“Adair!”

Trace Taylor exploded from the master bedroom, shouting. The man was already standing on the hallway, wearing a grim look on his face.

“I saw,” he said. “It’s going for the commune.”

“We have to stop it.”

“But how are we going to do that?” Liz stepped up from behind the redhead, her face twisted grimly into a frown. “We can’t all possibly catch up to the durable serpentfiend before it reaches Liberapolis.”

“No.” Trace shook her head. “Not all of us.”

Adair’s brows snapped together. He looked over at the redhead, his apprehension evident. “Ms Trace Taylor, surely you’re not intending to go after the level 32 monster all by yourself?”

“I am. I’m the fastest one here— my dexterity is ranked at D. Are either of yours even ranked at E?” Trace fixed them with a dubious look.

They shook their heads.

“Exactly,” the redhead said. “I’m going, and neither of you can stop me.”

“Very well,” Adair acquiesced.

Liz grinned, giving her a thumbs-up. “You’re finna kick its ass, Trace.”

Trace glanced between the pair: an unlikely combination of approval from her best friend and her attempted murderer. Sighing, Trace cocked her pistol.

“…I was expecting you guys to talk me out of it. Now I’ll actually have to do it, won’t I?”

And she gave chase.

The durable serpentfiend was barrelling down the road just ahead. It didn’t so much slither as it crawled and scuttled. Its legs— the odd spikes that poked out of its sides at uneven angles— helped to stabilise it from falling over as much as they propelled it forward.

It was a giant, deformed monstrosity, and Trace was heading straight for it.

Liz and Adair followed her, but they couldn’t keep up. Each step she took brought her closer and closer to the monster, and further and further from her two companions. She raised her pistol, firing potshots even as she sprinted down the tarmac.

It wasn’t well-paved. There were holes and bumps on the road that made it difficult for her to run at her full speed, especially after the durable serpentfiend tore up and damaged the path even further by felling trees and flattening parts of the ground.

The individual bullets barely hurt the monster. Trace’s Vulnerability Vision told her that it was pointless— that the tail of the durable serpentfiend was far too resilient for her to damage. The only way she’d be able to draw its attention was with Last in the Chamber, but even that was debatable.

[Trace Taylor, this action of yours is ill-advised,] a voice said as she stumbled over a fallen branch. [Even with your allies, the possibility of defeating the durable serpentfiend is almost null.]

“That’s a non-zero chance which I’m willing to take.”

[But why risk your life? Were you not hesitant about carrying out this task?]

Trace gritted her teeth. “Oh, shut up. Now’s not the time, Ex.”

Her eyes flickered. The weakest parts of the durable serpentfiend, according to her skill, were its barbed legs. And yet, shooting those wouldn’t kill it.

But it would attract the monster’s attention.

She unloaded an entire magazine, then two. The Mystic Bullets whittled away at the thick, armor-like skin around the base of its leg. Bracing herself, Trace carefully aimed at the now-weakened joint before pulling the trigger.

A beam of light streaked out— a skill that she was quite familiar with using now; it was her most powerful attack in terms of destructive capabilities: Last in the Chamber.

Its blue light lit up the night as it reached the durable serpentfiend. But at the very last moment, the monster swerved. Last in the Chamber missed its mark, instead splintering open the bark of a deciduous tree and sending it crashing down.

Trace blinked, watching as the durable serpentfiend made a sharp turn, going off-road. She ran after it and glanced at where it was headed. Her eyes widened when she saw the city.

No, not a city. A small town to the side of the road.

Houses and shops littered around its fringes, a scattered ring just like the invisible halo surrounding the Gas Giant. And the durable serpentfiend cratering its way to the town was like a deadly meteor rampaging through the vastness of space. It trampled over small buildings, leaving behind a trail of destruction as it headed to the centre of the town. There laid a petrol station, right next to an empty school.

Most of the populace had probably left or were forced to leave, since the town itself was mostly empty too.

Key word: mostly.

“You’ve gotta be—”

Trace cursed as she heard screams erupt from the town. Cries that echoed with the same fear and terror as just a night before. There were maybe a few dozen— a hundred at most— people in the town, and the durable serpentfiend was going to kill them all.

There was a moment of hesitation where the redhead slowed her pace. She glanced back. Liz and Adair were still far behind her. Gritting her teeth, she further resolved herself to action.

“Oi, serpentshit!” she shouted, firing more shots into the monster’s side.

The bullets scratched its skin, leaving tiny marks and dents that Trace knew barely bothered it. Still, she fired. There was nothing else she could do. It’d been no more than five minutes since she last used Last in the Chamber. Screaming and shooting was her only option.

It didn’t work.

The durable serpentfiend crushed a house, sending a horrified family running out of the back door. The monster gave chase, its winding body collapsing the rest of the garage as it made a turn.

A mother carried a child as she craned her body, raising her hands, conjuring a single shard of ice and hurling it at the durable serpentfiend. The magical attack shattered, doing no damage to the giant monster.

“Fuck, fuck, f—”

Trace could only follow a step— a very big step— behind the durable serpentfiend. It loomed over the family as they were cornered by the side of a three-storeyed building. There were four of them. A father, a little girl, and the mother with the child. They cowered and quivered in fear, accepting their fate as the durable serpentfiend opened its wicked maw.

There was still four minutes before Trace could use Last in the Chamber; her mind raced with her body, trying to come up with a way to save the family. And her eyes flickered. She laid her gaze on the petrol station just a few hundred metres to her left, vacant and deserted.

An idea bore fruit in her mind. It could’ve been a good place to trap the durable serpentfiend and kill it, but that’d only be after the family died. So, instead, Trace snapped her hands towards the petrol station, using Rapid Fire to unload on the fuel tanks.

After all, serpentfiend’s hated bright lights, right?

An explosion rocked the town as flames spewed up at the heavens themselves. A dimmed-blood tide of fumes spilled into the air as a second, smaller blast erupted from the petrol station, causing Trace to stumble.

The slight tremor drew the durable serpentfiend’s attention. It screeched, facing the warm glow blanketing over its body in utter revulsion. And during that brief respite, the family took their chance to run.

They scurried around the massive body of the monster, fleeing into a building as Trace finally caught up. She froze as the intensity of the heat from the explosion lessened. The durable serpentfiend slowly looked her way.

Adrenaline had kept Trace going all this time. But now that the durable serpentfiend turned its attention to her, the boiling pressure within her subsided, and she could feel the icy touch of death poking at her back like chilled pinpricks stabbing into her spine.

“Erm… hi?” She waved.

The durable serpentfiend roared, and Trace backed up. Round after round rang out as she ran back and reloaded, but the monster cascaded after her, a deluge of rage and anger directed at her and no one else. Three minutes. Three minutes before she could use her trump card.

But would that even work?

It wouldn’t. It could probably hurt the durable serpentfiend, but it definitely wouldn’t kill it. Trace couldn’t rely on her skills alone to win; she had to wait for Liz and Adair to arrive. They’d been trailing behind by quite a bit. The redhead wouldn’t be surprised if it’d take them another five minutes to finally reach her.

Now, the problem was, could Trace survive five minutes?

She ran back in a straight line, firing into the maw of the durable serpentfiend. It bore down on her, screeching, salivating, and snapping at the redhead. Each Mystic Bullet only served to annoy it even further. And eventually, Trace found her back pressed up against a wall.

The durable serpentfiend clawed over the tarmac road, shredding bits of tar into the air as it headed towards Trace. She watched how its body made undulating motions, moving slowly with only its crawling body, only to be propelled faster by each clicking step it made with its spiked legs. Her eyes narrowed as she tried to load another magazine into her pistol.

It reached her a moment after. It would’ve crushed Trace— gobbled her up in a single chomp as she was distractedly reloading her weapon. But the redhead dropped her weapon, and at the very last moment, she leapt to the side.

She rolled into a stumble as she raised her right arm, a flash of aether bringing her pistol back into her hand. Recall Weapon. Spinning around, she clicked the magazine into the pistol’s grip and aimed at the durable serpentfiend. The monster crashed into a small building, toppling it over as she fired more shots at it.

“Come on, Liz, Adair—” Where were they? She couldn’t take it on by herself. Trace needed backup before she made a deadly mistake.

The giant monster whipped around as the building collapsed into a pile of rubble and dust. Its long tail almost struck Trace, but she managed to hop back before it could graze her. But just as she landed on the balls of her feet, she… fell. Yes, she felt a stinging pain pierce its way up her legs as she grimaced, crumpling to the ground.

That was the thing: Trace Taylor had yet to fully recover from the Bne Worldeater. So, her legs gave out.

“Motherfu—”

She tried to pick herself up, but her legs wobbled and failed her. The durable serpentfiend came for Trace once more as she struggled to even get up on one knee. Her eyes snapped shut as she unloaded all her bullets at the giant monster with Quick Fire, before pulling the trigger once it was emptied, hoping that enough time had passed.

Click.

Even with her gunshots ringing in her ear— even with buildings collapsing in the background— Trace heard the death-quiet smash of the hammering of an empty pistol. She sighed. And her ears perked up as she picked up another sound.

It sounded like a soft buzzing at first, but as it grew louder and louder, Trace realised that it was a melody. A mumbling of hip-hop that jumped out amongst the overbearing destruction permeating the air. It rolled closer to her with a whirring engine pumping out gas and the turning of rubber tires on tar. And right as the song reached its crescendo, a truck flew into the air, with its passengers yelling.

“Fuck the police comin' straight from the underg—”

“WOOOOOOH!”

“Hell yeah! Fuck you!”

Three individuals rode in the truck. One sat at the front, driving, while the other two were standing on the cargo bed at the back. The driver had his windows rolled down, blaring rap music as he pumped a fist.

“Yo, over here, ugly!”

He drove between the durable serpentfiend and Trace, drawing the monster’s attention. As it turned its body to face the truck, he stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled.

“Get ‘em, boys!”

A flurry of barks followed. Trace glanced back, seeing a pack of dogs yapping and bounding towards the durable serpentfiend. They were all mutts— mixed breeds with no discernible features. And as they drew closer towards their target, their forms changed. They doubled in size as their fur seemed to almost shrink into their bodies. Their bodies almost seemed bloated with muscle, adopting monster-like features like sharper claws and more crooked teeth.

There were six dogs, and the leader of the pack was the largest. The durable serpentfiend brought down its head to crush them, but the lead dog hopped out of the way, and the others followed in time. They proceeded to pile onto the side of the durable serpentfiend, tearing into its hard skin, biting and barking as it reeled back.

The truck drove back towards the giant monster, and the two people at its back— a girl with a sledgehammer and a guy wearing a hoodie— leapt off to support the dogs. The guy with a hoodie landed on the ground, slamming a fist into the earth.

“Jackie!”

“On it!”

A concrete pillar shot up, propelling the girl with the sledgehammer into the air. She flipped and twisted and used the momentum to smash her hammer into the back of the durable serpentfiend’s head. It actually rocked the monster, eliciting a pained roar.

Trace blinked as the girl landed lithely on her toes while the dogs continued to ravage the monster’s side.

“Erm…” she trailed.

“Those three sure know how to make an entrance, huh?” a voice said.

The redhead looked up, and a brown-haired man stood over her. “…who are you?”

“The name’s Sam.” He grinned and proffered her a hand. “We’re here to help.”

“Thanks.” She accepted his help and stumbled to her feet. Trace tried to stand on her own, but she grunted and nearly fell back down.

Sam steadied her. “Woah, woah, woah. Don’t push yourself. Here, I’ll help.” He slung her arm around his shoulder as she grimaced.

“I—” Another voice interrupted the redhead before she could speak. This time, it was a more familiar person who called out.

“Trace!” Liz ran up to her, panting. “Are you alright? Are you? …” She glanced at Sam, then at the truck in the distance, leading the durable serpentfiend on. “Who the heck are these guys?”

“I… really am not sure.”

“We’re friends,” Sam said, turning to face Liz. “And the ones who’ll take that monster down,” he added with a wink.

The durable serpentfiend spun around, its tail grazing the side of the truck, knocking the vehicle over as it tried to swerve out of the way. The driver kicked the door open and leapt out before the durable serpentfiend crushed it with its mouth.

Liz crossed her arms. “Nice job. You guys really showed it what metal tastes like.”

“That… was just bad timing, alright?” Sam scratched the back of his head.

The girl with the sledgehammer dashed away from the durable serpentfiend as it continued to chomp into the truck. She raised her arms and faced the driver. “Yo, what tha fuck, Nathan? That’s goin’ ta cost us a few grand!”

“Bro, that wasn’t even our truck,” Nathan, the driver, protested. “We stole it, Jackie, remember?”

Jackie tilted her head back. “Oh, yer right.”

“I think a more appropriate term is borrowed,” the last of the group— the guy with the hoodie—corrected them.

“Fuck off, Darius,” Jackie and Nathan said in unison.

As the three of them exchanged their quips, the durable serpentfiend wriggled, shaking the pack of dogs off its body. Nathan’s eyes widened and he cried out.

“You bastard!”

The durable serpentfiend roared back at him, and he paled.

“…you win.”

“Ms Trace Taylor.”

The redhead craned her neck back, spotting Adair right as he finally arrived. His eyes narrowed as he took in the four strangers; Sam met his gaze, grinning.

Adair then shook his head, facing Trace. “It appears that you have survived. It may be best for us to flee now, while we still can.”

“We have help, now.” She shook her head, pushing off Sam. Steeling herself, she managed to stagger onto her own two feet. “We’re not running.”

The durable serpentfiend rose up above the houses, taking in the group of seven. With a terrible screech, it drew back down and tore forward after them.

[Affirmative,] Ex agreed. [Now that you have reinforcements, you can all die together.]

Trace’s eyes flickered. She saw the destruction left behind by the giant monster. She heard the cries and the screams and the whimperings of the few families that remained in the small town. And she knew what she had to do.

“No,” she said, defiant. “We’ll stop it here and now.”