They climbed up the wall toward the door they had opened earlier and sprinted down the hallway they had passed before. The glowing flowers along the ceilings had already withered, plunging everything into darkness.
Gideon could not stop himself from glancing up. Cracks were spreading across the ceiling, long and jagged, crawling like snakes through sand.
"Focus, Gideon!" Summer shouted. "Faster, and stop staring at the ceiling!"
She grabbed his hand and dragged him forward as they reached the narrow passage they had crawled through earlier. Without slowing down, they dropped to their knees and squeezed inside.
"Calm down, Summer. Don't panic," Gideon said, trying to sound steady.
The silence inside the passage made it worse. Every scrape of stone, every faint crack, sounded amplified, as if something was crawling just beyond the walls, and the darkness didn't help at all.
"Shhh," Summer hissed. "Move faster."
The building began to tremble.
At first, it was subtle, just dust shaking loose from the ceiling. Then the vibrations grew stronger, followed by a deep, grinding sound of pillars behind them.
Sand poured down from above, showering their backs and arms. Adrenaline surged through Gideon as they crawled faster, heart pounding so hard he could feel it in his throat.
Something tore at his shirt. He felt fabric rip and warm blood trickle down his skin, but he barely noticed. Getting stuck here meant dying.
"Fuck, fuck!" Summer cursed as a heavy clump of sand collapsed onto her shoulder.
"Calm down," Gideon said, his voice shaking despite himself. "We can do this."
The words were more for him than her.
"If we die, you can fuck me, Gideon!" Summer snapped breathlessly. "Do you have any way to get us out faster?!"
The thought hit him like lightning. 'Why didn't I think of this sooner?'
He opened the Infinite Shop, scrolling desperately. Teleportation scrolls. Escape items. Anything.
"Gideon, your hand!"
He looked up and he could see light as Summer was already out of the narrow passage, standing on solid ground. She reached toward him, panic etched across her face.
Only then did he see it reflected in her eyes.
Behind him, the passage was collapsing. Sand and concrete were swallowing everything, crushing inward with terrifying speed.
He grabbed her hand without hesitation.
She seized his arm with both hands and pulled hard as his body caught again, wedged tight.
"Damn it, Gideon!"
"Don't blame me!" he shouted back, kicking and twisting as the tunnel closed in around him.
Concrete crumbled beneath Gideon's boots. He flinched as chunks fell around his feet, sweat pouring down his face while he twisted his body, forcing himself to move inch by inch.
"Just a bit more!" Summer shouted.
Her face was flushed from the strain, veins standing out as she pulled with everything she had.
"Don't die on me, Gideon. You promised you'd take my virginity and become the father of my children!"
"You think that's good encouragement?!" he barked back as his chest finally cleared the opening.
More concrete crashed down onto his legs. "Fuck…"
"What do you want me to say?!" Summer panicked, her voice breaking.
"Do you want me to get naked so you have more will to live?! Because I will, Gideon!"
Tears rolled down her cheeks. "Don't die… I don't want to die a virgin!"
Gideon stared, then burst out laughing.
That last shove was enough as his upper body slid free, his waist followed, and then his legs came loose as the narrow passage behind him collapsed completely, sealed shut by rock and sand.
"YES! Guess it's worki—"
Before he could finish, Summer threw herself at him. Her arms wrapped tight around his neck, pressing his face straight into her chest while his lower body was still sprawled awkwardly on the floor. Blood trickled from his battered feet.
"I thought you were going to die!" she sobbed.
"You're crying now when you were the one who made me bait a moment ago?" he chuckled.
She pinched his arm hard. "Don't ruin the moment."
Then her hand slipped down, fingers brushing against his crotch, and she squeezed his cock.
Gideon jolted upright. "What the hell are you doing?!"
She shot him a sharp look, still sniffling. "That's my future. I'm just making sure it's still working."
He laughed despite himself, the pain in his feet momentarily forgotten.
The ground rumbled again. Sand began to pour from above, the walls groaning under the pressure.
"Yeah, nope," Gideon muttered.
He opened the Infinite Shop again and, without hesitation, bought a teleportation scroll using PayLater.
It was five thousand Love Coins for one scroll. The debt kept climbing, but at least Summer had already agreed to daily sex. She even promised to drag Freya into it.
'Worth it.'
Light flashed as he tore the scrolls apart. They reappeared nearly a kilometer away from the building, just in time to see the entire structure sink into the sand.
One by one, the surrounding ruins followed, swallowed by a massive whirl of collapsing ground.
"Goddamn," they said at the same time.
They dropped onto a sand dune, sitting side by side as dust clouds rose in the distance.
Summer let out a long breath. "Yeah… that wasn't really worth it."
Gideon turned slowly and stared at her with dead eyes. "I told you."
She rolled her eyes, then reached into her sling bag. Moving closer, she knelt and wrapped his bleeding feet with a long strip of cloth. He hissed as she tightened it.
"We need to hit the nearest settlement and treat this," she said. "Mom will lose her mind if she finds out we hunted a Rootpod."
"Hm?" Gideon asked. "Then what are you going to say when you sell the core? And settlement? That means it's faction territory, right?"
She nodded. "Yeah. It's protected by the Freebound. Peaceful place. Basically a moving market hub."
"And the hunt?"
"We'll say we took down an A-rank Aberrant. A Blackstag." She stood and helped him up. "After that, we can fuck."
He chuckled. "Yeah, yeah. Explain Freebound on the way."
She slung his arm over her shoulder. "Later. I'm exhausted and thirsty."
"Imagine being me," Gideon muttered.
She only shrugged as they headed east, the outline of the settlement finally appearing on the horizon.