Luke Everhart
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Chapter 31 - Survive If You Can
🕑 Added 2024-11-11 14:11:25 +0000 UTCThe silence was crushing.
Nar dragged his feet into yet another square. Another, identical, few feet of dark floor, with a single dim yellow arrow at its center. Around them, nothing. Not even the Pressure was visible, or made a single sound.
How many squares was this now? No idea.
How much time had passed? No idea.
It was impossible to tell without access to his UI’s clock.
The party stood in silence, only grunting at each other whenever blistering hot skin came into contact.
Nar dazed off, staring at the floor.
It swayed under him.
Or he did.
He didn’t care about it. Only that the floor looked so inviting.
Good job! Come and rest now! You deserve it! It seemed to say.
Nar nodded at it. He did deserve it, didn't he?
The problem was, every time even one of them fell asleep, the tiny guardians swooped down on them in the hundreds. They had caught on to it, eventually, but it was impossible for people not to fall asleep.
Kur had prohibited anyone from sitting down, but people still managed to drift off on their feet. That’s how tired they all were.
They only persisted thanks to their stamina, but the yellow bar wasn’t infinite, and they couldn’t even tell how much they had left.
They were caught, trapped in the Pressure, and without a chance to rest. Best they could do was hope they could get out before it was too late.
“What?” Mul grunted.
Nar blinked awake. “What?”
“What did you say?”
“I didn’t say anything,” Nar said, his voice raspy.
“Oh.”
Mul rubbed his eyes. The red neon color of his pupils looked faded, a clear sign of exhaustion in a lengos. And on his other side, Cen’s head bobbed up and down, in and out of sleep.
“Come on, you can’t sleep,” Mul whispered to her, shaking her lightly.
Cen took a shaky breath and looked around, disoriented.
Her pupils were even more faded, barely any purple left on them, and she had her mouth ajar, as though she had meant to say something at some point and had forgotten about it.
Something’s wrong with that one, Nar though. Something’s definitely going on.
He caught a glance of Viy slurping some jell-o, and decided to do the same. He was still flush from the safe room, and he was pouring non-stop sweat in that heat.
Jul suddenly gasped. “Above us!”
Nar choked on his jell-o, and coughed, sputtering it down his chin, trying to both breath and find his sword, which had fallen at his side.
Except, nothing happened.
“Jul?” Kur asked.
She stared upwards.
“I-I don’t understand… I sensed it.”
Kur smiled at her.
“It’s okay. We’re all tired.”
She pursed her lips and looked down.
Nar cleaned his mouth, having finally managed to grab his sword and stop coughing, and considered the scout.
Things were looking bad for them, but, at the same time, Jul had never been wrong before.
He glanced upwards.
If they had sense attributes and [Instinct], so would many other Climbers. He very much doubted that he and Jul were unique. Quite the opposite, there had to be a pile ton of other Climbers with those same attributes. Which meant, more than likely, that there was a chance that guardians had ways to counter those attributes. Right?
A shiver spread through his body.
Imagine… he wondered, slightly terrified at the prospect.
He shook his head, trying to escape the grasping fingers of dread that clenched around his stomach. However, he didn’t quite manage to.
Another section of the wall opened, and they dutifully walked into the next square.
The squares blurred and meshed into each other, and after a while, Nar was back in his lulled half-awake state.
“Incoming!” Jul cried.
Nar snapped back to reality with a gasp and lifted his shaking sword.
“What’s happening?” Tuk said, sounded like he too, had fallen asleep.
“Where is it?” Kur asked. “Jul?”
The girl looked crestfallen.
“I don’t know what’s happening,” she whispered, sounding like she was on the verge of tears.
Kur sighed and rubbed his eyes. “You’re just tired, that’s all. Same as us.”
“I know what I sensed…”, she said, in a very small voice.
“It’s okay. Just make sure first next time.”
Sometime later however, the same happened again.
“I made sure!” she protested.
“Jul, I don’t think you can trust your senses anymore,” Kur said.
He wasn’t glaring at her, but he certainly didn’t look happy either. Even their stalwart leader was starting to fray.
“No! I swear there’s something there.”
But Kur shook his head and turned his back to her.
“You believe me, right?” she asked, turning to Nar.
Nar withstood the pressure from those big eyes.
On one hand, her senses had saved their lives multiple times, and she had never been wrong. There was no doubt in his mind that, even with two tanks, or a tank and a half, without her warnings, they wouldn’t have even made it past the tutorial, let alone this far. But on the other hand… He wasn’t sure his own senses were to be trusted at that stage. Plus, she had been taken out of action by the alarms earlier. She could still be damaged somehow.
However, he just couldn’t shake the feeling that there could be something out there that knew how to counter their senses. And the more he thought about it, the more convinced he became.
Also, her eyes pleaded at him.
He sighed.
What did that thing say? Ignore your instinct at your own danger or something like that.
Jul hadn’t said she had heard something, or that she had seen it.
She had sensed it, which meant [Instinct]. With meant she had known something was wrong through a sense that was beyond mind and body. Something that supposedly touched their very soul.
And could a soul get tired, Nar wondered. Could it be tricked? Could the System, for that matter, being the One that governed their attributes? And this was an attribute they were talking about, not their own fallible eyes, ears or, in Jul’s case, her antennae.
Can [Instinct] be tricked? But she’s never failed before… Somehow, I can’t believe that she’s wrong now.
He groaned mentally. He almost wished she was, considering what it meant for her to be right.
“I believe you,” he said. “I’ll be ready, okay?”
Her lips quivered as she breathed in relief. “Thank you.”
He managed a smile for her.
They continued walking in the same oppressive silence as before, one square after the other. Waiting. Sweating.
Nar had to fight just to keep his eyes open, and the darkness around him danced and morphed, taking on shapes. Of people and memories, of things he had never managed to forget, no matter how much he’d wanted to.
Jul grabbed his arm and Nar startled back to reality.
“It’s here,” she whispered.
He glanced up, but found nothing. However, he didn’t dismiss her. She grabbed onto his arm so tightly that it hurt. She wasn’t even looking up.
He opened his mouth to shout a warning, and instead, found his party in a complete state. Mul and Cen were passed out on the floor. Viy and Tuk were sitting, the both of them staring at the floor in a trance. And Kur, the party leader, had his back to the rest of them, his head bent into his hands.
“What’s wrong?” Gad asked.
In all of this, she was the only one still standing, the heavy shield never leaving her hand.
Nar beckoned her with a discreet gesture.
“There’s something here,” he said. “I just don’t know why it isn’t attacking us.”
Gad nodded, looking down at Jul.
“I thought so too,” she said. “Jul’s never been wrong. I think it’s waiting to catch us off guard.”
“What do we do?” he asked.
“It’s getting closer…” Jul whimpered.
“We have no choice,” Gad said. “Stand up! Incoming!”
“Can’t you just give us a break!” Kur snapped. “There’s nothing there!”
Jul hid behind Nar, and the lengos twins woke up in fright.
Nar suddenly felt hotter.
“We don’t know that! We should be ready!”
“Nar, we’re all tired,” Kur said. “Just give it a rest.”
Nar frowned at him. “Her senses have kept us safe since day one. Why are you doubting her now?”
Kur exhaled and stood. He looked like a mad man. “We’re all exhausted and hearing things. And seeing things! Just let it go!”
“This isn’t the same! [Instinct] is different. There’s no sound! No sight! It just is!” Nar throw at hi, hoping that he was right in his understanding of the mysterious attribute.
“That doesn’t make any sense!” Kur shouted back at him.
Gad stopped Nar’s retort with her shield.
“No point in arguing like this,” she said. “Tuk, throw a ring.”
The trugger lifted his head at the mention of his name, and stared at her in confusion.
“Throw it,” she said again, motioning up with a discreet nod.
The ring tosser went pale.
“Now?” he asked, playing with a ring between his thumb and index finger.
“Yes. Just be ready, everyone.”
Perhaps it was her tone of voice, her demeanor, but hands reached slowly for weapons, and even Kur seemed to wake up from whatever stupor had enthralled him.
Nar considered all of Jul’s warnings.
It’s always been there. Probably from the very start, when we ran in. It’s just been waiting for us to get tired or distracted.
Every time Jul had sounded the alarm and they’d gotten ready for it, it had just withdrawn, biding its time. If not for Jul, they would have never known until it was too late, and it came for them in their sleep…
Tuk suddenly flung a ring upwards, straight above his head.
For a split-second, Nar thought that they had been wrong after all. He almost felt relief…
TING!
The ring bounced off something, with a clear metallic sound.
“Shit,” Mul muttered.
A low mechanical sound reverberated from above them.
Bright green lights flared to life, highlighting a huge bulbous body, and long, thick and winding limbs that spread into the darkness.
Things scuttled along the mass of its body, and it took Nar a couple of seconds to realize that those were guardians. Normal sized guardians.
The Pressure wall trembled, then returned with an even fiercer heat
The sound echoed again, stronger this time, and little dots of darkness fell towards them.
“Incoming!” Gad shouted.
-[ You have encountered The Sentry ?? (Boss).
Survive. ]-
Crystal… Nar thought, as the window blinked away.
All he could do was stare at the green nightmare descending upon them.
