It was dark, well, I supposed it was dark, because I could see as clear as if it was the day. Being a Seer is really convenient.

Anyway, where the fuck are we? A cave? Alice seems to feel uneasy. And it’s probably not because she is scared of the dark, she had nocturne vision back on Earth.

The place is huge, the ceiling is at least 5 meters tall and the width seems to be the same as that. It's actually like this tunnel have been dug by a giant worm or something. The humidity is pretty high too, but it's not that cold, and Alice probably have a way of drying us on the way.

“Are you okay?”

“Y-Yeah… I kind of had a bad experience in caves.”

“Like what? You fought a Yeti?”

“How do you know? And also a weird bear, but I killed him so I’m fine on that.”

Really? Damn, I just said that at random…

“So… What do we do…?"

“…”

“…”

“…”

“I should probably open the book…”

“Y-yeah.”

Struggle#13

Objective: Fall

Sub-objective: none

I forgot how much this book can be a pain. What the heck does it mean? ‘Fall’? He could have written ‘complete the objective’ it would have been the same shit!

"Hum… ‘fall'... maybe it asks us to go down?"

Okay, it might have some sense…

…

I feel a bit stupid right now.

“I guess we should depart right now then.”

I remarked that the path was slightly inclined, and we decided to go down.

We walked for a good amount of time, and it was getting boring. Even after almost an hours, there was nothing noteworthy around other than rocks and water dripping from the roof.

Well, the situation itself was uncomfortable, since our talk during the infiltration two weeks ago, things between me and Alice have been a bit weird, and she even avoided me multiple times. Everything was fine when we were with Marie, but now that it’s only the two of us, it’s getting a bit awkward. Maybe I should do something about it…

Unfortunately, -or not, I don't really know which- Alice sensed something ahead. Looking closely, I could see the tunnel getting wider further ahead.

Excited, we rushed to what appeared to be a huge underground room, lightly lit up by some phosphorous mushrooms on the walls and the ceiling.

We could see multiple huge holes in the wall, probably leading to tunnels, in fact, we were arriving from one of those holes, and there were dozens of them. The room was huge, and I probably wouldn’t be able to distinguish the end of it if it weren’t for my class.

But more than the size of the room, one thing left us speechless. It wasn't empty, there were monsters in it, and wow, they were eye-catching. It was the perfect fusion between a lobster and a bison -I saw some pictures of those animals once. To be specific: it was the massive shape of a bison, at least 2 meters tall, with a big head harbouring two huge horns and a sort of shell making its body. They were everywhere, at least a hundred of them.

They were peacefully walking and apparently eating things inside the water. From here it looks like the whole thing is a giant lac, but unless those things are walking on water, it's just several centimetres deep I think. We were a few meters above the ground level, so they haven't spotted us yet.

They might be odd, but I don’t think they are a threat to us, so we should probably just avoid them and continue our way. Actually, there is some tunnel on ground level that seems to keep heading down on the other side of the room, we just have to…

“Yaaaaaaaaa!”

Before I could react, Alice had already jumped down, branding the silver dagger above her head.

“What the fuck are you doing?!”

“?Ascending Crescent?”

A split second before touching the ground head first, she twisted her body, parallel to the ground, and formed a perfect ark with the point of the dagger, followed by an ascending flow of water. Her fall stopped at the same time the dagger passed through the head of one of the creature.

It was pretty awesome.

But why the hell did she do that?!

I immediately jumped after her. Her action had obviously caused an uproar among the other beasts, who started gathering around her, visibly enraged.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“Dinner is secured!”

“What the…”

“Hey! Stay away!”

She lifted the body of the dead 'animal' above her head like it was a stuffed animal, and was glaring at the rest of them like a cat protecting her prey.

This girl is driving me crazy…

I quickly looked around me, they were getting closer, mooing aggressively toward us.

“Stay away I said!”

And she is not helping the situation… I guess I’ll have to make a distraction.

Fine, I have an idea.

I concentrated all my focus, the world around me slowed down, like my breath, and everything. Each motion is part of a flow, unstoppable and absolute flow. I leaned on my right knees and placed my hands at my feet level, under water, palms up, nor slowly nor fast, at my flow speed, with an absence of ripples on the water surface. At this point, I have the hold of a ton of flux thanks to the ‘flow’, time to release it.

I stretched my leg, raising my hand up to the sky, and a sudden vertical stream of water surged from the previously calm surface.

“Alice!”

I called her out at the same time, and during the 2 second when the water screen was covering us, we managed to jump outside the circle of lobson -or bister.

They quickly remarked our escape of course, and started to chase after us. Shit, they are quicker than expected!

“That was sooooo cool!”

“I don’t think this is the moment for that!”

At top speed I was struggling to get off the pack, but even with her ‘trophy’ she wasn’t even breaking a sweat.

“I don’t really know why we are running away, I can…”

“Violence is not always the answer.”

“Pfff.”

During the chase, we also had to dodge other beast joining the party. Luckily, we weren’t that far away from another hole in the wall, just above the water level.

Alice started to speed up, and in a second reached the hole, where she threw the corpses before turning back toward me. What the hell is she…

She took some sort of stance, putting her hand on the water surface.

The instant I arrived near her, she raised her arm, projecting stram behind me.

She could do that?!

The smoke screen distracted them and we easily left the place, jumping into a similar path than the one leading to this room. After running again for some distance, and once I was sure they weren't after us anymore, we finally stopped to catch a breath. Well, at least I had to catch my breath.

Fucking i-talents.

“That was pretty cool.”

"What? You cutting in half the lobster, your disrespect for gravity or the steam bending thing?"

"All of that, obviously, but I was talking about your little dance, I didn't even saw you at first. What is that?"

"Martial art, sort of, but what's more important is: why the fuck did you fucking killed this fucking bister?!"

“I prefer lobson.”

“Alice!”

"Okay okay… It's getting hungry, and, you know, a combination of lobster and bison? I have to taste it!"

“You could have told me that, instead of jumping like… I don’t have a reference but you know what I mean!”

"Saaaaaawry… I couldn't contain myself. And look, it's just one tiny animal, I'm sure it won't have any consequence!"

I contemplated the massive beast she transported with her.

“Yeah… ‘tiny’. How do you even plan to eat this thing? I won’t… oh…”

She was showing off a beautiful dancing flame she created in the palm of her hand. On top of that, her eyes were so excited to the perspective of cooking and eating it that I had to give up the scolding.

Plus, I started to get hungry too.

Sigh... this girl will kill me one day.

----------------------------------------

"So, have you figured out where they are?"

“Not sure Val, I only world that I mapped entirely so far is the 1st one, I still have some blind spot here. I never heard of a cave this huge in the second one.”

"Yeah, me neither, it's more technology stuff there. Maybe they moved to another world already?"

"No, I don't think so. It's faint but I have a signal for Sam's book."

“So where the fuck is he?!”

“That won’t help Val, I don’t know, go ask Jules, he might know something.”

“Sigh… you are useless.”

Leaving her pissed of comrade, Valentine approached the one know as Jules, the Oldest Guide.

“Damn, you’re desk is really far from us.”

Without diverting his eyes away from his screen, he answered briefly.

“I like the calm.”

“Yeah, I figured, look, I have a question.”

“Go ahead.”

"Sam is on the 2nd world, and, like we don't know where this stupid is. The image quality as dropped, so we're not sure, looks like a cave or something… any idea?"

“Why would you think I would know such thing?”

“Well, you’re the oldest so…”

“You didn’t arrive that much later than me.”

“If you say so. Sigh… Seems it was pointless to ask you after all.”

“Wait…”

Jules finally pulled out his gaze away from his pupil's adventure and put his finger on his chin, trying to remember something.

“You said there is a drop in image quality?”

“Yeah, well, Will told me, I didn’t really care.”

"This is pretty rare. Actually, it happened only once before."

"Really? I said ironically as if I was giving a shit."

“You should, Pheit was there.”

"Pheit… you mean the huge ass dragon?"

“I believe his official title is ‘The 3rd Destroyer’”

“Wait, you mean that a fucking dragon is in a fucking cave in the fucking newbie zone?”

“Well, the Kunan managed to go down, so why not?”

“Holy shit…”

‘This… this is not good.’