The sounds of shoes tapping against the rocky ground echoed through the tunnels, which twisted and turned as it extended deep into the dungeon. Behind the four children, the barking of the beasts grew quieter and quieter until it became barely audible. The air smelt musty and earthy - enough so that Bell could practically taste it - and their way was illuminated by the dim glow of the meter-wide stream that cast shadows on the wall beside them. The stream was glowing brighter the further they ventured into the dungeon, and Bell could start to see small, orange fish lazing about as he passed them by.

Bell felt his older brother slow down as they all gradually came to a stop. Both he and Kana were set on the ground before the twins collapsed onto their bottoms, heaving.

"Do you think we lost them?" Bell asked nervously.

"Don't worry, dungeons always seal themselves off once people are inside," Day made out between gasps of breath. "They shouldn't be able to follow us."

"It also means that no one else will be able to follow us either," Leah added. "Exactly why did you tell us to come here again?"

"Bell and I both thought it was the best option. Either we come here, or we get eaten alive by those things outside. You saw them following us."

"Yeah, but…" Leah bit her lip, and sighed. "I guess you're right." She glanced down at the shivering ball of brown fur in her arms and stroked its head. "Kana, are you okay?"

There was no reply, but Bell could hear soft sobs and whimpering emanating from Kana. He lowered his gaze to the floor, then closed his eyes.

Bell could only imagine how she was feeling, and any words that he might use to describe her state would probably be an understatement. She had just lost her mother, and she was without her father. And now, she was a three-year old kid inside a dungeon with three strangers that she vaguely knew.

What could he say to make her feel better? Was there anything he could say at all? Bell struggled to think of how he might be able to console her.

His thoughts were interrupted by a sudden, loud bark which echoed through the tunnel, drawing his gaze back in the direction that they had come from. In the area further back where the tunnel turned at a sharp angle, the shadow of a wolf-like creature grew larger and larger against the wall of the tunnel.

"Crap, one of those... things must've gotten in before the entrance closed," Day groaned. He struggled back up to his feet, as did Leah, who leaned against the wall to prop herself up. He chuckled at the sight. "You're not looking so hot, sis."

"Oh shush," Leah scowled. She saw Day's shaky legs and rolled her eyes. "It doesn't look like either of us are going to be able to run away this time. It's probably better to chance a fight." Leah took a few steps forward and settled into a combat stance. The beast was now clearly visible as it turned the corner, and it began to charge at them as soon as it did so.

"Yeah, yeah."

Day stepped in front of Bell to stand with Leah. "Bell, you might want to take Kana and run away as far as you can."

Bell looked incredulously at his older brother. He didn't want to leave them alone.

"But..." he tried to say, but faltered. Even if he stayed, what could he do? He was useless, and all he would do was to get in the way. He felt a pang of resentment at this.

Bell was unsure of what to say when Day flashed him a wide grin.

"We'll catch up with you right after we beat this thing to the ground," Day said confidently, then returned his attention to the creature. "So, go! Hop, little brother!"

Bell didn't have time to reply. The beast, now only meters away, growled and pounced at the twins. At the same time, the twins each held out an arm with their palm spread out, from which a bright, white light shot out and struck the beast in mid-air. The force of the spell caused it to fly backward and crash against the rocky floor. It was a painful-looking crash that looked as though it should've caused some degree of injury or at least winded it, but the beast appeared to be completely fine, because it had already started to rise to its feet.

Day grimaced, his face paler than usual and his stance faltering briefly. Day shot Bell a brief, meaningful look.

Bell gaped at his older brother. He knew what Day was trying to imply.

Yes, he should run. It made sense to run. But…

Leah fired another silver light at the creature, but it had already gotten up and was easily able to jump out of the trajectory of the spell.

Bell looked at Kana, who was staring blankly into space as if she had lost the will to live. He should grab her and run away with her. He urged his body to move.

'Move, dammit.'

The beast charged at Leah, its red eyes full of annoyance and anger, but Day dashed forward and managed to clip it on the side with his spell, sending the beast flying into the cave wall. The impact caused the entire cave to shake, and a jagged piece of rock chipped off from the ceiling, impaling the ground mere centimeters away from the beast's head. Unfortunate.

Bell could see that his older siblings were breathing heavily, and their limbs were shaking. They were struggling to even keep their eyes open as they were probably strained from the rapid, successive usage of mana.

Bell knew that if he ran away now and left things as they were, there was a high chance that his siblings wouldn't make it out of there alive to join him.

Then he saw the beast start to rise, and his body moved.

Slowly at first, but hopping faster as he gained momentum.

"You guys run," Bell said as he leaped past his siblings.

"What are you doing?" Leah cried, as Day yelled, "No!"

Hmm, Leah asked a good question. What was he doing? More like, what was he going to do?

He didn't really know. This was really stupid. He was going to die, wasn't he.

The creature bared its sharp fangs in a growl and barked at him. It then lunged forward with open jaws to bite him.

Bell saw its mouth open in slow motion, two arrays of deadly, dagger-like teeth parting like some sort of pit of hell that was coming to tear him apart and devour him.

He had to move out of the way. Perhaps, if he could avoid these teeth and come up behind the creature, that would allow him to distract it and give his siblings time to run away.

This was what he was betting on. He gathered tension in his pseudopods so that he could try to launch himself underneath and between the creature's legs.

Then suddenly, a flash of pale yellow came in between him and the jaws of certain death, and he was sent barreling sideways into the stream with a splash. A high-pitched scream pierced through the cave.

His body cried out in pain, but Bell managed to reorient himself in the water. He was panicking.

What the hell happened?

When he was able to poke his head out of the water to see what was going on, his confusion was soon replaced with horror.

His sister was collapsed against the wall while clutching her mangled and bloody arm, which was failing to maintain its humanoid shape. Her face was contorted in pain, and tears were streaming down her cheeks.

His brother, on the other hand, was fighting the creature in close quarters. He watched in terror as his brother tried to kick the creature away, and the creature sank its fangs into his brother's leg. Day screamed, and there was a flash of white light that sent the creature tumbling back.

Tumbling until it stopped.

Right in front of Bell.

The creature wheeled around and locked its blood-red eyes with his. It bared its teeth in a snarl, which in Bell's mind, looked like a malicious smile. Bell trembled as his mind raced through possible solutions to his predicament. All thoughts soon converged on a single thought.

'Dodge!'

The creature pounced, and Bell ducked into the stream. Before he could be completely submerged in the water, he felt hot air directly above him as the creature's teeth snapped at the air where his head had been milliseconds before. After having missed, the propulsion of the creature's lunge sent it crashing into the stream.

Sploosh!

Suddenly, the creature was yelping in pain and thrashing about as though it was possessed by a demon.

Bell felt a sharp pain across his back as the water swirled around him and sent him tumbling in god knows what direction.

What the heck was happening? Was the creature drowning or something? No way, the water was far too shallow for that.

Once the waves had settled enough for him to orient himself, he found himself a couple meters away from the creature. He stared at it while he was still submerged, and grew utterly bewildered.

The creature was clearly hurting. At the same time, a black, wispy ink rose out of its body and into the stream.

'The water... but why?'

An idea came to him. It didn't matter why. It just mattered that it did.

And if there was one thing that slime bodies did well, it was manipulating liquid.

Bell sucked as much water from his surroundings as possible and poked his head out of the water. It seemed that the creature was trying to scramble out of the stream and away from the water, but there was a fat chance of that happening.

Bell spit the water out like a jet and doused the entire creature's head and torso in a shower of warm liquid, causing a large cloud of black mist to puff out from its body. It yelped loudly and leaped out of the water, but Bell continued to shower it in the stream water. The creature whimpered and faltered in its steps as the tumors in its face seemed to reduce in size, and the black coloring of its fur seemed to fade to grey as the black mist left it.

Soon, it crumpled to the ground and lay there, twitching. Bell doused it some more for good measure, and only when it finally stopped twitching did he stop.

The last wisps of black mist rose out of the creature's body and dissipated into the air, and Bell stared at the unmoving corpse for several seconds before it sank in.

He had survived.

He had survived!

Relief washed over him but a cry of pain snapped him out of his revery. This wasn't the time for celebration. He leaped out of the water and rushed towards his siblings.

...

Leah was now completely in her slime form, which Bell hadn't seen since she had levelled up last year, and she was breathing fast and shallow as she rested her back against the wall. The right side of her yellow, jelly-like body was ripped and punctured like jello that had been flayed and poked at by a fork. Yellow ooze spurted out of the wounds, and it appeared that the area surrounding it was bubbling as though it was being eaten away by some acid. To make things worse, Bell could see translucent, jagged structures poking through: her bones were broken.

Day, on the other hand, was sprawled on the ground clutching his jello-like leg. He had been able to maintain his sapient form elsewhere, but that was where the good news ended. His leg was oozing yellow blood, and similar acid burns could be seen all along the edges of the punctures where the creature had sunk its fangs into slime. His wails of pain came ceaselessly.

Furthermore, neither of the twins noticed Bell approaching them, giving him even more reason to worry.

This was bad. They needed serious medical attention, and they needed it now.

But where could he get that kind of thing here?

'Maybe deeper inside the dungeon,' Bell thought desperately.

Bell briefly glanced at Kana, who was now curled up and shaking. If it wasn't for the slight rise and fall of her body that told him that she was still breathing, he might've thought that she was dead. Even if he was worried about her current state, at least she was alive. That was good enough for now.

Bell steeled himself and started hopping into the dungeon. He needed to find something that could save his siblings. Soon.

Time was of the essence.

However, Bell hadn't made it ten hops before something popped into existence in front of his eyes mid-hop, causing him to slam into it headfirst. He cried out in pain and surprise, as did… something else. When the pain dulled, he was able to see what he had butted into, but he had to squint to make sure he wasn't seeing things.

It was a bird, except it was the strangest looking one he had ever seen. The overall form was that of a bird, yes, with chestnut-brown feathers and all, but what the hell was with its eyes?! Not only were they huge, yellow bulbs that jutted out from their sockets like googly eyes, but their pupils were black, of slightly different sizes, and - perhaps most disconcertingly - slightly off-center as though they were staring at the two sides of his face. It didn't help that it was also wearing a yellow bowtie with red spots.

The weird-looking bird, who was down on the ground on its bum, hopped up onto its bony legs and focused its attention on Bell. At least, that's the impression Bell got from how it leaned towards him. He couldn't be sure though, because the bird's pupils still seemed to be staring at the sides of Bell's face.

"What an exciting greeting, ohoho! Fantastic. Welcome to the Tomb of the Life Pharaoh. Potootoo is your dungeon guide, Potootoo."

Bell's jaws twitched. Or at least they would have if he had any.

'A dungeon guide,' Bell thought in wonder. Then came another thought. Maybe… just maybe, this person could help!

"Hello, Mr. Potootoo, er- dungeon guide, sir," Bell said, speaking as quickly as he could.

"Just Potootoo," the bird said, leaning in closer.

"Er… Potootoo, is there any way that you can help my brother and sister back there? They're injured, and they need medical help right away," Bell pleaded.

"Ohohoho, Potootoo loves to help! Yes, yes he does. But can he? No. But you have ability to help, yes? This is why Potootoo is here. Potootoo shall explain it. You have defeated a monster, haven't you? Sure, Potootoo doesn't recognize this monster, but it is clearly a monster. So let Potootoo check… aha, yes, yes," Potootoo said, nodding to himself as if he was reading something in the air in the two directions that his eyes were looking at; something that Bell couldn't see despite looking to either side of himself. "A level 3 unclassified beast, most definitely worth thirty credits. Because of the level difference, you get a bonus multiplier, for a grand total of ninety credits. Yes, this will do quite nicely. You can buy a healing potion and some bandages from the store."

"Store?" Bell asked hopefully, trying to ignore the eccentricity with which the bird spoke.

"Yeeeesss," Potootoo confirmed. "With your credits, you can buy a basic healing potion and some bandages. A potion is fifty credits and the bandages are ten credits each, ohoho. Would you like some?"

"Yes, I'll take as many as I can get," Bell said hurriedly. He needed to grab any chance that he could get to save his siblings. He just hoped this strange bird wasn't jerking his chain.

"Then, Potootoo will do this for you." Potootoo used his wing to nudge his bowtie closer to his beak as if it was a microphone. "One basic healing potion and four bandages."

There was a small rumbling sound from below, and Bell glanced down to see a section of the dungeon floor parting to form a small, circular hole. A pedestal rose out from it carrying a heart-shaped vial containing red liquid and four rolls of white cloth on top of it.

"Thank you." Bell told him, and snatched the items off the platform as the strange bird merely laughed in its strange "Ohohoho" way.

He first hurried back to Leah, who was by far the worse off of his two siblings. Her skin was very pale and her breath coming in ragged gasps. He used a pseudopod to secure the vial and used another to wrench the cap off. Carefully, he poured its contents into Leah's skin, making sure not to spill any onto the ground.

If there was any advantage in feeding a slime in its slime-form, it was that you didn't need to aim at any particular opening, since slimes could consume food or drink from any surface of their body.

Almost immediately, Leah's body convulsed and the wounded area began to glow.

Crick. Snap. Pop. Slop.

Bell watched in amazement as the protruding pieces of broken bone twitched and reinserted themselves into her body, the punctures and rips along the surface of her flesh knitted together, and the parts of her wound that were bubbling were sloughed off. These pieces of dead slime flesh slapped down onto the ground wetly.

The whole process took a few seconds, but when it was over, her wounds were still present and oozing slightly. Thankfully, these were a mere shadow of the life-threatening wounds they had just been. Leah seemed to be breathing a little easier. Bell realized that the potion had run its course, and that this was as far as it was going to go. He quickly unraveled one of the roll of bandages and applied it over the wound, throwing it over her body like a blanket. He then extended his pseudopod to catch one end of the bandage and tie it to the other end that was being held by another pseudopod. Once it was fastened, the bandage glowed green faintly, and Leah's tense expression seemed to relax a bit. Perhaps the bandage had an analgesic effect.

With his basic treatment of completed, he turned his attention to his brother. When he tried to move Day's hands away from his leg, his brother cried out in pain.

"Day, it's Bell. I have something that can help ease the pain," Bell said as soothingly as he could, trying to keep the shaking out of his voice.

"B-Bell?" Day croaked, his eyes opening wide and terrified as sweat beaded down his face. "What happened to the creature? What about Leah? Kana?"

"It's dead, and they are fine," Bell answered simply. "I'll tell you about it later. First, let me put this bandage on you."

Day looked at him disbelievingly, but gingerly lifted his hands to allow Bell to wrap one of the rolls of bandages around his leg. As soon as the bandage was tied tight, the bandage glowed green, and Day moaned in relief. It seemed that the bandage was capable of preventing blood loss, because none seeped through the fabric. Bell then wrapped another roll of bandages around the first bandage, but as he suspected, it did not glow green nor did Day indicate that it had any additional effects. Somewhat disappointed, Bell unwrapped the second bandage and rolled it back up.

As he did so, he saw that Day had closed his eyes. He supposed that his brother was tired, and wanted to rest now that the threat was gone and his injury had been treated.

"Is this your brother?" A voice asked from just behind Bell, causing him to flinch in surprise. Day's eyes fluttered awake in surprise.

"It's okay, it's okay," Bell reassured his brother, sighing a breath of relief when he recognized the voice. In the haze of trying to treat his siblings, he had almost forgotten about the strange bird whom he had met just moments earlier. "This is Potootoo, our dungeon guide. He's the one that got us the medical supplies. Potootoo, yes, this is my brother, Day."

"Potootoo did not give you anything of the sort," Potootoo said defensively. "You bought the medical supplies, not Potootoo. Potootoo just ordered them, he did."

Bell sighed internally, but didn't show it outwardly. As nutty as the bird seemed, he was grateful to Potootoo, and he wanted to be as respectful towards him as possible.

Day, on the other hand, apparently did not have such reservations, because he had his eyebrow cocked so high up that Bell thought it might disappear into his hairline. However, after a few moments of thought, Day seemed to be mollified, and he once again closed his eyes.

Now there was just one last task in front of him. Kana.

"Please excuse me for a moment, Potootoo," Bell said, turning his attention now to the curled up ball of fur a few meters away from him.

He hopped up next to the trembling Guardian child, and put a pseudopod on top of her furry head. It was warm and soft to the touch, and he stroked it gently. He took a few deep breaths, trying to calm himself down before thinking about what to say something to her.

Memories of the previous fight and the stress of it all raged inside his mind, but he tried to push it aside. This wasn't the time for it.

'Keep it together. You aren't done yet,' Bell reminded himself.

Yes, he needed to help this little girl. Only then would he allow himself to sort things through. What he needed to do now was to comfort this little girl to the best of his ability.

He opened his mouth to try and say… something. But no words came out.

He tried again, but once again to no avail.

Instead, he felt his cheeks start to become wet, and he found that tears were falling from his eyes. The pseudopod that was stroking Kana's head was shaking.

It was then that something inside of him broke, like a dam holding back a flood.

All of the fear that he had been bottling up inside since the start of the fight. All of the anxiety he had sidelined regarding his injured siblings and the responsibility he had for their lives. The concern he had for Kana, whom he had no idea how to console, if that was even possible. And on top of it all, the terrifying thought that if he failed, he would only have his useless self to blame; that he didn't change a single bit from the person that he used to be.

The raw emotions that broke free from their container overwhelmed him, and his thoughts became a confused puddle of sadness, relief, worry, and exhaustion.

Almost imperceptibly, the brown ball of fur shifted in his pseudopod, and Kana peered up at him with her blank, almost-lifeless eyes. He looked back at her with teary eyes.

When their gazes met, something inside Kana's eyes seemed to stir, and Bell felt an emotional connection gradually form between himself and the small child. It was something that couldn't be explained by words. It comforted him slightly on the inside, although his exterior felt cold and unbearable.

Whatever this connection was, it bridged the differences in their circumstances and the vast gap that existed in terms of their lived experiences. A single emotion was exchanged in that moment: an emotion that planted itself in the deepest place of their hearts.

It was a small ember that kept them warm in spite of the violent torrent of unrelenting emotions they felt inside.

'I'm not alone,' they both realized in unison.

On this day, inside the dungeon of Bairan Village in the aftermath of a gruesome battle between the villagers and tainted beasts, a friendship that would end up changing the fate of the entire world was born.