“Where the hell am I?” Alice muttered to herself, shielding her eyes as she stared up at the clear blue sky.
She pushed herself up from the dirt, casually brushing the loose blades of grass off her red business suit.
With her hands resting on her hips, she swept her gaze across the landscape.
Unlike the dense labyrinth from before, the terrain here was incredibly open and flat—a vast expanse of lush green plains with only a few lonely shrubs dotting the horizon.
“Well, at least this place is prettier than the last one,” she noted aloud.
With a shrug, she started trekking through the endless plains.
Before long, she had completely lost all sense of time beneath the relentless midday sun.
The vast fields remained eerily quiet.
The only sound was the whisper of grass bending in the wind.
So far, she hadn’t crossed paths with any deadly wildlife, let alone another player.
A sudden breeze rippled through the grass, and Alice’s cheerful expression faltered slightly.
“I hope Sam is safe…” she murmured to the empty air.
Up ahead, a lone silhouette caught her eye.
At first, the figure was too far away to distinguish, but as she drew closer, it came into focus.
It looked like a deer, but two extra jagged antlers sprouted from its head.
“Food…” Alice whispered.
A thin string of drool actually escaped the corner of her mouth—which was impressive, considering she had already eaten not too long ago.
Crouching low, she began to tiptoe through the grass, narrowing her eyes as she stalked her unsuspecting prey.
The deer suddenly snapped its head up, locking its wide eyes directly onto hers.
Alice froze, the two of them staring at each other across the open plain.
A second later, the deer bolted, kicking up dirt as it fled across the plain.
“Hey!” Alice yelled, abandoning all stealth and charging after it.
“Get back here, food!”
The animal’s movements were incredibly swift and precise, leaping effortlessly over shrubs, but Alice refused to let it escape.
Her legs pumped furiously, matching the beast stride for stride.
No matter how hard the deer ran, it could not widen the gap between them.
Eventually, the deer found a fleeting refuge—a dense forest of tall, ghostly white trees with vibrant yellow leaves looming at the edge of the plains.
Without missing a beat, the animal leaped straight into the thick treeline.
Stubborn as always, Alice charged right in after it.
However, the instant she entered the forest, the deer vanished into the undergrowth as though it had never been there.
She had lost its trail.
“Dang it!” she yelled, slamming her fist directly into the nearest tree.
The wood splintered with a loud crack, leaving a deep, gaping hole right through the trunk.
She frowned, rubbing her knuckles as her eyes slowly scanned the dense treeline.
She debated whether to keep pushing into the strange woods or turn back toward the safety of the open plains.
The barren plains offered little to survive on: no cover, no food, and, most importantly, no water. Get faster updates on g.com.
Taking a gamble on unknown territory, she plunged deeper into the forest.
The forest felt absolutely never-ending.
Alice had been traversing the dense terrain for what felt like hours without finding a single useful resource.
With a heavy sigh, she slumped onto a weathered tree stump to rest her aching legs.
She tilted her head back, attempting to pinpoint the sun’s location to get her bearings.
However, the thick, overlapping canopy of yellow leaves blocked out the sky entirely, leaving her in a disorienting world of perpetual shadow.
Snap.
The sharp crack of a breaking twig shattered the silence.
Alice instantly launched herself off the tree stump, dropping low into a combat stance with her fists raised, ready for a fight.
A sleek head poked through the yellow brush.
It was just a deer—the same four-antlered deer she had been chasing earlier.
Her defensive panic instantly evaporated, replaced by a wave of pure, feral excitement.
At last, fortune had smiled upon her.
The forest was bringing her prey straight back to her to be eaten.
At least, that’s what she thought at first.
Before the deer could take another step, it suddenly collapsed to the ground.
Blood erupted from its sides.
Someone—or something—had killed it.
A low, wet scraping sound echoed through the undergrowth, and the true apex predator emerged.
It was a grotesque nightmare.
The creature possessed no legs at all.
Instead, it relied on four impossibly long arms to drag its human-shaped torso across the forest floor.
Its head looked human from a distance, but as it tilted upward, Alice saw that its face was completely blank—devoid of eyes or a nose.
The only feature was a massive, vertical maw splitting its skull from forehead to chin, lined with hundreds of small, needle-sharp teeth.
“What the hell is that?!” she screamed, her hands igniting as she began hurling fireballs at the creature.
But the monster was terrifyingly agile.
Using its four long arms, it swung effortlessly from trunk to trunk, cleanly evading the explosive blasts.
With a powerful thrust, it launched itself high into the air, hovering directly above her for a split second before plummeting down.
Tracking the shadow closing in over her, Alice coiled her legs and leaped backward just in time.
The monster slammed into the earth exactly where she had been standing, carving a deep crater into the forest floor and sending dirt spraying in every direction.
Before the creature could react, Alice lunged forward and tackled the beast into the dirt, pinning it to the ground.
The monster thrashed violently, its four long arms swinging ferociously as it clawed at her, desperate to break free from her iron grip.
As she struggled to hold the writhing nightmare down, sparks began to crackle and fly from her palms.
She ignited her body, setting the entire beast ablaze in a roaring torrent of fire.
The monster let out a hideous, ear-piercing screech as the flames engulfed it.
In a burst of blind panic, it violently shoved Alice off its torso.
Screaming in pain, the burning creature scrambled to its feet and frantically disappeared into the dense woods, leaving a trail of smoke behind it.
“Well, that wasn’t so bad,” she boasted, dusting off her hands with a smug smile.
Bonk!
“Ouch!” Alice snapped, instantly rubbing the crown of her head.
A small branch had plummeted from above, striking her square on the skull.
As her eyes followed where it clattered onto the dirt, she noticed a thin wisp of grey smoke rising from it.
That’s when the horrifying reality clicked.
Her stray fireball attacks from earlier—the ones the monster had skilfully dodged—hadn’t just disappeared.
They had ignited the canopy.
Looking up, she saw the yellow canopy rapidly catching fire, the leaves crackling into a wall of roaring orange flames.
The entire forest was catching fire.
“Uh oh,” Alice muttered, her eyes widening.
Without a second thought, she spun on her heel and bolted.
Thanks to her powers, the raging forest fire itself posed little threat.
Her body possessed a natural resistance to extreme heat.
However, the environment was a different story.
If a massive, blazing trunk or a heavy branch collapsed directly onto her from the canopy, it could still crush her.
Ducking and weaving through the falling debris, she pushed her speed to the absolute limit.
CRASH!
CRASH!
CRASH!
The deafening roar of collapsing trunks echoed right at her heels, throwing up waves of ash and sparks.
Without daring to look back, Alice pushed herself into a full sprint as the canopy disintegrated around her.
Suddenly, the dense smoke parted, revealing a bright break in the treeline up ahead.
With one final burst of explosive speed, she hurled herself through the opening and out into the clear air, letting out a triumphant cheer as she flew.
She hit the ground rolling, skidding to a halt on a rocky riverbank right beside the dark mouth of a cave.
As she blinked past the lingering smoke, her eyes widened.
Sam was right there, sitting silently on the dirt by the rushing water.
“Sam! Over here!” she yelled excitedly, waving her arms as she jogged over to him.
But as the distance closed, her cheerful stride began to slow.
Something was terribly wrong.
She couldn’t immediately put her finger on what it was, but the moment her gaze locked onto his, the raw emptiness in his eyes told her everything.
Something had broken him.