Sylvester continued to approach the heart with the katana in front of him. The illumination it provided had been more of a relief than he was willing to admit. The worst would begin when he managed to kill it, plunging this into its heart, and he didn't want to think too much about that either.

A shot of electricity.

Concentrated energy shot out of the heart, slipped through the metal shards as they expanded in rhythm with the heartbeat, and came for him. He tried to deflect it with the katana and it turned out not to be a good idea.

His katana was designed to, among other things, withstand the energy charge of one of the satellite barriers and shape it any way he wanted.

So it never crossed his mind that it wouldn't be enough for this, but he should have thought better of it. Sylvester flew off, his flight coming to an abrupt halt only when he hit a pillar of flesh, wet and red.

The impact knocked the air from his lungs.

Okay, so he could defend himself.

He gritted his teeth, he practically had to rip his body from the wall of flesh, the shock had hit him harder than he thought it would. And he had no experience points to spend on the Health stat. If he fucked up, he'd be finished.

Another energy shot to intercept him.

This one he managed to dodge...

At first, but after missing it moved into the air and came back like a boomerang to hit him in the back. Sylvester stifled a scream and fell to the ground, writhing like a fucking worm.

Shit. He hadn't expected that.

Electricity didn't work like that... But hearts didn't work like that either.

Sylvester clawed at the ground, taking a deep breath, and did his best to get up before the third shot came. And he did. That is, get to his feet, but it was too close. The electricity, crackling, was right on top of him. It would soon reach him.

He hadn't used it for so long it was almost as if he'd forgotten about it, but he activated the overclocking.

The color drained out of the world, as if it were nothing more than a painting that had had a bucket of water poured over it, revealing the blank canvas behind it.

All his senses were heightened.

And, like a panther, Sylvester lunged for the enemy. Dodging the third shot of electricity was child's play, as was slipping between the metal through the small gap that had remained since it didn't end up contracting. If he had been any slower, the metal would have closed in on him, perhaps even splitting him in half, but he didn't hesitate for a second.

At first it was his eyes that had failed him. He had been forced to wander in utter darkness, relying only on the sound of the great beast's heartbeat.

Now it was his ears that failed him, while the heart provided illumination.

He had realized it only now, as he prepared to give it what he hoped would be the coup de grace, but he couldn't hear the heartbeat even though he was so close already. Not anymore.

He could feel the blood sliding out of his ears. Being so close to such a catastrophe had ruptured his eardrums. His legs were shaking because of it too, he vaguely remembered something about the ears being related to the sense of balance, but it didn't matter. It didn't matter as long as he had enough strength to stab this beast through the heart with his sword. Then he could...

What?

Be satisfied, rest?

Nonsense. Nonsense. There were more enemies out there.

The battle had only just begun.

He felt himself scream, though he couldn't even hear his own scream, and he plunged the katana up to the handle into that beating heart.

The creature began to tremble, the light in the heart to flicker. Sylvester barely had time to escape before he was crushed between the mortally wounded heart and the constantly moving metal, even with the overclocking still on. He had learned the lesson of not getting carried away, one of several lessons he had had to learn more than once.

The metal stopped moving for a second before his heart completely shut down.

I've won, he thought, but the thought didn't fill him with elation or relieve him in the least. Hard to do, when it meant a return to this monster-infested darkness with no food but himself.... or each other. He supposed if they had survived here long enough to meet him they had to have eaten each other more than once.

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Shit that's even creepier, why did I have to think of that? Shit.

The ground became unbalanced. He was already pretty unbalanced as it was, so he was sure the sudden unbalance was because of the ground. It had suddenly turned into a wall and then the ceiling, as he tried to stick the sword there to at least delay the inevitable a bit. He couldn't and fell sliding down into the unfathomable darkness where the fish men awaited him, more like the last thing that had attacked him, which refused to die no matter how much he broke it, and god only knows what else.

He needed to recover and take flight again. Soon, before he was caught, before several devoured him and fought over his bones.

He did it, he did it, and now....

Now what?

How was he going to get out of here? Calm down. The really complicated part was finding the heart. But to get out, you just have to follow a straight line. As long as you're moving in any direction, you're always heading for an exit. So calm down.

It didn't work.

Simply telling someone to calm down or yourself never worked, but that didn't mean it wasn't true.

He used the [Die Hard Buster] one last time, firing it towards what he hoped was above (he was now a bit quite disoriented), to open a hole in the "ceiling".

Yes, it was the last time, he couldn't use it again by any means. He'd simply been fighting for too long and didn't have enough MP.

By the way, Sylvester was supposed to receive five experience points and level up if he completed the mission to kill the monster, but so far nothing. For a moment he panicked at the possibility that he might not have killed it after all, but then he considered that maybe the mission wouldn't really be complete until he escaped from here alive.

Inconvenient, but the reward wouldn't have helped him anyway.

MPs would only recover over time.

If he failed here, he would have all the time in the world and it still wouldn't matter.

Sylvester shot off towards the ceiling. It was as if he had no eyes (the glow from the energy shot had provided illumination, but very briefly) or ears, so the only thing concrete was the physical sensation of his own body. It was almost like daydreaming.

He went through several holes made by his skill.

He only knew, of course, because he didn't hit the ceiling. He had no other way of knowing. He would keep going until he could go no further..... Anyway, that summed up life itself.

For anyone, not just him and his peculiar war.

The moment when he could go no further came more quickly than he expected. The sensation he already considered familiar of black goo on his wings, and then the inevitable fall into darkness.

But it wasn't a problem for too long.

It wasn't because the wings were gone.

He had run out of MP. He could no longer do anything about it. He could no longer access any of his extensive repertoire of skills, not a single thing.... Except brace for impact. He gritted his teeth, raised his arms, trying to protect at least his head.

And then what?

Then nothing. Nothing.

Blind, deaf, alone in the darkness on the other side.

This was not how he wanted to die.

He had always imagined some noble sacrifice, if it had to happen, a proper punctuation mark for his decade-long battle. Something that would make sense of all he'd lost along the way, not just suddenly stop writing.

But it looked like that was what was to become of his life.

Blank spaces, a page torn out. Nothing else.

I don't have my powers, but I have many other skills, he thought. I can still do this.

Why shouldn't he be able to break through to the other side, to freedom, just with sheer determination and his katana?

He had to try.

He had to try while he was still alive, while it still meant something.

With renewed determination, he picked a random direction. After so many shakes, which, by the way, hadn't stopped, he had no hope of figuring out what was up, down, left and right. The last use of the energy shot had been useful, but it clearly hadn't gone as far as he would have liked since no light from outside had entered this corpse.

He tried to make his way with the katana, cutting through the flesh. Enduring the fluids that splattered his face and hair with a grimace.

An explosion of pain in one leg. Sylvester grimaced. Of course he hadn't dodged the attack, fuck, hell no, when he couldn't see or hear it coming. But... Fuck. He gritted his teeth harder and harder. It seemed like an unforgivable mistake.

What was this?

A tentacle.

One of those fish men, surely, had shot a tentacle at him, piercing his knee from behind. Shattering it.

With the tentacle stuck there, he wouldn't even be able to continue crawling forward. He swung the katana behind him, and somehow it didn't hit anything. At least that much he could feel, it was a sure thing, but how had it dodged from so close? How had it been faster than him?

But the tentacle being stuck in his leg also meant it couldn't get very far.

His injured leg had moved a little further to the left without his consent. That way he knew in which direction to attack to cut the tentacle off.

Stupidly he felt as if he had accomplished something important ( for example, to begin with, killing the enemy) until another creature came out of the shadows and dug its claws into his chest. Sylvester didn't scream only because he didn't have enough air in his lungs for that.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Was he really going to... Was he really going to fall here?

Was this really it? He didn't have another...?

He spat blood, the creature ripped at his chest again, with the other claw. But the important thing was that he now had an idea. In the darkness, he reached for the earpiece before it was ripped off along with the ear. And he activated it, putting it on the right channel. He wanted his message to reach the bases, not the teams of agents who were in Kaleidoscope. They could do nothing for him.

"Can you hear me? I am... Sylvester Sunderland. I need you to fire on my location..." The claws dug deep into the hand against his ear. "A barrier. Quickly. Quick... or I'm going to die here."

He could barely speak.

Every word was an effort, and for all the pain it took, it was like mustering the determination to stab oneself.

If the device had malfunctioned and the monsters who wanted to feast on his body were the only ears his message had reached, then he was well and truly screwed.

If, on the other hand, they had gotten the message, maybe he'd be screwed anyway.

He wasn't sure to what extent being inside the beast's corpse would protect him from the massive amount of energy that was about to fall on them. Nor if it would matter, seeing how easily he could die afterwards with the monsters tearing him apart.

But he had to try something.

Life was a war and he was a soldier.

The Defense of Kaleidoscope (6): END