Light swallowed us whole.

  Not painfully, more like stepping through a sheet of cold water.

  For a heartbeat, everything was white, humming, weightless...

  ...and then the world slammed back into place.

  I staggered once, boots sinking into soft grass. A cold breeze brushed my cheek. The smell of pine and moss filled my lungs.

  My curses were gone, I could tell. Crossing the door cleansed them, which is good. I could down more potions now. Well, not now. Looking around, one thing was painfully clear.

  We were no longer in the chamber.

  We stood in a clearing. An open bowl carved into the side of a mountain, surrounded on all sides by towering pines and jagged cliffs. The air was thin and crisp, chilly but not biting. The sky above us was so blue that it hurt to look at it. It was bright and very real.

  For a few seconds, no one spoke.

  The silence of the wilderness pressed in around us, broken only by the distant echo of wind sliding between rocks.

  Then...

  Ding.

  A chime like crystalline glass rang inside every skull at once.

  Dozens flinched. I didn’t. I’d been expecting it.

  A glowing window unfurled in the air before each of us.

  Gasps. Swearing. Shocked muttering.

  The moment the windows faded, the clearing erupted.

  “Hundred days? Are you kidding me? Look at that thing! It's barely visible!”

  “Wait, failure means termination? That’s, no, what the hell...”

  “It’s so far away we can’t even see the base! Are they expecting us to walk across a continent?”

  A few people were trying to squint at the horizon where the faintest sliver of white light pierced the sky, so thin it looked like someone had drawn a vertical scratch on a painting. A scratch so far away might as well have been on another mountain range entirely.

  Someone groaned loudly.

  “Bro… if we have a hundred days, that’s not a hike; that’s a pilgrimage.”

  “Or a death march.”

  “Shut up! Don’t say that!”

  “Secondary objective… kill seven kings?” someone else read aloud in disbelief. “Where the hell do you even find a king out here? Do they have castles or something?”

  Rhea was massaging her temples. “They’re bosses for sure. They have to be. Maybe even raid bosses.”

  “What the hell is a raid boss anyway?” a man muttered. “None of this makes sense.”

  Another person called out, “And what’s this tertiary thing? ‘Key fragments’? ‘Oldest Dungeon’? Why does this feel like a trap?”

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  “It is a trap,” someone snapped. “The whole world is a trap.”

  A group of older participants had sat down, catching their breath after the teleport. One of them, a man in his sixties, was laughing dryly.

  “Lucky we took those potions,” he said. “My knees would’ve exploded trying to get down a mountain like this.”

  Another elderly woman nodded. “Potion of Endurance… best thing I ever drank. I might survive long enough to complain.”

  Nearby, Tom had knelt to inspect a sloping, barely visible trail leading downward between the trees.

  “Found something,” he called. “A path. The path, though not man-made, resembles a natural trail or an animal's run, and it leads downhill.

  Matthew joined him, scanning the incline. “Better than nothing. Going up isn’t an option, and staying here makes zero sense.”

  Tom turned to Elias. “You’re thinking the same thing I am, right? We start moving. Slowly. Controlled. Before people panic more than they already are.”

  Elias nodded once.

  “Yeah.”

  He stepped forward and raised his voice, not yelling, but enough that the nearest thirty or forty people could hear.

  “Listen up!”

  Murmurs died down by degrees.

  “We have one clear objective: head towards the Pillar of Light. It’s far. Extremely far. The hundred-day limit tells us that. So the sooner we move, the better.”

  A man protested from the right.

  “Move where? We don’t have a map!”

  “We have a direction,” Elias replied. “That’s enough for now. There’s a natural trail going down the mountain. It puts us closer to lower ground and makes travel easier.”

  Another voice: “Why down? The pillar looks straight ahead. We’re just going sideways!”

  Mary responded calmly, “You want to go straight? Through cliffs? You’d fall in ten minutes. We get down first. Then we navigate the base of the mountains.”

  Someone else shouted, “What about monsters?! The Kings?! The fragments?! Are we supposed to fight that right now?!”

  Tom answered before Elias could. “We stick together until we learn the area. There’s safety in numbers. Splitting up now would be stupid.”

  Elias added, “We scout as we go, we keep a sustainable pace, our eyes open, and please don’t wander off. Not even for going to the bathroom; it’s better to have a lookout than be caught with our pants down by a monster, literally.”

  At that some people made a face, while I went to discuss with the most cooperative people; many voiced their concerns.

  “A hundred days… we’re dead. We’re actually dead,” someone muttered behind me, trembling.

  “Don’t say that,” another whispered sharply. “Seriously, shut up... just... shut up.”

  “Why? Look at the pillar!” He jabbed a shaking hand towards the horizon. “You can barely see it. That means it’s, what, hundreds of miles away?!”

  “Then we walk.”

  That came from a young woman near the front—jaw tight, eyes set. “One foot at a time. It’s not that we have a choice.”

  A man besides her snorted. “Oh sure, we’ll walk to the moon while we’re at it. And kill seven kings on the way. Seven. Like it’s a grocery list.”

  “Better than staying here and waiting for monsters to sniff us out.”

  “It’s a mountain. What monsters live on mountains?”

  “Seriously? Have you not paid attention to anything since the start?”

  Along the left side of the clearing, two older men tested their joints like athletes warming up.

  “Well,” one said cheerfully, “these potions did wonders. I haven’t felt this spry in decades.”

  His friend laughed. “Glad I drank ’em. I’d have broken a leg just looking at this slope.”

  “Shame about the potions, though. I could have used a couple more.”

  “Bah. I’ll take with levels, and finding another safe area, we will get back to our twenties!”

  Nearby, an older woman frowned at the treeline. “Travel… weeks, maybe more. We’ll need more supplies. Shelter at night.”

  “Water too,” a man added. “Mountain streams freeze at night.”

  Someone groaned loudly.

  “Tertiary objective? ‘Heavily guarded fragments’? No thanks. I value my limbs.”

  “Just ignore it until we reach level fifty.”

  “If we get to fifty.”

  A few people weren’t talking at all; they just stared at the pillar, distant and ghostlike, an impossible spear of pale radiance piercing the sky.

  Tom stepped up besides me, lowering his voice.

  “They’re demoralised already. We’ve got to keep them moving.”

  “Yeah,” Mary said, shifting her staff on her shoulder. “If they stop, fear will do the rest.”

  “We follow the path,” said Rhea. “It’s probably a predator trail. But it’s better than climbing down blind.”

  Matthew adjusted his glasses.

  “With a hundred-day timer… the distance must be enormous. Weeks on foot. Maybe months.”

  “It’s still a direction,” I replied. “People can handle fear if they aren’t standing still.”

  Tom gave a short, lopsided grin.

  “Listen to you. Acting leader already.”

  I shook my head. “Please no, I will gladly leave it to you.”

  “If you didn’t want it, you should have minded your business,” Rhea said matter-of-factly. “But the moment you stood up and helped them, we expected you to take on the responsibility.” She finished with a small smile.

  I returned the smile automatically.

  Because what else should I do? Tell them that most of them are liabilities, loud, needy and pathetic?

  I feel trapped in their orbit, forced to address issues that do not concern me.

  If they were aware of this, or even had a hint, they would make my life extremely difficult.

  But fine. Let them think I’m reliable. It’s better than explaining the truth.

  Mary nudged me lightly out of my thoughts. “Go on, mister, the stage is yours.”

  So I stepped forward, raising my voice just enough.

  “Everyone! We’re heading down the trail now. Stay close, don’t wander, and don’t run ahead. We move slowly and steadily. Remember the formation we talked about with Tom?” I pointed at the big man besides me. “Fighters split between up front and rear, mages behind the fighters, and crafters in the middle. Everyone with their shield up! Spear at the ready, and shoot magic or darts only if you are sure not to hit your companions.”

  A wave of sound rippled through the clearing: relief, annoyance, resignation, but most importantly, movement.

  A man in his forties clapped his hands once. “You heard him. Stay alert! No dying on day one.”

  Someone laughed sarcastically. “Oh God, please, yes, yes. No dying; tell it to the guy we left behind in the safe area.”

  Feet began crunching over pine needles. The group slowly funnelled towards the trail, forming a hesitant line.

  I breathed in the thin mountain air, cold and clean.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  And together we began the long march towards the pillar of light.

  I opened my status to check it for a moment; I wanted to see what I was working with now.

  A grin formed on my face; despite everything, I was doing pretty good, if I could say so myself. And I had another round of potions in my backpack, but I had something else to do before using them. Still, I was sure to not be the only one to have found the cursed potion cheat; probably some other group found different ones too, or some other kind of synergy between classes and skills. In any case not many would have stats like mine, and as soon as I got rid of the curse… I will be able to move forward the way I want.