I was face-to-face with a relatively featureless creature, whose silhouette looked an awful lot like me. I could see the contours of its hair. I could see its mimicry of my cloak. Most damning—thing was lacking a left arm. Guess it couldn’t replicate New Arm.

  Blade bits trained on it, I fired. Three holes opened up in the enemy. It jiggled, and then the holes closed.

  “Yeah, I figured,” I said, already rushing toward it. “I’m going home,” I repeated, tired of everything.

  The humanoid lunged. To my surprise, it cheated. Its right hand became a whip. I slid to a stop, but still got nicked by the tip. That was fine. I stretched my right hand too, and bisected it with New Arm.

  Blade bits flew in and fired, blowing out another three holes. Its form vibrated. Ripples formed all along the surface of its body as the edges seemed to meld with the air. It reformed.

  I was about to attack, but then, pressure built in my head again.

  I cursed, clutching my forehead.

  Then, a second pudgy thing plopped onto the platform beside me, falling out from my head.

  The first one had been frightened. This one looked dazed, rubbing at its face like it had just woken up in a nightmare.

  “Again?”

  My voice made it jump. It ran off to the side, toward another humanoid that was approaching.

  “Oh, shit, not again!” I yelled as I chased after it.

  The world tilted again, causing me to trip over my feet. The first clone came at me again. I shot him with the blade bits, and rolled toward it, cutting through it once more.

  My eyes widened. As it fell, it swung its arm at me. I tried to pull away, but it left a cut across my chest. I fell onto my side, feeling that disorienting pain.

  I had barely registered that the new humanoid had stomped on the pudgy thing and reformed itself into a second copy of me.

  A roar erupted from me as a third pudgy one scrambled out of me and toward yet another the humanoids.

  “Damn it!” I roared, repeatedly slamming New Sword into the puddle of a mess that I had turned the first of my clones into.

  The sounds of chomping crystals filled the space around me. I leaped onto my feet and released blade-bit shots in all directions.

  “I’m going home!” I yelled.

  The fireflies twisted overhead. They flew ahead of me–was it an accident? They directed my gaze to a bridge that led from this platform. My mouth dropped. There was a door there, just like the one I had entered through. What’s more, a little of the cave stone that framed the mushroom door was there too. It was normal colored.

  “That’s the way out.”

  I didn’t care. I knew it to be true. That door would get me out of here.

  There was a shift in the air. My clones–two of them, with my third reforming–had taken positions that suggested that they would stop me.

  The chompers, too. They had stopped attacking and instead, were waiting as their numbers were bolstered by the new Chompers dropping in from thin air. They were chomping at the air, making it known exactly what they were going to do.

  The moment passed—no more thinking. No more planning.

  I grinned. It was a hollow grin, but it was all I was willing to do.

  I ran into the crowd. The first chompers reacted too slowly. New Sword already cut through a swath of them as the blade bits fired. Red crystal shards sprayed out like fireworks as the rest swarmed me.

  I mode-changed back into New Arm and caught the one that leaped toward my face. I tossed it at five others, catching how they broke apart out of the corner of my eye.

  I dropped to my knees, swung my arm, broke a dozen, and then mode-changed back into New Sword, executing a spin attack and giving myself some space again.

  One chomper snapped at my feet. I kicked its jaw so hard it flipped upside down, and shattered when it hit a friend. Another tried a clever swoop from behind, but I spun and cut through it. Its body snapped in half, the pieces wriggling before disintegrating into dust.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Blade bits fired without stopping, depleting the gauge faster, but clearing the way for me.

  The clones were different.

  They moved in sync, shifting forward together. There was something amiss in how they stepped hower. It looked like they were glitching, with their limbs abruptly warping and clicking back into place a second. It was like the world was having trouble keeping them solid.

  “Too many monsters loaded in at once?” I dryly asked. “That’s too bad…”

  I pointed at the air above them.

  “I need you to load one more!”

  I had made a big choice earlier. I had banished the Shadow Beast that had been Lyra—or something. At the time, it was because I needed time to think through what had happened. But now? I had to move on.

  The clones were troublesome in that they kept coming back and could produce more. In that case, a Shadow Beast was a better thing to put up against them.

  “Return!”

  Laughter rained down from above as an abyss opened in the sky. The laughter sounded happier than ever before. It made the whole world shake and made the enemies freeze. Had I just done something dangerous?

  The Shadow Beast fell out, skeletal hands bidding it farewell. It landed in front of my clones, smashing the chompers unlucky enough to be below it.

  As the laughter waned, the armored Shadow Beast got off its knees and onto unsteady legs. Even looking like that, I could sense its ferocity.

  And suddenly, the world convulsed so strongly that my sense of balance was chaotically thrown off for many seconds.

  Screeches echoed. Fractals wildly reproduced themselves. The wails of the bridges themselves became audible.

  I could see it–everything in the world had focused on the Shadow Beast–the one beacon of darkness in a world of red.

  The chompers forgot I existed. The clones twitched violently. A tide of red surged toward the Shadow Beast, intent on swallowing it up.

  And yet, the Shadow Beast just laughed. It was the same sadistic laugh I had become accustomed to–even now, it thought it would win.

  A cascade of silver eyes blinked open across its body.

  A swarm of chompers lunged, gnashing their jagged teeth, clawing at the monster's shifting form. The Shadow Beast let them come. Let them latch on, bite down, and attempt to rip anything they could away. Blade-limbed clones struck out in flashes of red light. The platform beneath them quaked, sending spiderweb fractures rippling outward.

  And still, the Shadow Beast laughed.

  It swung its blade of shadows, taking great pleasure in cutting anything and everything down.

  I ran. I pushed forward, breathing hard, eyes locked on the exit ahead.

  Then a voice cut through the noise.

  “Set!” it screamed.

  I knew I shouldn’t look back but I did—I looked at the Shadow Beast being swarmed, chompers hanging off its body, with a clone’s neck in its grip.

  Something was wrong with the Shadow Beast’s head. It was shrinking.

  Flesh slid across the shadowy dome. Smooth, perfect, human skin stitched itself into place in uneven patches, spreading across the shifting shadows like cloth being pulled tight. Hair slithered from its scalp in writhing strands.

  And then—her face became recognizable.

  The clones let out inhuman shrieks as they fought. The chompers went mad, tearing at the Shadow Beast, trying to rip it apart but failing to break through its shadowy shell.

  The Shadow Beast swung its sword wildly, all the while, looking right at me. Her face stitched at the edges by silver eyes, Lyra looked at me with a maniacal smile

  “You did this to me!”

  It didn’t matter how much they shrieked, how much the sounds of their bodies shattering filled the air; Lyra’s voice reached me.

  “One day, I’ll end you! I’ll end you for not heeding my warning!”

  …

  Warning?

  That stupid note! Oh, give it a rest already!

  I locked in, eyes forward.

  The closer I got to the door, the more a red mist thickened. I kept running, ignoring whatever phantoms were grazing and scraping me in the mist. I ran and ran until I hit the door. Just like when I entered, it opened, but this time, the moment it did, I was already in a cavern, like the cavern’s space had extended into the red realm.

  “Huh?”

  I looked around. The mushroom door was behind me, sealed shut. Ahead of me was just boring, safe cavern with no notable tunnel.

  I dismissed New Arm as I straightened up. “I made it.”

  It all felt unreal.

  I went over to a wall and just sat down. I still had HP, and all of the cheat effects that came with it, but my mind was still fatigued. It also still felt like I was on a boat sailing through an unruly ocean still, despite being out of that world.

  I opened my Checklist and frowned. After all of that, I had zero levels gained to show for it. That was actually mad–all of that, and nothing but some progression on the items that required wracking up kills.

  I kept staring at the Checklist as I asked it to load new items, or give me some sort of tip or guide, but alas.

  I was still at Level 9.

  My head rested against the wall as I exhaled. “Still, I was Level 0 a week ago… So it’s not all bad, right?”

  So, what was next?

  “Still getting back home.”

  What did I need to do right now?

  “Take a break. I saw a lot today. Maybe more than I ever need to see in a single day…”

  My stomach twisted as I recalled Lyra’s eye bursting, or Lyra dying in my arms. And then the face of that fake Lyra–

  “One day, I’ll end you! I’ll end you for not heeding my warning!”

  “Your warning? Bullshit. Bring it on… Bitch…”

  My mind was very tired. Trusting that I would get a break, I fell asleep after an hour, hiding in the shadows of the cavern.