The Systems Challenge

As Kim stood on Sonya's back, she didn't like how this felt, but she knew she wasn't going to be able to get a better position. That if she didn't jump now, she probably wasn't going to get a better opportunity. So, with the sensation of Elin's stat enhancement spell taking effect, she jumped, pushing off of Sonya's body, a distinctive cracking sound sounding as she pushed off.

As Kim sailed through the air towards the bear's gaping maw, she wondered what that sound might have been. She hoped it wasn't what she feared it was. Namely, Sonya's ribs. Yet, even if it was, she wasn't in a position to really do anything about it. Not with Sonya behind her and the bear's mouth in front of her.

She wasn't sure what to expect when she entered the bear's mouth, but she only had her confidence in what she'd learned from her sword that this was the way to defeat the fear. Although, she couldn't be sure if she was going about it wrong,

While she knew that the weakness of the bear to exploit was through its mouth, she couldn't be sure if she didn't just need to essentially shoot something through its mouth to hit it. The main reason why she felt she needed to jump into its mouth was simply because she didn't want to see exactly where the weakness was.

Plus, she had a feeling that if they tried shooting the weakness with, arrows or magic, from outside the mouth, that it wouldn't reach it. She couldn't say why she had that feeling, just that it was present.

Not to mention no matter how many second thoughts she was having at this point, it was too late to stop now. Kim did her best to push those thoughts out of her mind as she passed what she could only assume were the teeth of the bear on her way through the air to the back of the bear's mouth and its throat.

Yet, rather than hitting anything slimy and wet when she made contact with the back of the bear's throat, Kim felt like she suddenly was in a different kind of space. Almost like various documentaries about space exploration and what others imagined nebulas to look like.

Like she was in one of those herself, or at least seeing an immersive experience detailing astronomical phenomena, with her floating through them.

However, after her mind registered her surroundings, she realized that she couldn't breathe. Which if she really was in space, it would make sense that she wouldn't be able to breathe, given there isn't any oxygen of any real concentration that would be able to help her. What didn't make sense was that she wasn't getting killed immediately from how cold space was or the fact that the vacuum of space wasn't killing her right then and there.

Kim did her best to keep from letting the panic overtake her, because she knew since she couldn't breathe that she needed to find a way out of this as fast as possible. That if she took too long, it wouldn't matter what she did or didn't do, she'd end up dead. Which was not an outcome she was looking for.

As Kim drifted past the nebula, she felt like she was going faster than she had when she first entered this space, but it hardly felt like it. The sense of how fast she was moving was more because of how the nebula cloud and the stars in the background was moving past her. When it was gone, she felt like she was close to where the weakness was, yet still very far away from it.

As her lungs started to burn at not getting any oxygen, she noticed a light approaching her. Either that or she was approaching whatever it was. While it didn't look any different from anything else around her, somehow she knew as she looked at it that the light, or whatever was, was the weakness of the stellar bear.

Yet, as Kim glanced at her sword, she felt like her blade sitting at her hip was far too small to effectively deal with it. That it wasn't something that she could just swing her sword and strike at the weak point to do whatever it would to affect the stellar bear.

Yet, she knew that she needed to do something, otherwise it she'd likely drift past it until her chance to do something about it was gone. Which would ensure her demise, since she had a feeling that she'd likely suffocate long before she reached the end of… whatever this place was. Which was also assuming that she would reach and 'end' of it rather than merely drifting here for who knows how long.

Drawing her sword, Kim wished she could take a deep breath to steady her nerves, but being unable to breathe, prevented that. So, she merely did her best to focus on the light before her that was starting to get too bright for her to look at.

Closing her eyes, Kim gripped her sword tightly, and ignoring the blazing light that would likely bling her if she opened her eyes, she focused on summoning the flame pillar. However, she didn't stop there. Not only could she not be certain that it had any effect on the bear's weakness, but she couldn't be sure that it had activated in the first place. Then there was the point where if it did hit it and had an effect, would it be enough?

With what little she knew, she couldn't be sure that she could leave it at that. So, she the summoned the ice pillar as well, the general location of that light as her primary focus.

Even as she floated past the light and felt it starting to dim she could only hope that she'd done enough. That she hadn't essentially found an elaborate way to kill herself with. Not that she'd be able to do anything about it at this point if that turned out to be the case.

When she opened her eyes, she turned her head to look in the direction that the light would be, and first she wasn't sure if the lack of oxygen was causing her to hallucinate or if it was something else, but it looked like a giant crystal was sticking through the light. While she wasn't close enough to get blinded by the light anymore, it still looked like it was fluctuating. As if whatever had been powering it wasn't sending constant power to it anymore.

Kim couldn't be sure what was going on, but then suddenly the light burst apart into smaller lights, that almost looked to Kim like fireflies scattering. She wasn't sure what happened, but she suddenly could see a shrinking pillar of flames inside the crystal where the light had been.

As she got farther away, she suddenly noticed the shape of the crystal. That it was like a giant icicle that seemed to come from nowhere into this space and had its tip an impossible distance from where the bear's weakness had been.

About that same moment, Kim suddenly felt like her surroundings were vibrating. Like she was surrounded by a motor that was making everything rumble around her, including herself. While she felt her vision trying to go dark on her, she kept herself awake almost through a sheer force of will.

Kim isn't sure what to expect, but it felt like her surroundings suddenly disappeared and she was surrounded by darkness and something slimy that soaked through her clothing and started to burn her skin. In addition to that, she felt like an incredible weight was pushing down on her, as if it was trying to prevent her from breathing. Despite the fact that she couldn't see anything around her, nor did she think there was any air for her to breathe.

Not to mention the fact that she didn't want whatever was burning her skin all over her body to go down her throat. Not only did she think that it would make it even harder to breathe once she was out of here, but she had a feeling that it would make getting out of here more difficult.

Despite the pressure pushing down on her, Kim felt that she could still move. Which also meant that she could try to see if her sword might be able to cut a way out for her. Not that she knew if it was possible. Especially since she didn't know what exactly had happened. Such as if what she'd seen was essentially the bear's throat and if she managed to cut her way through its stomach, which is where she supposed she'd ended up, that she couldn't need to still cross that expanse again before she could get out of the bear.

However, she wasn't going to let that 'unknown' stop her. If she didn't do anything, she knew that she'd pretty much be dead as it is. If there was a chance for her to survive this, then she needed to start moving towards that possibility rather than just letting herself get digested.

While there wasn't much room for her to really wield the sword, she could feel that she was at least able to cut through whatever was in her way to getting out of the bear's stomach.

Though, as she struggled to keep from sinking into unconsciousness, she couldn't help but wonder why she suddenly felt like gravity had returned when she'd felt so weightless in that expanse where she'd used up the two strongest abilities that her sword had. An idle thought that she couldn't be sure had any significance to her current predicament.