The sun began to set, and they still hadn’t run into any other monsters. Ee pointed out a clearing, and they stopped for the night. Again, Ford made food for everyone, not letting anybody have seconds to conserve food and limit their consumption. Nobody felt pleased by that but accepted it.

Then Ford looked up at the sky and guessed that they still had a couple of hours of daylight left. “Hey, Ee. Do you have any more cards?” Ford asked.

“Yeah. Why?”

“I want to play a card game. We need two decks with different backs. Max, mind making a table and chairs for us?”

“Uh, sure,” Max said, a little confused, then concentrated on making a granite table and chairs for everyone. It took a couple of minutes, but she managed to make a table that could seat everyone and a cardholder for Gimble since his hands were too big to hold the small cards.

Ford climbed into one of the seats accepting the cards from Ee, and began shuffling them together. The cards looked like a blue and red bicycle deck, which was lucky, so she didn’t have to learn new cards. Everyone sat down in their perspective seats and waited for Ford to finish shuffling. She passed three cards to everyone and set the deck in the middle when she finished.

“Alright, the game is called ‘Maneuver.’ You start with three cards, and your goal is to empty your hand of cards. You do that by making sets of three or more with the same number or straights of the same suit. Jokers are wild cards and can be used for anything. Once you place cards on the table, you can’t draw again till your next turn. If you start your turn by drawing, you can draw until you have something to play with; you cannot draw until you can play your entire hand.

“When there are piles on the table, you can pick those up and maneuver them into different piles to get rid of cards, but you cannot keep the cards you pick up, and you must play them. If you can’t play all the cards you maneuvered, you have to put them back the way they were. When your turn is over, knock on the table. Got it?”

“I think so,” Lilly said, and everyone agreed with her.

“Good. If you get confused about anything, feel free to ask. I’ll go first,” Ford looked at her hand and began drawing to get rid of the two, five, and king she started within her hand.

As they played, they all chatted about good memories and truly got to know each other for the first time. Time passed, and Ford won one out of ten games; as night fell, she volunteered for the first watch, Max volunteered for the second watch, and Farah begrudgingly volunteered for the last watch. Then they all went to bed, leaving Ford to her thoughts, a massive smile on her face as she thought of the game they just played, even though she had lost so many times.

“I guess you enjoyed losing,” Wrath said, ruining Ford’s good mood.

Ford scowled and looked in Wrath’s direction; she sat crosslegged on the top of the table, “No, I enjoyed playing a game with friends.”

Wrath curled her nose and said, “Well, I don’t enjoy losing. Why didn’t you try to win every round? You know you could have.”

“I could’ve. But then they wouldn’t have enjoyed the game.”

“Why would that matter. If you’re willing to lose a simple card game so easily. What would happen if we ran into more people who want us dead? Will, you willingly lose to them so they could have some fun!?”

Ford bit her lip to stop herself from yelling at what was essentially herself and said, “You know I wouldn’t give up in a real fight. But that was just a simple game, and it can’t be compared to our situation.”

“IT IS THE SAME AS OUR SITUATION! You may think that this is a life or death apocalypse, but to them,” Wrath pointed up at the starry sky, “To them, this is a game. Just a little simulation that can be started repeatedly with no consequences. And we’re just fodder. So, yeah, I’m pissed that you would willingly lose a simple game!”

Ford took a deep breath and said coldly, “I am well aware of my circumstances, and I don’t need your input. So, why don’t you take your complaint and go somewhere I can’t hear you.”

Wrath shook her head in frustration and said, “One day, one of them will die, and it will be your fault,” she stormed off and out of Ford’s field of view.

‘I won’t lose anyone,’ she thought to herself. Ford turned back to the fire and watched the flames dance in the cold night air.

***

A few hours passed without incident. The fire had died out, and Ford sat in the dark of the night watching the stars far above. Then she heard footsteps behind her, and she turned to see Max exiting her tent and walking over to Ford. She sat down next to her and watched the stars with Ford.

After a moment, Ford spoke in hushed tones, “You’re up early.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” Max answered.

They sat quietly for a few seconds longer, then Ford asked, “Why?”

“I don’t know why I couldn’t-”

“No,” Ford cut her off, “Why did you come back?”

“What do you mean?”

“You had a way out of the dungeon. A way home. A chance to have a normal life without the threat of death. Why did you come back?” Ford asked, almost afraid of the answer.

Max fell silent for an uncomfortably long time, then she said, “You’re right. I could have had a normal life. I could have lived happily in my hometown and not had anything to worry about.”

Ford turned to her, “Then why did you-”

The rest of what she was about to say as Max kissed her with her soft, supple lips. They were locked in the kiss for a few seconds, then Max pulled away and whispered in an almost teary voice, “Because… I couldn’t forget you. I tried to. I honestly did try to forget so I could go home, but I just couldn’t.”

Ford embraced her and didn’t say anything because she didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know how to respond to what Max had said. When the words she searched for came to mind, her radar lit up with dozens of red dots, and she instantly jumped into action, summoning her swords. “We got lots of enemies incoming,” she announced over comms, “wake up and get ready!” Within moments everyone got out of their tents and had their weapons ready, except for Ee, who didn’t care. Nothing happened for a long time as they all peered into the darkness, then whispers surrounded them.

Ford couldn’t make out any of the words spoken, but with each word, she felt her heart rate increase as she looked around wildly for the source of the voices. “Sunny, give us some light,” she said, and the little fly flew out and lit up the camp. Screeches filled their camp from all sides, and Ford caught glimpses of spiders the size of dogs scuttling away from several horse corpses and into the forest. “Damn it!” Ford cursed as she saw the bodies.

“Wha’ are these things?” Lilly asked.

“Aren’t you the monster expert?” Ford retorted.

“I am, but I’ve never seen these monsters before.”

Before Ford could say anything else, the collective whispers merged into one coherent voice that sent chills down Ford’s spine, “You smell of the first one,” the words echoed each other as they were spoken as though some of the voices were trying to keep up with the lead voice.

Ford hesitated and asked, “Who’s the first one?”

The whispers went into an incoherent babbling for a few seconds, then said, “The first one made us. The first one gave us purpose.”

“What is your purpose?”

The clearing went deathly quiet for a few more seconds, then the whispers revealed themselves. Dozens, if not hundreds, of spiders, each the size of a dog, had attached themselves to one coherent body, and there were three of them. Each monster stood three to four meters tall and four to five meters wide and looked like a massive spider; hundreds of bulbous eyes covered its grey body. Its venomous fangs rubbed together and made a clicking noise. Ford looked at the monster, and a tremor ran through her soul since she had leveled up her soul exponentially. She could sense beings such as this better than the rest. Ford could feel the monster’s soul inside it, and it felt like hundreds of thousands of people were inside the monsters. Each one had a different amount, but each soul felt like an endless abyss from which there was no return.

She covered her mouth to avoid vomiting and took a half step back as a solitary tear rolled down her cheeks. Ford could hear and feel all the pain and suffering within the monster’s souls; some of the voices screamed for revenge that they would never carry out, some pleaded for mercy, others asked to be killed. Then the monsters spoke in their whispering voices, “Our purpose is to feed!”

At that moment, a debuff appeared in Ford’s upper right vision that looked like a man tearing off his face, and she felt the effects of the magical attack; her body refused to move, and her legs felt like heavyweights. The monsters began to creep forward, and Ford tried to run, but her legs refused to move, and a whispering voice in her head said, “Give up. Rest a bit. You’re feeling tired.” Ford nodded and fell backward to the ground; when she landed, she saw everyone else fall limply to the ground as well. “Good,” the voice said as the massive spiders climbed over her and a massive fanged mouth opened below it, “relax, this will only take a second.”

“GET UP!!!” Wrath yelled from within her head and slammed her will against Ford’s, sending pain through her body, and her fear debuff disappeared. She then reacted by creating a blast of highly compressed air in her hand instantly and blasting the spider off her. The monster flew back to the forest’s edge, and the rest stopped moving forward out of shock. She immediately got to her feet and cast essence enforcement with air, light, dark, earth essences, and five thousand stamina, which she regenerated a few seconds later.

Ford looked at the rest of her group and saw they were still in the monster’s spell. She summoned her segmented blade and willed the other six swords to rise from the ground where they had fallen. The monsters didn’t give her enough time to fight back and attacked her with another fear spell. Ford fell to her knees out of fear again and fought the magic back with her will. The monsters began to close in on her, and she could feel the spell slowly take effect, but before it did, a notification came into her field of view.

Natural skill: strong-willed; has evolved into immovable will; you are now immune to most mental attacks. Her fear lessened; she still felt it, but it wasn’t as overwhelming as before. Ford smiled and got to her feet, startling the spiders. They turned to one another and whispered and clicked in an incoherent jumble of words. Ford smiled, hefted her massive claymore, and separated it into its many flying parts. Looking at the spiders in their many eyes, she said one word, “Run.”

Ford flicked her fingers in convoluted patterns, each twitch moving a sword and blade segment into different attacks; she focused on the one in the middle that had tried to eat her and cut the spider into several hundreds of tiny pieces. The ones that broke off of the main body, Ford, willed her swords to hunt down and kill. They never even made it to the forest’s edge.

The other two spiders turned and ran as fast as their bodies could move, separating into their smaller individual bodies. Ford created spears of light and dark and sent a massive volley at the spiders killing all of them. As the last one died from a flurry of swords, everyone jolted upright, and Max screamed as she scrambled backward away from the corpses.

Two more notifications appeared in Ford’s vision, which she ignored and went to Max and embraced her in a hug, “Max, it’s okay now. It’s okay. They’re gone now. They’re gone.”

Max breathed heavily and began to cry into Ford’s chest as she hugged her back. Lilly spoke first, her voice quivering, “Wha’ were those monsters?”

Ford looked at her activity log and read, “Those monsters were called ‘Night terrors’ I think they resulted from subject seven eight one six experiments.”

“Night terrors. What an apt description,” Benet said sarcastically.

“Agreed,” Morgan said, “I don’t think I will be sleeping for the rest of the night.”

“Neither will I,” Farah agreed.

“I don’ think anyone’s goin’ to sleep after tha’,” Lilly said.

Ford nodded then helped Max up and walked over to where the fire pit had been burning and Sunny was now floating, sat down with her and everyone else joined. Ford opened up her notifications and read them.