“No other choice, Prince Arthur. Let’s go up the mountain!”
“Huh? Up the mountain? Then how do we get down?!”
“I don’t know. We’ll figure it out then. Right now, if we don’t go up, we’ll be swimming in its stomach. You choose, Your Highness.”
With that, Ian no longer held back.
He used every ounce of his strength, his speed skyrocketing once more, pulling a huge gap between himself and Amivy.
Ian’s sudden burst made Amivy startle, but she quickly realized what was going on.
‘This bastard actually wants me to cover his retreat and draw the aggro!’
Behind Amivy, the earth roared and sand and stones flew.
The other half of the giant worm, the female, saw that its other prey was about to escape and also erupted into action.
With a speed completely at odds with its massive body, it twisted wildly, breaking through the ground.
Its ring-shaped mouth was filled with layers of sharp teeth, spitting out foul-smelling mucus as it chased relentlessly!
Catching the faint stench from behind, Amivy didn’t have time to think.
She urgently unleashed her potential and ran for her life, dragging the Little White Dog along.
“Kevin! You bastard! Wait for me!”
But the only response to Amivy’s shouts was a gradually more athletic back view.
Seeing that Ian, that bastard, didn’t even bother to turn his head, Amivy was so angry that her pace involuntarily quickened.
Soon, the two arrived at the foot of the peak, kicking up a trail of dust.
The soft sand beneath their feet was gradually replaced by hard rock.
Ian was the first to charge up the rocky slope at the foot of the mountain.
His steps were a bit stumbling on the uneven rock surface, but his speed didn’t decrease much.
He just became more agile in turning, constantly using the protruding boulders as cover and footholds.
Amivy followed closely, dragging and pulling the whimpering Little White Dog up the rocky slope.
She glanced back, and her heart almost stopped.
That female worm actually wasn’t giving up the chase!
Its massive body slammed into the rocks at the mountain’s base with a dull thunder.
The hard chitin scraped against the stones with such force that sparks flew!
But with the barrier of solid rock, its speed up the slope clearly slowed.
It was no longer like a fish in water as it had been on the sand.
Every time it writhed forward, it had to use its mouthparts and body to forcibly break or squeeze past the blocking rocks.
Gravel rattled down, making its pursuit route twisty and slow, like a giant python trapped in a swamp.
The slow but steady speed proclaimed the giant worm’s determination to devour its prey at all costs.
“Huff… huff… Kevin! Wait… wait for me!”
Amivy panted heavily, climbing hand over foot, and finally caught up to Ian on a relatively flat rock platform.
He had stopped and seemed to be observing the terrain.
She grabbed Ian’s arm, not even bothering to berate him, and asked urgently:
“That thing is catching up! It’s slower but it hasn’t stopped! What do we do?! The peak is just above us; do we go up? And then what? Jump off a cliff?!”
Ian didn’t respond.
He let her grab him, but his gaze wasn’t on her.
Instead, it swept over the surrounding terrain, the distribution of rocks, the changes in slope, and the trajectory and speed of the worm breaking rocks behind them.
His silence made Amivy anxious.
The worm’s hissing and the sound of rocks breaking grew closer.
Though slow, it was closing the distance with a determination like that of a civil service exam candidate.
Amivy could even smell the nauseating stench of its breath.
But Ian still didn’t speak.
After another moment of silence, Ian climbed up again.
Amivy had no choice but to follow him toward the top.
Just as they were about to reach the summit, Ian seemed to notice something.
He suddenly stopped and turned around.
“Prince Arthur, do you trust me?”
‘Trust you? What kind of joke is that?!’
‘How many times has this bastard screwed me over? How am I supposed to trust him?’
Amivy looked up, almost blurting out the words.
‘Like hell I trust you!’
She suddenly realized that the figure of ‘Kevin’ before her perfectly overlapped with the figure of ‘her’ who had once saved her life.
In a flash of daze, combined with the days they had spent together, Amivy stared hard into Ian’s eyes.
Time seemed to stretch, each second filled with the background noise of rocks tumbling and the worm’s screeching.
“…Say it!”
Amivy squeezed out a single word through gritted teeth.
She didn’t directly say whether she trusted him or not, but she chose to listen.
Ian didn’t mind.
Speaking very quickly, he pointed toward a relatively smooth, rubble-covered steep slope below and to their side.
“See that gravel slope? I need you to—right now, immediately—charge back down from there! Straight toward the worm!”
“What?!”
Amivy thought she misheard.
“Are you serious?!”
“Right now, all its attention is on climbing up. If you suddenly rush down toward it at high speed, it will greatly disrupt its judgment and attack rhythm. Its huge body can’t turn around quickly on this steep rocky slope. I need you to draw its attention for a moment and create an opportunity!”
“An opportunity? What opportunity?!”
“Don’t ask! There’s no time for a physics lesson! Trust me! Slide down, stay as close to the rock wall as possible, and after sliding down, count to 13 in your head, then move sideways off the slope! Can you do it?!”
Ian’s gaze was very serious.
Amivy looked at Ian’s earnest and serious expression.
Gritting her teeth, she set down the Little White Dog, turned around, and dashed down the gravel slope.
“Kevin Caerslana! I trust you one last time! If you dare to trick me, I’ll dig you out of your grave and flog your corpse even as a ghost!”
Amivy’s action indeed completely caught the worm off guard.
It was focused on breaking through the last layer of rock above when it suddenly discovered that one of its prey was actually rushing toward it at an astonishing speed, as if ‘throwing itself into its arms.’
This abnormal sight caused momentary confusion in its simple neural circuits.
Its pursuit movement visibly stalled, and its massive body subconsciously tried to adjust its direction to intercept this ‘delicacy’ so close at hand.
This instead hindered its upward momentum.
At the edge of the peak, Ian wasn’t idle either.
He came to a huge rock he had already selected earlier and quickly cleared away everything blocking its bottom.
Then Ian began to push with all his might, trying to shove this massive rock down the mountain!
Ian’s effort, combined with the rock’s delicate center of gravity and the slope, finally broke the balance at one moment!
That boulder, as big as a small hill, let out a dull groan, slowly broke away from the mountain body, and rolled down the gravel slope Amivy had just descended, with a thunderous roar!
On the already rubble-strewn slope, the boulder Ian pushed down triggered an avalanche, pulling more rocks into accelerated motion.
Amivy was fully focused on counting the time in her head.
The earth-shattering roar reached her ears, but she ignored it.
“13!!!”
After counting to thirteen, she lunged sideways behind a protruding rock wall!