Screams echoed through the forest, spurring Thomel onwards in his flight of pure desperation and terror.

He ducked around a low-hanging branch and vaulted over a collapsed tree, but he knew no matter how fast he ran, it wouldn’t be enough.

“One more, one more, one more.” He panted out in between breaths of crisp, morning air.

A root concealed beneath a heap of leaves almost tripped him up, but he quickly grabbed onto a nearby sapling and righted himself, muscle memory keeping his escape continuous.

Stiff twigs poked at his face and rough thorns clawed at his clothes, however, he simply couldn’t afford to lose momentum, so he kept smashing through the cruel fauna as fast as he possibly could.

The fear in his hazelnut eyes had receded slightly, replaced by firm determination and pure survivalism.

He was practically flying through the woods, his feet were only touching the ground for the briefest of seconds before he leapt away.

He felt like he was on fire; he had never moved this fast in his life. It was like he had invested fifty points into agility

But he knew in his heart that he wasn’t going to be fast enough; he couldn’t outrun it. Others had tried and failed, their broken bodies littered the periphery of the forest.

But there was another choice available to him. He just had to make it a little bit further, just a few more steps.

He was moving too fast to easily divert his path, so, bracing himself, he crashed straight through a group of interlocked vines, earning himself a series of brutal, red welts in the process.

Worse still, he was losing momentum and becoming aware of just how agonisingly numb his legs were.

He was perspiring so much that if he took off his shirt and squeezed it, there would be more than enough clammy sweat to fill a bucket. After a hurried second to check over his swelling welts, he took a shaky step forward and started to jog.

Before he could turn the jog into a sprint, he felt something change, the forest was different somehow and after a concerned second trying to figure out why he realised the cause, the screaming had stopped.

Eneal had finally been granted the sweet mercy of death, and now that thing was going to be looking to give him the same treatment.

With renewed terror and an entirely new surge of drained adrenaline, he clumsily regained his former speed and began to charge through the dark forest.

Skirting around obstacles he could avoid and battering aside the ones he couldn’t, he finally arrived at the second and final trap.

A human thigh bone zipped past his head, slamming into a tree and embedding itself in the thick bark.

It silenced the greetings his remaining fellow hunters had just been about to give him and wiped clean everyone's curious smiles and worried frowns.

Everyone became blank-faced and stared up behind him in sheer horror, blood drained from their faces and bravery from their worn-down spirits.

Thomel was now acutely aware of the goosebumps on his patchy skin, and with a solemn gulp, he turned around.

It was an abomination to the natural order of the world, a stark reminder of the brutality that the System had unleashed upon reality.

It was a giant ball of chitin with countless fleshy tentacles anchoring itself onto the nearby giant trees.

It was a monster, a true one in every sense of the word.

He could almost laugh at how similar it looked to a meatball surrounded with spaghetti, if it wasn’t for the giant, vibrant, purple eye, which stared at him with savage hunger.

This eye was rooted in the middle of its mouth, like a mockery of a human tongue. It was so primordially wrong and disgusted him with how evolution had been forced into a compromise with this creature.

How did it eat? How did it evolve? Why was it here?

He could see its serrated teeth gleam in the faint light that seeped in through the foliage. A few strands of a dark red liquid caught the attention of the light and became momentarily visible to him.

Was that saliva dribbling onto the rich soil or the blood of his comrades?

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Glancing down at his bolt-action rifle, he felt abysmally small and weak, and a feeling of vulnerability he had never felt since his childhood settled over him.

It felt like he had been looking up at this monstrosity for years, but it had just taken him a few seconds.

With a bang, one of his former competitors fired a shot up at its eye. Thomel didn’t see if it was a success or not, but judging by the lack of cheers or inhuman screams, She had failed to wound it

Launching itself off the trees and over him, it smashed into the dark dirt like a fallen star, immediately lashing out to grab at her with its spine-coated appendages.

Right before his eyes, she was torn to shreds; her limbs got skewered on its tentacles and her organs were thrown everywhere like a burst party pinata.

Awoken from the possibly literal spell of horror, everyone began firing all at once, and a hail of bullets, many of them magically enchanted, smashed against the creature's exoskeleton.

Hurriedly, Thomel pointed his gun up at the monster and also started to open fire.

It was like he was a machine; he would aim, fire, then reload, all in a smoothed, synchronised manner.

But his and all his friends' efforts looked to be in vain. It just kept on sweeping up people and hurling them into its mouth, one by one.

All they were accomplishing was blasting apart the odd tentacle or two, any shots aimed at its eye just bounced off or shattered apart on its devastating teeth.

Thomel found himself entering a state of deeper clarity. He watched as a severed arm fell out of the beast's mouth, landing on top of a young hunter's red hair.

Thomel didn’t get the chance to figure out whether he was a natural redhead or if it was from the blood, as the creature knelt down and, in a flash, beheaded the youth.

A small explosion rippled out across its hideous chitin, and then a moment later the offending hunter was torn in half.

In less than a minute an entire two-thirds of their number was obliterated.

Mechanical survival instincts had taken hold of them, and now that fight evidently wasn’t working, flight took over.

Just like the trap Thomel had been a part of earlier, everyone began to disperse, fleeing away from the safety of the small clearing and into the tree line.

All they had done was guarantee their deaths; there was no third ambush set in place, this was it.

With what Thomel could have sworn was glee, the monster started to wrap its limbs around the nearby trees and begin its pursuit of the escapees.

A multitude of thoughts swirled around in his mind once it was out of sight.

He had been left alone, why?

Did it have something to do with movement?

If he just stayed still could he maybe survive?

Or had it forgotten about him temporarily?

Or maybe it was toying with him…

He didn’t have enough time to contemplate his choices, he had to make a decision now.

Stumbling over to what remained of his deceased comrades, he offered a quick prayer up to whichever gods they prayed to. Then, he began to cover himself in their blood and guts.

The creature was a very messy eater, so he had more than enough to fully cover himself with.

Plopping onto the ground next to the eviscerated corpse, he closed his eyes and just hoped that it would work.

He didn’t have enough mental energy left to do a prayer for himself. This was his final gamble.

He laid on that bloodied soil for what felt like an eternity. Listening listlessly to the screeches of pure agony, which seemingly echoed out without pause.

He had almost fallen asleep when he felt the ground vibrate.

He kept his eyes firmly closed, but he just knew it was looking at him. He didn’t have any time to react before it grabbed him.

Hosting him up, it stared at him with malicious glee, like a child about to rip the wings off an insect.

It swayed side to side, stumbling all over the place like a drunkard, though the only thing it was drunk off was primal bloodlust.

It was a sickening sensation; Thomel had to force the bile back down his throat. He would die with at least some dignity.

Unfortunately for him, the monster didn’t want to permit that. It cruelly started to contort and squeeze him.

Treating him like a stress relief ball, it venerated all of its otherworldly brutality onto him.

Using its spines, it flayed a large chunk of skin off his back and made him watch as it shredded it like paper.

It did that two more times before it grew bored and moved on to other avenues of entertainment.

It would dislocate his left shoulder and then fix it immediately afterwards, taking delight in the popping noises.

Thomel was spared from that fate when his shoulder simply broke. The bones had been mashed together so much and so fiercely that they just broke under the pressure.

He would scream in agony and horror but he was unable to do more than a shallow groan, he never got the time to take in a full breath before the pain made him exhale.

It tried a few more times to dislocate his shoulder, but once it realised that was no longer possible, it tore the entire limb off of him and hurled it into its gaping maw.

That was what made him black out, but only moments later he was brought back to the cruelty of reality when it began pulling his left leg counter-clockwise until only a thin ribbon of flesh was connecting it to his torso.

While this was all happening it also wormed its other tentacles into his chest and plucked stringy tendons and chunks of his innards out of him.

He couldn’t think; all his mind was occupied with was the overwhelming agony that encapsulated his whole body. He couldn’t even recall any past memories or beloved faces, his consciousness collapsed without even a single last thought.