WOOZI’S POV

“Where am I?” I asked while feeling my head. The air was thin and dusty and it was too dark to see anything. I stood up from off the ground and tried regaining my balance. “What happened?” The left side of me stung, almost as if something bit me.

“Woonderfullll…. You’re awwakekekekeke.” A weird voice filled my head. The last part sounded almost as if it were laughing.

“This isn’t funny. Tell me where I am!” I turned around and looked for clues as to where I was. The floor was definitely made of solid earth, but that didn’t tell me where I was in comparison of the school. As I kept walking around the smell of decay escalated, making it harder and harder to breathe.

“Thaaatts rigggght. Come clooooser.” The voice sounded awfully sinister.

Strangely enough, I don’t remember getting here. The last thing I remember was me helping Megan take care of patients and an elephant breaking through our walls. The wall shattered and I caught the pieces before they could hurt anybody. Then everything went blurry and I woke up in this.. Cave? Cavern? Pit? This dark room in the Earth.

“Are you going to show yourself?” I squinted, trying to make my eyes adjust to the darkness quicker. “C’mon. I don’t have all day.”

“But I doooo.” The voice laughed and I could’ve sworn I heard some rocks move.

“Are you a snake? I know people are fighting some crazy things. If you’re a snake, please hiss.” I waited for a response. “Alright, not a snake.. could’ve just said so.”

After about a minute of silence, I decided it would be best to keep moving. If this.. whatever it is.. doesn’t want to fight me, then I am only wasting my time. Odds are, it’s only trying to separate me from the others to make it easier to pick us off. While healing patients in the infirmary, those who could speak mentioned something about fighting enemies they couldn’t beat. At first, I was like ‘nah, you just ’ but after the 100^th complaint I was like ‘man, the enemy sure knows our weakness’. That makes me wonder how he knows all of this. It’s not like he attends the institute with us.

In the distance, a faint glow spread across the ground. As I approached, the glow grew brighter, revealing a patch of mushrooms. I know I’m no plant scientist but I could have sworn mushrooms didn’t glow in the dark.

“Fiiiinallly. Nooow wee may fiiight.” The voice was much louder now.

I stared at the glow-in-the-dark mushroom as the ground began to shake. The sound of rocks shuffling could be heard as the ground beneath me felt like a tidal wave. The top half of my body began to sway as my elastic body tried maintaining its balance. Suddenly, the earth below my feet broke and a creature flew upwards. Before it could bite me, my body stretched around the frame of its body, avoiding any harm. The creature jumped back into the ground like a dolphin. It was actually quite glamorous and I give it two thumbs up.

“What are you? An earthworm?” I joked.

“Nooo. I am THE earthworm. The oriiginall earthwooorm. I faattthherr mooost creattuuures ooff the eaaarth.” Its voice rang in my ears. You’d think a creature of the earth would have a low pitched voice, right? No, this one sounded like a frightened Dino when he bumps into an elephant. Poor kid, I bet he doesn’t remember me watching the whole ‘an elephant pooped on me’ incident. He probably wouldn’t, due to the fact that I was a grade above him at the time. “Dooooont ignooore me.”

“Oh, sorry. Something funny came to mind and I just had to relive it.” I refocused my attention on the ridiculous beast.

“Leett me teellll you the storrryy of—” I ignored the creature by putting my earphones in and setting my music to the maximum loudness. I’ll be quite honest with you, I hate when people (or in this case creatures) have a weird dialect. I shouldn’t say I ‘hate’ it; it strongly bothers me.

By the looks of it, the earthworm didn’t appreciate me ignoring its story. Instead of hiding underneath the already deep earth, it decided to reveal itself. Thank Jisoos for these glow-in-the-dark mushrooms; without them I wouldn’t be able to see the ugly thing. The earthworm was a rotten yellow color and looked like a raw crinkle-cut French fry. In the front.. I think that’s the front.. Its mouth was a single large hole with razor sharp teeth.

Before it could do anything, I wrapped my body around the ugly creature and began to squeeze. It squirmed all over the place, making it harder to hold onto. Eventually, I had to give up and fall back. The beast, however, had no intentions of giving up anytime soon. It charged for me and swallowed my person.

“Umm.. is this considered cheating?” I removed my headphones and tapped on the inside of the beast’s belly.

“Stooop that. It ticklleess.” The beast laughed.. and it wasn’t for evil intentions this time.

As disgusting as being inside of an earthworm’s belly is, it wasn’t as bad as living with Hoshi. I mean, during our freshman year, our dorm room was condemned and the principal said it was unfit for human life. Since there were no other available rooms, we stayed there anyways. I can’t tell you how many diseases I got while staying in there. The earthworm’s belly is so much more sanitized than that room. I almost want to add a couch and just sit in this place forever.

As I sat there, it began to get hotter and hotter. I looked around the comfy area but saw no signs of potential danger. An earthworm’s stomach acid shouldn’t be potent enough to melt away at my skin. As I let it get hotter, the bottom of the earthworm’s stomach turned a bright pink color. Eventually, it was glowing orange and spreading.

“AHHHHHH!” The earthworm shrieked in pain, causing my ears to ring.

BOOM!

That was either the sound of the earthworm exploding, or something more dangerous. And by the looks of it, I was still in the belly of the beast that was slowly melting away. The longer I sat there, the hotter it got. Eventually, I stretched my body into the shape of a snake and slithered my way out of its mouth to see what was going on.

The bottom half of the earthworm was completely engorged in flames almost to the point where it was melted off. Behind it, a giant crater of flames lit up the massive crater. At the bottom of the crater, the outside of the cafeteria was visible, followed by an even deeper crater. Did something explode? There was too much smoke to see what had actually happened. However, I did manage to see Hoshi in the far bottom corner of the room. By the looks of it, he was also looking to see what caused the explosion. Before I could call out to him, he ran away.

“Can someone help me down?” I called down. Some smoke moved and golems looked in my direction. One of them literally jumped from the bottom of the crater up to where I was at. “YO!!! WAIT A SECOND I THOUGHT WE ALL HAD OUR FIGHTS!!!”

The golem picked up the half melted earthworm and jumped back down into the deep crater, carrying it away along with something they picked up in the center of the crater. Instead of standing there and being useless, I stretched myself down to the ground and walked back to the infirmary.

“Hey, Megan. Where are Dino and Jeonghan?” I looked around the room.

“Dino is fighting that crimson elephant that broke the wall and Jeonghan is fighting a pair of gargoyle.” She walked around on some dead bugs.

“What did you fight?” I asked her.

“Isn’t that obvious?” She brushed her shoes off.

“Hey, same.”

“How did you even survive that bite?” She stopped working.

“I don’t even remember getting bitten.” I felt my side.

“Yeah, it happened pretty suddenly. Just a massive earthworm shot up from the ground and carried you up to the surface of the school.” Megan walked over to me and wrapped my waist with gauze.

“It didn’t carry me up to the surface of the school. We are too deep for it to be the surface. There is just a giant pocket of nothing on top of us.” I told her.

When she was done wrapping me up, Jeonghan walked in. His face was pale and he was sweating. His neck seemed to have a slight scratch on it. Other than that, he looked fine.

“How did the battle go?” Megan changed the conversation. “Are you okay?” She asked the sickly looking Jeonghan. He didn’t reply, instead he pointed to his stomach and fell to his knees.

“Great, one of our healers is down.” I stretched my body around him so he wouldn’t completely fall. Megan walked over to the passed out Jeonghan and looked into his cold eyes.

“Well, he isn’t dead. So, that’s good. Lay him down and I guess I will perform a surgery on his stomach.” Megan said and I obeyed. “In the mean time, you should head to Intel and tell them what you told me. By the way, if you run into Hoshi, tell him to hurry up with Wonwoo.”

QUESTIONS:

Woozi suspected something was strange about the enemy knowing what monsters to use against the students, does he have a point or is it just a coincidence?

What do you think happened at Intel? (Intelligence Unit)

What do you think the other members of Seventeen have to fight?