The bravado lasted about two seconds before Suzume's brain kicked into gear.

  [Okay. Focus. What do I know about this thing?]

  Cavern Crawlers. She'd studied them back during her obsessive research phase, watched footage of Players fighting them in underground dungeons. They weren't common, but they weren't rare either, and they had a reputation for being nasty in close quarters.

  [Chitinous armor. Hard to pierce from the front. Weak points are the joints between segments and the underbelly.]

  The creature advanced another meter, its mandibles clicking hungrily.

  [Attack pattern: lunges with the front section, tries to wrap around prey with the body. If it gets a hold of you, it squeezes until bones break. Don't let it grab you. Abilities: acidic spit, range of about five meters. Watch for the head rearing back, that's the tell. Speed: fast in short bursts, slower over distance. It's ambush predator, not a chaser.]

  The Cavern Crawler's head reared back.

  Suzume dove to the side.

  A glob of something hissed through the air where she'd been standing and splattered against the cave wall behind her. The stone sizzled and smoked, dissolving under the acid.

  [Yeah, don't get hit by that.]

  She rolled to her feet and circled to the creature's left, keeping her glowstick raised in one hand and her knife ready in the other. The green light made the thing's carapace look almost pretty, in a horrifying sort of way.

  The Crawler lunged.

  It was fast, faster than something that size had any right to be, and Suzume barely managed to sidestep in time. She felt the rush of air as its mandibles snapped shut inches from her ribs.

  [Counter when it overextends. That's what Kasumi taught me.]

  She pivoted on her back foot, just like Kasumi had drilled into her a dozen times, and slashed at the joint between the creature's head and first body segment.

  The knife bit into softer flesh.

  The Crawler shrieked, a horrible high-pitched sound that echoed off the cave walls, and whipped its body around. Suzume tried to jump back but she wasn't fast enough. The tail end of the creature caught her left shoulder with the force of a baseball bat swung by a professional athlete.

  She heard the crack before she felt the pain.

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  Then she felt the pain.

  "FUCK!"

  Suzume hit the ground hard, her left arm hanging limp and wrong at her side. White-hot agony lanced through her shoulder and down her spine, so intense that her vision went spotty for a second.

  [Dislocated. Maybe broken. Definitely broken. Shit shit shit.]

  The Crawler was already turning back toward her, mandibles dripping with something that might have been saliva or might have been more acid. It knew she was hurt. It could probably smell the weakness on her.

  [Get up. GET UP.]

  Suzume forced herself to her feet, her right hand still gripping the knife, her left arm dangling uselessly. The pain was a living thing, screaming at her with every heartbeat, but she shoved it down into a box somewhere in the back of her mind and slammed the lid shut.

  [I'm still so weak. Level 15 and I still can't take a single hit without falling apart.]

  The Crawler lunged again.

  This time, Suzume was ready.

  She dropped low, letting the creature's momentum carry it over her head, and drove her knife upward into its underbelly as it passed. The blade sank in deep, meeting less resistance than she'd expected, and she twisted it before yanking it free.

  Something warm and wet splashed across her face.

  The Crawler screamed again, thrashing wildly, and Suzume scrambled backward to avoid getting caught in its death throes. It writhed on the cave floor, ichor leaking from the wound in its belly, its legs scrabbling uselessly against the stone.

  Then it stopped moving.

  +10 XP

  Suzume stood there for a long moment, breathing hard, her knife dripping with the creature's blood.

  [I won.]

  It didn't feel like a victory. It felt like she'd barely survived, which, to be fair, she had. One hit. One single hit and she was down an arm. If that tail had caught her in the head instead of the shoulder, she'd be dead right now.

  [Weak. Still so fucking weak.]

  But she didn't have time to wallow in self-pity. Her shoulder needed attention, and there could be more of those things deeper in the cave.

  Suzume sheathed her knife and knelt down, taking stock of the damage.

  Her left shoulder was definitely dislocated, the joint sitting at an angle that made her stomach turn just looking at it. Whether the bones were broken or just badly bruised, she couldn't tell, but it didn't really matter right now. She needed to get the joint back in place before she could do anything else.

  [I've done this before. In simulation. It's fine. It's gonna be fine.]

  She braced her back against the cave wall and gripped her left wrist with her right hand.

  [On three. One. Two—]

  She yanked.

  The scream that tore out of her throat echoed through the cave, bouncing off the walls and coming back to her like a chorus of agony. Her vision went white, then black, then spotty again, and for a second she thought she was going to pass out.

  But then she felt it. The horrible, grinding pop of the joint sliding back into place.

  "Oh god," she gasped, tears streaming down her face. "Oh fuck. Oh god."

  She sat there for a minute, maybe two, just breathing through the aftershocks of pain. Her shoulder throbbed with every heartbeat, a deep ache that radiated down her arm and up her neck, but it was manageable now. Functional, if she was careful.

  Suzume pulled out her Toolkit and grabbed a roll of bandages, fashioning a crude sling to keep her arm immobilized against her chest. It wasn't pretty, but it would hold.

  [Emergency Treatment] activated, the warm glow of the skill spreading through her shoulder. It wouldn't fix the damage immediately, but it would take the edge off and then she could just keep casting it later. For now, she just wanted to keep moving.

  She checked her HP.

  HP: 89/170

  About half. Not great, not terrible.

  Suzume pushed herself to her feet, swaying slightly before finding her balance.

  [Keep moving. Find the exit. Get out of here.]

  She picked up her glowstick and started walking deeper into the cave.