'A little more…'
'Just a little more…'
'I'm not dying here. Not like this. Not now. Not ever.'
Ali's mind roared with defiance. Despair—cold and suffocating—sank its claws into him, but his willpower was a wall of steel. It didn't crack. It didn't bend. It didn't flinch. He continued to crawl, inch by torturous inch, dragging what remained of his body over jagged, ice-coated stone.
His shirt had long since shredded into frozen rags, hanging limply off his body. His abs—usually carved like stone—were now torn apart, lacerated as if by a thousand razors. Deep gashes split open across his midsection, lined with purplish frostbite that had claimed his skin and crept inward.
His left leg was gone—dead weight lost to the cold. His right leg, though still attached, was nothing more than an immovable slab of ice. If he'd had the strength, he would have severed it just to move faster.
But he didn't. So he crawled.
'It's just a race against time now…' Ali gritted his teeth.
As he climbed higher, the number of crystals embedded into the cave walls began to dwindle. The luminous, bone-white crystals that once glared like miniature suns had begun to fade. With their absence came a slight—almost imperceptible—rise in temperature.
But it wasn't fast enough.
CRAWL
SLASH
Ali's broken, bleeding body slid forward across the terrain—until his lower stomach collided with a jagged edge. It carved into him like a cleaver.
'FUCK—'. His breath hitched. His hands froze in place, gripping the rock. He didn't have to look—he could feel the stone embedded deep in his belly, angled perfectly to rupture whatever remained of his internal organs.
'I've survived worse,' he told himself through gritted teeth. 'I've survived worse.'
Each second drained his ability to stay conscious.
CRAWL
He pressed forward again—forcing himself onto the rock like a butcher placing meat on a cutting board.
The stone dug deeper.
His vision flickered.
And then—his body gave way.
Ali felt it.
A wet squelch.
His intestines—sliced clean—slid from the gaping wound in his abdomen and spilled across the frozen stone. They slapped against the icy rock like limp cords, slathered in blood and rapidly blackening from the cold.
He didn't scream.
He didn't cry out.
He kept crawling.
His arms—shaking, shredded, leaking blood from torn muscle—dug into the stone and pulled him forward.
Half a meter.
Then another.
'One more push… another half meter…'
Every time he moved, more of his organs dragged across the frozen floor, slashing and fraying until they were no longer distinguishable from the tattered remains of his shirt. His blood was now thicker, darker, and barely flowing.
His heart rate slowed.
He could feel it—his body's engine preparing to shut down.
'If I call the flames… I can trigger my healing cells,' Ali thought. 'It would save me….'
But even in this moment—at death's doorstep—his brilliant mind stayed calm, rational.
'But the crystals… they'll disrupt the rhythm. My body's in no condition to contain the flames. Best-case scenario? The flames wake up my healing cells and I can shoot out the flames in time which would make the cave fall one me. Worst-Case I just blow up'
His mind searched for another option. None came.
He reached again for the Force. But it was like trying to pull water from dry sand. Nothing responded. The crystals were still too close. Their unnatural energy crippled his connection to everything he relied on.
Still…
He crawled.
He pulled himself around a bend in the cave.
His eyes—already beginning to dim—narrowed.
'Please… don't be more crystals.'
And then he saw it…
'I can see it…'
Through his dragon's eyes, the world was a smudged landscape of cold and light—but beyond the next bend, it changed. The white-hot brilliance of the massive crystals had faded. Now only smaller shards remained, their glow weaker, their influence less suffocating.
And with that came warmth.
Real, tangible warmth.
Not fire—but hope.
Ali's lips curled into the faintest expression of triumph. A silent scream of victory. His jaw clenched. His fingernails snapped and bled as he clawed forward, dragging what was left of him to salvation.
His body—shattered, torn, nearly dead—endured.
One more meter.
Another.
Every inch forward felt like a marathon—but finally, mercifully, the terrain levelled out.
He could see An opening at the end of the path, the air coming from it was much warmer…
An end.
The temperature had risen enough that frost no longer bit into his flesh with every breath. The crystals were behind him now—lessening their grip with each passing second.
He had made it.
He'd survived the gauntlet of cold.
Ali reached into his inventory with a flicker of remaining thought, summoning his lightsaber.
It appeared beside him, its metallic surface dull with condensation.
He didn't have the strength to hold it.
So he simply reached out with a whisper of will…
And willed it to ignite.
Just once.
Just enough.
DARKNESS.
His vision collapsed.
His body gave in.
His lungs ceased to rise.
His heart stilled.
Ali's body slumped on the edge of the cavern like a discarded corpse, unmoving, surrounded by the blood of his own making.
The man who had shocked every player in the arena.
The one who'd walked through thousands of players and entered the gate first…
…now lay unmoving in a cave of frost, with his intestines shredded across stone and a heart that refused to beat.
Paradise… always reminds you where you truly stand….
BA—DUM
BA—DUM
BA—DUM
HAAAAAAAAAAAH—!
Ali's body jolted violently to life as his lungs tore open with a gasp, dragging icy air back into his system. His eyes burst open, wide and sharp, pupils constricted from the piercing light and raw pain of return. His chest heaved as his heart pounded with brutal intensity, every beat thundering through his ribcage like a war drum fighting back death.
And in front of him—still humming with quiet, unyielding purpose—his red lightsaber stood lit beside him. Its blade cast a thin, glowing warmth in the frigid cave, the low-frequency buzz of plasma slicing gently through the oppressive silence.
That lightsaber—that single, persistent hum of red energy—had saved him.
Ali's healing cells, dormant and nearly inert under the weight of deathly cold, had been stirred to action by the lightsaber's heat. That sliver of warmth was all they needed to trigger a biochemical alarm. They surged through his bloodstream like a microscopic army, working in unison to repair the devastation.
They reinforced the walls of his heart.
They simulated nerve signals to restart muscular contractions.
And most importantly—they resumed circulation.
Frozen blood began to move.
Frozen flesh began to pulse.
And death… retreated.
Far away in a primordial realm, time itself seemed to pause.
In the Dragon Hall, a realm untouched by mortals, vast creatures of legend sat in tense silence. Towering dragons the size of cities opened their eyes as one and turned toward a roiling storm of shadow and silence that loomed above their sky like an omen.
And then—
From within the cloud of darkness, Bahamut, the elder of darkness, stirred.
Twin violet eyes flared open, cutting through the storm with their ancient glow.
ROOOOOAAAAARRRRRR!
A colossal roar, the cry of a god-beast, erupted from Bahamut's maw. It swept across the realm like a tidal wave of sound, causing lesser dragons to flatten themselves to the ground. The very mountains trembled under the echo.
In a single instant, every dragon knew:
'HE'S ALIVE.'
Relief and awe flooded the realm. The contract still held. The bond was not broken.
Back in the frozen tomb of stone and death, Ali stood on shaking legs, reborn.
His body was drenched in sweat—an unusual reaction for him. But it made sense. His internal temperature was abnormally high. His entire biological system was in overdrive, pushing beyond normal thresholds to recover from the brink.
'The cells are overreacting—adapting. They're setting up countermeasures against the cold.'
He placed his palm on his abdomen, feeling the residual heat rolling off his skin like waves from a forge.
Reaching into his inventory, Ali withdrew a ration box and tore through five ration bars, chewing and swallowing them one after the other without hesitation. He needed the fuel. His metabolic furnace was consuming resources at an insane rate.
He sat down and crossed his legs, closing his eyes as he focused on lowering his internal temperature, manually controlling the chaos within.
Control. Always control.
Two minutes later, Ali rose to his feet, standing tall on newly regenerated limbs, the strength returning to his frame like a flood breaking through a dam. Steam coiled from his bare skin as residual heat radiated from deep within—evidence of the internal inferno that had jumpstarted his resurrection.
He turned slowly, casting one last glance back at the deadly corridor he had escaped. The path behind him glowed faintly, illuminated by the haunting, crystalline light of the magical ice. It still pulsed with danger.
Anyone else would've died in the first thirty seconds. But to crawl through it, alone, powerless, on the verge of death for that long and survive…
A soft exhale escaped him.
…that was monstrous.
Ali moved forward through the narrow opening that marked the exit from the tunnel of death. He leaned in slowly, cautiously peeking through the crevice—and the moment his eyes adjusted, they sharpened like blades.
'A spider?'
At the heart of a massive, circular cavern, an enormous arachnid loomed.
It wasn't just any spider—it was a grotesque colossus, a creature born of frost and horror. Its body spanned nearly the size of the giant wolf he had defeated back in the arena. Its entire form was coated in thick, glacial plates of ice, its limbs reinforced with crystalline armour that shimmered in the frigid light. Light blue exoskeleton gleamed under the frozen mist that filled the air, while two monstrous ice-encrusted fangs jutted from its grotesque mouth.
It was sleeping.
And even in sleep, it was dangerous.
Thin clouds of bluish vapour leaked slowly from between its mandibles—faint, ghostly wisps that danced in the cold air and curled through the chamber like breath from the dead.
Ali's eyes narrowed as realisation clicked into place.
'And it's releasing the same shit as the crystals…' he thought grimly, instinctively reaching out with his senses to confirm what his eyes saw.
It was exactly the same magical frost. The exact suffocating energy that had nearly killed him in the previous chamber. This was the source—or at the very least, the architect of that hellish environment.
ALERT
ALERT
A soft chime echoed in his mind as his interface blinked to life.
Two new notifications had appeared.
One was marked in red.
[Personal Mission: Kill the Mother Magic Crystal Spider (0/1)]
'So that's what you're called… "Mother Magic Crystal Spider." Figures. Those crystals I nearly died crawling through were magic crystals.'
He clicked his tongue, his eyes tracking the subtle movement of the spider's breath.
'Magic crystal… So it's not just elemental—this thing uses magic-infused ice. High-density. That explains the suppression field. That amount of raw magic, concentrated like that, must interfere with all other forms of magic nearby. Probably why the Force and my weapons failed.'
His expression darkened further.
'Anyway… I really, really want to hurt something after what I just went through.'
His eyes dropped down to the second notification blinking on his interface—this one a message marked with a blinking blue location beacon.
He tapped it open.
[Help. I was teleported inside a goblin cave. I've barricaded myself but there are hundreds of goblins around me—with a goblin that can do magic and a really big one too.]
—Miles
A small icon appeared on his map, a pulsing dot pointing west of his current location.
'Miles… of course. What timing.'
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