Ayla stood at the mouth of the chamber, facing the empty altar where the wounded goddess should have been waiting, if the loop were the same as the last.

The answer to her doubts cleared.

The loop couldn’t affect the goddess. She had only descended in the last loop, and Ayla had simply been the small, hungry thing in the right place at the right moment.

In every loop before that, she had died as her siblings had died, devoured by goblins. Ayla’s lips pressed into a thin line.

If the goddess had not chosen this exact corner of the world to die in, Ayla would’ve remained an ordinary mimic slime.

A little smarter, perhaps. Nothing more. Her mood darkened at that thought.

A warm hand closed around her forearm. She turned to find Kenji pulling her gently closer. His other hand settled on her head and patted it twice, awkward but deliberate.

"Sorry. We are late."

Eh?

Her gaze followed his to the chamber floor. Smears of pale residue marked the stone where her siblings had been. Tiny, formless puddles drying into crusts.

"Perhaps we should regress again," Kenji offered. "If we are fast enough next time, we can save your siblings." He brushed a few strands of silver hair behind her ear with pity in his eyes.

Ayla wore a confused expression. "Why would I want to save them?"

"You are not sad because we did not get here in time?"

She laughed. The soft echo of it bounced through the chamber and came back to her doubled.

"I would rather have eaten them."

Kenji’s mood collapsed. He had truly believed, for one brief moment, that he had found a crack in her.

A place where grief lived. Instead, the answer was that she mourned a lost meal.

"Kenji, let us go back."

She drifted closer until their shoulders pressed together, sharing warmth in the cold of the chamber. Kenji turned to leave, ready to walk her back through the tunnel they had come from.

But she brought her mouth to his ear. A cold tickle slipped through his ear canal, and his consciousness folded into darkness.

[You have been killed.]

[Do you want to regress together with Kenji? Y/N]

"Yes," Ayla murmured, her tongue catching a smear of blood and brain matter at the corner of her lips.

Kenji opened his eyes again into the same pair of terrifying gold pupils. "What was that for?"

He had returned to his anchor. The junction where Daniel, Haiz, Jaxon, and the Outers would all converge in an hour.

He laid on his back, head pillowed on Ayla’s lap. Her silver hair fell around his face like a curtain. It tickled more than it angered.

"Saving time," she shrugged.

"For what?"

"To plan."

"We could have done that down there, you know."

She tilted her head at him. "I want to save Jaxon and his team."

"Save?" Kenji let out a short, dry laugh. "You? I am damn sure you want to eat them."

"How did you find out?" Her eyes widened with something close to delight. "You know everything I am thinking. You are the perfect partner for me." She gripped his head and shook it side to side until his vision wobbled.

Kenji caught her wrists and pried her hands off him. "Stop that." He flailed his arms loose. "You can eat them after the goblins ambush them. Why kill me to skip ahead?"

Ayla regarded him with the patient pity reserved for slow children. "It is dangerous near the Hobgoblins."

"So what? We come back from death anyway."

She fell quiet. Her gaze drifted past his shoulder, weighing the idea.

"If I take the traits of Jaxon’s three teammates, and Daniel and Haiz too, before we face the horde, we save time. You said the tunnel wakes in fifteen days."

He wanted to tell her either way it would be the same. He’d rather believe that she killed him because she wanted to eat his brain.

Kenji studied her face for a long moment.

"I am not a saint," he admitted. "But I do not want to kill people for nothing."

Ayla blinked at him. "You do not have to. I will do it."

Kenji choked on his own breath. The seriousness in her expression confirmed she had missed his meaning entirely.

He raised both palms in surrender, then offered an alternative.

"Try this. You kill them, you take their traits, then we regress. After that, we team up with them. Properly."

He pressed on before she could object. "More people, better survivability." He paused, feeling it sounded stupid. "Better win percentage."

Ayla turned the suggestion over and found it reasonable. She nodded.

They waited.

An hour passed in near silence, broken only by the slow drip of water somewhere deep in the stone. Then footsteps echoed from two of the three tunnels.

Daniel and Haiz arrived first, stepping into the chamber and freezing the instant they spotted Kenji.

Their attention shifted next to Ayla, and a treacherous light kindled behind their eyes.

"I do not like them already," Ayla whispered against Kenji’s ear.

A monster’s senses missed nothing. The greed that drifted off the two boys was as obvious to her as the smell of blood.

They leered at her like prey. Ayla hated it. She didn’t want to team up with them; she preferred eating them.

Daniel and Haiz had taken only a single step forward when another set of footsteps joined the chamber.

Jaxon and his three teammates emerged from the second tunnel, halting when they registered the standoff. Wariness settled across all four faces.

Ayla brightened the moment she caught sight of Jaxon. "Hi, Jaxon."

She waved.

Both groups turned toward her.

Jaxon froze with one foot still half-raised, his expression stuck between recognition and bewilderment as he tried to place the most beautiful girl he had ever seen.

How did such a girl know his name?

Kael nudged him hard with a shoulder, mischief sparking in his eyes. Sora hid a small grin behind her hand. Elara raised an eyebrow at him.

Jaxon’s face turned the color of a ripe plum.

He cleared his throat. "Lady, do you know me?"

Kenji facepalmed.