Chapter 120: Sam & Jerry! [Bonus]
[Four days earlier...]
Sam stepped through the swirling dungeon entrance with her staff in hand and emerged into a vast cave that stretched outward in all directions.
Above the cave were stalactites that dripped steadily into a central lake as the sound echoed all around.
Behind her, Jerry stumbled through a second later, already dusting off his armour with an annoyed huff. "Alright," he said, "let’s get this over with. D-rank shouldn’t take more than—"
With no transition or warning, the world swapped, and the cave vanished.
One moment they were surrounded by damp stone and dripping water. The next, tall golden grass that brushed against Sam’s legs as a dry, hot wind rolled across an endless savannah.
Above, two suns burned low in the sky, casting long, overlapping shadows.
Sam spun around. The entrance they had just come through warped, twisted, and collapsed inward, folding from the inside out until it was a thin black line, and then nothing at all.
Jerry staggered, grabbing his head. "What the hell—?!"
Sam tried to keep her breathing steady even as her stomach dropped. She looked up at the alien sky with its twin suns and felt the truth settle like ice in her veins.
"...We triggered it," she said quietly.
Jerry blinked at her, still dazed. "Triggered what?"
She didn’t look at him. "A Hell Gate."
The wind moved again, sweeping through the grass in slow waves, and Sam crouched, fingers brushing the blades.
The horizon was flat and open, offering almost no cover except for scattered black-barked trees in the distance, their branches thin and crooked like broken fingers.
"Visibility’s bad," she said. "We’re completely exposed."
Jerry turned in a slow circle, panic creeping into his voice. "Exposed to what? There’s nothing here."
Sam stood slowly. "There’s always something."
And just as the words left her mouth, the grass parted, and this time it wasn’t the wind.
A single low growl rumbled across the plain, and Sam’s eyes locked onto two faint glints of gold in the dark gap where the grass folded back, watching them from thirty metres away.
"Don’t!" she snapped, hand shooting out as Jerry started to move.
He swallowed. "Tell me that’s not what I think it is."
The stripe-back left the grass like a released spring, eight thousand pounds of pure muscle crossing thirty meters in a fraction of a second with jaws wide open.
"It’s a st-st-st—" Sam’s eyes widened. "Stripe-back!"
The air was displaced by its movement and the tiger’s jaws snapped shut where her head had been a fraction of a second earlier.
She threw herself sideways, pivoting off her front foot, barely dodging as the ground shook beneath its landing.
It swiped and claws tore through the dirt, ripping up huge clumps of earth as it twisted mid-motion, already correcting.
However, Jerry was already reacting. He spat a thick stream of sticky green goo from his mouth that slammed and plastered into the monster’s forelimb, pinning it to the ground with a wet slap.
<Sticky sticky gumshot>
"That’s not gonna hold it at all!" Sam shouted and grabbed his wrist, already yanking him backward as they broke into a sprint.
"Obviously," he said, and ran with her.
They sprinted across open ground, grass whipping at their legs with nowhere to go except forward and forward. And by the horizon, trees could be spotted.
Jerry snickered mid-run, somehow looked pleased with himself. "That’s not all my Sticky Sticky gumshot can do."
The Stripe-back tore through the goo with a roar. But the moment it ripped free, the substance glowed bright, drawing the creature’s attention and momentarily blinding it before detonating.
The explosion hit their backs as a wave of heat and displaced air, and Sam glanced over her shoulder to see a column of smoke rising from the spot they’d just vacated.
When it cleared, the stripe-back was shaking debris from its coat, barely marked, but stationary, buying them precious seconds.
"Jerry, you’re incredible," Sam said breathlessly.
Jerry rubbed under his nose with a proud little grin. "A Stripe-back, huh?" He said calmly. Then his voice cracked into a scream. "What’s a B-rank monster doing in this dungeon?!!!"
His yell carried far across the silent savannah, and it wasn’t long before something responded. Unfortunately, this something was enormous, blotting out one of the suns.
Sam heard the scream before she saw it. A gigantic pterodactyl-like monster that let out a shriek like a hawk.
Then it folded its wings, and dove from the sky, twelve-inch claws extended, ready to snatch one of them up and leave nothing but crushed bone and skin.
Sam spotted the black-barked trees ahead and cut sharply toward them. "This way!" The tree cover came up fast, branches interlocking overhead in crooked patterns that broke the sky into fragments.
Inside the thin forest the beast couldn’t dive-bomb them, but its massive shadow still circled overhead like a death sentence.
They slowed only when the canopy closed above them, and Jerry leaned against a tree, chest heaving, staring at the ground. "D-rank... please tell me that’s still D-rank?"
Sam didn’t answer immediately. She looked up through the twisted branches at the circling shadow.
Then she relaxed just a fraction. "That was a Raptor. Also B-rank." She slumped against a trunk, breathing hard. "This isn’t supposed to be happening. I was supposed to clear a simple D-rank dungeon and rub it in Kurt’s face when he got back."
Jerry caught his breath and straightened up. "For what it’s worth," he said carefully, "the way you called that monster from thirty meters out in grass?" He shook his head. "You’re like a walking monster encyclopedia. It’s—" he searched for the word, "—honestly pretty remarkable."
"Hm-hmm." Sam made a small, satisfied sound in the back of her throat and tugged on her hair ribbon. "Mama always said knowledge is power."
The mood quieted and Jerry nodded slowly as his voice dropped. "You know Kurt screwed up, right? Leaving before you woke up." He watched her face. "It’s okay to be mad."
Sam’s expression softened for a moment. "I know," she said. Her voice came out smaller than she intended, and she cleared her throat. "I’m not mad. I just—" she stopped and started again. "I just would have—"She shook her head once. "It doesn’t matter."
Jerry looked at her for another moment. Then he leaned in as he tried to close the distance, lips aiming for hers.
She placed two fingers gently but firmly against his mouth, stopping him cold with a sweet, slightly awkward smile. "Jerry," she said softly, "you’re sweet, but... no."
Jerry blinked, then laughed sheepishly and backed off. "Right. Sorry. Got carried away."
"We should keep moving," Sam said, standing and dusting off the back of her skirt. She tried to orient herself using the twin suns, but their positions made no sense for navigation.
Two of them, fixed at different angles, gave her two shadows pointing in different directions.
So she switched tactics, reading wind patterns, slight elevation changes, and the faintest signs of predator movement.
Jerry followed behind her, still a little flustered. "So... that’s it then? We’re stuck here until we die or something decides we’re allowed to leave?"
Sam pushed aside a branch. "No."
He let out a dry laugh. "No?"
"We clear it," she said simply.
Jerry stared. "How? We don’t even know where the boss is."
"Well, we do know there’s always a boss." Sam said. "Hell Gates don’t let you out until it’s dead right? We just have to find it, kill it, and the gate drops."
Jerry looked at her like she’d lost her mind. "You just saw what’s out there."
"It’s not like we have a choice," Sam replied, eyes scanning ahead and Jerry sighed in agreement.
They walked for what felt like hours, and Night, if it could even be called that, came without warning.
The suns were replaced by aurora-like bands of light that rippled overhead, casting dim illumination across the savannah and turning the sky deep purple.
And with the darkness came new sounds.
There was the faint rustles in the grass, then low growls circling at a distance, trying to herd them toward open ground, and she and Jerry moved faster, staying within the thin forest cover.
These were nocturnal monsters that stalked them with the coordination of a pack. Circling and cutting the angle of escape down by degrees without ever committing to a charge.
Their eyes caught the dim light and held it, a dozen pairs at least, moving the perimeter tighter. Then the creatures stepped out, coming in from three sides.
They were four-legged predators with glowing amber eyes and dorsal plates along their spines that made them look like a cross between a dinosaur and a wolf.
They growled in unison, closing in, and Sam and Jerry dropped into fighting stances as she lifted her staff.
The pack paused at the tree line, and without any visible signal, stopped entirely. Every pair of eyes in the grass stayed fixed for one moment before sliding upward to the trees.
Then, as one, they backed away with their ears flat and tails low, retreating into the grass like they’d seen something far worse.
The silence they left behind was nerve-wracking as Sam and Jerry stood in it, weapons still raised, looking at what the pack had looked at.
They were in the trees, a dozen of them at least, crouched along the branches in postures that suggested they’d been there for some time.
Their builds were lean and tall, muscle visible even at rest, and across their dark skin ran patterns of faint luminescent green tattoos that looked like it was moving, tracing the length of their arms and crossing their faces in thin lines.
Their eyes were green too. Glowing and fixed on Sam and Jerry with an attention that was neither hostile nor friendly, just present.
Jerry leaned in and whispered, "What the hell do you think those are?"
Still holding up her staff, Sam exhaled slowly, heart pounding as she searched every corner of her knowledge for a match. "I... I don’t know."