Michael whispered towards the masked couple, "Don't move if you want to stay alive. I don't want to hurt either of you, but I need you to stay back."

Once their eyes adjusted to the bright light of the flashlight the husband began to panic.

"Where is your mask? What are you doing showing your bare your face in my house, you're going to get us all killed!"

"I said stay quiet, shut the hell up right now," Michael ordered, trying to quiet the man's yells.

The husband ignored the orders, turning towards his wife. "We need to get rid of him, what are we going to do when the inquisitors discover him? They'll think we smuggled it in! Gods we could be killed for this! "

The more panicked the man became, the more his mask began to shift and stretch. At some point the woman had slumped down to the floor, tears flowing down her face, streaming over the fleshy mask.

Michael’s attention was fully on the man in front of him. Things were escalating, he needed to either calm them down or leave, but leaving wasn’t really an option, he still needed information.

"Listen, I'm going to need you bot-"

Before Michael could finish the sentence, the man lunged at him.

Reflexively, Michael pulled the trigger of the shotgun, firing off the shell loaded with small rubber projectiles that impacted the man's chest hard and a loud crack echoed throughout the building despite the suppressor attached to the gun, no doubt alerting anyone that happened to be nearby.

The man collapsed to the floor unmoving, his chest bloody and bruised. Moments passed before his mask began to shift and contort, attempting to rip itself away from his face.

Michael quickly moved forward and fired two well placed shots into the man's face and the mask stopped moving.

He needed to get out of here. Somebody definitely heard those shots, and this guy had seemed more scared of whatever an inquisitor was than the stranger appearing in his home.

Michael ignored the crying woman and rushed through the door and out into a quiet dirt path. It was dark, but a gargantuan moon shimmering in the sky provided just enough light to see where he was going. Looking around farmland stretched out almost endlessly, with similar cottages speckled almost randomly throughout. The fields housed every crop imaginable, and several that he was almost positive didn’t exist back on earth. This place would've been beautiful if it didn't have such unsettling caretakers.

Michael reached into his bag, pulling out the gas mask and putting it on.

He wasn’t sure if it’d make a difference, but he’d feel better having something covering his face near those things and the mystery plants that surrounded him. With that, he began to jog down the dirt path.

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After roughly twenty minutes of jogging Michael began to feel the strain of his new body. He was gasping for air and a cramp in his side was making its presence known with every step. He’d been stuffing exotic looking fruits in his bag as he ran, probably not helping the whole stamina situation, but like hell was he going to give up the chance to discover new plants when they were just right there for the taking.

When he eventually came upon a field growing something similar to wheat Michael decided to stop and catch his breath. He moved and crouched down, hiding himself within the plants to better stay hidden, but his rest only lasted ten minutes before something spotted him.

Michael could make out a figure illuminated by the moonlight rushing towards him. It moved with an alarming amount of speed, getting close within mere moments. When the figure was no more than fifteen meters from him it stopped.

Shining the flashlight towards the man revealed a disturbing figure. He stood tall, roughly seven feet but looked human enough. Though in his left hand, dripping blood was the decapitated head of the woman from the cottage.

He also wore a mask, though his seemed to be more comparable to muscle than the rotting flesh of the couple. It covered his entire head and completely blocked out his eyes, only his nose was revealed. Flesh coiled and veins stretched out from the mask and into his nostrils, pulsing rhythmically like a heartbeat.

He sniffed the air deeply and turned towards Michael.

“Now how did an unblessed get so deep within my fields, hmm?” The inquisitor asked.

Michael decided to stall for time, any second waisted was one closer to him leaving this dimension. Of course the first world he visited would be one would be one of the dangerous ones.

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Still with his shotgun raised Michael calmly responded, “I’m just a man passing through, I don’t want any trouble but I’m willing to give you plenty if you refuse to settle this peacefully.”

The inquisitor scoffed, though it was muffled behind the mask.

“I simply want to know how these fools managed to smuggle in an unblessed.” He said, gesturing towards the woman's head. “I pride myself on keeping my quadrant clear of pests, and you’re going to sully my record. I can’t have that,” he said, tossing aside the woman's head.

Michael sighed, “Well you see-”

Without warning Michael unloaded three shots towards the inquisitor, impacting its chest with all three. It stumbled and let loose an inhuman shriek while dodging the fourth shot. Then it sprinted through the field faster than anything Michael could ever hope to shoot.

With quick fingers Michael reached into his bag and lit two flairs, tossing them to either side of him, trying to get better visibility.

The second the flairs touched the wheat an inferno quickly started to overtake the field. It was like someone had soaked the wheat in gasoline beforehand.

Michael turned and began to run to the edge of the clearing, away from the rapidly spreading flames, but with each step he felt the heat of the fire growing closer to his back.

When he finally reached the edge of the field he dove for cover, rolling along the ground before righting himself and quickly reloading his shotgun, before pointing it towards the field.

The creature was desperately trying to put out the fire, using its apparently enhanced strength to throw large amounts of dirt into the flames. Many of the cottage residents were also running towards the fire. Noticeable by lit lanterns in the dark as they attempted to stop the fire's spread.

A waste of time in his opinion, the fire was probably going to consume the wheat field and burn out soon enough. Dirt paths surrounded the field, making it unlikely to spread and at the rate it was burning they were unlikely to extinguish it.

With one last glance at the blazing inferno Michael ran away through the various fields of fauna and away from the monsters.

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Michael moved frantically, trying to think of a plan to kill the creature hunting him.

'It’s blind as far as I can tell and will probably track me through scent,' Michael thought, changing direction to avoid several more lanterns he saw burning in the night. 'It was also a lot faster and stronger than me. That'll be an issue if it catches up to me.'

Which was all but a guarantee if Michael's assumptions of the creature were correct. He was running through an apple orchard, or at least something similar to apples when he came across a small stream and an idea struck him.

Weighing his chances he shrugged, “This probably won’t work, but fuck it.”

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The inquisitor had long since given up on putting out the fire, content to let the larvae do the work. He could smell his quarry, the one that dared enter his territory, to tamper with what he’d worked so hard to obtain. That damned interloper had even burned a field of splik, nobody could know of this. This was not weakness, that damned creature had just got lucky.

Suddenly his head shot up, the scent trail he’d been following was coming to an end right behind that tree. Was he waiting for him? Perhaps trying to ambush him, how idiotic. He’d feast upon his flesh and bury this embarrassment alongside his corpse.

The creature’s mask contoured into something resembling a smile, before punching a hole straight through the tree.

However, he didn’t feel the sweet tearing of flesh he'd expected, nor the screams he craved so much to hear. He moved to pull his arm out of the tree, when pain erupted in the side of his head.

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Michael could see the monster stalking towards him. It moved confidently, foolishly. It was so certain of its strength that it was ignoring the prospect of this being a trap. Even after its crops had been burned it still thought that he wasn’t worth taking seriously.

Michael sat in a tree, shirtless, with his body smeared in mud. His shirt was stabbed into the neighboring tree the monster was currently stalking towards.

It crept up, pulled its arm back and punched straight through the wood in a shower of splinters. Like the tree was nothing but delicate paper and not a meter thick of wood.

Once it’s arm was fully lodged in the tree, Michael grinned.

'Try dodging now.'

With carefully lined shots Michael unloaded his shotgun into the creature, going only for shots aimed at the mask. All eight shots, the entire magazine, impacted the monster square in the side of its head as it finally ripped its arm out of the tree and collapsed to the ground, body twisting and then laying eerily still on the ground.

Michael jumped down from the tree and ran over to the creature. Its mask was squirming, trying to rip away from the most likely dead man. Rubber bullets or not, you don't survive something like that.

Michael gripped his shotgun like a bat and swung down at the mask, and with each hit it screeched.

At five swings it’s squirming slowed.

At nine swings it’s screaming stopped.

At fifteen swings a feeling of weightlessness overtook Michael's body as space itself shifted around him.

When the feeling passed, Michael looked around and could see he was in a meadow, a highway not too far from him. He still had his foot atop the creature, its head a bloody pulp of what it once was.

It was over. Michael breathed heavily in relief before walking a ways away from the corpse and collapsing in the soft grass of the meadow, panting hard from exertion.

He started up into the sky, clouds moving lazily above him without a care in the world. Everything had passed by normally while he'd been fighting for his life. Exploring a world no one had ever been to, finding plants and creatures nobody had ever seen. Struggling for himself and to untangle the unknown.

“I think I just killed a monster,” Michael said to himself. Almost blurting it out without thinking. It undercut the thoughts flowing through his mind, simplifying what had happened to him, but in that moment, he felt contentment at saying it out loud.

Then he smiled. He couldn't quite pinpoint the exact reason why, but as the rapid beating of his heart calmed, he felt the most fulfilled he'd probably ever felt in his life.