Pocket Dimension

"Do you think we can find them like this?

Hayley was together with Gerhard exploring the cow's mouth.

"I… don't know, but I have to do something they have to be somewhere…"

They were relieved when they found nothing on the cow's mouth… after checking some places, they moved forward trying to find anything that could tell them about the fate of their friends.

Hayley was praying that they weren't in any of the parts that she froze during her outburst. She wanted to know where they were, but she couldn't help but be happy the more they advanced without finding them.

They were ready to go down the throat when they heard a beast battle-cry.

*MOOOOO*

Currently, they have won the fight, and none of the beast around tried to get near until now.

Gerhard left the cow's head as they saw a man-bull appear from somewhere… none of the recalled seeing it before so it must have been from a group of reinforcements that the cow prepared beforehand.

The man bull got ready to charge, but it suddenly disappeared.

Gerhard only felt the headbutt on his side as he was suddenly sent rolling to the ground… it hurt less than what he expected… he should be weaker than a couple hours ago, but that orange light had a different nature than the sunlight. He looked back at the semi-human, and the orange got darker and redder than before. He got ready for the next assault.

Hayley knew how dangerous this beast was to her, so she was ready for the next jump of the beast and was prepared to leave the cow's head at the first sign of danger.

Luckily for her, the almost red light that was surrounding Gerhard apparently attracted the man-bull attention. This time Gerhard was ready, the next jump was successfully parried by him, the semi-human kept moving and jumping around which made difficult for Hayley to lock on him and freeze it and slowing it down wasn't as helpful since it just needed to blink to his objective.

The battle sounds called the attention of Blake and some other hunters and rats, at the same time that they saw a new variant of chimera appear…

It was a goat, with a long tail, big ears and whiskers.

________________________________________________

…

[Mission Complete: Defeat the Alpha Cow with your party.

Reward: 500 System points, 10 Skill points]

The system notification woke me up…

After laying down next to Hope due to my weakened state and the cold, I fell asleep. I also noticed that while I was sleeping, I obtained a level of cold resistance.

My body has recovered from the weakened state, so the cold didn't affect me as before. After waking up myself, the first thing I did was wake up Hope. She was sleeping, and from the aura, I could tell that she was out of danger, but I noticed that she was way colder than how she should be and pale even for her standard.

"…Bro?"

She slowly opened her eyes, she was confused and weak. She saw the blanket and snuggled into it while getting closer to me looking for a heat source instinctively.

Without doubting for a second, I got a thermal jacket for her from the system. With cold resistance and my stats back to normal I didn't need it, and I might even get another level with some luck.

I helped her with the jacket and let her rest a little while she recovered. In the system, there was water and ingredients, but unfortunately, I couldn't get a hot coffee from it, so I just hugged her for a while looking around me analyzing the situation.

I tried to remember the state of our surroundings at the time we stopped. Contrary to my expectations the frosting was advancing, it wasn't spreading as fast as the beginning, but it was still advancing, waiting for the lake to unfreeze and use it to go back wasn't a real option anymore as I hoped when we got here.

There was also the fact that something weird was happening in that direction, a storm was slowly forming, and after a while, it started to advance. That part wasn't part of Hayley's power. My best guess was that after the cow's death the pocket dimension began to collapse.

I looked in the other direction, and instead of the endless prairie, something that at first glance looked like a giant wall was standing there.

"Hope… wake up, we have to move."

Hope moved on my arms and nodded. I could still notice confusion on her. Probably she still didn't understand what is happening right now.

"Okay…"

I saw that she still had some difficulties to move, so I took her on my back again, this time she was more cooperative and helped me surrounding my neck with her arms making it easier to carry her.

I looked back to the place that we came from once again…

Even if I don't like it, there should be another way out right? This is the digestive system of the cow after all…

I walked to the giant wall and got away from the storm and the tundra-like zone of the beginning of the cow's pocket dimension.

As I walked, I finally managed to know that what looked like a giant wall was a chain of mountains.

Climbing it wasn't an option so as I got nearer and nearer, I started to look for a way to cross it.

Hope slowly recovered and finally managed to fully wake up from her stupor. She slowly remembered everything that happened and took her a while to process it… we walked in silence for a while until I got to the base of the mountain.

"Spence… are we dead?"

I looked directly to her eyes… I don't think we died right?... the system was still working, and I saw Hayley's power in action.

I looked at her worried eyes at the verge of tears and couldn't hold it anymore…

"pff…"

"DON'T LAUGH!!! I was eaten by a giant cow!!"

She seemed to analyze her words…

"Oh my god… our worst nightmare came true!"

"That's definitely not at the top of my list but being honest I didn't consider that possibility either …"

"Are we in heaven? Hell? Are you my guide?"

She said while looking the storm and me…

"Hope… we are alive, and I'm your brother."

…

"Really?"

A single tear fell from each of her eyes.

"Yeah, I'm ninety-nine percent sure that we are still alive after being eaten…"

I was trying to be a little funny but for her, it was a confirmation that she didn't die, the first tears were followed by others as she jumped on my arms and started to cry from the relief.

I just calmly caressed her hair as she wetted my already dirty shirt with tears and snot as she cried her eyes out from the repressed feelings…

"I-i thoo-ught t-that… Waaah"

"Everything is going to be fine…"

I let her cry until she calmed down…

…

It took a while in which I managed to notice a place that might have a mountain passage for us to cross.

"If we are not dead… then what is this place?"

"We are inside the cow…"

She looked around with her swollen red eyes.

"It doesn't look like the insides of a cow…"

"What would you know? How many times have you been inside of a cow?

"I have seen it in a book…"

I was about to joke about who was the nerd now, but I decided to keep it for the future.

"We are in a pocket dimension inside the cow."

She looked around I could feel thinking about the possibility of being death again.

"What is that?"

"We are in a different world inside the cow…"

"We can't go back from where we came from?"

I pointed towards the storm.

"We appeared near a lake in that direction… I think that the lake was the portal, but I didn't have the time to check it."

I explained to her what happened, she tried to resist the Alpha's pulling force. Unfortunately, her body wasn't able to hold the pressure and fell unconscious, I basically jumped behind her when I saw that…

I mentioned throwing the duck-bomb, but I omitted how we were almost crushed by the travel to the pocket dimension. Finally, the rest were theories, that Hayley got mad and freeze the cow. Luckily, she stopped before killing us… after a while, the cow died… probably due to hypothermia. Because it died, the dimension started to collapse… because the area that was frozen by Hayley was the weakest at the moment, the collapse began there.

She looked at me nodding from time to time.

"So basically, Hayley killed the cow and our way out at the same time?"

…

"That's… a way to put it."

…

"What is the plan now? It here a way to leave?"

"We look for an alternative, despite this being another dimension it still is the digestive system of the cow, so… there should be a second way to leave this place…"

"Wait you want to?... EWWW!!!"