Sometimes a whole life can pass in front of you in less time than it takes your eyes to blink. It’s hard to explain it. Moments when you see death and you know you came all this way and came way short, and that it does not matter what you dreamed, wished, aspired, or were certain that you would accomplish. There it is. The end of the road. The lights out.

The serpent’s head comes at me, and I somehow find a blade in my hand, how I took it out so fast, I have no idea. I have only enough time to put it in front of me as the snake tongue hisses out its mouth to lick me.

I don’t mind being licked unless I’m to serve as someone’s meal. So, I slice at the tongue, and the serpent instantly twitches back, hisses in pain as a part of its tongue comes off.

But then in another second, it opens its huge mouth, showing me how it’s big enough to swallow my whole head inside. I just have a slit of a second to bury the knife deep under its mouth, pushing it up, pushing it up, forcing it to close its mouth.

I try to wrap my free hand around its head, but it spins me around. Yet, I hold on to the knife and wiggle it inside, trying to cut every way I can without taking it off. As it tosses me around, I hug it with my free hand, hold it as much as I can, lean my face against its eyes, thinking if I should take the knife out and stick it in its reptilic evil-looking pupil.

I try to wiggle out, but the snake moves its body further around me, wrapping itself over half of my torso now, going now around my waist, squeezing me harder and harder, ready to go up and around my neck to strangle me. Does not even need to bite me then to kill me.

If not for the buried blade inside the snake's mouth that I don't want to let go at any price, I would probably be all dead by now. I got lucky there. Very lucky. But what is it worth if I can't even breathe?

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I understand that the snake is probably like an Ertinian Swar or Sian-like Python, not poisonous but with enough muscle to strangle its victim before it swallows it all.

As I'm wrestling a losing match with the wiper, in the corner of my eye, I see Zan jump on it, almost burying two knives he holds in each of his hands somewhere in my face as the giant python-like snake twists and turns and throws him around.

Is this still part of my nightmare? How can this be real?

But the pain is real. And if little bugger like Zan is in it, and if the pain in my whole body is so damn real, and the messages keep popping in my head telling me how I'm going to die soon, then all of that has to imply that this is all too fucken' real to be any kind of a nightmare.

The snake bangs me against the ceiling, but the soft earth cushions the blow, and I don't stop holding my knife and keep my face away from its teeth.

Zan, who was thrown off a second ago, jumps on the back of the snake again, his one hand and a blade in it sliding close to my throat as he hugs it right where its head ends. Then he starts slicing it with two opposite blades, spraying blood in my face and eyes.

"Go for his brains," I scream at him. But he seems to have another idea and keeps cutting and slicing till the snake does not drop down to the ground, more than half of its head almost sliced off.

In the end, Zan finds the bone, goes around it, and completely severs the snake's head. I let go of the knife handle only as he drops the head to the ground.

But my problems are not over. Yeah, the snake might be dead, but its muscles are still work, nerves still live, still constraining me, even more now that they are left to do whatever their self-preserving impulses might dictate them to do.

I can't get the snake off me, can't breath.

WARNING! INSUFFICIENT OXYGEN SUPPLY

Health: Ten Percent

Message flashes in the corner of my eyes.

Estimated time of death is within 100 seconds

I can't breathe through my lungs, can't even call for help and get Zan to stop staring at his trophy of a severed snake's head, congratulating himself. But I try to smirk in the air through my nostrils, just small rapid puffs, just to get anything in.

"Zaaaaannnn!!!" I let the sound go with a little bit of air I have in there.

The knucklehead turns around right away and starts wrestling with the upper end of the snake's body, trying to free me up a bit.

It's a struggle. But my hands are still loose so I can help a bit. It takes us a while for me to move it off my chest.

The air I breathe burns and I can't have enough of it.

"Are you okay?" Zan asks me as I finally kick my legs free of serpents' still constraining muscles.

That's a good question.

"How is my health?" I ask and then remember to mutter inside of me the command. 'Present status please.'

Present Status:

Health Overall: 40

Stamina: 30

Hydration: 90

Energy: 70

Fat Deposit: 40

'Any other update I need to know about?'

Update

Strength Reevaluated to Level 5

Explosiveness Reevaluated to Level 8

It makes sense that I would have high level of Explosiveness and Strength with all the training I did in a little cell, and I'm glad that the system is recognizing it.

You have [helped] in killing Eitnian Wiper, an invasive specie. A bounty of:

100 Rounds

1000 Karma points

Have been deposited to your balances

Hundred rounds? How much is that? And what can I get with it?

And it seems my karma is raising up nicely. I’m not sure I’m all in one piece, but, hey, I am moving up.

'Anything else? Important tutorial information I have not accessed before?'

IMPORTANT INFORMATION:

Gains of over 1000 Karma points have increased your REPUTATION level to 1.

Each consequential raise in the Reputation level will require doubling of the earned Karma points.

Cool. I think I remember I need to raise my reputation if I am to advance in classes and standings. It's all so complex. So many rules and parameters. But I'll learn it all. Eventually. If I stay alive that is.

I’m rubbing my sore legs, wiggling my toes, not believing nothing is broken in there.

Zan greens at me. “See, you should be glad I blessed you with my presence.”

“Yeah,” I smirk at him. “I feel so blessed.”

He certainly took time to kill the fricken serpent. But at least he did not run. He stayed and fight. Maybe I made a good choice by letting him come along.

“You’re lucky it’s not poisonous,” Zan says, now busy sharpening his knives.

“I know. Otherwise, it would bite me and not try to lick me first.”

I’m fully awake now, but the dream I had still is very vibrant inside my head.

I look at Zan and he nods his head, unsure what I mean.

“I was wrong,” I tell him. “You were right yesterday. I have to go back. I should have helped the others.”

“You're not making any sense. Why now? Just when I thought you went completely mad, a snake attacks you, and you suddenly develop a conscious?”

“There was a reason why they sent us here in a group. It will be tough to survive on our own,” I say, not ready at all to tell him about my dream. Besides, maybe that is exactly what my dream was meant to tell me. I don’t know. “If we can find another two or three good people there… that might be enough. But…”

“Yes…”

“I’ll have to do some clean-up job first.”

“Like those big fellas?”

“Yes. Big Garden and Pick have to go.”

“Into the snow.”

“Yes.”

“I was hoping you would say that.”

"Yeah, but before we go... look at all these meet."

"You hungry too?"

"You bet."

"I guess we know what's for breakfast."

"Better than leftover wolverrie kabobs. Snake meat is good food. Had it before. Well, ate it with a bunch of spices, but I bet just over the fire would taste just fine. Besides, who knows what we are to find out there in the cold? This could feed us for days.

"Yeah, It would be a shame to let it all go to waste.

"So, what do you say? Do we skin it all?" Zan asks me.

"You bet. Keep the skin too. Could find a use for it. Talking about useful things. It was getting cold outside. I still need to finish skinning that wolverrie outside. Use its hide to make us something to put over our heads, you know, that could help.”

"He was big enough that we can get more than two hats out of him."

"I'm just wondering, where did that fucken snake come from? I examined this place a few hours ago. It did not seem to have anywhere else to go."

Zan gets up to examine the snow that seemed to have completely covered our entrance. It is still dark outside, and we have no way of knowing when the dawn will come. It takes him quite a while to dig through the snow to open up the entrance again.

"Well, it did not come through the front," the guy I thought of being smarter than me tells me. Maybe he is just sleep deprived.

I've already moved to the back. "Must be a hole someplace. This fire... we would have died of carbon monoxide poisoning if the gas had nowhere else to go," I say and with a lighted torch, I try to see where the smoke might be running too. It does not run anywhere.

But the fire is enough to let me examine the cave better. The walls and floor all seemed solid, but the ceiling has a two-foot wide hole in its far right corner. The snake ends curled up below it. "I bet it came through here. Nowhere else."

"Funny, humans made a cave as a way to hide from a beast, and then another beast used it as a trap for them. Pretty smart huh? How many do you think it ate before us?"

"Let's better leave some skin here, bones too. That should let anyone who comes after us know this place is not safe. I mean, if this hole was made by a snake, that would mean we only killed a baby."

"Yeah, we better hurry. I would hate to know what its mother looks like."