Chapter 19

"How is your hand?" Dana asked me after wrapping my hand.

"Better. It stings less now." I answered. I didn't know what to feel at that moment. My chest was hurting, but I knew that I couldn't save Yumi. Would it have been better if I had fallen with her?

"You know? I'm sorry for your loss. You must have been close to her." Dana sympathised.

"Yeah, I was. I just feel like I could have done better." I explained my feelings to Dana.

Dana looked at me with pity. "We could do something about this."

"Do what?"

Dana then smiled. "Come with me."

***

The four of us all went out to the entrance of the cave. On the side, Dana gave me a wooden pole. "Use this."

I looked at the pole and thought of an idea. "Does anyone happen to carry a pen or something like that?"

Sakura's eyes then lit up. "I do." She then took a pen out of her skirt pocket and handed it to me.

"Thanks, Sakura." I then turned towards Dana. "Do you happen to have another pole?"

"Yeah." Dana handed it to me.

"Thanks." I took the poles over to the side and wrote on them. After writing on the poles, I stuck them in the ground.

"Eiji and Yumi." Dana read the poles.

Sakura then began to tear up. "Ah."

Yazoyo then looked at the ground and mumbled, "May they rest in peace..."

"I will make sure they get a better memorial when we get out of this game." I said while looking at the two "tombs stones" I had made.

We then went quiet for a few minutes. After that, I broke the silence. "Let's go into the cave again and find the special skill we were looking for."

"What?! But what if we die just like Yumi?" Yazoyo questioned.

"But if we don't gain that special skill, will we really be able to win in the next guild war?" I asked Yazoyo.

He looked at me with a pained expression. He knew I wasn't wrong. "Ugh."

"Let's go." I started walking towards the inside of the cave.

"Wait!" Sakura followed along.

"I love her assertion ❤︎︎." Dana said, sending a chill down my spine.

"I don't love her assertion." Yazoyo scoffed.

We continued further into the cave looking for the "skill" Dana had talked about.

"What does this skill look like?" I asked Dana.

"Dunno. Never saw it before." He shrugged.

"What do you mean? Then how do you even know about this skill?"

"The developer told me about it." Dana showed me his message:

"Want a special skill for your guild? Go look for it in the cave in the icy horizon ✺◟(∗❛ัᴗ❛ั∗)◞✺!"

"Oh. When did you get this message?"

"My guild got it right after the guild battle. We went out searching here, and they robbed me. They just left me here to die, and left to search for this skill. However, I don't even know if they found it already." Dana explained.

"What?!" Yazoyo exclaimed. "Aren't guilds supposed to be close together?"

"Not when you are the guild leader and they hate you." Dana's expression changed.

"You were a guild leader?" I questioned.

"At the time. That's why I'd rather just stay out of guilds. I'd rather not have the same thing happen again. And what's even sadder is the fact that they were my bros. We always played RPGs together. Now, they treated me like crap."

"If you join our guild, Dana, we promise that won't happen." Sakrua eagerly told him.

Dana smiled and patted Sakura's head. "I'm sorry, little one. I think I just want to die. Being betrayed by your own best friends hurt. It feels like a pain worse than death."

A pain worse than death? Like torture? Truthfully, I have never been betrayed before, so I don't understand that feeling. Is it the same feeling like losing a loved one?

Suddenly, Saruka looks at me. Her face suddenly grows pale. "B...behind you..." Sakura pointed.

I turned around and saw the polar bear enemy that I saw before with Yumi. "Ah...crap."