#didn't think I'd write much today because headache so thank goodness for painkillers hurrah!

[shamera]

NaNo day 19

I worked really hard to get to a point where I felt I could at least stop writing for the day without ending it somewhere mid-sentence, lol.

needs a lot of work, but I just need to push through this part first. xiaobao feelin' some things here. things he will not be talking about, no thank you.

He didn’t know how long he froze for, but his eyes were burning by the time Fang Duobing was able to look away from the dungeon boss, thoughts frantic and buzzing in search for the exit. 

They fell in. He couldn’t even see walls, much less a place for them to have come from. The boss room felt like a dimension of its own, a protected bubble that would allow no exit once someone ended up there. If he had known… if he hadn’t taken off running…

They might have been food for the monsters if he hadn’t done that. Fang Duobing studied up on dungeons well enough the last several years to understand that they had gotten lucky getting the amount of crystal shards they did, as most dungeons had monsters that were difficult to kill one at a time, yet this one was filled with creatures that were rather weak but made up for their weakness in numbers. 

The problem was when they needed only a few crystal shards, but couldn’t take on a swarm of dozens to hundreds of monsters at a time. He should have strategised drawing a few in at a time somehow, even if at the moment he still didn’t know how he would have done that. There must have been a way, at least a way better than running and then ending up in the boss room. 

The first handful of years after the gates appeared, no one had been able to defeat dungeon bosses. Many Hunters tried once they discovered their existence, and ultimately lost their lives, and the lives of the teams they brought with them. 

It was Jinyuan Alliance’s leader Di Feisheng who cleared the first dungeon, purposefully taking his sect into a do or die situation where they either took down the dungeon boss or didn’t come out. The first dungeon clear had been a shock, and then a cause for celebration as the gate disappeared entirely from a place that had once been a highly visited mall. 

He declined all interviews, but the official statement from his PA Jiao Liqiao had been that he wanted to take the top rank, to push and prove himself as the greatest Hunter in the world. Di Feisheng’s persona was that of a cold man who cared not to do good but to become stronger and stronger. He didn’t focus on saving people, but rather on bettering himself. 

Immediately after, Sigu Sect cleared a dungeon as well, and then two, and then three. Once it was proven that dungeons were, in fact, not indestructible, Li Xiangyi had turned it into a personal mission to clear dungeon bosses, with or without the help of his sect. While others planned weeks in advance and took large raid parties, by the third clear, Li Xiangyi took only a small group with him, usually with only a few people in excess to give them the experience and knowledge of how to fight a dungeon boss. 

But as the dungeons collapsed into nothing, the media portrayed the remaining ones as… stronger, somehow. And soon the celebratory support behind the sects turned into that of doubt and suspicion as Hunters started protesting the closure of the dungeons. 

Sure, the first dungeon would be easy to clear. Maybe the second and third as well! But once they closed ten, once they hit more than that… wouldn’t that make it harder for everyone else? If they wanted to close all the dungeons, then sure the last handful would be impossible to do! And it would be more dangerous for any civilians who fell through the gates as well! With the average monsters growing stronger as each dungeon boss was defeated, more Hunters would be put in danger. 

But Sigu Sect and Jinyuan Alliance did not stop, and their successes spurred Hunter groups around the world to compete in closing dungeons, until there were less than a hundred all over the world. Until sects had to team up, had to send their best, for a hundred man raid battle against the bosses rather than dedication teams. 

And then the disastrous day when Sigu Sect and Jinyuan Alliance fell apart in the middle of a raid, when they started fighting each other along with the boss, when both sects were decimated and most of them died. When the boss was finally defeated, when the dungeon shut down and everyone made it out, they discovered that neither Di Feisheng nor Li Xiangyi had been among the people who returned. 

No one ever saw them again. 

And then the worst came to pass: gates started appearing around the world once more, randomly, infrequently, but growing as if attempting to balance out the dungeons that had previously been defeated. Every several months, a new one would appear in the world. While the first wave had appeared in the brightest cities in the world, all the subsequent gates were scattered about. 

Many over the ocean, some over deserts or rural towns, and there was no way to predict when or where one might appear. 

The common speculation was that the gates would stop appearing once they reached their original numbers, and civilians navigating around them became the new normal. Dungeons existed alongside society, and new businesses supporting Hunters and selling scavenged items started popping up. 

Many online wrote of their dissent, blaming the new dungeons and the civilian deaths associated with them, the danger of being caught up in a new gate, the feelings of anxiety over never feeling safe enough, all on the old Hunters. On sects like Sigu and Jinyuan, on people like Li Xiangyi and Di Feisheng. If they had only left the dungeons alone, many wrote, then the world wouldn’t be in such a situation! The gates and dungeons were here to stay, and to attempt to abolish them brought about the last decade of uncertainty and fear. 

If only the Hunters left the gates alone, then no new ones would have to appear. 

Fang Duobing didn’t think so, and spent too many hours of his teen years angrily flaming those posts on Weibo and Baidu forums. 

How could the Hunters have possibly known what was going to happen? How could civilians blame them for trying to prevent more innocent people from falling through the gates, from property damage as the gates breathed in size? The sects had a duty to close the gates if they could! They were trying to protect people, and it wasn’t their fault that further gates appeared! 

But country after country agreed to stop closing the dungeons, to let the numbers to grow back to its initial size, and Fang Duobing could only seethe in silence. 

It was now illegal to confront a dungeon boss, as if any normal person could actually take one on. 

It meant no one would be coming to help Fang Duobing, not unless his aunt convinced his parents to sanction the government for a special force to find him. But it would take hours, if not days. 

With the way the large coiled creature was already starting to move, responding to Fang Duobing’s presence in its territory, he didn’t have that sort of time. 

The only way to leave was through the boss. 

But before that, he had to find Li Lianhua. 

He had to find Li Lianhua, and then he had to find a way to… to leave somehow. If they could just find two other monsters who might have fallen in with them, if they could take those two out, then they’d be able to get the crystal shards to leave. 

(Deep in his mind, Fang Duobing understood that those thoughts were delusional. Ordinary monsters would never enter the boss room, and he could see no exit in any direction.)

He shrunk back into the grass, giving a reprieve to his aching legs as he crawled through the higher grass, hiding and searching. 

“Li Lianhua,” he hissed out frantically, unwilling to raise his voice and draw attention, yet also unable to stay silent. “Li Lianhua, where are you?”

As he moved, he could feel the creature waking, stretching, searching. The movements were slow and lethargic so far, just rousing from a deep rest. 

“Li Lianhua!” Fang Duobing hissed out again, tone switching to despair. He couldn’t be the only one here, could he? Li Lianhua couldn’t have— how bad was the fall? How far had they fallen? With the way his shoulder felt, he would certainly need medical care after this if they could escape, but… Li Lianhua wasn’t a Hunter, he complained about having to walk after an hour or so, and needed frequent rests. He would spend days in bed when his illness flared up, barely able to eat and definitely without the energy to care for himself. Today’s exertion must have already been too much, and to fall at such a height, he had to— 

There was a flash of something pale through the glowing grass, and Fang Duobing made his way over quickly, trying to ignore the rousing monster that was pushing his heart rate into a panic. Around thick clumps of grass, he saw Li Lianhua’s pale clothes, parts of his skin covered in dark red blood that had Fang Duobing reeling. 

Li Lianhua was on his back, unmoving, but he didn’t look overly worse for wear. Fang Duobing didn’t know what to do, grabbing at the man’s cold hand to feel for a pulse, and letting out a breath in relief as he found it, slow but steady. There was the beginning of a bruise across his temple on the same side where he sustained the cut, and Fang Duobing didn’t know whether that was because of the fall or if it had been there before, but unseen due to the dim lighting. There were several scratches that tore through the sleeves of his shirt, and one long cut up his thigh, but it didn’t appear to be bleeding too badly. Other than that and the mud splattered across his clothes, he looked relatively alright. 

Relatively. Fang Duobing didn’t know how to gauge. 

“Li Lianhua, wake up,” he breathed out frantically, gingerly shaking his shoulder. What if he had a spinal injury? A concussion that meant he wouldn’t wake? What if Li Lianhua had internal bleeding that Fang Duobing couldn’t assess, and he was making it worse?

What if he was already too late?

“Wake up, we have to go,” Fang Duobing murmured with wide eyes, darting to look at the moving mountain, the monster that had yet to find them. “We have to hide—”

He must have made too much noise, as suddenly there was a loud roar that reverberated through the cavernous room, shaking the earth under them. The sound was deep, deep enough to settle in his bones and pool within his marrow, laying the foundation of fear. 

It was that roar that finally roused Li Lianhua, the man twitching into awareness with a frown that left a deep furrow between his brows. A rhythmic thump spread across the ground like ripples in a pool, and the man’s hand twitched as it hit him. 

“Li Lianhua,” Fang Duobing repeated, demanded, because they didn’t have the time for a slow and peaceful awakening. If he had to carry the man out of the dungeon himself, then Fang Duobing would do that. The thumps on the ground were quickly growing in frequency as Li Lianhua finally opened his eyes, awareness settling in quickly despite the way his eyes were unfocused. With that acknowledgement that the man was awake, Fang Duobing pulled him forward and up. “No time, we have to find a place to hide.”

To his credit, Li Lianhua didn’t protest or even indicate discomfort from his injuries, following along with Fang Duobing’s movement until he caught sight of the towering monsters that was rising from its coiled position, revealing more lines of sharp spines that curled around its form, twining its way down corded flesh that was starting to pulse with discolouration, the fleshy pink and browns sliding into an array of blues and purples that mirrored the colours of the gate. 

He didn’t know where the reflex came from, but within a moment Fang Duobing managed to pull Li Lianhua all the way to his feet while he got up himself, and yank them both out of the way as a large tendril slammed into the ground where they had previously been. There was a shrieking sound from the plants crushed underneath the tendril.

The pulsing tendril hit deep into the earth, and pulled back slowly as Fang Duobing stared in shock and horror, hands grabbing tightly on Li Lianhua’s shoulder and arm, sure that he would leave bruises. 

It was as thick as a dinner plate, yet nowhere as large as the monster. Where did it come from?

“Move!” Li Lianhua’s voice was raspy, and soon the two of them were stumbling away from the boss, feet bumbling over the ground as the thumps continued, attempting to trip them up. 

The roar came once more, feeling like a wave crashing into them and pushing them as physical as a hurricane of wind. 

Fang Duobing stumbled, crashing forward into the soft earth alongside Li Lianhua, who exhaled sharply in pain at the fall. Then he stopped, and yanked Fang Duobing toward him as he rolled away, and a moment later there was the crash of another tendril right where Fang Duobing had been, mere inches away and close enough that he could feel the resulting gust. 

“Stop,” Li Lianhua commanded before Fang Duobing could scramble up, chest to chest as they drew panicked breaths. His thin arms were bracketing Fang Duobing, weight painful on his ribs. “Don’t move.”

Above them to the side, the tendril was pulling up, shining with a purple light like smoke as it slowly retreated, and Fang Duobing stared with bated breath as it withdrew toward the monster, and the thumping of the ground slowed and stopped. 

The monster made another noise, this time less a roar but rather something higher pitched, and Fang Duobing stayed frozen. 

“It’s movement,” Li Lianhua breathed against him. “It senses movement on the ground.”

They stayed utterly still, and the monster made another one of the pitched noises, its every movement rumbling through the dirt. Despite not being able to see the monster clearly as they lay in the grass, he could feel its movements as it searched for them. As they held still to the point of holding their breaths, the creature emitted noises like clicks, at first slow and then growing in speed and pitch. The sounds of shrieking grass became a chorus as the monster slithered and crushed it. 

Fang Duobing’s eyes were wide, staring straight at Li Lianhua, afraid that even the motion of looking away might attract the attention of the boss monster. 

They were tentatively safe for the moment, lying on the grass, but that safety wouldn’t last with the way the creature was moving around the cavern. It couldn’t last when they weren’t allowed to move, but the moment they did move, then— 

Fang Duobing was fairly confident in his ability to take down some dungeon monsters, reassured of his martial training if nothing else. But the creature searching for them now was beyond anything he imagined fighting by himself. He didn’t even have a proper weapon, nothing more than a small wooden sword he carried with him for luck. 

Above him, Li Lianhua’s mouth flattened into a stern line, likely reading Fang Duobing’s panic. He was always good at figuring out Fang Duobing’s thoughts with a look. It was something that fascinated Fang Duobing at first, and then irritated him later, until he was determined to do the same. 

They could wait there, rest while they could, but with the way each sound the monster made was making his heart pound faster, it seemed more likely that the longer they waited, the more ill prepared he would be. Panic created mistakes, Fang Duobing knew. 

No one was coming for them. 

There was no way of getting out. 

But he couldn’t afford to start a fight he couldn’t win. The fear crashing against his throat and faltering his breathing was screaming at him very clearly that he couldn’t win. He didn’t have the skills, he didn’t have the experience. Even if he did have both, he didn’t have a team to back him up. He was already injured. He had to keep Li Lianhua safe. 

“If it could tell where we were by movement,” Li Lianhua muttered lowly under his breath, and Fang Duobing almost shushed him for it except the man looked too deep in thought to pay him any mind. “Then we would have been killed the moment we fell in. It didn’t do that. Why?”

Fang Duobing struggled with his urge to stay completely still to the point of not speaking for a long moment, but as the monster continued to move a direction not close to them for the moment, he risked, “It seemed asleep.”

“No,” Li Lianhua’s eyes were narrowed in thought. “Anything could drop in here. This cave is at the bottom of the dungeon. A creature that big would need to conserve energy, it can’t go chasing after every rock dropped into this room. It’s about secondary movement. Like a venus fly trap.”

Fang Duobing didn’t know anything about venus fly traps except for the shape and that it ate insects. 

Another series of pitchy clicks erupted above them, and Fang Duobing tensed his jaw even as he stared at Li Lianhua worrying his lower lip in thought. 

No one was coming for them. The thought bounced continuously in his head. His mother would be so mad. She always said that his obsession with being a Hunter, with dungeons, would get him killed. She had done everything in her power to lock that path from her only child, even as Fang Duobing raged and rebelled against her orders. 

She was going to be so, so mad about being right. 

He couldn’t give up. He had to… to… 

It wasn’t until Li Lianhua shifted slightly above him to touch his shoulder that Fang Duobing realised he was shaking. The older man looked down at him and then closed his eyes for a moment, expression softening. 

“It’s okay,” he said. “I have a plan. But I need you to do something.”

Fang Duobing couldn’t nod, but said, “Anything.” Li Lianhua was smart, so much smarter than he often let on, which was astonishing because Li Lianhua had never been shy about boasting his own intelligence. If anyone could come up with a plan in this situation, it would be him. 

“Close your eyes.” Li Lianhua told him, shockingly intimate as they lay chest to chest and Fang Duobing found himself flushing in that moment where he hadn’t before. They were injured, dirty, and bloodied, yet Li Lianhua’s hair was escaping from his loosened bun, and the strands were tickling the side of Fang Duobing’s face. “Count to a hundred. All the way to a hundred. Don’t move before then.”

Fang Duobing made a face. “What? That’s not a plan— Li Lianhua—”

A slight movement, but it was enough that the clicking from the monster petered out, and a rough hand covered his eyes, prompting Fang Duobing to close them unintentionally. Li Lianhua’s skin was cold, his poor circulation not helped by blood loss. 

“Count.” Li Lianhua told him, and in the absence of sight, Fang Duobing could feel the warmth of his breath. “And don’t move, no matter what. It’s part of my plan.”

And then he was gone. His weight, his warmth, the hand across Fang Duobing’s eyes… Between one moment and the next, he was gone and Fang Duobing squeezed his eyes shut to start mentally counting, trusting in Li Lianhua’s plan. He was smart, he always knew what to do— 

The monster roared once more, and the thumping on the earth began once more, like ripples across a pond. 

Locating movement, Fang Duobing realised now. 

There were heavy thuds, great hits against the dirt that he could feel, at a distance from his person, and he wondered just what Li Lianhua managed to do that drew the monster away. Hopefully, Fang Duobing prayed, throwing stones to divert its attention. But where was Li Lianhua himself?

A heavy shaking, a great impact that had Fang Duobing clenching his fists, and then the creature gave out a pitched scream, discordant like the sounds of faulty machinery, the frequency vibrating through his bones. 

A beat, another, and Fang Duobing continued to count even as his conviction wavered hearing the shrieking flowers from one area and another, and the feeling of the boss monster moving, the shaking of the ground underneath him overpowering even the rapid beating of his heart. Each moment built his anxiety, his fear, his uncertainty, and Fang Duobing felt like a bow string drawn tight, verging on breaking. 

He was halfway through his count, his entire body a ball of tension, when he smelt it. 

Beyond the pained shrieking of the creature was a sharp, heavy ozone smell. Metallic. Almost warm, in a way that alarmed his senses. 

Blood. A lot of it. 

He couldn’t stay still. He couldn’t keep his eyes closed. If something happened to Li Lianhua, and he sat back and didn’t do anything— 

Li Lianhua was smart, so smart, but Fang Duobing was now remembering all the times the man would throw himself in dangerous situations or anger the wrong people with his sharp tongue, never once backing down despite being outnumbered and outclassed. How many times had Fang Duobing stepped in to stop a fight? How many times had Li Lianhua been in danger without him even knowing it?

He opened his eyes to the glow of the grass, the lights escaping up toward the ceiling, and found there was a plume of dust fogging the area high above. He shouldn’t move. Movement would draw the attention of the dungeon boss, and it might ruin Li Lianhua’s entire plan— 

But the man never told him the plan. And he was never good at keeping himself out of danger. 

With gritted teeth, Fang Duobing carefully and quickly pushed himself up and got his feet under him, crouching in the tall grass but now able to see over it. What he saw was the giant worm-like monster, except now it was halfway uncoiled, unravelled like the frayed end of a rope to reveal itself made of dozens of tendrils of purple-blue, pulling apart to reveal a dark abyss at the centre, so black it looked like a hole in the fabric of reality. Some of the tendrils had serrated edges, the spines he originally saw, and writhed wildly in pain. 

Half the tendrils on one side of the creature lay cut and limp, leaking what could only be a blackened blood as the entirety of the monster flailed upward away from a figure and a shine. 

A figure in pale clothes that landed before the monster with their back to Fang Duobing, hair unbound and wild, and one arm extended to reveal a glowing blue sword held firmly and with impeccable control. 

It was a posture he had seen before many years ago. On a figure he in recent years came to know all too well. 

And then the figure moved once more, barely having landed on the ground for a split second before he was back in the air in a display like a dance, twisting to evade two tendrils that shot at him and spinning the glowing blue blade to slice through yet another tendril, prompting the monster to let out another piercing cry and lash out blindly. 

The movements were beautiful and almost otherworldly, speaking to years of experience and practised grace. He landed on a tendril, already off running before it could sweep down under his weight, and pushed on higher, higher in the air until he twisted above the monster entirely despite the size of it, hair a curtain trailing after him. 

And then Li Lianhua came back down, in one sweeping move slicing through the rest of the monster tendrils.