Chapter 2 - I hate wardrobes

The road was half on fire, and fighting my way through bug creatures was exhausting. I ran out into the road just as a car almost hit me and careened into a wall. I looked down at Hobie and felt a stab of regret for the kid. I had just broken into his house and kidnaped him, but he needed to experience this to grow. This being fear. Yeah I had gone insane a long time ago.

I walked like I was strolling through a garden, idly watching as people tried their best to fight off the monsters in a desperate attempt to survive. I reached the wreckage where Siddharth was trying to rescue a couple, and glanced at him with pity. He was doing his best to break through the glass of the car door, but Siddharth as he was now couldn’t do much, he was simply too weak. “Hey!” I called out to him, and he turned to look at me. “I’ll help you out,” I offered, “Just take care of this guy for me.” I said hoisting up Hobie who was now almost in tears. Siddharth glanced back, clearly torn, but nodded grimly and with a muttered thank you, held Hobie for me. He probably assumed Hobie was someone I was taking care of, thankfully, and he didn’t ask any questions.

Moving to wreckage of the car I opened the system again with a flick of wrist and called out, “50 points to strength.” The air around sparkled with electricity as the muscles in my arm stretched and stiffened with the message [Congratulations! You have bought 5 points in strength!] My body was pathetically weak before the apocalypse, and the 5 points of strength wasn’t much but it was better than the hands of a computer engineer like Siddharth. Despite hundreds of lives, I still grudgingly respected him for trying so hard to be a good person, it was something I could never do.

I formed a fist and punched the glass of the car window twice before it cracked and shattered, showering glass onto the family inside. Sobbing their thank yous the clambered out from the car, but I just looked at them emptily. I couldn’t even feel happiness for saving this family when I had done it a hundred times before, left them to die a hundred times before. No, I thought to myself, self-loathing was a terrible rabbit hole that I wouldn’t go through again. Taking a deep breathe a returned their gratitude with a weak smile of my own and turned around to face Siddharth.

He was still holding Hobie in one limp hand, staring at the wreckage of the car. “Thank you for your help and forgive me if I’m being rude, but you got stronger,” he murmured, more to himself than to me. “How?” He asked looking directly at me. I opened my mouth to answer, but Hobie wrestled his way out of Siddharth’s grip with a yell and ran backwards. I leaped towards him and grabbed the edge of his jacket just as he tripped, pulling both of us to the ground. The boy was running straight towards one of the bug monsters, and the thing had locked onto us.

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I didn’t bother raising the handgun, it was useless against a monster with tough hides, so instead I grabbed Hobie and stood there, panting as the creature started moving towards us. I felt Hobie petrify in my arms, and I dimly clocked the family I had saved fleeing away, but all my attention was fixed on the monster. I had no weapons to fight this thing, and now I cursed myself for not bringing the knife from my room to this fight. After a 1000 lives, how could I have been so stupid.

I stared at the mirror-like eyes of the monster, trying to intimidate it to back down, but I knew in its eyes, a delicious meal had just landed in front of it, and it conveniently had a tiny one for desert. We stared at each other in a stand off as it contemplated how to attack and I contemplated how to get out of this safely. It charged us with a sudden flight, just as Siddharth tried to run up and use his body to protect me like an idiot, but I anticipated the move and dragged him and Hobie to the right as the monster flew past us like a bull, crashing into the wreckage of the car behind us. It turned around and hissed to fly back, but we were already gone.

I panted, cursing my low stamina as Siddharth and a scared stiff Hobie followed me. “This way!” I called pointing to the motel gate, glancing back at the monster and swearing under my breathe. Great, it had called its buddies and all three of them were running after all three of us. I ran through the motel lobby trying to think why this regression was going so badly already. I ducked behind the large desk of the receptionist and watched Siddharth drag Hobie around, doing the same.

“Why does your son hate you?” He asked wheezed through his laboured breaths. “He’s not my father!” Hobie exclaimed. “I don’t…I think he—” Hobie tried to say, but the rest of his sentence was muffled by my hand around his mouth. “The insects are coming after us,” I said trying to change the subject. The morality of killing someone’s father would have to wait. I glanced at the clock, and sighed in relief. “Don’t worry, in about 30 seconds something strange will happen.” I laid my head against the mahogany of the desk.

The only way to get away from the monsters in the real world was to go through a dungeon gate. The formed sometimes all over the world, but I knew one formed in the lobby of the motel gate soon. Inside the gate was a whole other problem, but for now, they needed a somewhat safe place to camp out. “What are you talking about, those things are coming closer,” Siddharth hissed out, but I waved off his concern. The monsters were in lobby now, buzzing around tentatively in this new environment trying to find us. I tried to stay calm as Siddharth started praying, because the gate had to come right about now.

I glanced at the reception clack and frowned, where was this gate. Still stifling a panicking Hobie, I started doing some panicking of my own. The gate was definitely not here, and monsters definitely were, and were so dead. I stared around wildly until I saw the gate through a window, 50 feet outside the reception where it was supposed to be. I swallowed a swear and crawled around the desk cautiously.

Siddharth started to whisper something about running, but I shushed him and pointed to the gate. It was a swirling green vortex, with what looked like electricity crackling around its edges, lighting the shadow it cast on the surrounding landscape. The whole thing seemed to emanate darkness, warping the area around it. “We need to go there” I whispered to him. “And you need to stay quiet for all of us to live!” I hissed in a soft voice at Hobie. He grunted, trying to free my grip, but the 5 strength points were working wonders.

Siddharth looked at me like I was insane, but his eyes widened to the size of gold coins. “What?” I asked him impatiently, hoping I didn’t have to explain what a gate was to someone for the millionth time, but he pointed behind me and screamed “DUCK!” just as an insect the size of a wardrobe smashed into me.