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It wasn\'t just him; they all were spit out, but flung in different directions within the checkered forest. Emilio found himself sent across the lake and crashing through the black-and-white trees before stopping as he fell into a pit of mushy, sticky mud.

"What…just happened?" He muttered.

Laying in the mud for a moment, he picked himself, looking around to find that none of his companions had landed alongside him.

\'I\'m alone? It…shot us all out in different directions? Are they all right? I landed in mud, but…it wasn\'t a gentle nor short landing–if one of them hit solid ground…\' He thought.

Picking himself up, or so he tried, he found the mysterious mud clinging to his body. It stuck needily to his body, not letting go as he found himself already submerged into it up to his knees.

\'Quicksand…?!\' He realized.

"Aaaagh! Help me!"

–The yell didn\'t come from Emilio, but a familiar voice that haunted him in its desperation. He recognized it quickly, forcing him to fight against the quicksand harder.

"Joel!?" He yelled out.

There was no clear idea to him where the voice came from as he struggled to move at all, even summoning strength from his System to combat the hold of the solidified, stringy mud, though it seemed to grip even harder to match the strength he fought with.

"...I\'m stuck!...I can\'t…I can\'t get out of this!" Joel yelled back.

Though he couldn\'t see where his friend was, it seemed they were in the same predicament, or at least similar. Nonetheless, it didn\'t change the fact he was still bound to the gripping substance himself, making it impossible to help his friend until he could free himself.

\'I need to get out of this…!\' He thought.

"Give me a second!" He called out.

If fighting against it with strength only made the mystical mud respond by pulling just as hard, there needed to be a different approach entirely. There wasn\'t much experience he had with this sort of thing, though one thing came to mind as he found himself submerged up to his waist in the gripping material.

\'Come on…fire!\' He urged.

Summoning the azure flames from his internal System, he exuded their heat from his body, spreading the reach of the blaze throughout his body as the clingy mud began to let go of his body.

\'There we go!\' He thought.

There was no time wasted from the moment he loosened the bond of the mud and to jumping up from it, looking around for where his friend was.

"Joel! Where are you?!" He yelled.

It took a moment for a response to come, but from the left, a scream came, "...Over…here!"

\'...Sounds like it\'s gotten worse!\' He realized.

Taking in a breath, he prepared to act in haste as he reinforced his body with magic before kicking off of the ground, leaving a cloud of dust in his wake as he burst with overwhelming speed to the left.

He covered quite a bit of ground in an instant, pulling the brakes by stomping down as the soles of his boots slid across the grass as he found the spot in which Joel was held.

"...Huh?"

Emilio found himself shocked to find that the silver-haired man wasn\'t caught in the same quicksand-like mud he had been trapped in, but instead caught within a bush of thorns.

"Did you land in that…?" Emilio asked.

Joel winced while trying to answer, "...Yes! There\'s a thorn poking me in the ass cheek! Hurry!"

"Alright, alright," Emilio tried not to laugh.

It definitely wouldn\'t have been a laughing matter if it was him that fell into the bush of thorns, but he couldn\'t help but find it to be funny–both in the relief that Joel was safe and just how ridiculous it was.

"Fire," he called upon quietly.

Rather than yanking his friend out of the prickly hedge, he chose to emit a pulse of fiery mana throughout the bush, burning it to cinder before Joel landed on his rear with a wince.

"Ngh…Damn, I got poked everywhere," Joel said.

"You\'ll be fine," Emilio extended a hand down.

Joel looked up for a moment before accepting the helping hand, being helped up to his feet before they looked around.

"Wonder if the others are closeby," Joel said.

"Hopefully, but this mist isn\'t going to really make it any easier to find them," Emilio remarked.

The fog was still ever present in the checkered forest, filling the scope of the black-and-white landscape with its veiling presence.

–

[...Somewhere Else | The Checkered Forest]

"Uungh…Talk about a tough landing."

Picking himself up and rubbing his back, the blonde-haired elf winced after having crashed through a series of branches. Though it certainly wasn\'t pleasant to have rough branches scratch his back on the way down, it certainly broke his fall from one that instead broke his bones.

For a minute, he sat on the grass while rummaging through the pouches attached to his belt, counting each and every single tool and gear he had to make sure none were lost upon landing.

"All good!" He announced solely to himself before picking himself up.

Brushing the dirt off of his arms and shoulders, he flicked his goggles back over his eyes so that he could see through the thick layer of mist that had swirled around the clearing in the forest.

\'Looks like we all got separated. Hmm, troublesome, but nothing I can\'t manage,\' he thought.

There was always a perfect tool for the job–that\'s what Blimpo believed and what served as the foundation for his almost maniacal dedication to his craft. As such, he retrieved a single cube from his pocket, placing it on the ground before activating the tiny button placed on the light-brown mechanism.

"Go track down the others and come back to me when you find them, \'kay?" Blimpo told the little device.

It spread apart into multiple, insect-like mechanisms that scattered, immediately heading off into other directions as Blimpo took to a direction himself.

\'My "Seeker Hive" hones in on heat signatures unique to humans. It\'s meant for situations just like this,\' he thought.

The only problem the elf found for himself was that his trusty rune cannon had taken a hit on his rough landing. As he inspected it, some of the reinforced wooden plating on the weapon was loose and a light shake of it revealed there were some jumbled parts internally.

"Hmm," Blimpo thought to himself.

There weren\'t exactly plentiful parts available just sitting around in the forest, and even if he did want to commit to making those parts himself, there wasn\'t exactly the time nor freedom to do so.

Especially with what greeted him on his path to reuniting with the others, stomping out from dense foliage into the grassy path:

"Oh, err, hello there," Blimpo nervously said.

It was a creature of the depths; a tall, burly-built being that resembled a human in its physique, but was covered in clammy, dark-gray scales with the head of a face and lifeless eyes that further resembled one.

Each step it took was heavy–large enough to feel the imprint it made on the soil as it dragged its gilled body into view.

Nearly the very moment the lumbering giant from the pond saw the elf, it let out a shriek, revealing its rows of thin, sharp teeth before stomping towards him.

\'Oh, boy…This is a big one,\' Blimpo thought.

The first instinct he had was to lift his rune cannon up, though as he pointed it at the amphibious giant, he remembered that it was broken and jumbled-up.

"Ah, crap–!" He let out audibly.

There wasn\'t much time to choose a different option rather than "blasting" with his rune cannon, leaving the elf to duck-and-roll to the side just as the muscle-bound amphibian charged straight past him.

It charged with its shoulder, though instead slamming straight into the trunk of a tree rather than the elf. The impact the gray-skinned, amphibian humanoid made caused the entire, white-leaved tree to rumble as the branches shook and leaves cascaded down through the misty air.

Seeing just what sort of force the fish-headed, pond-dweller brought in its charge made the elf realize just how badly he needed to avoid being caught.

\'Talk about a musclehead! Well, brains over brawn, yeah?!\' He thought.

With a smile on his lips, Blimpo reached into the leather pouch on his belt before retrieving a small, crimson rune, tossing it just as the brute faced him and began approaching.

"Take this!"

As the rune made contact with the amphibious musclehead\'s body, it released its form into a fiery explosion, directly blowing against the brute.

To his surprise, the little explosion did nothing more than burn some skin off of the gray-skinned fiend as the fish-headed humanoid shrieked out before jumping directly in front of the elf, covered in smoke and flames.

"Ngh!" Blimpo reacted, raising his arms.

Though he was no physical fighter; the elf received a harsh slam of knuckles straight into his gut, causing him to be flung back and slammed straight into a solid tree trunk.