The soldier threw himself headlong into the writhing crowd of crimson flesh, his arms pumping as he literally tore them to pieces. Giant ones, mountainous heaps of veined muscle that throbbed and pulsed as he gouged pieces out with his bare hands. Small horned creatures with nubs of horns and wide mouths. Lanky humanoids with inverted faces. None of it mattered - there wasn't a single one that could injure him at the moment, and they all fell before his destructive might.

Ducking underneath the clumsy claws of a fifteen-foot demon with long curving horns and jagged gray bones covering it, the soldier yanked a double-barreled shotgun from practically nowhere and unloaded both slugs into the thing's face before it knew what had happened. Tucking the firearm away and grabbing the demon by the horns, the soldier ripped them straight off its skull and began using them as impromptu knives, carving through the monsters with greater ferocity and efficacy.

It was a matter of minutes - minutes - before the crowd was gone, reduced to bloody scraps and unmoving hills of blood and bone. The soldier stood among it all, splattered from head to toe in the toxic matter, chest heaving as he caught his breath. The horns he'd been using were cracked and broken, the majority of one missing entirely.

Dropping them into the calf-deep sea of blood, the soldier climbed up the hill and sat down, turning to face the only entrances into the stadium-sized cave that he knew of. Of course, the things could dig through rock, but they almost always took the path of least resistance.

He had been fighting the demons for... a long time. An incredibly long time. He was pretty sure it had been terrifying and brutal as he adjusted to the knowledge that he would be down here for what essentially amounted to the rest of his life. It had progressed from there to acceptance that he was going to eventually die here. After that, he had come to the realization that endlessly blasting and shredding demons was borderline therapeutic, and that he had never had so much fun on Earth as he did here.

He was well aware that it was probably his tired brain coping with the stress, but at some point, he had stopped feeling stressed about it. Instead of fear, he felt exhilaration. Instead of disgust at being covered in gore, he gloried in it. Instead of worry that the hordes would never end, he felt confident certainty that they feared him far more than he had ever feared them.

Rest was an uncommon variable for the soldier, but that didn't matter either. The Praetor suit that he had received - or had it been given? Or perhaps it had been issued... Regardless, it ensured that he didn't need rest at all, but it was a nice break from all the action.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Cracking his knuckles, he set to looting the corpses of the fallen. He had long since stopped questioning why the demons carried weapons, ammunition, and medpacks and didn't use any of them. He just picked up whatever he wanted and kept it for later.

A roar echoed down from one of the caves, and the soldier raised an eyebrow inside his black-tinted helmet. Apparently 'later' was going to be a lot sooner than he had expected.

Reaching down into the mountain of bodies, the soldier rummaged around for a moment and then removed a gigantic gun with a barrel that could probably fit a soda can inside. Raising it to his shoulder, he braced himself and slammed the stock against his shoulder. Inside the device, a deep thrum was audible. Hefting it one-handed, he pulled a small detonator from his side and stared at it, grinning. 

He had been working on this particular area of Hell for some time now, and there were explosives set at various points in the ground. A lot of explosives. Suffice to say, anything remotely near the area would go down in flames and rock, and the soldier would enjoy seeing that very much.

When the monster came towards him, he smiled widely behind his helmet. It was freakishly large, a seventy-foot mass of arms, eyes, and teeth basically rolling towards him. 

Aiming without too much care for whether or not it was accurate, the soldier hit the trigger, knowing full well the destructive power of the weapon in his hands.

Nothing happened.

With an almost disappointed sigh, the soldier pulled back the ammunition chamber of the gun, ignoring the monster crawling towards him, and grunted irritably. The power cell, which was supposed to be glowing green, was dim and lifeless. 

Well, so much for that. 

Tossing the gun aside, the soldier held the detonator aloft and pressed the trigger. 

Over eighteen detonations rumbled through the cave they were in, and the monster paused as a rumble crept through the cavern. The stones covering the ground dancing from the vibrations, the monster looked at the soldier, all of its eyes wide. 

The explosions erupted through the ground, tearing rock and flesh as it blew upwards in a cataclysmic eruption of flame, and the monster was summarily decimated from the sheer force of it all, showering the soldier in blood and gore.

Shaking himself mostly clean of it, the soldier dusted his hands off and turned around, freezing as he did.

The mountain of bodies he'd been standing on - over a hundred tons of meat, bones, and various discarded weapons - collapsed. Gaining speed as it rushed towards him, the wave of defeated enemies and oncoming death began to roil from the force.

The soldier shrugged. There were worse ways to-

CONGRATULATIONS! For proving that the hordes of Hell are not in fact endless and saving the world of humanity countless times, you have been selected to be the Hero of Teracot! You will be granted skills and abilities tailored to your preferences. Good luck!

And everything went... white?