Roberto had to fight a very strong desire to get the fuck out of there as quickly as possible. He could be as cynical as you want, as uncaring of others as you want; God, even as nuts as you want, but here it was already far beyond ridiculous.

How should we kill that thing? He thought and thought as he ran away with that useless Alex still clinging to him. In fact, before that thought came, he found himself for a few moments feeling genuine hatred towards that fucking pussy and also towards himself. The doubts about him that Mario had told him the day before were nagging him insistently, even making him regret his decision to give away the only Skill they had obtained from the Chest.

But now that he was seriously between life and death all that anger quickly lost its meaning. Wrong choice or not, wasting time and neurons by pondering about it would not have helped anyone. Therefore, Roberto put aside his personal bullshit and went back to the main topic of the matter: avoiding an ugly and painful death kindly offered by that nice piece of beef known as Mini Boss.

"Hey!" In the meantime instead, Camilla raised her voice to get his attention, immediately saying, "Do you think we've gone far enough?" having noticed that they had already gone quite a ways. Roberto came back to his senses thanks to that call, regaining his calm after a deep breath and then analyzing their current situation.

Indeed, the danger seemed to have passed for the moment. They had already reached the central part of the mall, staying on the second floor, and there was no longer even the shadow of the Mini Boss. Relieved by that fact, but also a little frightened by not knowing where he could be, he carefully leaned out of the railing to better observe the central corridor.

"There!" He then said with more energy than he would have liked as he noticed that the Monster was still a long way away from them. Camilla did the same, carefully observing the slow movements of the creature that, with some effort, moved those legs of his thick as logs to advance one small step at a time. "At least it's slow. At least that..." Camilla went on shortly afterwards, breathing a sigh of relief, having finally found the Boss' first weakness.

"That thing is the genetic mix between an obese man and a heavy artillery piece," Roberto echoed her, thinking out loud. "We don't have any rifles or rockets on our side to counter its fireballs, though I doubt anyone would know how to use them anyway. Our only shot from a distance might work as well as not... What do we have on our side?", finishing by uttering the final question mostly addressing the void in front of him.

"We can outrun him." The girl answered him though, catching him off guard and causing him to slowly turn around. "That Monster is much slower than us," she then continued without waiting for Roberto to say anything. "If we keep running he'll never catch us and as long as we stay at a distance we won't have to worry about getting hit by his flames." She expanded further keeping her eye on the Boss, looking for more confirmation than reassurance from the other.

"That's true," Roberto confirmed, biting his lower lip, picking up immediately afterwards with: "In other words, our advantage is tied to the weight of his body. With a size like his, it's obvious that he has trouble moving, and that also makes the fact that he can know our location every ten minutes less worrisome. Even knowing it, he would still have to catch up with us first," which helped in no small part to boost the previously rather cracked morale.

However, they both quickly realized a major flaw in their reasoning. After all, the mall had been built as a mostly straight building with the stores placed on the side and with a large empty central corridor from which one could, for better or worse, see the windows of the rooms on the various floors. So, even if they continued to run, sooner or later they would reach a wall that they could not overcome.

The voice of the System had already told them that they would not be able to leave the building until the Boss was dead. So, once they reached the other side of the second floor they could only go up or down, but in both cases they would have to cross their path with the monster.

In other words... "The fact that he may know our position is worth little or nothing. Even running away is pointless, it would only delay the inevitable," Roberto said scratching his forehead with his knuckles, then concluding in no uncertain terms that the only choice to survive was to fight. "Shit, now I have the feeling that those who designed this fucking game are not completely incompetent, but at this point I would have preferred the opposite..." He couldn't stop himself from complaining though.

"So?" Camilla asked with her eyes still glued on the differently walking creature. Of the same opinion, at least regarding the impossibility of dragging out the escape indefinitely, she resumed asking, "Do you have a plan in mind?" while remaining surprisingly calm.

"I would say no," was however the reply of the boy who out of habit lit a cigarette. She, rightly, felt the smell of smoke and stared at him for a quick moment with a look that could quietly kill, but he justified himself by saying that if he had to die, he should do it with style. The acrid smoke of the tobacco, however, did not only serve to annoy him, but actually turned on a light bulb in Roberto's head.

"Fucking hell... The Boss's weak point is his own weight. Those assholes had practically warned us," he exclaimed then suffocating a liberating blasphemy that he avoided to communicate to the world, turning then to Camilla and saying sighing: "That thing is giant, it has a cannon instead of a nose, it moves slowly and weighs a ton. They had already given us the best weapon to deal with it, but I'd say it's not going to be very useful now..." He then concluded, moving his gaze downwards, just to the side of the girl.

She didn't immediately understand what he was referring to, but having turned her head she began to put the pieces of the puzzle together. The person standing in front of her at that moment was none other than Alex. Or, rather, a version of Alex still under an honest amount of shock holding onto his two broken fingers and rocking restlessly back and forth with his torso. A not too pleasant sight, even for her.

However, watching him a few seconds made it all clearer to her. "Don't tell me..." She then said without finishing the sentence, slowly approaching the moron and then gently grabbing his hands. "Alex... Alex... Can you hear me Alex?" He then asked the idiot, staying close to him but getting no response other than unremarkable gasps. Roberto sighed a second time, looking down on the result of his research experiment that threatened to get everyone killed.

There was no real rancor in his gaze, just a deep apathy that Roberto didn't have the mental strength to hide at that moment. The thoughts of just a few moments before came back, blaming him for wanting to test his theory on someone else without giving it more thought. [Supergravity] would probably have been the best possible Skill to deal with Bolzig's Puppy, and instead of being able to use it they would have had to make do without it.

Also because, even if the imbecile would have been able to recover, he would not have been able to use it. On this specific point, however, Roberto couldn't help but wonder if it would have really changed anything if he had been the one to learn it, since only Camilla seemed to be able to activate her Ability without real problems. Perhaps, specific information was needed to activate Non-Personal Abilities? Or was it just [Supergravity] that wanted to be difficult?

Surely both could be considered legitimate questions, but there was now a complete lack of time to launch possible options.

Not too far away, in fact, the ground had begun to shake again. Short and rhythmic vibrations reached the metal of the railing, making it tremble even though Roberto was holding it tightly in his hands. The Mini Boss was slow and yet, one step at a time, he had shortened the distance between them.

"Well, well, well... What am I supposed to do now?" The boy wondered as he watched the behemoth, silently, but extremely insistently, searching for an answer that wouldn't land him in a coffin. Staying stationary on the spot wasn't a viable option, and running away, interesting as it was, wouldn't get him far either. Right now he lacked information. Information about the Boss in particular that, had it remained a mystery, would have diminished his hopes of survival.

Actually he'd known the answer for a while, at least since he'd regained his composure after the initial emotional outburst, but he doubted his lungs would stand the strain. As far as he was concerned, he was already old and out of shape, despite his age, and the fact that he smoked like a chimney didn't help. Still, it was worth the risk. Provided he remained in one piece at the end of the experiment.

"You take Alex and keep moving towards the entrance," he said to Camilla, at that point in his reasoning, keeping the same sterile expression on his face as before. "If you can make your husband come to his senses, all the better; if not, I'll make the best of it with Mario, hoping he's still alive. Try to stay at a manageable distance though, your Skill might be one of the few effective weapons we have at our disposal." Pointing at the same time with his finger to the corridor that continued on the opposite side from the direction of the Monster.

"Are you going to get yourself killed?" She answered, however, in a voice that was clearly affluent, yet finding herself on the defensive as she returned the other's frozen gaze. Nevertheless, her character did not permit her not to speak her mind, despite the fact that she did not particularly care for him as a person. "What are you going to do, jump off the second floor?" She resumed then holding her head up high while slightly stumbling with her words though, going on to say with difficulty, "What do you hope to accomplish by going up against that thing alone?" as her forehead began to droop downward.

He, good soul, tapped her on the head, catching her by surprise. For a brief moment, the shadow of a smile seemed to color his face, but it passed as quickly as a mirage would. Deep down... he thought without realizing it. These two dickheads aren't bad. Still I would much rather not have to deal with them. Oh, well, I guess I don't have much of a choice.

"You just don't worry about it and start going. If you drag Alex along you won't be able to run, unless you want to leave him behind with me" he continued to say teasing her a little, turning away before she could give him an answer. Camilla was stunned by such a behavior, considering then the subject from which it came. However, she also realized that if she wanted to keep Alex safe she would have to leave and leave Roberto to his suicidal ideas.

It was a complex feeling that she felt in her heart when faced with that strange choice. It was certainly not a situation that could be easily encountered in a civilized society and if she could save only one person between Roberto and Alex her choice would have been obvious. Maybe it was because she was never used to feeling protected by others, but she had to fight hard to get up from the ground with Alex under her arm.

"So we're going, try not to die by accident," she paused to say before leaving, holding onto the waist of her moron still in shock. A bitterness that would have been hard to explain in her own words made her first steps even heavier, but it got worse when she heard Roberto's bland reply that greeted her with a simple: "See you next time," which she couldn't tell if it was said that way out of simple ego or because he had already surrendered to his fate.

Fortunately though, both possibilities that came to her mind were wrong. For Roberto, life would have been much simpler if he had had the chance to think in either of those ways.