I spotted DeGalle dmAge through the carnage, and DeGalle spotted me. Through the unending smoke, she charged—looking angry—hopefully not angry at me.

  My reaction to this was, Uh, whatever. Wasn’t like I needed her help. Now I felt like a pro with the Debug Blade. I had no pro-level moves, but who needed that when the Attack gain was so ludicrously high? All these barbarian blows even made for a decent defense—if I saw a vine coming at me from the corner of my eye, all I needed was a mild shake sideways and bam, a clump of plant life would fly away. I’d have called the carnage scary if I could tell whether these plants had plant consciousness. Or if I were in a daze killing in cold blood, which I thankfully was done with.

  Point being, I didn’t think I needed DeGalle’s help, but I…supposed she could jump in, if she wanted. Despite me remaining unconvinced that she was a total goofus, on my list of preferred allies, she was at the bottom, just under Sierra and above that lycanborn mother and son.

  Oddly enough, she was both wearing gauntlets and wielding a scythe. It didn’t rankle my instincts, though—as a wild animal, I kinda took it for granted that one should pick up anything they could salvage from the hands of the dead.

  Um…were there dead?

  DeGalle charged not at me, but at the nearest two-hundred-foot dandelion. Actually, once she made contact with a free fist, she seemed to blink out of existence into a mere shadow along with a chunk of it—then they both reappeared, but one was charred almost to nothing. The whole tree fell before us. “Hey,” she said, and even though she was more than a little bloody all over, her voice was hale and hearty. “How fast are you?”

  I squinted. It was words she wanted, and words she would not get. “Meow,” I gasped out just as a tide of mobile-firing razor leaves flew for me. Holding my blade up before my face chopped them apart on contact. That’s impressive when the leaves are as thick as bricks.

  Then I processed her question more fully. “Fast”? “Fast” by what metric? Those leaves died pretty fast, if that was what she me—

  Someone sped past me. Oh, maybe that was related.

  I turned dully, just catching sight of—wha?—oh! A human lying on the back of a running sheep. With the aura trailing behind that sheep, together they looked like one weird comet.

  “They’re running to sa—ugh!” DeGalle was slapped in the arm mid-speech, but again, her “ugh” sounded less pained and more mildly perturbed. She swung her scythe into a green limb so huge it nearly blocked my view of her. I swore it froze in place as DeGalle then hacked away, the scythe-end poking out almost into my face. Thus the annoyance was dealt with. “They’re running to safety.”

  Safe places in our vicinity? Did those exist?

  My Map’s answer was…yes! Nearly! There were still vicious plants in pretty much every area there had been before, but now most of that terrain was a very light gray. As a matter of fact, the biggest danger was—right below me! In maybe a two-hundred-meter bubble, let’s say.

  This all was a huge relief. but all the same, this whole square was all dangerous land. DeGalle would have to get some pretty fast runners to actually find them safety. It felt so risky to me that earlier when I’d found humans in need, I hadn’t even bothered moving them.

  Once I realized that was all DeGalle was prepared to ask me to do, I tuned her out. Heidschi had lots and lots of sheep, and they could all hoof it, but I had only one me and…not to boast, but my Attack outshone the rest. Soon DeGalle got the idea, and we did indeed become battle partners.

  When I wasn’t cleaving tiny foot vines apart, we shifted into a one-two combo: DeGalle would hook her blade into a vine and I would stab it. Or chop it, or even knee it a few good times until it became a fine pulp. Something about her scythe stunned them, especially when the foe was especially big and she wailed on them time after time.

  Then I found myself panting and hunched forward, standing still…and I blinked.

  Nothing was flying out to get us?

  But the black spot wasn’t gone yet. Sure, the rest of the enemies were a slightly lighter gray, but, um…

  Suddenly two gauntlets shoved me to the ground.

  I carved my shoulder apart on a rock. I didn’t blame her. I’d only just realized that vines underfoot had reared up around my feet, already wrapped around my ankles.

  I could have punched myself in the face for letting this happen.

  Okay, at least DeGalle—despite not pushing me hard or well enough to keep the vines from consuming me—was kneeling with her scythe, ready to slice. And at least I had the presence of mind to still be holding my blade. We would end this together, in a flash.

  It turned out that magical vines need less than a flash to do their work. They just need to be on you.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  A chill. A lightning bolt of violet aura, cold as absolute zero. A neuron-fast switch turned off in my brain. My vision blanked out, and I feared my mind had too. A scream was already rising to my throat—but already I couldn’t feel it, losing sensation to a new host.

  All I could think as I lost control was, I am so glad I saved a few others.

  …Thank goodness I was only out cold for a minute at most.

  A sheep was carrying me on their back. Now I’d reverted to cat form and back to a smaller, more portable size—the dropped golden blade in the sheep’s mouth, thankfully—so at least I didn’t look as awkward riding this creature as knocked-out humans.

  Speaking of, as the chill of mind control left me, left nothing but its imprint, I looked around at the battlefield…searching for bodies. There were lots of vines, but not a lot of people. Smoke and aura was clearing, but I thought I still noticed an eerie sepia tint just above the ground. Still, the most important thing was, there were hardly any human bodies.

  These sheep and whoever else is finding survivors is doing really good work! I marveled. Unless flytraps eat people? Don’t say that, Taipha.

  Then I looked up and—woah.

  Please excuse me for not hearing this earlier. The humming of krigries just didn’t penetrate, especially not when they were swarming not in a single mob, but in dozens of dozen-strong little groups. A daisy chain of krigries had formed a circuit reaching up and out of the sandy forest. Each tiny swarm was carrying its own human, and when they finished, they came back for more. Down to the place where this sheep was heading.

  “Meh-h-h,” the sheep said in warning before bowing and rolling me off. I tumbled onto my feet, and as soon as the sheep released the blade, I Inventorized it. Then they sped off—the rescue mission went on.

  Just ahead, I saw what looked like five roughed-up, rugged farmer dudes patiently telling a krigrie cloud that they appreciated the thought, but were headed back in.

  For the record, the krigries did not seem to understand them, and it took swatting them away from their collars for the farmers to stay on solid ground.

  But also…what?! They were going back?!

  And then I realized, Wait, but I want to go back!

  Did they know what I knew—there was still some danger back there?

  Wait, hold on. Was I even that far out from the big black spot?

  No! We were still on the frickin’ rim! People had an inkling of what I knew, but nobody had, y’know, the Map. And the Map itself had incomplete data.

  Map, what’s in that spot?

  Okay, well, at least it told me where Logy was. Which was nowhere in this Square. As much as I would’ve liked to appreciate the demonstration of new goodwill that was carrying the injured to safety, I was too busy panicking.

  Whe…when are we going to stop it?! What do we have to do, drill a mile underground?! HOLY CRAP, DON’T SAY THAT EITHER!

  Then Reed and Chora appeared, farther from the black spot, through a gap in some thankfully immobile trees. Reed called out, “Taipha! Let’s retreat!”

  “No!” Chora snapped at her, and I had to agree, at least for myself.

  I wouldn’t argue. I would just act.

  I turned to run back into the fray, this time determined to—sigh—dig a mile underground. I’d consider it practice for the dungeon ahead…unless—

  A dull, vast boom sounded, and made the choice for all of us.

  We were all staying, no one was going to retreat, because the earth itself was making a decision for us.

  Faster than a blink, the sand became a slope. We were rolling, losing what little HP we had. Then we were falling.

  The world was drenched in the brown glow of some otherworldly catacombs. The sand collapsing beneath my feet glowed so powerfully now—until it fell away completely and I realized it was never the source of the glow to begin with. It was never infused with magic, or radiating from some Spell’s aftereffect. There had been something below it. Something very very large that, until moments ago, from an aerial view, had been roughly spot-shaped.

  Before I’d even fully processed what was happening around me, I thought to ask, Map?!

  That spot grew to an oval. So that was why some new danger was unfolding beneath me! But it explained nothing else.

  Oh wow, I thought. Despite my Intelligence being back to normal, and even a little augmented, I had the least intelligent reaction possible.

  That was just how awed I was by the scale of this thing reaching up all around me.

  This pair of massive flytrap jaws.

  That seemed to be growing.

  After literal seconds of quaking and buildup, so much sandy terrain, with gargantuan plants, and a scale that puts a tear in your eye, was being swallowed into a black—sorry, brownish-orangish hole, ridged with at least ten rows of teeth, its palate on the far far end before me ridged with writhing forms that I had to guess were the thinnest vines, the mind-controllers.

  Beneath us was the source of the glow. It could’ve been a darn esophagus, for all I knew, but the amount I cared about that was nothing compared to how much I cared about us being alive.

  Reed, Chora, a more distant DeGalle, even more scattered sheep, and five rugged farmers were all falling within a gaping maw. Let me repeat that: falling within. We were already inside. The teeth were zooming far above us at the speed of twin freight trains. Soon the jaws would clamp together, and we would be devoured—or all those mouth-vines would grant us a mercy by just possessing us.

  But even as gravity began to claim me and I went speeding down the dank corridor that was plant guts, I didn’t lose heart. After all, if we changed our trajectories and banded together, we could probably find a way out of this! Weren’t there helpful insects in here?

  …Yes, and they were zipping away, clinging to the collars of some very thankful farmers. High above, those five figures shrank, and so did the expanse of sky blue they were headed for. Soon it would be only a band.

  But the sheep, I thought, immediately jinxing it as about eighteen sheep were consumed in eighteen streams of lemon-yellow light. Then they were gone. Wow, they really were pocketable monsters.

  DeGalle had the perfect arsenal for getting us out of this: some kind of different-dimension punching power, a weird scythe, maybe even teleportation! And she used one or all of the above to disappear herself out of there as soon as I spotted her.

  Ugh! I thought on an existential level. This left me, Reed, and Chora. And an all-consuming maw, of course.