The four of us dashed towards the dying worm. I didn't have any essence left, and since most of my attacks were based on spellcasting, this should have left me in a hopeless position. At the very least, that would have been true if I were alone - but I wasn't.

Sallia was the first one to reach the worm's flesh. She immediately yanked out her sword and plunged it towards the worm's stomach.

The worm tried to wriggle away, but it was too slow. Sallia's sword ripped into its flesh, and parted the worm's skin as if it were soft butter. However, a moment later, I saw a white-blue flash of light arc towards Sallia.

I felt a flash of horror as I turned around, and realized that one of the blind scavengers had taken advantage of Sallia's distraction to attack her. The scavengers left here might be doomed to die, and half of the scavengers had already fled - but the other half probably couldn't escape. Since they were already destined to die, it seemed that they wanted to take us with them.

Luckily, Sallia's reflexes were far beyond my own. She just barely managed to duck out of the way, and the flash of white-blue light struck the worm instead of her. However, Sallia didn't escape unscathed. Even though the attack hadn't hit her, simply being near it had cooked part of her shoulder and neck. Rather than flesh, they resembled melting wax.

I had no idea what kind of spell the scavengers had used to try to kill Sallia, but I didn't doubt that she would have died if she hadn't dodged out of the way.

I glanced at the worm, and realized that it hadn't suffered very much damage from the spell. That was likely why the scavengers hadn't used it during the fight with the worm in the first place. The worm gurgled in hatred, but with its limp, slow movements, it wasn't able to respond to the attack in any meaningful way.

"Humanoid enemies! Not from outside this dimension! No wonder the little wretches kept following us! They're from the Market! They're the reason so many of us died before!" Yelled one of the female scavengers who were left behind. She had no eyes, much like the other scavengers who had suffered from the worm's light attack - but somehow, her face was still constantly tilting towards me. She was tracking my movement somehow, even though her eyes were gone.

I looked at the scavengers who had remained in the area, and furrowed my brows in frustration.

Five scavengers. The others had already been eaten by monsters, and I didn't think the five here would last much longer - but with things as chaotic as they were, even a small change on the battlefield could send me or my friends plummeting into the abyss.

I saw one of the scavengers raise their hand towards Sallia again, but this time I was ready. I caught sight of a flash of silver in their hand, and I jumped right in front of them as a silver crossbow bolt leapt out of their hand and towards me.

The crossbow bolt slammed into my dress, where it vanished into the swirling waters of a spatially compressed lake. Nothing else happened. I thanked my lucky stars that we had picked up the {Lake-Gazer's Dress}, or I would have probably died right there.

My relief didn't last for long. Right after the scavenger's failed attack, a massive, two-meter tall humanoid sculpture leapt over the scavengers, before slamming into the ground right in front of me. It raised a hand towards me, before Anise launched a massive wave of force at it, sending the stone giant teetering backwards a few steps. It steadied itself a moment later, but a streak of red-white energy hit it from behind.

I glanced at the scavenger who had attacked it in surprise. Weren't they trying to drag us with them a few moments ago? Why had one of them stepped up to help us?

I took a closer look at the scavengers, and then realized that only two of them were actually focused on the four of us. Clearly, they had some way of tracking our existence, regardless of whether their eyes were intact or not. They were still preparing attacks to try to drag us into death with them.

The other three scavengers looked like they were flinging attacks into the area completely at random. Some of them hit monsters, and some of them hit random chunks of pavement. Furthermore, their own features were starting to melt and collapse with each second.

I glanced around the battlefield, and quickly confirmed that there were no functioning 'marks' anymore. In other words, the laws of reality within the Market were corroding their bodies in real time - and since they were already heavily injured, they were even less resistant to the corrosion of the laws of reality than usual.

The stone giant stomped on two of the scavengers closest to it, ending their lives, and then turned back towards the four of us. It grabbed one of the corpses of a scavenger, and then hurled it straight at Sallia with the force of a freight train.

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Anise deflected it with a wall of force.

<Sallia, get the splinter of wood as fast as you can!> yelled Anise. <We'll deal with the horde. The moment you get the splinter, Felix can ditch an item and cram it into one of his item slots, and then we can run away and wait for the horde to slow down a bit! We need to end this situation fast!>

<Got it!> yelled Sallia. <I might need a bit! The worm isn't moving much, but it's still regenerating! Trying to kill it is - ack!>

I saw Sallia duck under a desperate tail-swing from the worm. The force from the worm's desperate, near-death attack was still strong enough that I could feel it displacing air halfway across the battlefield. Sallia managed to roll out of the way right before its tail slammed into the spot where she had been standing. It tore apart stone as if it were paper. The moment Sallia returned to her feet, she leapt at the worm with her sword, and began carving into it while the worm desperately tried to wriggle out of the way.

Meanwhile, another wave of monsters dashed into the battlefield by leaping over a row of ruined buildings, dragging my attention away from Sallia's battle and back towards the approaching horde. These ones faintly resembled wisps of light. I had no idea what they were, but Felix killed them with a spray of metal spikes before they could do anything.

Before we had time to catch our breath, a group of fleshy giants sprinted into the battlefield. Anise had been using her magic to hold off the stone giant, but she didn't have the spare leeway to concentrate on handling four flesh-giants as well. I gritted my teeth, before I grabbed a rock and threw it at the nearest flesh giant. I was out of essence, so there wasn't much I could do, but I could still annoy these creatures and keep them away from my friends. I just had to hope that Sallia was fast enough to get the splinter so we could get out of here before we all died.

I felt a tingling sense of danger a moment later, and ducked. A bolt of white and blue light whizzed right past where my head had been a moment later, and I felt scorching pain radiate through my body. I felt like I had just jumped into an open fire pit. I tried to reach out and touch my face, only to realize that my right hand was gone. It had melted like wax under the attack. I gurgled in pain, and then realized something was wrong with my throat. Luckily, I could still move and see just fine - although my dominant hand was now out of commission.

I turned to the source of the attack, and saw one of the remaining scavengers still glaring at us, with an expression of pure hatred on his melted, ruined face. He screamed, and pointed his hand at me again, before Anise killed him with a fireball. That gave the stone giant an opportunity, and it dashed towards Felix, who barely held it back with a wave of metal.

<Sallia, how much longer?> Felix asked as he took out his {Craftsman's Hammer} and started hitting the wall of metal he had created. The wall vibrated softly with each crack of the hammer, reinforcing itself against the mad assault of the stone giant.

<Almost there… got it!> Yelled Sallia. I spared a moment to glance at her, and saw that she was now holding the minced remains of the heroic-grade shooter. Since the worm had died so fast, it hadn't had much time to digest him, so the corpse was still recognizable - although it was a mess.

Sallia grabbed the whole thing and threw it at Felix. <Is the splinter somewhere in there?> asked Sallia, as she sprang in front of him and started cutting down a flesh giant.

Felix stopped worrying about the monster horde, and started sorting through the ruined chunks of material from the corpse. A few moments later, he grinned.

<I got it!> He said, as he held up a thick layer of tree bark.

Despite the fact that we had been calling it a 'splinter' of wood all of this time, I realized that it was far larger than that. The splinter of wood was nearly the size of my torso. Based on the structure of the bark itself, I could tell that it truly was a splinter of wood - at least in comparison to whatever tree it had come from. Even more unusual, as someone who was now half-conceptual, I could tell that the splinter of wood also had a concept attached to it. I couldn't identify it - I didn't have the ability to directly identify any concept besides hope in my vicinity. However, the splinter of wood was clearly like me - a living being with at least some basis in the conceptual, rather than a purely physical entity. It was somehow still alive, even after all of these millenia, which was even more astounding.

<Good! Put it into one of your inventory slots and we can run! We need to get out of here before the horde wears us down!> yelled Sallia, as she cut down another flesh giant.

<I can't bind the splinter to an item slot!> said Felix. <I can bind it to ME, via the same method that the Market let me take a material back during our second world. But I can't hide it in an item slot until it turns into a 'proper' item!>

Another wave of monsters broke through the side of a nearby building, before Anise blasted them to oblivion with a wave of fireballs.

<So the monsters are going to keep coming?> asked Sallia.

<Yup!> Said Felix.

<Got it, let's run away!> yelled Sallia. She dashed over to me, and before I could object, she picked me up like a sack of potatoes and slung me over her shoulder. I wished I could object, but that this point I really wasn't feeling very good. I had too many injuries.

<If we can't stop the horde, I think we have to reincarnate now,> said Felix. <This splinter is our best chance to break the situation anyway - we can take this to another world where the monsters of the Market won't constantly harass us, and then we can devote our next life to focusing on crafting.>

<Agreed! Let me use a magic eye to look for a nearby pool!> Yelled Anise. She froze for a moment, before she pointed north. <I can see a building that probably houses a pool of reincarnation! It's a couple hours of running away, but we should be able to make it!> she said.

Our destination was confirmed. The four of us started sprinting at full speed, while a horde of monsters nipped at our heels.

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