Nathan bit his bottom lip and concentrated all his mental faculties on deciding what to do.

  Mara was missing.

  Not only that, but she disappeared without even making a noise. Something that was distinctly… not Mara.

  “We need to fan out. Give me your Dither contact information," Nathan said.

  Bjorn nodded and passed Nathan his username. Nathan added it to his personal messages and wrote out a test message. A soft ding rang out from Bjorn’s window.

  “Right. We’ll be back here in ten minutes," Nathan said.

  “Understood.”

  The two separated from each other. Nathan whispered into his shoulder. “Lily? You there?”

  A beat of silence.

  “Of course. I’m always here.”

  “I need you to detach from me and try to hunt Mara down. I think something’s happened to her.”

  “Detach? Is that necessary?”

  Nathan frowned. Was it really that big of a deal?

  “Just for a short while.”

  “…Okay.”

  Nathan felt her roots slither out from his arm. Her flower head poked out from his hand, then stretched out toward the ground. She slid underneath the dirt like a kid underneath a blanket.

  Nathan had considered showing her off to Bjorn, but he figured that it would be better to keep that particular secret until later. He’d already thrown enough madness at Bjorn. He wanted to give the poor man a break.

  He broke off in a random direction. His eyes ran across the floor in time with his steps. He was hoping to see more scuff marks, some sign of a struggle. Anything that would get him closer to finding out what happened to Mara.

  The ground shook.

  Nathan felt his heart leap into his throat.

  “What was that?” he muttered. “It’s huge. An earthquake? Or maybe a creature.”

  Nathan wanted to believe that this had nothing to do with Mara’s disappearance, but he knew better. It 100 percent had something to do with her disappearance.

  “Just once—” he dashed in the direction of where the noise had come from. “Just once, I would like it if I was wrong. About anything, ever.”

  Some people joked about how it was so difficult perpetually being right. In Nathan’s case, it wasn’t a joke. It would’ve been very, very nice if his cynicism was proven incorrect.

  He made a left turn and—

  Mara was on the ground, eyes shut. Her face was unnaturally pale. She shivered, and a tight frown came onto her face.

  Nathan moved forward before he could stop himself, then froze halfway in the hallway.

  This was obviously a trap.

  …but he very much doubted they had accounted for him.

  He ran up to Mara and pressed his thumb to her wrist. Her heart rate was fluttery and weak. Not exactly how he wanted to describe someone’s pulse.

  The ground shook.

  Nathan looked up and away from Mara. A long, purple, frog-like tongue reached around the hallway. It was huge—probably the size of Nathan’s arm in terms of width.

  A gigantic worm slithered forward and made a turn right toward Nathan and Mara. It was easily the length and width of the entire hallway. The inside of its mouth was covered with row after row of spiked, needlelike teeth.

  A sudden chill washed down Nathan’s body. He reached down and picked Mara up, then slung her over his shoulder.

  The creature was definitely creepy. But he’d faced scary things before. So why was he so nervous?

  He reached into his inventory and pulled out his old harpoon. It was still E-rank, but with Nathan’s absolutely unholy levels of power, he was confident that he would still be able to at least distract the creature long enough for him to get out of dodge.

  And that’s what he was planning to do—run away. If he were on his own, he’d be more willing to try to take the thing on. But doing that with a person of unknown condition—who was pale and shivering and clearly in need of medical attention? No, Nathan would fight this thing another day.

  Nathan wound back his arm for a massive throw.

  He aimed right for the creature’s tongue, hoping to shred it before the harpoon would enter the body and cause some kind of internal damage. He’d probably end up losing the harpoon, but he was in need of a new one anyway. He’d talk to that elven blacksmith about getting a replacement.

  He launched it.

  It shot through the air like a bullet and crashed against the tongue. Nathan made a wide jump backward at the same instant.

  The harpoon knocked against the tongue with a loud ding, then crashed into the wall.

  Nathan’s blood chilled. How…?

  The ground groaned. The wormlike monster moved forward, and it was in front of Nathan in half a second.

  Nathan’s legs moved before he even understood what was happening. He made a turn, then another one, then another one. The whole time, the roof above him kicked up dust from the creature chasing him from behind. It was grinding its way through the stone, destroying the hallway in the process.

  Internally, Nathan’s mind screamed at him.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  This shouldn’t have been possible. How was he so utterly outmatched? He was the strongest, wasn’t he?

  There was something else happening. Something he’d missed. He’d messed up somewhere, made some kind of assumption—he could feel it in his bones.

  But what? Where had he messed up? Where had he made his mistake?

  Surely the monsters of the sixth circle weren’t just that powerful. It felt extremely unlikely. There had to be something else he was missing.

  A dead end was coming up ahead. Nothing to the left or to the right.

  Behind him, the breath of the hallway-consuming worm burned his back. He hit the dead end, then turned around.

  The creature was ten feet away. There were no other exits.

  Nathan breathed in and out and tried to steady his racing heart.

  What is this thing? he thought.

  Instinctively, [Inspect] activated.

  [A present!] – LV.??

  Since you were so kind as to mention my name, I thought I’d get you a little gift. Something to prove that I’m paying attention.

  ;)

  Nathan stiffened. Who had done this? There were only a small number of people who could affect system descriptions. B32 was dead. Thalassa was on his side—even if she was probably a little bit mad at him at the current moment. It could’ve been a new system admin, but the Mother System said that she was preventing outside interference—

  Nathan paled.

  He had invoked her name earlier. He’d told Bjorn all about her. He thought that she wouldn’t care, like she had all those times in the past—

  And that’s why she was doing this. To make a point. At any time, at any moment, she could choose to destroy Nathan.

  Nathan’s hand twitched. Mara groaned from atop his shoulder. “No, I want the automatic, not the semiautomatic…”

  Nathan suspected he knew exactly what she was dreaming about.

  The worm inched closer and closer. Five feet. It was taunting him. Taking its time.

  Honestly, Nathan was starting to get less annoyed at himself for the situation and more annoyed by the insecurity of the eldritch being that had summoned the worm. What, all he had to do was say her name in order to earn her ire? Rude.

  He reached into his inventory and pulled out his fishing rod. As soon as his hand wrapped around the handle, the smell of the sea flooded his nose.

  His best shot was to try to buy time for Bjorn to get back to him. If Nathan was lucky, Bjorn might have some trick up his sleeve specifically for defeating worms. That would be nice, if extremely unlikely.

  It inched closer. Nathan’s hands shook. The fishing rod, Mara’s weight on his shoulder—it all seemed to get heavier and heavier with each fraction of distance the worm crossed. It would be fine if he died. He was sure that his friends and subordinates would be able to pick up after him. But the fact that Mara had gotten involved in this whole thing enraged him.

  He’d try to get her out. That would be his first priority. He’d use his own body as a lure and distraction, then find a way to squeeze her past the worm.

  It got even closer. Three feet.

  Do or die.

  Nathan got ready to swing his fishing rod—

  The ground cracked.

  Roots sprang up from the roof, the ceiling, and the left and right walls. They wrapped around the worm and constricted it in seconds.

  The worm thrashed around. A few roots were torn off. But for each root that was torn off, ten more seemed to materialize. The radius of the worm’s body shrunk, creating an opening to its sides.

  Nathan didn’t think about it for too long. He immediately ran for the opening. The creature thrashed again right behind him. Nathan sensed the air gap close. If he’d been a second slower, he would’ve been squahsed like a bug. He ran faster and faster, the roots parting for him and allowing him to pass through. He reached a corner and made a sharp turn.

  Lily’s rose was rooted in place, facing directly toward Nathan and Mara.

  “Nice save.” Nathan took a few deep breaths. “That was looking a little bit close.”

  “This thing is nothing compared to a kraken,” Lily said.

  The roots tightened, and the worm let out a pained hiss.

  Nathan turned around and took a step backward. “I don’t fancy our odds against it, I’ll be honest. We should just get out of here. Can you run while constricting it?”

  “You know, in the past, that would’ve been impossible,” Lily said. “But right now, I think it would be incredibly easy.”

  Nathan broke off in a run. Behind him, he could hear the thrashes of the worm turn into distant thuds. Every few seconds, Lily would dart underneath the dirt, then reappear twenty feet ahead of Nathan. They continued on in this manner, making left and right turns to lose the trail of the creature. After nearly twenty minutes, Nathan decided that they’d probably made it far enough away.

  He dropped to his knees and placed Mara on the ground. He rubbed the sweat off his forehead with his arm.

  Dirt shifted to his left, and Lily popped out of the ground.

  “Is it still trapped?” Nathan asked. He snorted. “Sorry, that’s a dumb question. There’s no way you can still sense—”

  “It’s in the same location where it has been. I still have my roots wrapped around it.”

  Nathan’s eyes widened. “But we’ve been running for twenty minutes. You’re telling me that your roots extend all the way out that far? You can still control it?”

  Lily’s flower bobbed down and up in something like a shrug. “I’m just as surprised as you are. But it really isn’t taking that much out of me to maintain a network like this. I bet I could expand it even farther if I wanted to.”

  It must’ve been all that rest. That was the only thing Nathan could think of. She’d stretched out her abilities to the max in the battle against the kraken. As a result, she’d spent an entire circle upgrading and assimilating her new gains. It was like high intensity exercise. Her old muscles had torn, and now they'd regrown, stronger than ever.

  Nathan sighed. He’d messed up. He’d gotten confident, cocky, reckless.

  … But in his defense, the Mother System’s actions didn’t really make much sense either. She wanted to keep him alive—then she sent what appeared to be an unbeatable secret boss out of nowhere?

  Unless it wasn’t meant to be unbeatable—unless it was beatable.

  Maybe if Nathan went all out, he could actually damage it. The main problem, of course, was that it was difficult to go all out with an unconscious sack of potatoes on his shoulder.

  Maybe the key would be that ability Thalassa was talking about—the power to turn into freaking water.

  He was still kind of mad that she hadn’t told him he could do that.

  “You know,” he said, “it’s really weird how this started with me in a cave and a fishing pole, and now I have a bunch of increasingly ridiculous water-related abilities, I have a pseudo-daughter who is also a flower, I killed my sister’s fiancé—this whole thing feels really ridiculous the longer I think about it.”

  “Pseudo-daughter? Is that what I am? Should I call you Dad?”

  Nathan let out an involuntary shudder. “Please don’t call me that.”

  “Okay,” Lily said, not seeming that choked up about it.

  Nathan was about to suggest that they head back to the main quest hub when Lily stiffened.

  “It just got out.”

  “What just got out?”

  “The worm.”

  Nathan felt a knot tie itself in his stomach. “Okay, it should have no way of tracking us, right?”

  “It’s coming here. Right now.”

  Nathan’s blood chilled. How could it have tracked them so quickly? Did it have some kind of super sense of smell? Did that thing even have nostrils?

  Nathan stiffened, then sighed. "It followed us via the roots that you were laying down behind you.”

  “It was my fault?” Lily drooped. “I messed up. I’m sorry, Nathan.”

  “You couldn’t have known. And besides, I doubt the… source… of that thing would’ve let us get away scot-free anyway.” His voice tightened. “Can you slow it down?”

  “I’m trying,” she said. “But it’s just crashing right through. I thought I’d gotten stronger. It seems like it didn’t matter.”

  “I think against anyone else, you would’ve done a great job. It’s just that our enemy is cheating.”

  “Is this how B32 felt?” Lily muttered. “I see why he didn’t like me.”

  The absurdity of the statement made Nathan crack a grin.

  “It’s almost here,” she said.

  Nathan dragged Mara back and hid her around the corner. At the very least, even if he died, she might be able to get away.

  The worm arrived and made a sharp turn directly toward Nathan. It came to a stop in front of him and Lily.

  Nathan knew there was no point in running. Without Lily’s ability to constrict it, it would be right on his tail the whole time. Better to take a stand here and try his best to take this thing down.

  In the back of his mind, he hoped that Bjorn would appear. Emi. Some kind of deus ex machina to get him out of the situation.

  But there was no one.

  It was just him, Lily, and the worm.