As he pounded away at his drum Pan realized that his true quarry had escaped. It was a pity to be sure, but he could always find the creature again.

He was, after all, very knowledgeable in how Game-Like Post-Apocalypses worked. He had read more than a few Manhuas and Web Novels, and he recognized the traits that he and those characters in fiction possessed with each other that were practically identical.

He was a loyal servant of the Honorable Chairman’s legacy, just like them, and so he was sure that his destiny was grand, just like those of those in the fictions he read when not doing other things. Besides, he had grown rather strong in the five years since the Apocalypse happened, and even this beast was no match for him.

For once, this wasn’t an empty boast. As he ramped up his drumming, the beast began to falter before slowly slumping over dead due to the sonic and quantum quakes produced by Pan’s drum.

He picked up his drum from where he had set it down and began to walk over to the fallen monster, only stopping once he had reached the corpse and from there opening his Item Box and withdrawing a small vial of opaque liquid, which he poured into the mouth of his former foe. The creature then stirred from death, got up, and ran off into the undergrowth in the direction that Pan’s target had fled.

“Good. Good.” he said to himself. “It was a worthwhile purchase. Now I won’t have to sully my own hands when killing that thing. And any kills that creature gets will go straight to me! Oh, I see this as an absolute win! For me, that is.”

…

Lyrhea had been running for over thirty minutes, swallowing any food she could get into her hands as she tried to outrun the monster that was on her heels. The creature was big, the size of a van, yet it was fast and seemingly had no limits to its stamina.

She, on the other hand, needed to constantly eat in order to keep herself moving, and as she ran deeper and deeper into the cross between a rain forest and a pine forest she found it harder and harder to find things that were both easily reachable while she was running and also small enough to fit inside her mouth.

As she ran, her foot got snagged on a root and she tumbled to the ground, rolling and spraining, if not breaking, a few parts of her body in the process. She looked up and the monster that had been after her for over half of an hour looked down at her and raised a massive fist the size of a car tire.

Her mind raced, and in the split moment between the fist being brought down and her incoming death, Lyrhea pushed herself to roll aside and, simultaneously, swipe at the monster’s arm with her nails. The nails did nothing, but they did give her some courage. She could, at bare minimum, die with ample defiance inside of her.

The monster did not take this attack well, and from where its fist had fallen the hand swept outwards and batted her aside, damaging more of her body in the process. Now she was spitting out blood as she felt a part of one of her teeth break off.

“Well… shit.” she thought to herself. “No way I can bite it now and use my venom with broken teeth…”

The monster drew closer and grabbed her by the waist, lifting her up to its eye level and staring her down as it slowly began to tighten its grip. If Lyrhea could not break free, she would soon find her insides becoming her outsides by way of her mouth and… other orifices.

In a last act of defiance, Lyrhea hocked up a loogie filled with blood and whatever else was available at the time and spat it directly into the monster’s eye. The creature, perhaps in a show of how powerless its prey was, did not even blink, nor did it move out of the way.

This was a mistake on its part.

The wad of spit, blood, phlegm, and other mouth secretions landed directly in the beast’s eye, and the creature tossed Lyrhea aside as it began to howl in pain. Lyrhea took this opportunity to pull herself away from where she had been tossed, and sequestered herself inside a small hollow in a fallen tree trunk, and prayed for help.

Her prayers were seemingly answered as the sounds of some other beast nearby added its own noises to the ones made by the now half-blind original monster. From there, what could only be described as a miniature kaiju battle took place until both creatures parted ways and went off to lick their wounds, leaving Lyrhea shivering and afraid inside of the trunk of the fallen tree.

She stayed there for a day and a night, dreading the act of eventually going out of her hiding place until she eventually built up the courage to slither out of it. The forest was noisy, and that was a good sign, as it meant that no apex threats were around.

Or at least that was her interpretation of it, anyway.

Her wounds had healed, but she was now in a rather dangerous state of mind. She needed to get some kind of win, or at least make some progress, otherwise she would risk falling into a truly defeatist mindset, and that kind of view would be a highway to death if ever there was one.

But for now, the best thing she could do would be to get some rest, as she had been up for nearly 2 days straight by now, and while she was not exactly exhausted due to her healing factor, her mind was in serious need of rest. So, after making sure that the coast was clear, she hid herself away in the fallen trunk again and closed her eyes, praying to whatever power or powers that existed or didn’t that she would not be attacked while she slept.