Lila nodded quickly to herself, hugging her arms tight against her chest like she could physically hold herself together. "Just… just wait. In my dreams, something always takes it before it reaches us."
"But this isn't your dr—" I started, and her voice cracked right over mine, forcing out a smile that didn't match the panic in her eyes.
"Trust me, okay? Just relax your throat… and don't break eye contact."
I raised a brow. "Wha—"
and she snapped her head toward me so fast I heard her neck pop. "No—! I don't mean it like that! I SWEAR!"
"…Okay."
"I SWEAR! Please... believe me..." I just nodded, slow, the way you nod at someone holding a live grenade.
"Y-yeah… thank you," she breathed. "Now we just wait. Something will take it."
Three seconds passed. Nothing moved— not the wind, not the dust, not even a fly dared cross the lot.
The monster stared, all of its eyes blinking at different rhythms, some slow and heavy-lidded, some twitching like they were malfunctioning, and then every single one of them locked onto us at once.
Ot stepped forward.
THUD.
The ground cracked wider beneath its paw.
Another step—
THUD— and the earth shuddered like it was trying to crawl away from what was standing on it.
Each footfall landed slow, deliberate, like the beast itself was taking its time choosing who got to die first.
Lila's whisper came out broken. "…No… no, no, no. This isn't right…" Her hands shook violently at her sides. "In my dream… this is where something takes it…"
Her breath hitched hard. "So WHY IS IT STILL HERE?!"
The beast snarled, thick black drool spilling from its jaws and sizzling holes into the stone where it landed.
In front of us, Vesper stepped forward— no weapon, nothing, nothing but clenched fists and a voice that trembled even as her eyes burned steady.
"Fear not," she whispered. "If death must take us… then I shall strike first."
She was about to fistfight a monster, and somehow that was the most Vesper thing I'd ever seen her do.
Ivy clung to my neck, her whole body shaking— not violently, like something fragile trying very hard not to break in my arms.
Then she lifted her tear-streaked face and looked straight into my eyes, lips trembling, and out came a small, horrified, crying voice. "Ahjussi… c-can I… call you Dad…?"
My brain just stopped. "What? Why???"
She wiped her nose and eyes with her sleeve, sniffling through it. "B-Because… if we survive… I want you to be my Dad…"
Her lips trembled harder. "But if we don't… then I want to call you Dad at least once…"
"…But you already called me Dad before."
"Please…" she sobbed, burying her face into my neck, silently begging like it was the only thing left she had control over.
I patted her back and looked past her— at the monster closing in, at Vesper bowing her head with her fists white-knuckled, at Lila collapsing into full panic on the ground— and I sighed deep from somewhere I didn't know I had left.
"Okay." I patted Ivy's head. "Call me whatever you want." It's not like we're surviving anyway.
Vesper and Lila both froze.
Even the monster paused, its many eyes narrowing in something that almost looked like confusion.
Ivy raised her head and looked up at me, eyes wide. "R-Really?"
"Ouch!" She slammed her forehead straight into my chin in excitement.
"Sorry! But really?!"
"Yes, yes… whatever! Daughter, penguin, talking potato— just cling tighter! I don't want you falling when we get eaten!"
"Promise…?"
"Yes." "'Yes' isn't enough."
"…I promise." Her tiny body finally went slack against me, hugging like her life depended on it. Which, yeah. It kind of did.
The beast blinked— all of its eyes at once— and let out a long, wet, gurgling growl. "BRRGHKKSKS."
Lila screamed from the ground. "OKAYYKAYOKAY!!!! This is not what happened in my dreams! This is nonsense!! Why is it offended?! You can't be offended!!!"
She jabbed a finger at it. "It doesn't even PAY TAXES!!!"
Vesper murmured a prayer under her breath, "Pray… pray that it chooses me first…" and threw a punch straight into empty air. The air did not care.
The beast stepped closer.
Thud.
Closer.
Thud.
It lowered its massive wolf-dragon head toward us, closer, closer, closer, closing the gap one heavy, deliberate step at a time until the ground itself cracked beneath our feet from the weight of it.
Its breath washed over us— sour, rotten, decayed, like a dead fish left out under three days of summer sun— and black smoke curled out from between its teeth.
"Ew…" I muttered, because apparently that was the best my brain could manage.
"WAHHH!!" Ivy screamed into my shoulder.
Lila collapsed fully to the ground, and Vesper's fists clenched harder, shaking now not from fear but from something worse— hate. She hated this. Hated being helpless in front of it.
The beast's many eyes slowly narrowed, focus sharpening onto me, onto Ivy, onto all of us at once, and its jaw creaked open— rows of jagged bone teeth unfolding, more of them lining the inside of its throat like it had never stopped growing weapons.
I swallowed hard. "Well," I muttered. "This is where we die."
"NO!" Lila screamed up at the sky. "SOMETHING SHOULD'VE SWOOPED IN BY NOW!"
She stared at the portal above the CU. AND WELL… YEA [nothing] swooped.
Vesper tightened her fists one last time. "If destiny wills my demise, so be it— but I shall not fall quietly."
Ivy squeezed tighter around my neck. "D-Dad…" she whispered, voice tiny and cracking. "It's looking straight at us…"
"I know."
"S-should I close my eyes?"
"Yes. No. Actually— maybe. I don't kn— JUST HUG ME TIGHTER."
The beast lunged. A blur of claws, jaws, and too many eyes all converging at once, its mouth opening wide enough to swallow the three of us whole.
I closed my eyes and waited for the end.
5 seconds passed. Nothing happened. I opened my eyes— and the world had simply stopped.
Only for me.
Time frozen mid-death, the beast's jaws hanging inches from my face, a single strand of drool suspended mid-drip in the air like a photograph nobody asked to take.
And floating right in front of the frozen teeth, a blue translucent window blinked into existence.
「[ SYSTEM NOTICE ]
NEW QUEST ARRIVED: SURVIVE.
Objective: Survive.
Reward: ALL directions movement.
[Tap for more Details]」
I stared at it for a long moment before muttering, "You're kidding." I tapped Details anyway, and the window shifted, letters rearranging themselves like they were still deciding what to say.
────────────────────────
「[ DETAILS ]
QUEST: SURVIVE
Objective: Remain alive.
Reward: All-Directional Movement (Locked)
Penalty: Death.」
────────────────────────
I scoffed at the frozen monster in front of me. "Like I wouldn't die anyway if I fail…" Then a new window slid into view beneath the first.
「ACCEPT QUEST? [ACCEPT] / [DECLINE]」
"…as if I have a choice."
I pressed [ACCEPT.]
Time resumed all at once— sound crashing back in like a wave breaking.
The beast moved.
But something moved faster now, my thoughts accelerating into something sharper, clearer, like my brain had been running underwater and someone had just pulled it up for air.
A yellow glow flared to life in Vesper's clenched hand.
Lila was gone from where she'd collapsed, vanished from her spot entirely.
Ivy screamed against my shoulder.
The ground kept shaking beneath all of it. And then, quiet and small, another line of text appeared beneath the window, almost like it was whispering directly into my skull:
「Hint: The quest is always correct.」
"…What does that even—" Another line followed right behind it.
「If the quest is 'Survive'… you will. Even at 1%.」
My breath caught in my throat. "…That's cheating." But I'd take it.
Somewhere above the fractured sky, the reward sat waiting— [All-Directional Movement], just out of reach, glowing faint behind the clouds like a promise nobody had signed yet.
Sounds useless. But I guess I only needed to stay alive long enough to actually grab it
The world didn't slow back down so much as it sharpened. Every crack in the pavement, every twitch of the beast's too-many eyes, every strand of Ivy's hair whipping against my collar— all of it came through clearer than it had any right to, like someone had wiped a layer of fog off my senses I didn't know was there.
My legs moved before my brain finished the thought, throwing us sideways out from under the beast's jaws by a margin so thin I felt its breath scorch past my ear.
Ivy shrieked, fingers digging crescents into my neck, and somewhere behind us Vesper's glowing fist finally connected with something— not the beast, just air again, but this time the air rippled, a shockwave rolling outward and knocking a chunk of asphalt clean off the ground.
"THAT WORKED?!" she shouted, genuinely stunned by her own punch.
"NOW ISN'T THE TIME TO BE SURPRISED BY YOURSELF!" I yelled back, skidding around a collapsed light pole with Ivy still clamped to my chest like a baby koala mid-earthquake.
The beast roared behind us, furious at missing its meal, and the ground behind my heels erupted in a spray of gravel as one massive claw came down where we'd been standing half a second earlier.
Well, I didn't stop to admire how close that was.
I just ran, quest window still hovering faint and translucent at the edge of my vision like some kind of morbid GPS counting down my odds of dying, and somewhere in the chaos I caught one last flicker of text scrolling past—
「Current survival probability: rising.」
"…I'll take rising," I muttered, and kept running.