By sheer reflex, all of them did different things. As Berdrogh jumped in to shield Kanade, Han leapt in front of the cy chunk. The warmth his exploding back fur created offset the projectile's momentum. The force shook his brain, but what did more damage was hitting something hard. Everything happened in a split second.

  —Glosh! Plosh!

  His eyes blurred, but he could still clearly hear the living cy pnning another attack fading out behind them. He had no reason to worry; they weren't waiting.

  “Yet another new thing?” Berdrogh shouted between running and the cttering of his armor. Han's sight and senses returned quickly, the hard thing he had hit was Berdrogh and they were booking it straight back to the root wall in the distance.

  Kanade was evidently ahead but conserving her speed; knowing her, she didn't want to leave either of them behind. With a quick reorientation, Han leapt to the ground and matched Berdrogh's speed

  Whether he didn't hear it or the attack never came, they were out of there. The root wall was close. He thought he subconsciously sped up for a moment as Berdrogh disappeared from his peripheral vision, but it was only because his legs were barely moving, at least he didn't fil his hands.

  Since the spot around the Sapling should be fine, he didn't say anything. What was strange was that Berdrogh hadn't made a quip about being old. Instead, he sat on the ground with his legs stretched out, arms pnted behind him for support, taking in the air.

  He’s finally taking this seriously…

  Kanade, on the other hand, squatted down, her expression a puzzle his asocial mind had trouble solving. However, he knew what needed to be done.

  “I’m going alon—” His words were interrupted as warm arms wrapped around him from behind, disappearing into his thick fur. Once more, she stayed mute. He couldn't parse it, but he had more than enough ideas. A quick gnce around would give someone one.

  “I’ll return tomorrow. If the moth ocean comes, that’s when.” It was the only way he could estimate time, and if it recurred it would guide them, act as a sign of hope. He was making everything up as he went, but it didn't reduce the effect.

  Her embrace showed no sign of ending. He was better off alone, and he was made for this. He had to move away from her grasp; her fingers gently brushed against him until he was far enough.

  “Stay safe. I’ll do what I can.” Berdrogh said as he passed him.

  You better.

  He turned back to the long path ahead of him, his paws slowly picking up speed until—

  I’m used to going solo.

  The moss flew up into the air, leaving four paw-sized furrows as Han sprinted into the distance. His feet kept going faster and faster, the wind brushing his fur wildly while the corners of his eyes blurred at the sheer speed.

  In a quarter of the time, he reached the spot. Without pausing he leapt, flying over the hole three times over, and only then did he breathe in. Despite his hearing being disrupted by the air resistance, his sense of smell was ranging freely across the floor.

  The scent of a flower blooming in the distance, the humidity in the air, even the faintest whiff of damp bark, all of it felt as if it was pressed right up against his nose. There were no disgusting smells, which promptly encouraged him to open the valve. That was the only way he could scout ahead reliably..

  Bark. Moss. Flowers. Repeated until his sensors went numb. Even faint traces of salt along the cave walls couldn't escape his wind-enhanced nose. But then, a tinge of iron. Whatever he was picking up ahead had no discernible scent he could trace. No sweat, no odor, nothing. The only way he knew of its presence was the blood flowing through it, and flowing extremely slowly.

  His sprint had wound down into a jogging pendulum motion, still nothing to scoff at, and was ready to jolt back or forward at any sign of whatever he had sensed. His blue eyes tried to catch an inconsistency in the bleak, two-toned scenery. Though that wasn't needed.

  —Ouoaoua

  A rhythmic croaking came from his left, closely resembling a monkey warning call he had heard before. His steps halted immediately. He first had to understand what this floor was riddled with.

  —Ouoaoua

  The same call, slightly higher in pitch, came from his right. His vision blurred, though the background stayed still. The root under him was shaking and not subtly. The intervals were human-like, and with a moment to spare, he got it. Something was climbing up, straight up toward him.

  He jolted back several feet and crouched down. The climbing stopped as a brown-furred hand gripped the wood, making a mess of the grassy moss above it. And another. And another.

  The call being close to a monkey's was a clear enough sign, but the monster in front of him was far more terrifying. It finally climbed up and rexed all of its arms. It had light brown fur with a shade of gray covering its inner parts, armpits, chest, fingers. Its height was easily over three meters, yet it had no legs to support it; it sat on a stump that didn't look like an injury.

  And even then, there was a good chance it didn't need them anyway. It had four arms stacked closely on top of one another. Each thick arm had no trouble bearing its body weight as it brought the other three to its mouth like a megaphone.

  —OUAOU—

  An impossibly thin, bright red beam pierced its skull. The monkey’s body didn't even know it was dead. It just stood there, stiff. His eyes swept the semi-ft area around him, and only when the fpping was close enough did he start to register that it was above him.

  A bck, waxy blob with wings uncharacteristically rge for its size had what could only be called a long fleshy appendage sticking out of its mouth, lined with multiple rows of triangur teeth. It swallowed it back and aimed straight for the monkey's corpse.

  Coming in hot, a single skinny cw jutted out from the bottom, tched onto the monkey's neck like a vulture, and carried it off into the distance. He caught the monkey vanishing at the corner of his vision.

  This was hell.

  Without mulling over the whole situation as it would be an ouroboros of dread anyway, he continued sprinting. Time melded, as did the scenery. He either saw something or didn’t; in either outcome, stopping never crossed his mind.

  He was closing in on another Yggdrasil sapling, though he couldn't make out what type it was, the abundant, human-sized leaves blocked even his keen eyes. It was enclosed by roots, as seen before, and while that wasn't his true destination, he might as well stop by.

  As, something else caught his short attention span.

  He jumped to a parallel root that went deeper into the yer below. It didn't take long to pass through the multiple yers of well-knit roots, eventually emerging beneath them. This time he had to stop once he was in the clearing and take a moment to look around.

  The floor, as dumb as it sounded, had floors. The entire area underneath was one uniform color. An earthy brown, the shade of cy with a slight tinge of red. At a gnce, it had to span the full area of the floor above. The horizon was muted compared to the upper level; the terrain was mostly hilly, with only outliers reaching any notable height that could be a building-sized at best.

  He also noticed that the Yggdrasil Sapling roots weren't reaching in here, which confirmed they were protecting themselves, though it still amazed him that a couple of sapling’s roots covered a country-sized area underground.

  Being close to the wall, he could see how a daring person might head deeper. There were thousands of openings, maybe millions If accounting for the full radius, arranged in a way that closely reminded him of the cross-section of an ant's nest, but horizontal. He couldn't see far into the darkness those paths held, but they all seemed to go down. Not an option, then.

  His mind had wandered. He hadn't been attentive.

  —Glish… Glosh…

  He recoiled instinctively, though his cloak didn't break, his heart almost had. Unlike the forming of a projectile, the sound was sloppier and smaller in scope.

  He pinpointed it and saw one of the giant cy creatures sculpting. At a gnce, the amorphous thing was simply building a copy of itself, a third of its own size. A moment ter the tiny copy began moving, jiggling its limbs around. The bigger one quickly helped detach it from the cy floor and let it run, then started following along on the little one's journey.

  It was better to leave them alone. Didn’t know why, just had a feeling.

  With four lives at stake, he hurried back up, settled into the pendulum jog, and made his way back to the upper area. He was in the middle of it, surrounded by bleak wood on every side, when an eye stared at him. A glossy bck eye.