawn in a safe location near their death point and if that location was unluckily close to the Sunken Devourer, they’d just be targeted again. However, it was still worth a try because dying meant that they’d lose the [Mark of the Devourer] debuff, so Lizzy volunteered as an experiment.

Things proceeded rather smoothly as her friend was killed and she received the notification that the Sunken Devourer’s mark had been erased, but the problem came afterwards. When Lizzy respawned in the game, she was quite a distance away from her friends because they were still being pursued by the Sunken Devourer though they had tried to keep themselves within the area where she had been killed.

Unfortunately, the threat chasing so adamantly behind them was just a little too frightening, so they slowly began to move farther and farther away and on top of that, Lizzy even encountered a large horde of underground monsters as she tried making her way over to them and was killed once again. This happened a few more times until finally, she was able to regroup with her friends, but after making contact with them, she contracted the [Mark of the Devourer] again because it spread to her from her friends.

They had to die together for the plan to work, but Maria couldn’t do that after remembering what happened last time she died in the Underworld and left Cali alone to fend for herself until the duration of her death penalty was over. She wasn’t going to let her daughter experience that again and although she didn’t need to be stubborn about it, since this could be their only ticket out, her friends understood her and decided to call off the plan.

Players could respawn if they were killed, but in their case, they’d be logged out of the game for a few hours before they could login again. NPCs, however, would permanently die if they were killed and they didn’t know what would happen to Cali if all 4 of them were logged out and she was, unfortunately, killed.

Just the thought of it made Maria angry and she didn’t like it one bit. Cali was her Soul Weapon and she didn’t know what would happen if she was killed or destroyed. She might be able to repair her if that happened, but she didn’t know what the consequences were of if such an event were to happen. For everything in the game, death was a very real and miserable event, so she didn't want to risk it. For all she knew, she might just lose her daughter forever and this wasn’t something Maria wanted.

The previous time when Maria had been killed in the Underworld, it was back in the First Layer so Cali was able to fend for herself and find a place to hide until she logged back in and respawned because the monsters there were at a level that was still manageable for her.

In their current situation, however, things were different since they were in the Underworld’s Second Layer. Any monster here could kill them and this was already proven by Lizzy, who volunteered as their group’s guinea pig and was killed a few times before she was able to regroup with them. It didn't even take the monsters more than a dozen or so hits to kill her.

The plan to get rid of the mark was also unreliable after they thought about it for a while. It wasn’t a guaranteed success since one of them could respawn and, unfortunately, encounter the Sunken Devourer and be marked again, just like how Lizzy was marked again after she met up with them.

After that, they’d have to die again and get rid of the mark, but after that, what would happen? They might meet the monster again and be marked or they might die to another Underworld monster only to respawn a few hours later at a place that had monsters that could kill them again. Maria and her friends could be stuck in a life-death loop if this were to unluckily happen and if they died too much, they might lose some items, equipment, EXP, and worse, levels and skill proficiency.

The plan was immediately thrown out of the window when this possibility was brought up by Amanda, so Maria and her friends remained stuck in the Underworld until now. They really were fed up with the Sunken Devourer because now that dying wasn’t an option, killing it was the only way they could escape from its mark. However, how were they supposed to kill the monster if they couldn't level up?

“We can’t even hunt any of the monsters here because they're too strong and even if we tried, that bastard could come at any moment to interfere with the hunt..."

“And since we can’t level up…we can’t kill that monster…”

“Yeah…”

“So…we’ll just stay trapped here…forever?”

"""..."""

The girls all heaved a dejected sigh when they came to this conclusion. It's been days since they’ve seen any sunlight inside of the game. If this was in real life, they would’ve long since grown depressed and resigned to their fate of dying to the monster.

“Come on guys, we can’t just give up. There must be something we can do to kill it…” Maria said as she got up and led the party away from their spot.

The tremors were getting closer and closer, so they had to leave the place immediately and create more distance between them and the source of those tremors, Zechenoa. While they were running away, Amanda thought long and hard before finding a rather insane solution. It was incredibly risky and seemed very unlikely to work, but she still said it anyway.

“The only thing we can do is lead it towards another boss monster that isn’t afraid of it…”

“Where would we find a monster like that?” Lizzy questioned. “For all we know, this guy could be the strongest one out here, so the other boss monsters would just avoid running into it.”

“...Then we can only go to the Underworld’s next layer.”

“Huh?”

“What?”

“...”

Maria, Lizzy, and Emily all looked at Amanda like she was insane, which prompted her to say, “Well, what else can we do? We can’t beat it, so the only way is to lure it to a monster that can or to an area that it won't dare move into!”

“Yeah, but that would also mean that we’d be plunging ourselves literally into hell!” Emily exclaimed. “Think about it, if the monsters on the Second Layer are afraid of the Sunken Devourer, then we’re receiving its protection since we’ve been marked by it so they’re staying away from us. However, if we go to an area that isn’t afraid of that monster, then–”

“–the monsters there would rip us into shreds…” Maria finished.

“Exactly! And for all we know, there might not even be a Third Layer!”

“I know that as well, Em, but what are we supposed to do then?” Amanda said with a tired look on her face.

Their fun exploration had turned into a fight for survival and it was weighing down on their minds and stressing them out. The atmosphere and environment of the Underworld also wasn’t helping them. The girls turned silent as they continued to run in a random direction until the tremors stopped and even after they did stop, they kept on running. Maria was staring blankly into the air and looking at the ceiling before something stupid came into her mind.

“Hey guys, why don’t we collapse the ceiling onto that guy?”

Lizzy looked at her friend incredulously as she exclaimed in disbelief, “What the f–”

"Language!"