As the two girls on horseback galloped toward us, I surveyed my surroundings really quick, trying to figure out how the hell things had gone awry in such little time. 

To my far left, Jihyo, Nayeon and Jeongyeon were recovering after Gucci slammed into them. Jihyo seemed to be stunned, as she wasn’t moving and her eyes were unfocused, and Nayeon was trying her best to heal both herself and Jihyo. To my immediate right, Momo was lying on the ground, near my feet, still reeling from being hit by the beast as well. Sana was desperately trying to free herself from the rope that tied her wrists behind her back in order to heal both of them, but Jeongyeon and Nayeon were experts at tying knots, so it would take her forever to do that.

Once sure that everyone was at least okay, I looked back at our attackers. DugunDubuDugun, who’s name I remembered being ‘Dahyun’, was no longer in leather armor, like she had been the last time I saw her; this time she had on what might have been iron armor and a dark purple cloak, eerily similar to Mina’s, and as she angrily galloped on her black horse across the empty plains, it flew behind her dramatically. Her hair also flew around, imitating a bright blue flame, and it struck deep fear within me.

She signalled something to ChocoChewy, who I recalled actually being ‘Tzuyu’, and as she turned to do so, I noticed she had a bow and what looked like a staff strapped to her back. That staff hadn’t been there before, if I recall correctly.

As she neared, I braced myself for impact, but suddenly she disappeared for a short moment, reappearing farther back, where she had first started. 

“She’s- she’s lagging-” Sana hissed behind me,  “-and a lot, by the looks of it!”

Momo shook her head, clearing her vision. “We have to hide, now! We’re in plain sight! Once the lag stops, she’ll be on us again!”

They got up to start running, but I didn’t know where to go. Would it be a good idea to go with them?

During the confusion, a pair of strong hands wrapped themselves around my arms, answering my question for me.

It was Jeongyeon. I could tell by the grunts. She began to pull me away from SaMo and closer to 3Mix, running as hard as she could while carrying me.

“W-Wait, Jeongyeon,” I struggled in her grip, “what about Sana and Momo?” We had stripped them from anything that could help them protect themselves. They were completely helpless, at the mercy of our new threat. “We have to help them!”

Jeongyeon shook her head and put me down, still pulling me along, but harder than she should have. “Right now we need to protect the members of 3Mix, Chaeyoung! The guild is more important than a pair of raiders.”

I helplessly looked back at the two Japanese girls, who clearly heard the loud exchange between us. They looked away ashamedly and continued to run for cover.

“They’re in danger, Jeongyeon!” I wanted her to see that so badly, but obviously I didn’t know Jeongyeon well enough at the time. I had no idea how stubborn she could be.

“So is Jihyo, Chaeyoung! The beast– that Cerberus thing– I think its attacks have a paralysis effect. It gave Jihyo some kind of concussion and she can’t move at all. You and I need to provide Nayeon cover as her magic points regenerate. Hopefully it’ll be enough to cast the Tingle spell and help Jihyo.”

“ No!” It shouldn’t be like this! I wasn’t sure why I felt so bad for SaMo suddenly. Not even five minutes ago, they had tried to steal our things and sell them while leaving us bare-handed, but… it didn’t feel fair to leave them to their own devices like this. Especially because this seemed like a worse situation for Sana and Momo; it seemed like Dahyun was specifically targeting these two and would stop at nothing to get to them.

“No?!” Jeongyeon asked, offended that I’d refuse to help. She quickly waved it off, probably not willing to hear any more of my pitiful begging. “Listen, Chaeyoung,” she said, facing me with her steely eyes,  “DugunDubuDugun is still lagging like crazy, and it seems like ChocoChewy is too,” she observed, gesturing to Tzuyu. “Because she isn’t moving at all…”

I ignored her observation and put on a pleading look, which she replied to with a disapproving one. “Don’t,” she said simply, but hey, I’ve never been one to follow orders, so I broke free from Jeongyeon’s grip on my bicep and ran to our shared camping equipment. Somehow I managed to find the pair of bows and the arrows that belonged to the Japanese girls relatively quickly. Jeongyeon gave me an annoyed look that only deepened when I ran past and snatched the Ranger blade from the sheath on her hips. 

“Hey! Chaeyoung, no!”

Too bad! I headed straight to Sana and Momo, who were hiding behind the nearest boulder as they watched Dahyun lag. I accidentally startled them when I showed up with the sick knife in my hand.

“Hey,” I breathed out, dropping the bows and arrows to hold up the Ranger’s blade, you know, to show them I meant no harm. “Give me your wrists.”

Sana turned around immediately and held her wrists out to me. I cut her free and turned to Momo, who seemed to be too busy looking over at Dahyun, an uncharacteristically worried look possessing her face. Sana rubbed her wrists and glanced at Dahyun every now and then, as well. 

Sana muttered something and opened the spells menu and healed herself, slowly but surely. She ran out of MP before she could fully heal, though, and looked frustrated, but said nothing of it. Instead she gestured with a hand at the bows and arrows at my feet. “Hey,  ChaeYoungster, are these… ours?”

“Yeah!” I exclaimed as Momo finally turned and let me cut her ropes. As I did, I carefully explained my plan. “We have a  common enemy right now. Sana, I saw the way DugunDubuDugun was looking at you… She’s clearly dead set on killing you. So I suggest we put aside our personal goals right now and work together. Please?”

Sana bit her bottom lip and was about to say something when Momo shouted an anguished “Move!” 

We both barely jumped away in time to dodge a huge ball of fire, which landed on the ground like a comet and burned everything within a 5 yard radius, minus the weapons that belonged to SaMo.

“FIREBALLS?” I shouted, turning quickly to see Dahyun no longer lagging and searching for something in her spells menu, probably a fireball spell again. 

Momo grabbed my wrist and bent over to grab the bows and arrows, then began pulling me away from Dahyun and Tzuyu. “Yes, fireballs, so let’s run, get some distance between her and us!” Momo shouted behind at me.

“Why are we running?” I asked as I let myself be led away. ”We outnumber them! We have you, Sana, Jihyo, Nayeon and Jeongyeon! You guys are all great fighters and together we could totally take those two! No problem!”

I didn’t miss the way Momo glanced at Sana with a certain look that I couldn’t quite place. It seemed like they were going to keep me in the dark about what their expressions meant when Sana, still running at full force, began to explain.

“Okay, ChaeYoungster, you’re at level 3, so clearly you’ve not been playing for very long and don’t know how things wo-“

For a whole ten seconds, I stopped listening. I was at level 3? Since when? When did that happen? I glanced up and, sure enough, there it was.

ChaeYoungster, LVL 3

I had mysteriously leveled up twice without my knowledge… It was weird, especially since I had done nothing but be a burden on my friends as they fought, but we could discuss how it was possible later. I unfurrowed my brows and tuned in back to Channel Sana.

“-and they’re on horses. Horses are probably the best thing you could get in this game.” Sana took a second to gasp between breaths and strides. “It’s way easier to dodge a lot of attacks, like arrows, for example, on a horse, seeing as they move at lightning speed, so Momo and I are out of luck right now. Also, DugunDubuDugun doesn’t have the best fireball aim out there, but she can reach us faster on her horse and gut us some other way, like with a weapon. We need to run now and get away as fast as possible.”

I hadn’t caught the first bit of her explanation but I think that’s all I needed to hear, really. It made sense. Horses were a huge advantage in real life, so why wouldn’t they be in a game like this? Also, Dahyun had a bow and a staff, so who was to say she didn’t have a sword somewhere in her arsenal that she could swiftly behead us with?

“You’re right,” I said, the bravery I felt before replaced with worry.

“Also…” Momo gasped out, taking a second to glance back and look at me funny. “You were right. They’re out for our blood. We- we raided their camp two times in a row… and I guess sometime between then and now, they leveled up a ton. They still remember, and they want revenge.”

A memory sparked in my brain. The first time I met Dahyun and Tzuyu, Tzuyu had warned Dahyun about a so-called ‘Japanese Duo’ coming and taking all of their equipment- again .

“There’s also that damned Cerberus thing ChocoChewy has,” Momo continued, not-so-subtly changing the subject. I let it go, for now, because we had more pressing issues at the moment. “It can knock out even the strongest people. So we have an archer that out of nowhere can suddenly cast powerful martial magic and a beast master with a rabid Cerberus. They’re pretty much overpowered in comparison to us.”

“So we can’t keep running forever,” Sana agreed, right when another fireball flew past us. This one landed farther from us than the other one, but we weren’t going to let that relax us at all. “Momo!” Sana cried, “She doesn’t lag anymore! She’ll waste no time and reach us with no problem! What are we gonna do?”

I saw despair in the eyes of Momo. She was dead tired from all this running and looked like she wanted nothing more than to just stop and rest. “I don’t know…” she huffed out. “I don’t think there’s anything we can do right now…”

It suddenly struck me. Of course, it hadn’t occurred to me before, since otherwise it would have been absurd, but now that we didn’t have any other choice, it popped into my head. It wouldn’t hurt to try it again.

I stopped in my tracks and reached into my pocket.

The two blondes stopped too and ran back to me, looking like they were about to scold me, but when they saw me pull out my pan flute, they paused.

“What are you doing, ChaeYoungster?” Momo asked, confusion written all over her face.

I didn’t say anything. I just waved for them to keep running. They nodded at each other and started running again, for some reason trusting me despite being in immediate danger.

I expected nothing to happen again, honestly, but this time, this time, it was different. When I blew on it, the instrument made a sharp sound that echoed through the empty plains. 

Seemingly out of nowhere, Sana and Momo tripped and fell hard on their faces. 

“What the hell?!” I heard Sana shout, but I ignored her and didn’t reply. My test was finished, and now I needed to do the actual thing. 

I turned to face the general area Dahyun and Tzuyu were located at. Dahyun was, just as the two blondes had suspected, hot on our trail. She had her staff raised, a glowing fireball at the tip of it, quickly growing to the size of a car. Before she could swing it and blow us up, however, I raised the pan flute to my lips again and blew as hard as I could.

Dahyun’s dark steed went wild. It screeched to a halt, bringing up grass and dirt. It bucked and spun around in place, making her stop trying to cast the fireball spell and do her best to hold on. Eventually she couldn’t any longer and was knocked off with a thud so loud it echoed right back to me.

Behind me, I heard a familiar sound: a bowstring being pulled taut. Except this time, I trusted it wasn’t being aimed at me. The arrow flew past and hit Dahyun squarely in the shoulder, causing her to howl and fall right back to the ground. Shakily, she tried to access her spells menu, but another arrow hit her stomach. A quick look