It was once again entirely clear that I was in a new world. The same world, the old world.

Pallos.

I didn’t have time to take everything in. I was in trouble, and as I felt power flood through me once again, I acted. [Bullet Time] wasn’t activating, but my bond with Auri was letting me think faster.

We had landed at twilight, the full moons creeping over the horizon as the sun set. We were deep in an ancient-looking forest, the shadows stretched long.

Monstrous spiders surrounded us, resting on their thick webs. Cocooned animals larger than I was were wrapped in their nests for later. They ranged from a poisonous orange smaller than my pinky nail, to gigantic black-grey specimens that looked like they’d eat Julius for a snack. The spiders looked hungry, and I wasn’t going to wait and see what they did.

We’d appeared in a tiny gap in their webs, somehow not touching a single one.

Also - why was it always spiders!?

The first step was to dismiss the notifications as I landed. I needed to strip everything away except for the essentials, and work from there. The notifications weren’t important right now, and were horribly distracting from the situation at hand.

Speaking of distractions, cool relief washed through me as [Center of the Universe] kicked back in, muting my sense of pain. A quick flick of my eyes glanced at my status, and I saw I had everything back. I hadn’t gotten reset to level 1 or anything stupid like that.

Second step was to assess the threats. I quickly pulled up a dozen of them with [Long-Range Identify], the skill letting me check entire groups.

[Sentry Spider - Lv 278]

[Black Widow - Lv 53]

[Jumping Spider - Lv 148]

[Tyrant Tarantula - Lv 764]

[Brown Recluse- Lv 236]

[Black Widow - Lv 301]

[Baby Spider - Lv 5]

[Spitting Spider - Lv 99]

[Webspinning Warrior - Lv 262]

[Unfriendly Neighborhood Spider - Lv 85]

[Wolf Spider - Lv 210]

[Spider Seductress - Lv 149]

I absorbed the information without getting lost in the details, idly wondering why I was getting numbers and not colors from my skill, but now wasn’t time to wonder about that.

Third step was to assess what tools and people I had.

Artemis, Julius, and I had all worked and trained together extensively. They were some of the most lethal, combat-capable people I knew. I knew how they worked and fought, and how we’d execute things. I also knew they’d see that I was punching harder than I ever had in a fight and adapt to it.

Amber was a small liability. I adored my beanpolish apprentice, but there was no sense in wearing blinders. She was worse than dead weight in a fight, she was someone I actively needed to protect. She had a good head on her shoulders though, and I could somewhat trust her to listen to us.

Auri was a major liability. She thought she was invincible, and would fearlessly attack. No matter how strong we were, I didn’t like her chances if the level 700+ [Tarantula] ate her whole. I’d need to spend effort not only keeping her safe and alive, but also stopping her from diving in.

Plans flashed through my head, getting analyzed and discarded until I settled on one, right as the first spider started to skitter over to us.

It was one of the low-leveled spiders, and with my vitality and [Bullet Time], it looked like it was running through thick jelly.

Unfortunately, my communication was also slow. To tell Auri and Amber anything, I’d need to speak slowly enough that they could understand me, which could give the spiders an eternity to act.

Relatively speaking. Everyone moving at such different speeds was tricky to manage.

I threw up [Mantle] all around us in a great dome, trusting that Artemis would know to turn my snap-shield into a full stone dome. I grabbed Auri with one hand, mentally smiling at my Fire immunity, while the other one grabbed Amber and started to unceremoniously shove her face-first into the dirt.

If the spiders broke through, I needed her out of the way.

I noted a few tiny spiders inside the dome and blasted them with prejudice, utterly annihilating their tiny bodies with an overeager application of Radiance.

Normally I’d do a precision shot, but I was shoving Amber onto their remains. Didn’t want there to be a super venom sac or something.

I finally had enough time to work on myself. I flashed [Dance with the Heavens] through my body, fixing my ruined feet, then immediately set up a connection with Auri and reset my [Persistent Casting] with my healing on her.

It was obvious that visiting the land of the fae had reset all of my careful [Persisting Castings]. It was going to be a pain to reset them all, if lacking them didn’t prove lethal to somebody in the short term.

Thick stone walls slammed into existence all around us, Artemis’s Earth walls curving up and over us to form a dome. I flickered [Mantle], changing it from the dome that Artemis used to build her more solid walls, to something like a knee-high wall around us. It’d help against waves of small spiders, while still giving Artemis easy access to the stone walls, so she could expand them.

Amber ate a faceful of soft moss. The inside of the stone dome was lit by Auri’s soft glow, who was just now starting to protest.

“Brrrpt!” She cried out. It hurt, but I ignored her, in favor of keeping us all alive.

“Backs, over Amber.” I called as I whirled up, standing over my apprentice. I quickly felt the comforting presence of Artemis’s back against mine, quickly followed by Julius’s reassuring strength as we formed a triangle.

“Auri, my head, light. No fire. We have limited air.”

“Brrrpt!” She shouted her understanding, and having an Important Mission, would be suitably out of the way.

I drew my short sword and handed it to Julius.

“Julius, close. Artemis -”

“Walls.” She grunted. It was clear that she meant she was spending all her mana and focus on building, repairing, and expanding the stone dome we were in.

“I’m firepower.” I agreed with her, letting Artemis and Julius know that I was to be the heavy hitter for this engagement.

I did a quick look around the dome, lighting it up with a soft Radiance glow to compliment Auri’s flames. A few quick beams of Radiance handled the few spiders that were still inside the dome with us, regardless of how harmless they looked.

I shifted my weight from foot to foot as I stared at the dark walls in front of me, waiting for one of the massive spiders to burst through. With a quick thought, I turned on [Dance with the Heavens] with a terrible image - “heal” - and set it with [Persistent Casting] on both myself, and any human that touched me.

[Wheel of Sun and Moon] was worthless without sunlight or moonlight, and given that we’d entombed ourselves in a dark forest, I didn’t think there’d be that much of a chance of using the skill.

“Artemis. Arcanite in my armor. Use it.” I told her. I was attuned to the Arcanite - it had been issued to me, after all - but that didn’t mean Artemis couldn’t use it. It was harder for her to use and she needed to be in direct contact, but it was usable.

Speaking of, those walls had gone up fast. Much faster than I thought Artemis could bring them up.

“Completely out.” Artemis declared after a dozen seconds, and I felt her back shift slightly as her arm came down. We continued our watch, and I was able to slowly process everything that was going on, see and figure out the world around me.

Slowly, because I was on edge. Every part of me screamed to be ready. Be ready to move. Run. Roll. Blast. Heal. Analyze. Adjust. Adapt.

Overcome.

I was a tightly wound spring with enough power at my fingertips to kill most people, most monsters, with a thought.

Sight was practically useless. All I could do was stare at a blank wall. At the same time, it was like my vision expanded as I slowly panned my head back and forth, looking for any little crumbling of stone that indicated one of the spiders slowly tunneling through. Ready for the explosion of noise as the massive [Tyrant Tarantula] crushed the walls, letting a flood of its smaller kin in to kill us and feast on our flesh. Shadows flickered against the wall, Auri’s flames casting gigantic, inconsistent shadows, shifting as I turned my head to keep checking on my parts of the wall.

Useless, and the most important at the same time. A paradox, in a sense.

Sound was next, the most horrifying. Our intrusion - specifically, the stone dome Artemis conjured up, if not our actual presence - hadn’t gone unnoticed, and Artemis’s stone was magically uniform and solid. Perfect for hearing the skittering feet of dozens of spiders with hundreds of legs exploring all over this new object in their midsts. Heavier thuds echoed through as some of the larger, more gigantic spiders walked over our new home. Worse were the noises I couldn’t identify. Screeching, scratching, chewing, clawing, the sound of rocks breaking and falling, crashing.

Screaming. From elvenoid throats or monster, I couldn’t tell.

The deep, earthy smell of the woods came to me next, the smell of rich loam and decay. All perfectly natural and somewhat reassuring.

I hadn’t felt the sickening sensation of the Dead Zone coming back.

The air felt humid and warm, making me think it was still summer. Hopefully it was summer, and we’d just been thrown to a nasty forest. I wasn’t looking forward to ‘Operation: Where the hell is Remus?’ again - especially with Amber slowing us down - but I had high hopes for the rest. Especially after the Sentinel debrief where everyone plotted out all the best ways to find Remus when dropped in a random place on the map!

Six months, tops, to make it back home.

We waited, tension steadily increasing. Even then, no matter how tense and dangerous the situation, there was only so much staring at a blank wall I could do.

However, I needed to do it, so I did. After an interminably long time, we broke in unison, and turned to face each other.

“I’ll take first shift.” Julius offered, and I nodded in approval. Artemis reached her hand out, and without looking, Julius took it.

After all, they’d just been spiders. There might be a malevolent intelligence behind them, but we’d shown up and vanished so quickly that the big, important, dangerous spiders might not have noticed us or cared, and were simply expanding their webs and territory to the nice new rock in the middle of the forest. Who casually broke boulders just because they could, especially when there was no pressing reason to?

For the moment, I thought we were safe. Sure, we were on a dozen timers - the lack of breathable air being the biggest one, water being a close second - but the immediate threat was done.

“Guys. You have to look at the notifications.” Amber’s voice was a whisper of horror.

“Brrrrrpt!!” Auri was shocked.

Well, they had waited until we’d determined we were somewhat safe. Might as well see what all the fuss was about. I opened my notifications, and was initially confused. What was going on…?

I realized what the notifications meant. Not just the words, but the implications. The blood drain from my face. My knees got weak, and I fell down onto my butt.

“No…” I whispered, trying to deny the truth in front of me.

“NO!”