~A few streets away, in an underground complex of the Mara Syndicate, a magic-science group operating within the slums.~

A few candles barely lit the bunker room, making it hard to tell who or how many individuals were in there - but using candles meant one less mana signature to detect.

By the candle flame, two hooded men stood, not revealing their faces to the light as they began to talk.

“An alarm has tripped. Someone’s in one of the trap houses.” a man in a robe whispered.

“In this storm? Well good, more food for Mara. I’ll send some collectors.”

The robed man nodded back, handing a slip of paper to the other before disappearing into an adjoining passage.

It was a short meeting, but nothing more needed to be said.

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~On the surface~

Kai finally moved away from the doorway and crept to the broken table.

It was a little quieter inside, and he felt like his ears were adjusting to the white noise of the rain outside.

The collapsed table had two legs left, making it easy for Kai to plant his foot on one and stomp, snapping the table leg off.

“Finally, a weapon. If you could call it that.”

Kai looked back towards the entrance, wondering if he would need to fight off someone with his wooden bat.

Next, he poked his head into the room further into the house, checking to see if anyone was home.

“Just more shadows.” he nodded, glad the building was abandoned.

The second room was partly lit up by traces of light entering through another broken window. It had no furniture and no portraits on the walls; just some more partly-destroyed furniture.

The last place to check was the stone stairs going up towards the collapsed roof, but there was really no point in ascending, as the top story of the house was basically non-existent; no walls or roof. He would just be outside again.

“Well, here’s as good as ever.” Kai thought, placing his wooden bat down before removing his wet clothes.

First, he removed his gray coat along with his white shirt, draping them over the remaining part of the table. He decided to keep his pants on as he didn’t want to remove his shoes in a place like this.

Yet as he looked around, something was different about the room.

“Huh, the portraits are gone?” Kai thought.

“Perhaps they were just weird shadows? It’s weird that only this room had them though…”

Suddenly, Kai felt something sting his foot.

“Gah!~”

He jumped in fright, kicking his foot in the air.

For a split second his mind struggled to make sense of it - the portraits from the walls were on the ground around his feet?

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They were moving.

Obviously, those dark oval shadows were not harmless portraits at all.

From the fight, Kai accidentally jumped away from the wooden bat, and now had to suffer more stings to reach it.

“Ah fuck, shit,” he couldn’t help but swear as he pranced over the ‘portraits’, trying not to step near them.

Reaching the bat, he readied it as the shadowy blobs had followed him.

“Not today fuckers”

With both hands, he stabbed the bat down as if he were trying to stab the earth with a sword.

*splat!~*

A squelching sound.

A burst of guts.

“Easy to kill. One down… many more to go.” he thought.

So many oval shadows had appeared that he didn’t bother counting, he simply squished as many as he could.

*splat!*

*splat!*

Kai was on a squishing spree.

He had since realized they were a kind of bug, but it was hard to see exactly what was in the darkness; he only heard the crack of a chitin armor before the guts spilled out.

He guessed it was like a large cockroach, the size of a dinner plate, but as he squished his way through the horde, he felt something strange going on with his body.

Or at least, the lack of feeling.

“Hypothermia?” he panted, “no, it can’t be… my body is warm from all this splatting.”

His feet were going numb, but what made the situation dire was that the numbness was slowly spreading up his legs.

“Oh fuck, the bug stings… If this continues…” Kai grit his teeth.

He didn’t know if this paralysis poison would work on his whole body, and didn’t want to know what it would be like to get eaten by bugs.

Time was running out as he gripped his bat a little more tightly.

“Fuck. Kill or be killed. I need to finish them all before I can’t move.”

Kai bashed and splattered enemies as quickly as he could, adding more bug guts to the floor, an ever-growing pool of filth.

Yet he had to slow down.

His wooden bat began to splinter at one end, it wouldn’t last much longer - but the splintered jagged wood only made it more deadly.

*Bang, bang, bang!*

*Splat, splat, splat!*

More of the bugs ended up as paste, yet Kai’s legs were beginning to shake.

He was losing control.

“Fuck… not much longer…” he clenched his jaw.

Kai was going to kill more but he couldn’t see how many were left among the dead shells and guts- neither could he tell if there were more bugs stinging his feet at this very moment, and he could be getting a huge dose of venom without even realizing it. Such was the nature of paralysis.

He staggered over towards the one-legged table, sitting on the remains and perching himself up on it.

“Come on you little bastards… show yourselves.”

The entire floor was filled with blobs of darkness now - the remains of Kai’s work.

Unfortunately, it only served to camouflage the others, though as he moved away from the messy soup, the remaining enemies revealed themselves.

“Shit… more than I thought.” Kai watched more black blobs moving out of the mass of guts.

Immediately he got to work again, hoping to end them before he could no longer move.

*Smack! Smack! Smack!*

More fell to his trusty wooden bat, but as his legs harmlessly sat on the ground, they were stung some more.

How many more times was he stung? Kai wasn’t sure. He didn’t notice it as he couldn’t feel a damn thing.

“Grah! Little fuckers! Get away from my damn legs!”

Panic set in as his lower body began to tingle and more bugs appeared.

He went into a frenzy for a moment, smashing more of them, even hitting his own legs in the process - not that he felt it.

Unfortunately, there were many more bugs than the ones he saw on the walls when he first entered, but it seemed their little swarm was decreasing, the attacks getting less constant.

But if even one of them lived, and Kai became completely paralysed, it would be over as one would sting him into a coma, followed soon by death.

“Ah fuck…”

He lost feeling in his lower body, pissing himself as he could no longer hold his bladder.

“Not like this…”

His abs and lower back muscles were gone now too; the circulating blood and adrenaline helped the poison to spread, and he had to use his hand to prop himself up.

“Not much longer… Any more bugs? Please no more…”

Looking around the room, his fears came true.

Perched on the walls were more black blobs, all out of the range of Kai’s bat - all just waiting for him to succumb to the paralysis.

Another bug came towards him, testing him again.

Kai shook his head hopelessly, almost wondering if he should even bother killing it at this point. It seemed like his fate was sealed. Too much poison had entered his body.

“Little fucker… killed by bugs.” he shook his head.

“A truly pathetic way to go… I hope the next world has magic too, and isn’t such a conniving, diabolical cesspool.” he spat bitterly.

“Hopefully I don’t get born into a damn cult again…”