There can be nothing worse than knowing your fate, your time of death. I’m sure, many will disagree with my statement, but believe me when I say this, nothing, not even the knowledge of the exact circumstances leading to your death, can prepare you for it.

My circumstances, however, were different. It wasn’t death I had foreknown about, but peril: a monumental task that had me hesitating ever since I had seen the bugs that had invaded the farm. I had wondered then about my chances against the horde of winged bugs hovering above our heads like deities keeping watch, and had staggered to stillness upon finding myself a dead ant if I ever went against them. And after winding around the horde for so long, the time had finally come for me to meet them in person— and not even the knowledge had me prepared.

Dirt under my feet, long wide shoots of grass covering my sight, and a distant lone plant; I didn’t expect this. The dirt didn’t glow, the grass didn’t move, and neither was there anything special about the plant; other than it being the only one of its kind, but that, when I thought about, was the one thing which also made the plant an oddity in this otherwise ordinary space.

The plant didn’t look as robust or tall as the skyscraper where I had fought the caterpillars, yet it certainly was strong, for not only had it grown out of the grass cover to stake its purchase on the sky above but had also bloomed a flower. It had five long and thin leaves and the lone flower growing from its top was a small robust thing with closely packed petals of red. Close to ten massive oblong and creamy-white fruits hung from its various thin branches, hanging on mostly by extremely thin almost transparent strands of unknown origin.

I didn’t see any enemies around, but that didn’t worry me, for I already knew what I was going to be facing this stage. I was standing a short distance from the plant, and there couldn’t have been a worse place to stand, other than maybe directly underneath it. The dungeon was adamant about being crooked. Last time the plant had been the only place of safety in the endless dark void, whereas this time, it was the plant itself which was the entity glowing voraciously red in the field of dim green grass.

Yes, the plant was an enemy and my trouble started right when I discovered its identity. The system chimed in my head a dull archaic provocation upon my discretion, starting the game.

Fear you shall where your journey ends and death waits; the words it fed me as the fruits hanging from the plant fell one by one, about eight of them. Every single one of the fruits was larger than the apples which had poisoned me during my maiden voyage outside the colony.

They fell one after another without a pause and started shaking instantly upon touching the ground, bulging as if their occupants couldn’t resist the urge of freedom any longer. Then exploded with a crisp sound, and every single one of them vomited out half a dozen caterpillars covered in a slimy puss. Five I could have easily faced, ten I would have struggled against, and fifteen would have been a problem; but thirty-six of them? With two large variants which could easily devour me whole? It was impossible.

Everything single one of them hurtled and rolled and trudged behind me, chasing me. They were the enemies I was to face. They were the foes I had feared. It was the horde; yet, it wasn’t.

Their large bodies and sharp pincers and deadly poison and pointed hairs and weighted charge concerned me; yet, they weren’t the reason behind my urgent rush toward the tall grass blades in search of a sanctum to hide. The monster I truly feared was still hiding, waiting or sleeping, but stalling the inevitable, nonetheless.

How to face them? This was my first thought as I ran for shelter. How to face them spending the least of my scarce resources? This was my second thought.

Like I said at the start, the foreknowledge of future events is not a good thing. If I was oblivious to the horde of winged foes coming after this tide of multi-leggers, the decision to use falling stars wouldn’t have been difficult. But I knew the truth. And that worried me. And worry is not something you want in a life and death crisis.

However, the more I pondered, the more I realized of my chance to cleanly get rid of all the caterpillars in a single strike. They were after me, and were yet to separate and spread in a wide span of area. It was an opportunity. If I could somehow make my mind to use falling stars, then I wouldn’t have to worry about taking them out one by one. Every second which slipped through was an opportunity wasted. Every second I hesitated led to my thoughts racing. And then it happened.

While I was still hesitating, still pondering, still formulating, the situation changed.

I heard something break and sensed something move at a distance, and perceived the tension rise. I stopped hesitating right that instant. I decided on what had to be done. And when the first of the leaves, green and thin, broke away from the plant to ride the invisible current of ethereal wind flowing in the chamber, I stopped rushing away from the fight or hesitating, turned toward the horde of tubular monsters chasing me, and made the stars to fall and burn. And they burned, all of them. The nasty, obnoxiously large and vile bodies of my enemies exploded at the touch of the stone which had come to rain upon them, scarred and exploded, minced and became undone of everything which made them whole.

By the time I had burned through 200 points of mana, which had led to exactly 10 seconds of chaos, the meadow was once again free of caterpillar presence as it was before them bursting out of the fruits. Their place, however, was taken over by a persistent droning of fluttering wings belonging to the lace winged fliers which had waken from their leafy transformation, and the red armored ladybugs which were once the petals belonging to the flower budding atop the plant, leaving the plant behind as a barren impersonation of its once lush figure.

Their numbers exceeded twenty and neared thirty, and I believed to have jumped the gun. Had I waited and allowed the flying monsters to group up with the caterpillars I could have possibly taken them all out in a single volley. However, the chance was lost and along with it my ability to summon another rain of stars, for I no longer possessed enough mana to perform the skill. It was fear which had first made me think without acting, and it was fear again which then made me act without thinking. When I was thinking I had hesitated, and I committed a mistake when I stopped hesitating.

The lesson learned allowed my knowledge to reach level 20, but the counsel it gave was of lesser importance than knowing where the rest of the bugs were, for there had been close to a hundred of them hovering above the farm when I had first seen them. There were only a third of them present on the scene, the rest I had no idea about.

They flew and I ran, slowly increasing our distance. They flew without courtesy or chivalry. I ran with reason and confidence. They came as a tide to sweep me away. I rushed into the grass forest to lose my way. There was no rhyme to their formation, no reason behind their madness, only rage which I had tasted and lost to. But the further I went into the forest the more I found it an impossibility to ignore the fight. They hadn’t lost me. I hadn’t managed to hide. They were right above me and attacking.

The lace winged fliers tried to bind me with their hardening strands and the ladybugs tried to sizzle my shade with their poison. The grass blades helped me in my need. Their numbers kept me protected from my enemies direct rush and covered me from the hardening laces. But the forest was only so large. It wasn’t long before I saw the end nearing and had to turn, only to find myself face to face with a ladybug, which rolled into a ball and crashed into me without hesitation.

I was flung back into where my enemies were the most concentrated. I was deceived by the shoots of grass. They had given me the false sense of being protected from my enemies while jumbling my senses. It was a small but valuable lesson. Though inactive, the grass was also a part of the dungeon, hence an enemy. I cursed the world and thanked anyone watching over me for letting me get away from the blunder with minimal damage. Though the numerical twenty of red which had come to float in front of my eyes was menacing and aggravating, it wasn’t time to waste over it, for my enemies had me barred from all directions. I was trapped.

I stored the momentum carrying me into battery and came to stop inside the rapidly shrinking ring of enemies. I had been stalling the inevitable, hoping to find a solution out of my predicament, but there was no more time for intelligent solutions, nor was there a way out. It was time to settle this in the most rudimentary of ways: a direct confrontation.

The ladybugs were bulky and hence slow, so it was a group of quick lace wingers that reached me first. I counted to three to let the effect of calmness settle my nerves and moved away. I went for them to unsettle their calm.

Two wind cannonballs I sent seeking toward the ladybugs which were still a distance away, and one toward that which had me brought down and into danger. The nearest winged flier hurled at me a sticky lace which I canceled (making it become undone), closing the distance at the same time. It wasn’t alone, though. There were two other of its kind closely following behind and they attacked me in the same manner. I stuck a thread of the web at the front runner's torso as it passed over my head, and sent two air bullets seeking toward the hardening laces which its friends had fired at me.

My feet left the ground as the wind cannonballs I had sent seeking the ladybugs meet their target and obliterated them. Though it pained me to use the slots in such ways, there was no other choice. To use wind cannonballs during a fight was an impossibility I had learned about on the day I had received the skill. Hence, the reason I had slotted nine of them — four out of which I had already used. It wasn’t the answer I sought, I realized.

Mid-flight, the winger I had latched onto passed through a thin mist that smelled vile. It was poisonous, and though it didn’t hurt me in any way or form, the thin thread of my creation however melted upon its torch and broke, and I fell. I hurriedly maneuvered mid-air in order to dodge the charge of a red armored ladybug but got taken from the flank by its sister. Its mandibles tightened around my torso and tried to shear my body into two halves. I countered exactly in the same manner, though by going for its head, which easily sliced and fell off as my jaw closed.

A blade of grass cushioned our fall and the springing release of energy at the end separated us.

I wasn’t allowed to act however, —and before I knew it— my legs were bound by the hardening laces of the lace wingers.

I fumbled on the grass blade in order to break through the bind, but couldn’t. Inversely, the longer I stayed stuck the larger became the pile of hardened laces covering my body. Cursing my enemies, I had to use the slipping steps in order to get out of the hardened substance, decreasing my mana pool by another ten points and my arsenal by a wind cannonball.

I fell to the ground when the mist descended upon me, covering my sight and senses in a shrouding layer. It wasn’t dangerous, simply irritating. However, it gave my enemies the element of surprise, which they ignored. They were brutes and pushed me with the sheer strength of their skills and stats. They didn’t coordinate. They didn’t run. They were stubborn, profusely so.

And we fought. First, I fought to protect myself, to survive, to get through.

Fear of death kept me grounded. It kept me humble. It made me dodge, to seek opportunity where it was, and ignore the chance which would have led to equal injuries on both sides.

And then, I fought to fulfill my desire. The longer I survived, the clearer my mind became, and clearer became my desire. I hadn’t betrayed captains' trust to survive. I would have left with them was my desire. I had wanted to save Billy and had failed. I had raged then, but that hadn’t been my choice. I wasn’t adventurous. I wasn’t prude or prideful. I wasn’t even truly strong. Believing the opposite of that would have been me overestimating myself. So what the hell was I doing in the dungeon, alone, putting my life on the line?

I had skills called reckless courage, tenacity and battle sense, but I wasn’t battle crazed. It wasn’t reckless, the bloody battle which I fancied. And neither did I hate the bugs. They weren’t the villains. If anything, they were the victims instead.

It’s true that my initial thoughts behind coming to the dungeon were mostly related to saving Billy, and only after his death had I started seeing the whole picture and realized what failing to capture the dungeon really meant. I hadn’t believed that the farm was our colony's only option to survive at first, but the clarity I achieved under the influence of calmness helped me realize my mistake.

David wouldn’t have been so adamant about this if he wasn’t completely sure. Someone who had the heart to give up commandership in order to save a friend wouldn’t put others' life in danger if it wasn’t the only option.

For the colony; The words passed through my mind as my eyes settled on a ladybug that had somehow found it in herself to attack me with a ball of poison. I absentmindedly answered her attack with an air bullet only to get the feeling of déjà vu strike me awake. I was reminded of Pyro’s irritated retaliation against a poison ball which had brought about a surprising result in respect to the poison spray which my air bullet had brought.

I hesitated for no more than a second and then decided to get on with the idea. I stopped retaliating, allowing my enemies to get closer, and released a poisonous acidic mist of my own, keeping it concentrated in a small radius around my body until my mana reached rock bottom. I left just enough mana in the pool to activate two more skills. First, of which was fortress, to increase my physical defense; other was Fire body.

Turning my body into a fortress, I activated fire body, and the mix of poison and acid blazed and exploded —just like how the poison ball struck by Pyro’s fireball had; like how the spray of poison which had burned him beyond belief had— and completely destroyed all the bugs in range. The ten that survived the explosion had their wings burned and limbs swollen and remained a threat no more.

I managed to survive, but even my fire resistance couldn’t save me completely. Two exploded legs, one completely burned, another boiled and swollen, cracked exoskeleton, and 55 points worth of damage to my health was what the explosion took from my body.

My acute senses, now acute and precise again with the mists clearing, made sure to let me hear every single vibration and disturbance which the raging explosion had created. That gave me a headache.

I healed myself, emptying the slot and looking about the ground for the bugs. My wounds closed and my health climbed became half-filled again. Some of the status effects disappeared with heals effect, and others remained and decreased my strength and agility by ten percent.

Once healed, I took care of the remaining bugs. Tired, I dropped to the ground believing I was done for the time being but had to get up right after. I was wrong. My struggle wasn’t over yet. No. More bugs didn’t arrive to stake claim at my battered body.

But the plant did move.