POV: Windy

I squeezed the grip of my simple, black bow tightly enough to turn parts of my hand white and looked for an opening. My heart felt like it could burst at any moment, just like that day during the national archery competition. It felt like I would die if I lost that day. However, even though I lost, I didn't die.

Now it was different, though. That guy had killed Faris already, and he wouldn't hesitate to do the same to any of us.

'Should I just shoot? Who cares if it hits someone else? I'll just shoot again and again until it hits,' I thought.

My trained hands were shaking. This bow was much more rigid than the ones I was used to, and I had been pulling the string back for a while now.

I considered just shutting my eyes and letting the shining golden arrow fly wherever into the crowd of people swinging their weapons around in a frenzy. Maybe the arrow would manage to make it through all the obstacles and hit that guy anyway. After all, it was much sharper than I had thought possible for an arrow head.

'Just... let go,' I thought, my face crumpled into an ugly expression.

I needed to put myself first. I had to fire now, or I would die. But I just couldn't let go. Ten more had already been killed by that man, but it was too crowded, he moved too fast, and he was too acutely aware of his surroundings for me to be able to hit him.

I finally lowered my bow, my arms unable to keep the string pulled back any longer.

The feeling of uselessness in my heart had always been there, but never before had it been as strong as now that I was forced to watch as my comrades were picked apart by that man. The man I had thoroughly ignored and underestimated, only for him to reveal himself to be a murderous psychopath with monstrous strength.

It was just my luck. To be put into a group with such a person.

My heart jumped, and I drew my bow in a split second. Someone had managed to slice Akir's back.

Akir grunted as he jumped forward, away from his attacker. There was another attacker waiting for him immediately, however, and he was forced to duck as a wild swing came flying at his torso.

He stayed down for a little longer, though, and kicked the shin of the one who had swung at him wildly. The shin kick seemed to be thrown at full force, as it was powerful enough to knock the man's feet from under him.

The man fell straight forward on top of Akir which seemed like a good thing. However, just as I was about to let my arrow fly, Akir's previous attacker tried stabbing Akir, but hit the man instead, making him fall to the ground and block my view of Akir.

At that moment, I was reminded of the fact that Akir was still alive only because our group's coordination was awful at best.

The man who tried stabbing Akir went pale as he realized that he had killed a comrade instead of an enemy, and before he could recover, Akir launched at him and stabbed his chest area.

It was then that another man ran at Akir with a blade in his hand. Akir had already recovered for the most part, though, with the only mark of vincibility left on his figure being the shallow wound on his back that had sand sticking to it.

Akir waited for the man that was rushing at him to make his move with his eyes fixed on the man's shoulders, and once the man swung his weapon, Akir leaned back slightly, letting the swing pass right before his eyes. Akir then simply swung at the man's wrists, separating them from the man's arms, before shifting his focus to others.

He was aware that he didn't need to finish every single person in one move. He just needed to throw swift strikes while focusing on defense to reduce the number of people he needed to deal with at once.

At the moment, there were 16 people alive, and three were engaging him. Others were either too afraid or too injured.

The three attacked, and Akir dealt with them without giving me a single opening. I wasn't sure if he knew that I was here or not, since he never seemed to focus his sight on me, but he sure wasn't prone to leaving any openings.

I put my bow down and drew it again on multiple occasions as I watched our numbers gradually dwindle, helpless to do anything about it. With each draw of my bow, my hands shook more and more.

Eventually, there came a moment when Akir's back was turned and he had both hands full. I couldn't see what he was doing, but I didn't care.

I breathed out and let go. The arrow pierced the air, producing a high-pitched whistling sound as it neared Akir's back.

Then he ducked quickly, letting the arrow go over his head. Somehow, he knew to avoid the arrow at the exact right moment.

'How could he know?' I thought in panic as he turned around. 'Was he aware of me, the aware of me this whole time?'

Mine and Akir's eyes met as a limp body fell behind him, and it was just then that I noticed it. Everybody was dead. Of course, he knew that I was here. After all, I was the last one alive.

Akir's cold, gray eyes that seemed almost thoughtless—like those of a slave—peered into mine, which probably had a glint at the bottom by now. My lower lip quivered as I quickly summoned another golden arrow and drew my bow as far as I could with a wild movement of my arms.

Without any hesitation, I let go with the full intention to kill. Akir had no right to live. If he could even be called a human anymore, he was certainly the worst human ever.

Akir's eyes jumped slightly before he lowered himself ridiculously close to the ground while staying in an athletic position from where he could launch up at a moment's notice. The arrow missed him by more than a meter, but I had been prepared for such an outcome and summoned another arrow directly after.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

The distance between us was more than enough for me to get one or two more shots off before he closed in on me. A slight smile grew on my lips as such a reassuring thought occurred to me. If I made it out of this place, I would surely be good enough at archery to win the Olympics, and then my mother would...

Akir jumped up to his feet and took a couple running steps as my fingers, which held the golden arrow between them, made their way to the string of my bow. I grasped it and gritted my teeth, ready to exert all my leftover energy to draw. That was when Akir flung his body into a peculiar series of movements, stretching his arm, which held his dagger, out behind him before bringing it up with ferocious speed. Sand flew all over as his rapid foot movements disturbed its presence, and Akir let out a loud grunt.

Suddenly, there was a stinging sensation all over my body, akin to the sensation after beginning to move a body part that had fallen asleep. After that, I felt nothing. The strength that I had planned to use in order to draw my bow was no longer there.

My eyes darted around in a panic. I had no idea why anything wasn't working anymore. Why couldn't I feel my arms? The arrow had fallen from my hands, but I couldn't think of summoning another.

Then I saw it. The dagger lodged in my chest. How exactly had it appeared there? Akir was still far away. I was supposed to be safe.

"Aah..." I fell backward onto my left side.

'Mother, my arms... they don't work. Can't we... continue... tomorrow?' I thought as my eyes blankly looked down at all the blood flooding from my chest, dyeing the boring gray sand beneath me.

***

POV: Akir

She died with her eyes open. They all did. Every single one. It was an expression of anger, terror and shock that tied them all together.

There was one exception, however.

Faris' eyes were different. They showed me regret. After all, he was dying a death that he could have avoided if he had just slit my throat while I slept. I was sure he had considered it, and he would surely have done so if only he had known the answer to that question.

The question that I answered with my actions.

'Yes, killing humans does make you stronger. Even more so than killing the monsters.'

Suddenly, my heavy breathing stopped, and I lost the power in my legs, falling face first onto the ground. In addition, I dropped my dagger, which I had retrieved just now. I had no time to think before there was already bloodied gray sand stuck to my face. I tried propping myself up with my hands and jumping up to my feet, but I only got halfway before slipping on the sand and plummeting back onto the ground, beginning to writhe in pain.

No, it wasn't necessarily pain that I was feeling. It was something more. In a sense, it could also have been described as pleasant.

Sand was flung all over the place as I rolled and writhed in the sand. Some of it got into my clothes, mouth, nostrils, ears, and eyes. I heard weird sounds that I didn't immediately understand to have come from my own mouth. At some point, I vomited.

I couldn't really think or question the situation, but the moment I saw my dagger, I knew everything I had to.

The large and simple golden runes had morphed into much smaller and more complicated runes that almost looked like some kind of ancient language.

The weird feeling in my body faded, and I regained control of myself. The improvements in strength I had experienced prior were just minor improvements compared to this one. This was what the voice talked about. This was my first real evolution.

I wiped some sand out of my watery eyes before sitting up on my knees and picking up my dagger with my mouth slightly open in suspense before proceeding to inspect it.

There was now a symbol on the bottom of the golden pommel. A circle of black and white matter moving inside like paint that was alive. Out of the two colors, black was the more dominant one.

I let out a chuckle and shook my head, before pumping my free hand into a fist a couple of times. The feeling was completely different from before. It was like my body had been completely remade into something superior.

Then my eyes and focus drifted away as my facial muscles all relaxed and my heart sank inexplicably. All I could see were corpses.

I gritted my teeth and separated my lips. Then my face twitched a few times randomly, the muscles in my cheeks pulling the ends of my lips. My eyes opened even wider as I took in the whole sight around me, turning my head to the left and right before returning it to the dagger in my hands. For a moment, I wished my sight hadn't gotten better during the evolution.

The white substance moved in circles. It was a futile movement that led nowhere.

'It's done. You have to move,' I thought, but no part of me was actually listening.

My hands started shaking as an idea occurred to me, and I raised my dagger. For a while, I was in a dream-like state. Then there was a cold, stinging sensation as blood dripped from my throat.

It was silent. So silent, I liked to imagine a cold wind blowing in this humid desert and causing a humming in my ears.

I dropped the dagger and grasped my knees, imagining my fingernails digging into my flesh. My lower lip began to bleed as my teeth dug into it. I lowered my chin for a time worth a few deep breaths before I raised my gaze, the golden line entering my sight.

I screamed out.