Life was worth to be lived after all.

I’m in heaven, and angels are surrounding me.

Okay, it's a hallucination, but you see the point.

“Are you okay?”

“Hum? Oh, yeah…”

“So… how was it?”

This is the best thing I ate in my entire life. It’s the food equivalent of happiness. If one day I write a dictionary I’ll just put a picture of it in place of the definition. I want to eat it until I die and then go to heaven to eat even more of it.

“Meh, passable.”

She must never know!

“Aww… well, I’ll do even better next time!”

If she managed to make something better than this, I am so screwed.

Anyway, we finally finished eating the bister. It looked exactly like a lobster on the inside, but with the size of a bison. I wonder how it genetically works, but I’m not the nerd of the group, so I don’t really care.

We were comfortably installed between to big rock we found on the way. Alice used her fire magic to heat and cook the whole thing, I kinda had forgotten about her magic, but it’s true that she did carbonize the robotic tiger at the 11th stage.

Man, it feels like it was an eternity ago! I mean, it was more than two months ago, I wonder how the others are going… Well, they’re probably fine.

So, after a well-deserved break, we resumed our descent toward our inevitable fall, and I don’t even say that sarcastically. Hey, I wonder if our jump counted as falling.

Struggle#13

Objective: Fall

Sub-objective: Eat a lobston - Get out of the cave - Defeat Krieg

Damn, it didn't work, well, at least we completed one sub… wait, Krieg? Who is that? Are there people down here? Seems unlikely, maybe it's a hermit or something.

Hum? Val sent a message.

V: Hey nevvbie! Hovv’s going?

S: Fine, do you need something?

V: Haha, can't I just casually ask nevvs from my favourite nevvbie?

S: …

V: Okay, I have something to tell you.

V: You are in danger.

S: Yeah, no shit.

S: I was chased by a pack of bister less than an hour ago.

V: Yeah, I savv that, pretty cool svving from your sister.

V: But I’m not talking about that.

V: I’m talking about real danger.

V: The kind of threat that even I can’t overlook.

S: Wow.

S: (Sarcasm.)

V: Bitch I’ll have you knovv that I can cut a continent in half and beat the shit out of you vvith a vvink.

V: For once I’m serious, so shut the fuck up and listen.

S: Sigh…

S: Okay.

V: VVe think that the cave you are in is the lair of a dragon.

S: A dragon? What is that?

V: Seriously?

V: Uuuurgh.

V: It’s like a big lizard vvith vvings that spit fire. VVell normally it’s that but here, it’s more…

V: Doesn’t matter, just knovv that if you happen to come across one, you are dead.

S: …

V: In fact, if possible, get out of the cave immediately, the closer you are to its nest the stronger the monster vvill be.

S: It’s that bad?

V: Yep.

S: But, we can’t go out of the cave, the objective is, quote, to ‘fall’.

S: So our plan is to find a pit or something and to jump in it.

V: Going Romeo and Juliette double suicide already?

S: Aaaaand you’re back to yourself.

V: Yeah whatever, do what you want, I’m not your mom, if I was you wouldn’t be that ugly. Just don’t die here, it would be bad for me.

V: Tchuss, loser.

Haha, she might be weird and savage, but it’s really entertaining to chat with her. I kinda missed it, she almost never contacted me during the whole Presidency thing. Except the part were she insult me, probably.

“Aaaah!”

As I diverted the eye from the book, I realized Alice’s face was just in front of mine.

“Hahaha, always so easy to scare.”

“Yeah yeah, I almost got a stroke, happy?”

“Very. What was your chat about this time?”

“Apparently there is a dragon here, and… you know what it is?”

The instant I pronounced the word, I saw sparkle appears in her eyes, like a kid thinking about a unicorn - and yes, I know what a unicorn is.

“Aaaaanyway, she told us not to approach it.”

“What? But dragons are so cool! It’s like, THE fantasy creature. There’s no meaning of a quest if there is no dragon in it. I even heard that back in the day, they liked it so much they invented a game called D&D: Dragons and Dragons!”

“Hey, we don’t know if this thing will be hostile or not. Val said it was dangerous and for once I believe her.”

“B-but…”

“Sigh, don’t make that look, you know I can’t handle the puppy look…”

Holly shit, I want to pet her. My heart... She's... so… cute…

"Fine! We are going down anyway, if we see signs we'll try to approach it a bit."

“Yeay!”

“But as soon as we complete the objective we’re out!”

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Sir, yes sir."

“Now let’s go, we’ve rested long enough.”

And we promptly departed along the tunnel.

Alice took the remaining half of the beast -yes, we ate half of it, but to be fair she is still growing. It’s pretty cold here so I guess we can still keep it for the rest of the day without it rooting.

This tunnel was even longer than the previous one, and at some point the path split. Each time we chose the one with the highest slope, I can spot it a bit, but Alice as an integrate level measurement or something, surely another one of the i-talent has. I wonder if there would be any other situation where this would have been useful.

The good news was that the tension between me and Alice had faded away.

“Why are you looking at me like that? Did you fall for me already?”

“Drop the narcissist act already. I just thought that it was good to see you cheerful again.”

“Oh, yeah, I guess I feel better now.”

"Hey, now that we have some time, I was wondering. What was that dagger crescent moon or whatever you did, where did you learn that? It was pretty cool, completely different from my own style but…"

"It was awesome, right? Actually, for once I was properly taught, by a woman named Kunan."

“Oh?! You too? How was it?”

"Really hard! Like, we fought for at least two hours. I felt that she was restraining herself, but I got cut several times… I guess it was worth it, it's like the strongest technique I have!"

I don't know why, but I'm extremely annoyed right now.

"Yeah, yeah, trainings are hard… at least for some."

“What about you? What’s this dance that you made before?”

"It's not a dance. And it's not really a move either… it's kind of hard to explain. To put it simply, there is 3 main form in the art I was taught, and I only learned the first one. The concept is to build flux with the ‘flow' of your movement. I don't really know all the technicalities myself, I was barely conscious most of the time."

“Seems pretty hard, I’m not sure I’ll be able to reproduce it…”

"It's not like you need to, you know. Hey, I see something!"

It was the exact same pattern as the last time. And as we reached it, as expected we saw a gigantic room with its walls holed and packs of bister - I’ll never say lobston!- were peacefully walking down inside the layer of water covering the ground. Well, there was a slight difference. It didn’t really struck me last time, but the bisters in the last room were all red-ish, like actual lobsters, but those were entirely blue.

I looked at Alice, she's drooling, but it doesn't seem like she's about to jump.

I wonder if their colour will change something in their behaviour.

“That’s so cool!”

“You said that an awful number of time since we arrived.”

“Hehe, but look, they are all blue! It’s a color swap!”

“Yeah… I figured.”

“No, what I mean is that they are probably stronger, and to show that they have a different color.”

“That is stupid.”

"I red once in a book that it was used in video games to show that an enemy was stronger than the previous one without having to design an entirely new enemy."

"That makes sense, but what's your point?"

“Doesn’t this cave looks like a dungeon to you?”

“I never went to a dungeon before.”

“Me neither, but I’m pretty sure it would look like that.”

“So…?”

"Nothing, I just thought it was cool."

“Sigh… let’s go down.”

We jumped down, it was just a few meters once again, and at this point, this kind of things becomes trivial, even to me. Well, it’s not like I would be able to jump right back in the hole.

There was another tunnel close to us after we landed, but before I could decide where to go, a chill ran down my spine.

I turned back, and one of the beasts was charging toward me.

So fast.

So big.

So close.

It’s gonna hit me.

CRASH

A split second before the impact, Alice managed to get on the flank of the beast, and threw what looked like a stab with the dagger, but it didn't pierce the bister's shell. Instead, it stopped its charge and blew it away.

I saw small wave on the water surface from the impact… how hard is this thing?

“Alice! Let’s go!”

She was also pretty confused that the creature survived, but from the corner of my eyes, I could see other coming.

I spotted the closest escape route just a few tens of meter away, but a couple of bister were in our way.

“Steam!”

They spotted us, but Alice understood immediately, and she projected a great cloud of steam toward them, covering their field of vision.

I grabbed Alice hand and went through the dense cloud and between the hostile animals. After an intense few seconds, we arrived inside the tunnel and safely distanced ourselves from the room.

“Shit, this was no joke. Those were nothing like the red ones!”

“Yeah, there were so fast… and their shell was so hard, I don’t think I can make a cut through, even with the other moves…”

“I wonder why they…”

The closer you are to its nest the stronger the monster vvill be.

‘I have a bad feeling about this.’