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VoC: B1 — 35. Mine to Save!
🕑 Added 2025-10-08 06:37:46 +0000 UTCPoV:
1. Sophia (Our Protective Mimic Lady!)
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Time stretched like pulled taffy through frozen air, each mote of snow suspended between heartbeats that Sophia no longer needed. Her many eyes—dozens of them scattered across her massive, chest-like frame—drank in the moment.
Three eyes tracked the halfling girl, watching cursed ice crawl through her veins in real-time, ruby blood becoming garnets, flesh transforming into the dungeon’s art. The spear hadn’t killed her yet, but it would in the cruelest way. Lily’s pupils still moved, still processed, still felt every crystal forming in her lungs.
Sophia knew she could not save her. The teenage girl would die before this fight was over. Yet, in this world, they apparently had hope—[Resurrection].
Seven eyes mapped the Snow Sovereign as it materialized from the blizzard’s heart, and what she saw wasn’t just a leopard—it was winter given murder’s purpose.
Its fur moved like living snow, each strand a perfect fractal that caught light and twisted it into spectrums that hurt to look at—not mental like the Toxic Sovereign but visual. Where the Toxic Sovereign had been an alien horror, this was elegant annihilation, wrapped in white that transcended color.
Four eyes watched her fox-buddy vanish through the root wall with the fleeing adventurers, its blue glow fading into memory.
The rest—in their scattered constellation—watched everything else. The way the blizzard bent around the Sovereign. The frozen lake’s surface was perfect as a mirror. The temperature was dropping so fast that the moisture in the air became ice-dust, each particle a tiny blade waiting to dance at the leopard’s command.
Through it all, her vision began to paint shades of crimson, [Berserker Rage] activating for the first time. Heat bloomed in her transformed gut—not just physical, but spiritual, the kind of warmth that came from absolute certainty.
Mine.
The thought hit with the force of religious conviction. This territory. This girl. This moment.
She’s mine!
The Sovereign’s eyes—frozen stars burning with intelligence that had evolved past cruelty into art—met hers across the distance. She saw recognition there. Not fear. Not contempt.
Professional assessment.
It knew she was the Final Boss.
It knew it could take her title.
Yet, it did not know her.
“Graaargh!”
The sound that tore from her throat belonged to nothing that had ever been human. It was a declaration, a challenge, a promise all at once, vibrating through ice that cracked just from proximity to her rage.
She launched.
[Titanic Growth: 100% active]
[Weight: 9,000 lbs]
[Berserker Rage: Active - Intelligence 11→10]
The impact of her first charge shattered the ice where the Sovereign had been. One moment solid, the next dispersing into snow itself, reforming ten feet left as her massive frame cratered through frozen nothing.
[Perception: Active]
Her enhanced senses caught the trick—it wasn’t teleporting, but it might as well be. It was literally becoming part of its blizzard aura for split seconds, mist riding wind currents that obeyed it absolutely.
Despite the lowered Intelligence, her mind was clear for the first time.
It’s too fast and there’s too much space. I can’t win if I can’t hit it.
The leopard’s response came as cursed ice spears materializing from six angles simultaneously, each one singing through the air with a whistle of magic. Tentacle-like feelers curled out of the inside edges of her chest-body, delicate, still growing from her young age, yet functional.
She twisted—massive frame showing surprising grace—and opened her maw.
[Pocket Dimension: Open]
Three spears vanished into the void of her storage. Two scraped along her organic, metallic wood surface, leaving trails of supernatural frost that tried to spread before [Hyper HP Recovery] burned it away. The sixth—
Pain exploded through what might have been a shoulder, might have been a joint, might have been something her transformed anatomy had invented. The spear punched into her flesh, not piercing through but shattering like toxin into her veins—cursed ice spread from the embedded shard in crystalline patterns.
[Constitution: 28 - Resisting Ice Curse]
[Hyper HP Recovery: Active - 7% per minute]
The frost spread three inches before hitting the wall of her regeneration, her [Berserker Rage] keeping her golden blood boiling, too hot for the curse to properly take hold. The spear melted from the inside out as acid leaked from the wound, yellow ichor steaming in the frozen air.
She launched toward where the attack originated, but the Sovereign was already gone, dispersed into its storm.
What a little bitch… she internally snarled, tongue twitching in her mouth, eyes swiveling, searching. Her instincts screamed. Follow the wind.
Her [Pseudopod] exploded out in three directions, barbed tips seeking flesh that had already become wind. One tendril caught something—a laugh made of temperature, cold so pure it had its own voice.
The Sovereign reformed twenty feet away, prowling left then right, testing her tracking. Each step left frost flowers blooming on the lake’s surface, beautiful and wrong, ice that grew like cancer.
Shockingly, Sophia wasn’t afraid.
Enraged, boiling inside? Sure.
Fear? No.
What can I do? I can’t hit it like this…
The realization might have sparked anger, but her enhanced intelligence processed it differently. No—it was learning. Testing responses, cataloging her speed, her reach, her patterns. Exactly what she would do.
[Heavy Fisted: Passive damage +22.5%]
She charged again, committing fully this time, feelers pounding the ground and teeth gleaming. The ice exploded under each slap of her feelers, cracks racing outward from impacts that treated the frozen lake like tissue paper. The Sovereign dispersed again, but she was ready—
[Shapechange: Metal Plane]
Mid-charge, her form collapsed into herself, mass compressing as she became a sphere of pure density—a mini steel plane more than creature. Momentum conserved, she punched through the space where the leopard was reforming, catching its hindquarters before it fully dispersed.
[Shapechange: Deactivate]
[Bite]
The contact was brief but meaningful. Her telescoping teeth found flesh for half a second, tearing away a chunk of ethereal fur that tasted like frozen starlight and broken promises. White blood—if it could be called blood—splattered across ice, each drop freezing before it landed.
Her tongue lashed out with neurotoxin gleaming on the barbs—too slow.
“Grarrr!”
The leopard’s scream shattered ice formations fifty feet away, casting a flurry of snow. Not pain—outrage. It didn’t feel pain, like normal creatures.
She launched forward again, wrapping herself in her aerodynamic, metallic form from earlier. Unfortunately, the Sovereign’s blizzard condensed into a dome of white nothing that blocked out everything beyond twenty feet.
Sophia flew through empty air. The temperature dropped so fast that her acid began crystallizing at the edges of her wounds. Form unraveling into her colossal state, her chest bottom slammed against the ice, skidding to a stop, only to see not one leopard, but six, all equally real, all moving with lethal purpose.
Illusions? No… [Perception] countered that assumption. Ice clones, masquerading as illusions, wind conversion, cursed ice, and blizzard generation, hmm? You are a monster…but so am I.
They came from every angle, claws that could shred steel, seeking joints and soft spots on her anatomy.
[Pseudopod] launched out like a viper, piercing the nearest copy, barbs sinking deep. [Adhesion] locked it in place inside its body as she roared and spun, using its very body as a club, catching four copies—they shattered.
Yet, another managed to get its claws raking across her back, real this time, cursed frost spreading before her regeneration fought it back. Her tongue whipped it over her frame to bring down the ice clone on top of it, destroying both.
The real one materialized inside her guard, jaws clamping on what might have been her throat—the lock at her front. Cursed ice spread from the bite, trying to transform her into a frozen monument.
Son of a—
[Constitution + Berserker Rage + Hyper HP Recovery: Ice Curse Partially Resisted]
Dammit! If they were illusions, [Perception] would work, but since they’re real, I can’t tell which is the real one. Oh, and great…they can reform.
Her many eyes tracked them all, but without a tell, without a difference—
Memory struck, sharp as winter: Damon in their tiny apartment, teaching her to play three-card monte. “No, no. Soph, look, don’t watch the cards. Look here—watch the dealer’s shoulders. The body always tells the truth, even when everything else is lying.”
His words settled into her heart, vision shifting focus. Not the leopards but the blizzard itself. The way snow moved around them, the micro-currents of wind it controlled.
There! The real one displaced air differently since it’s the source. Let’s try something different…
She let the copies close in, pretending confusion, body language screaming vulnerability.
Three seconds.
Two.
The real Sovereign took the bait, materializing behind her for a spine strike—
Her tongue snapped out, curling along her gums as twin fangs erupted to pierce the paw before it landed. Icy, white liquid struck two of her eyes, searing like liquid glass. Yet, the central fork coiled inward—[Haymaker]—a miniature sledgehammer infused her force that caught the Sovereign mid-leap. The impact sounded like thunder made of breaking bones.
Sliding across the frozen river, it found purchase and flipped upright in a blur, leaving a trail of white blood that froze into abstract art. Liquid still pattering against the mirrored ice, a heartbeat in the storm’s silence. The leopard cradled its damaged arm, liquid still pattering to the floor.
Sophia’s mouth curled back into a smile.
I’m actually enjoying this. Aria would be freaking out right now, she mused, blood still raging as she charged forward to meet it. Open ground is its advantage. Too much space to disperse and attack me with its clones…
The blizzard exploded outward, no longer a dome but a hurricane with them at its eye. The Sovereign began to circle, claw flexing as ice coated its wounds, stemming the bleeding. Still, it treated it with care. This time, Sophia matched its pace, feelers dragging her across the slick surface.
It won’t fall for that again. I need a new plan while it tries to recover… I need to change the battlefield, just like with the previous Sovereign. This is its environment.
Her eyes flicked to the lake ice beneath them, where the crab had lurked, thick enough to support her mass but not invulnerable. Below, dark water promised a different kind of fight.
If I don’t engage soon, [Berserker’s Rage] will vanish, and it’s keeping me functional in this chilly atmosphere, keeping my blood pumping. I need something more, though. Didn’t I get new Feat options?
[Feat Selection Available: 7 Points]
The menu bloomed in one of her many eyes as the Sovereign prepared its next assault, no doubt ready to close in the blizzard and use ranged magic.
Three paths called to her:
[Siegebreaker - Titan Dreadnought Branch: Enter a powerful kinetic charge, dealing 4x mass damage to structures.]
[Kinetic Retribution - Juggernaut Branch: Convert physical damage taken to strength multiplier.]
[Elemental Gorge - Barbarian Branch: Consume elemental attacks for temporary immunity.]
Her instincts parsed the options in a fraction of a second. The Sovereign was already moving, ice copies forming again, but this time carrying weapons—frozen spears, swords of cursed ice, beautiful and lethal.
Space is the problem. I need to remove space. Every option is amazing, but for right now…
[F-tier Normal Siegebreaker Selected]
[Siegebreaker upgraded from Normal to Magic Grade: -3 Feat Points]
[4 Feat Points Remaining]
Power flooded through her frame, not strength but purpose. Her body understood destruction now, understood how to make the world break rather than bend.
The ice copies converged. She let them.
[Pocket Dimension: Open]
Its own icicles released out of the void, shattering two. [Shapechange: Paper Plane] carried her in a wind-swept arc around the many swords as [Perception] told her where the wind shifted more violently—inside the blizzard.
Flying past all the ice clones, she twirled to evade the triple ice lances that were launched out of the veil—its cloak vanished as she drew near.
[Shapechange: Paper Plane]
[Shapechange: Deactivate]
Her pseudopods shot out, wrapping around the real Sovereign’s throat just as its many claws found her center mass. Pain exploded through her consciousness, but she held on, adhesion making her grip absolute—[Siegebreaker] activated.
“GRAAAAGH!”
She drove them both toward the ice below, mass quadrupling as reality acknowledged her new purpose. The Sovereign’s eyes widened—the first genuine emotion she’d seen—as it realized what was happening.
The ice didn’t crack. It shattered like glass.
They punched through the first layer, as if it were paper, her enhanced mass turning solid ground into suggestion rather than substance. The Sovereign tried to disperse, but its wind wasn’t keeping pace and her grip was absolute, [Adhesion] making separation impossible.
The second layer fractured in a cascade of crystalline shrapnel.
The third—water.
Black and cold enough to burn, the lake flooded up to meet them as they plunged them into depths. The Sovereign’s blizzard aura followed them down, trying to freeze the water, but liquid moved too fast, pressure too absolute.
[Pocket Dimension: Open]
Water flooded into her mouth as her fangs curled in, piercing its neck and body to inject neurotoxin. Then, it vanished into a swirl of bubbles, only to reappear merely eight feet away, struggling in the murky, chilled water.
[Mimicry: Organic Submarine]
Her form shifted between submarine and nightmare, her tongue finding its target again in the struggle. Streamlined but wrong, propulsion organs that shouldn’t exist, firing to drive them deeper. The Sovereign thrashed in her grip, claws tearing into her shifting flesh, each wound sealing as fast as it opened with ice or golden ichor.
[Titanic Growth] remained maxed, her little crab ‘buddy’ poking her gums.
The underwater cavern opened beneath them—a pocket of air trapped by geological impossibility, walls of ice holding back crushing depths. She drove them into it, both creatures exploding from water into pressurized air in a spray of impossible physics.
[Mimicry: Deactivate]
The Sovereign landed hard, immediately trying to disperse—but water vapor wasn’t snow. Its form stuttered, half-solid, caught between states.
She vomited the water she’d been absorbing—thousands of pounds rushing out. It crashed over the Sovereign in a torrential wave, its own blizzard aura instantly freezing it into a prison of its own making.
Can’t turn off the cold, can you? She was laughing inside, blood hot, wounds sealing; it didn’t seem to have a rapid regeneration, like her, its paw still damaged. Checkmate!
The leopard realized its mistake too late. Ice formed around it faster than it could break free, its own supernatural cold working against it. It screamed, the sound muffled by frozen water crushing in from all sides.
She didn’t give it time to adapt.
Lurching forward in the torrent, her jaws unhinged, opening wide, telescoping teeth spinning outward in rings of grinding death. She bit through ice and flesh alike, acid flooding the wound, mixing with supernatural cold to create steam that filled the cavern with fog.
The leopard’s desperation gave it strength. It shattered its ice prison in an explosion of cursed shards, each one seeking her flesh. They found their marks—dozens of wounds opening across her form—but high Constitution, [Hyper HP Recovery], and [Berserker Rage] made them merely flesh wounds.
Pain was just information. Damage was just numbers.
She had one goal:
Mine! Mine! Mine!
The fog from her acid meeting its cold had filled the cavern now, and she noticed something—the Sovereign was moving wrong. Hesitant. Its frozen star eyes tracked where she had been, not where she was.
Snow vision. Not fog vision. It can’t see!
[Stealth] hid her from its mind, becoming forgettable even as nine thousand pounds circled through the fog-filled air pocket. The Sovereign’s head snapped left and right, trying to track by sound, by temperature, by anything—but the fog was everywhere, and her [Silence] Feat with the surging water made her movements practically a whisper.
[Haymaker: Cooldown - 23 seconds remaining]
She waited. Patience came more easily with intelligence, even when filtered through rage. The Sovereign, partially frozen, torn flesh leaking liquid frost that only further imprisoned it, began creating ice copies again. It sent them searching through fog, partially frozen, but they moved as blind as their creator.
Fifteen seconds.
It tried to clear the fog with wind, but the cavern’s confines made that impossible. Water kept dripping from above, her destruction of the lake’s floor creating constant moisture for its aura to freeze, generating more fog and ice to crawl up its frame.
Ten seconds.
The Sovereign made a choice—it began freezing everything, trying to turn the entire cavern into solid ice. The temperature dropped further. Her acid began crystallizing. Her wounds stopped regenerating, overwhelmed by supernatural cold.
Five seconds.
Through the fog, she saw it—the Sovereign standing in the cavern’s center, pouring everything into its final gambit. If it could freeze the entire space, she’d have nowhere to hide.
Yet, ice was just a barrier, and barriers would not stop [Siegebreaker].
It would not stop a Dreadnought, Titan Mimic.
Two seconds.
She surged forward, jaws wide, tongue lashing, ice shattering. [Pseudopod] extended, locked around its throat, and drew it in. It had one second to realize its mistake—freezing everything meant it couldn’t disperse.
[Siegebreaker] propelled her forward, and [Haymaker] would not be denied.
“Mine!”
She met the leopard with nine thousand pounds of kinetic violence. Not a strike but a full-body collision that drove both of them into the cavern wall with the force equal to the one that brought her into this hellish world, striking through the stone behind ice.
The sound was not a crack—it was a detonation.
Ice, stone, and Sovereign collapsed inward as if reality itself had blinked. The cavern’s heart imploded around them, jagged sheets folding like glass hit by artillery. Pressure rippled through the air pocket in concentric rings, snapping stalactites, pulping ancient frost into diamond dust.
The Snow Sovereign’s chest folded. White blood fountained across the mirror walls, instantly freezing into lacework fractals that webbed outward faster than sight could follow. The cat’s scream turned liquid, half-air, half-magic, spilling into silence as Sophia’s mass drove it through its own frozen domain.
Shockwaves rolled up her frame—beautiful agony.
Bones, if she still had bones, thrummed like struck bells. Her hardened hide split in a dozen places; golden ichor and steam burst from her in ribbons that glowed against the blizzard-light. But she did not stop. Could not stop.
Each tooth-ring rotated deeper, grinding ice and muscle into slurry.
When motion finally ceased, they were buried halfway into the cavern wall—an inverted meteor crater of crushed beast and shattered ice. The blizzard had died. Only vapor and the hiss of melting frost remained, thick as breath.
For a moment, everything in the dungeon exhaled.
Then came the stillness. The kind that meant the dungeon was listening.
[You have slain Snow Sovereign - Level 8 Champion]
[Experience Gained: 6, 503.8]
…
[Level 6 Achieved]
[3 Feat Points Gained; 7 Available]
[3 Stat Points Gained; 3 Available]
…
[8,001 EXP to Level 7]
The notification barely registered. She was already biting, tearing, her wet teeth finding the Sovereign’s spine as it tried one last desperate attack—driving an ice spear directly into her core. Or, that’s what would have happened, if she hadn’t opened [Pocket Dimension] just in time, disappearing to use for later.
Sophia’s tongue coiled around what remained of the Sovereign’s throat. The creature’s skull dangled by frozen sinew, light fading from its star-bright eyes. She could taste the last flicker of its mana—clean, sterile, colder than comprehension—and she devoured it.
The temperature spiked. The dungeon screamed through the walls in frequencies too low for mortals to hear, but she felt it in her chest. A resonance. A heartbeat not her own.
Cracks spidered outward from the crater, not from impact now—but from within the ice. The whole floor shuddered, reacting to its Champion’s death.
And then came the whisper.
“You strike like I once did.”
Her breath hitched. Not from fear—something deeper.
Who… The dungeon? Jaws slowing in her frenzy, her eyes swiveled to look into the depths of the lake behind her. You’re alive?
“Oh, very much so, little Titan. Who do you think has been guiding you, feeding you? You break my body, but you build my shape. Every kill, every level, every breath—it’s me you feed in return.”
The fog around her swirled, forming almost a face, not quite seen, but cemented in her mind.
“I was mortal once. Before I… I don’t remember. Pain. Horror… Lords of void, unimaginable power, and formlessness. But they reshaped me. Now—”
The voice became warm, pleased.
“Now I’m endless.”
Crunch
Sophia blinked, the voice gone, the crab in her gums crushed.
Shit… What the hell am I attached to?
[Combat Ending: Titanic Growth deactivating over 30 seconds]
[Berserker Rage: Deactivated - Intelligence 10→11]
[Intelligence Upgrade 11 → 14: Above Average]
Finally, my mind is back! I’m back…
She looked at the Sovereign’s corpse, water still pooling into the pocket—beautiful even in death, white fur perfect despite the violence. She stored what was left in [Pocket Dimension], sliding the crab into her stomach as hunger growled.
Whatever you are, Dungeon Man, I’m not your slave… The girl!
Memory hit like cold water—Lily, frozen to the cavern wall above. She had to—
The cavern shuddered. Her [Siegebreaker] assault had damaged more than just ice. Cracks spider-webbed across the ceiling, water pouring through in torrents. The underwater pocket was collapsing.
[Mimicry: Organic Submarine]
She shot upward through the flooding shaft she’d created, breaking through chunks of ice still falling through the murky depths. The water was freezing even after the Sovereign’s death, but ordinary cold meant nothing to her now.
She erupted from the lake in a geyser of displaced water, immediately shifting back to standard form. The blizzard was dying, the snow falling normally now, almost peacefully. Around the lake’s edge, creatures were emerging—foxes, ice elementals, things with no names—all fleeing.
The Raid Boss had killed their Champion.
She was their apex now.
But she had no time for territorial displays. Lily was still frozen to that wall, ice curse spreading throughout her small form like crystalline cancer.
Yes, she was dead. That was the point. But now, with her connection to Dungeon Man growing stronger with each level, she knew something more horrifying.
If I left her here, eventually, he’d absorb her body, making resurrection impossible.
Each second meant more of her becoming the dungeon’s permanent decoration.
Sophia bounded across ice that cracked under her reducing weight, [Titanic Growth] slowly reverting her to merely massive instead of apocalyptic—the size of an F-150 truck cab, tires to hood.
The wall where Lily hung looked like a shrine—ice formations had grown around the halfling girl, making her the centerpiece of frozen art.
She’s not yours, Dungeon Man, she’s mine. Mine!
“Oh?” he chortled in the back of her head, tickling like the onset of a headache. “But all of you is mine…which means everything yours is mine. Bring her to me.”
Uh… I don’t think so, bud. Find yourself another girl.
The connection snapped—just gone—and she actually grinned inside. Not even Damon or her perfect parents had ever been able to make her heel, not when she’d crashed cars, lost jobs, or failed expectations. So why would some self-important narcissist carved out of—well, whatever dungeons were made out of—have any sway over her actions now?
She studied the ice with her enhanced intelligence, looking for connection points. The curse had spread from the spear into the wall itself, making Lily part of Floor 7’s structure. Simple removal would shatter her like glass.
But Sophia had acid that could dissolve anything except herself.
Careful. Careful.
She extended her tongue, letting drops of acid fall precisely where ice met stone. The reaction was immediate—steam erupted as supernatural cold met alien chemistry. The ice didn’t melt so much as sublimate, transforming directly from solid to vapor.
It took twelve minutes of precision work, her tongue becoming a surgical tool. Finally, Lily came free—not the girl but an ice sculpture in her perfect likeness, the spear still embedded but no longer connected to the dungeon's structure.
Sophia stared at the halfling—the child.
She looks so much like a child…
Memories triggered of that day she’d called her old school friend to make a drug drop. Poison flooding her veins past the pain of her life and death battle that was far, far worse—self-betrayal, ethical violations, and the small plastic wand hidden inside a brown paper bag. A white stick with a window, one pale line fading, another burning blue. The lingering image of a clinic where she’d gotten a little pill.
It took several minutes for her to let the emotions settle in the face of the halfling teenager. The ice would preserve her. Inside Sophia’s void space, time meant nothing. Lily could wait, but that wasn’t the issue churning her stomach.
Floor 6. I need to rise…to get her out of here.
She could feel the dungeon laughing at her, curious and amused. She felt its response more than heard it.
“Impossible.”
Yeah? Well, we’ll see about that!
With that, the weight of the child she carried overcame her and Sophia turned to look across the misty lake. Golden tears dripped from her many eyes, her body still ruined and in need of healing, yet she couldn’t help but cry at the beautiful sight.
Inside her core, now in the silence, all she felt was a river, rushing into her, like a mighty chariot…and someone rode on that saving grace she did not deserve.
Everything she felt since awakening, the reality of why she was here, her fractured conversation with Titania, and the pain of her sin bursting over the muddy banks of her heart.
Oh, Damon… Love supreme did not withhold
But gave all his heart and soul.
Oh, what joy when blind eyes see…
You bled, you died…you rose for me.
Weeping filled the icy expanse, her words whispered out, now fully aware of what she’d done.
“I know my weakness has come to nothing… You’ll find me, Damon, I know you will… And under those hazel eyes, under that bloody avalanche of love… I don’t stand a chance. I can’t protect you from my failure… I love you. I love you…and I fail you every time…”
Tears streaming, she repeated the thorns pricking her heart.
“You bled… You died… You rose for me. I’m sorry… I’m sorry.”
The only thing I can do…is live in a way that makes you proud…until you abandon me for my betrayal.
Trembling eyes closing, Sophia sucked in a shuddering breath and pushed herself forward.
Until I have to confess my sins to you… I killed our child without even letting you know you were a father. But maybe I can do one good thing… I can save this child.
Unhinging her monstrous maw, she carefully drew the frozen halfling into her storage.
I’ll save you, Lily… I have to save you. I’ll make it right, child. I’ll make it right… I have to make it right.
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Next PoV: Merana (Our Wyvern Unity Tamer Snow Elf!)
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