Scarlet proudly declared “Fear not Little Human, for we have maps of every planet within the Ra System!  Well, except for Genesis, but nobody lives there, so you don’t need to worry about that.”

I muttered “Wait, what?  No, we’re totally on Genesis right now…” 

“How is that possible?  You’re talking about the one that skims across the Sun’s corona every ten orbits, right?  Why would anyone try to live in such a dangerous place?  Even Immortals wouldn’t be that crazy…” 

Jasmine seemed genuinely confused, so I asked them “How could you guys not know what planet you’re on?  Haven’t you been here for a really long time?”

After a few seconds of awkward silence, that deep-voiced idiot mumbled “Umm, well, kinda?  It’s not like we have much to do in here, so we usually just sleep?”

Then the other one confidently announced “Even if we don’t have a map, we can just use our Spiritual Awareness to find the fastest way out of here!”

Of course, before I could even get excited, Scarlet swiftly retorted “No we can’t!  We’re stuck inside of here, remember?  At most, we can only sense a hundred meters in every direction!  Oh but umm, I guess it would be fine if the mana-density wasn’t so thick, I guess?”

Totally motherfucking unreliable.  I closed my eyes and tried to ignore the fact that I was on the verge of suffocating to death, then concentrated on ‘hearing’ as much as possible.  You’re wondering ‘what’ I was trying to hear?  Well, obviously it was Qi.  Specifically, I put my ear up to the three different tunnels in front of me and tried to pick-up something other than the rumbling noise.  Yeah, that didn’t work at all.

However, I did ‘hear’ a noise coming from inside of my money-bag.  It was soft and almost like the hissing of a small snake.  When I opened it up, I couldn’t see anything in there, because it was super-dark.

“Agh~?!  What the hell?!” I couldn’t ‘see’ what happened, but there was suddenly a sharp pain in my left eye-socket.  I know, right?  It seemed like every other day, something weird was happening to my empty eye-socket.  I guess it was technically one of my biggest weak-spots, but still…

“Oh, oh~!  I didn’t notice that organic lifeform earlier!  Ah, can I play with it?  It looks so kawaii~!” Jasmine’s high-pitched voice was making my head hurt even worse than it already did.

I asked “What is this thing?!  Can you really get it out of me?” By the time I reached up and touched the inside of my eye-socket, there was nothing but another bloody hole.  Seriously, it’s kind of amazing how I managed to survive so much brain-damage back then.

Scarlet sighed, “No, well, maybe… You’ll have to come back inside here, but yeah, probably?  I can see it crawling around inside of your head… Looks like some sort of parasitic worm, but I’ll need to crack open your cranium to get a better view.”

“Okay, no offense, but we just met and I don’t really trust either of you enough to let you perform brain-surgery on me… So I’m just gonna put up with the mild discomfort and agonising pain until after we escape the catastrophe at hand.”

“Did you say there’s a cat in your hand?  I don’t see it anywhere… Are you trying to trick me?  I’ll trade you ummm, Scarlet, how much is a cat worth?”  Jasmine asked a stupid question and her other half promptly answered.

“I guess it depends on the cat?  If it’s simply an Unranked Beast, then an Unranked Item I guess?  But I don’t think that he actually has any cats… At least I can’t see anything remotely feline within his hands…”

Meanwhile, I decided to pick the closest tunnel to where I was standing and try my luck.  Was I worried about the parasite that was slithering around inside of my brainbox?  Of course I was!  But what the hell could I do about it?!  That volcano was erupting and I was trapped inside the motherfucker!

As I was briskly walking across the rocky ground, my flip-flops made clopping noises and I was really out of breath.  However, I still had the presence of mind to ask “Wait, what is all this Death Qi shit anyway?  You said that there was going to be supervolcanic eruption, but what would happen?”

Jasmine muttered “Ah, oh, hmm, yeah, that would be pretty bad, huh?  Umm, well like, I’m pretty sure that Luna probably rigged it to blow… Uh oh, I might have done something bad, maybe?”

Scarlet grumbled “She was worried that you were going to die, so she let you inside without finishing the riddle-door sequence properly.  Knowing Luna, rather than allowing someone to gain access to her secret stash, she would blow them up.”

“No, that’s not fair!  It might not be my fault… Luna might have done this as a test!  Right, it’s probably just a test to make sure that you’re worthy of her stuff!  Oh, I know, if you can keep us all from dying, I’ll give you a reward!” 

I sighed dramatically, telling them “Nah, it might be something else… There was a huge battle going on for a while earlier.  When I found the door, it had only been some Experts fighting, but there was a giant flying whale and on this mountain, there was a Rank-C Beast.  How do you guys even know that there’s going to be a supervolcanic eruption though?  Didn’t you say that you can only sense a hundred meters in any direction?”

“Ah, well, when you’ve been through enough of them and when you have access to a Rank-A seismometer, it’s really not that difficult to figure out.  This kind of Darkness Eruption is rare though.  I predict that any organics within a thousand miles of this place will probably be killed by the miasma, but who knows?  If they live on such a dangerous planet, then they should have plenty of formation arrays and countermeasures for disasters like these.  We do need to get at least a few dozen miles away from here though, assuming that you want to escape the blast radius.” Scarlet seemed way too proud of himself… No, maybe they both did.  It was kind of like listening to small children bragging about stupid shit that isn’t actually impressive.  Well, it’s not like I really had a problem with it, because I didn’t have anything better to do anyway.

Listening to the two of them talk was better than focusing on the creature wriggling around in my head, the rumbling of the ground, the shivering of my body or the dizziness from all the rumbling.  Fortunately, it didn’t take too long for me to navigate through a few winding tunnels and reach an opening to the outside.

It was technically the middle of the day, but there was so much thick, black Death Qi, that it almost entirely blocked out the sun around Silver Moon Island.  “How much time do we have left?”

Jasmine immediately answered “Four-hours, fifty-nine minutes, thirty-two seconds…”

“I don’t really get how you could possibly have such an exact timer, but whatever.  Oh my God, what is that smell?!” When I was struggling to breath inside of those tunnels, I didn’t realize just how nasty the Death Qi really was.  Once I was able to take a few deep breaths of ‘fresh’ air, it felt like I was nostril-raped by a bunch of dead mice.

“Awooo~!” A deafening howl rocked the entire mountain and I found myself uncontrollably coughing, on the verge of actually throwing up.  Without warning, a large amount of blood sprayed out of my left eye socket, and I heard a furious hissing noise inside of my head.

After grabbing the revolver with my left hand, I flipped open the cylinder and emptied out almost all of the bullets.  Then I grabbed a full quickstrip and rapidly reloaded the gun.

Scarlet suddenly yelled “Woah~, so cool!  I didn’t even realize it before, but where did you get that firearm from?  It looks just like the ones that Luna used to make!  Well, hers were obviously a lot better, but I didn’t know that Mortals were allowed to use firearms… Are you going to shoot some people?  You should hurry up and find some people to shoot!”

While the other one complained “Lame~, guns are so dumb.  They’re too loud and annoying.  Aren’t real macho men supposed to like, use their fists and penises to fight each other?  At least that’s how it’s described in the ancient ‘Yao Wei’ scrolls…”