Harid Reyllin felt his hand being grabbed and pulled forward and when he followed the direction his limb was going with his eyes, he ended up staring at blue shorts that were tightly wrapped around the bottom of a girl walking in front of him. The shorts looked like jeans that had been cut short and altered in a way to look worn out and whoever had made the customization made sure there was the least amount of material possible left from the original. The more conservative women would certainly call the custom made product panties.

  The contents of the shorts shifted profoundly when the person wearing them made a step and Harid gulped, frantically pulling with all his might to prevent his hand from reaching where the Newton's laws of motion dictated. Finally, the evil hand that had caused all of it had slipped off his own and he stumbled backwards, immediately turning to his right where his friend was suppressing laughter.

"You are an idiot!" Harid Reyllin stepped closer to the perpetrator of the commotion and hissed into his ear, not forgetting to jab his friend in his ribs, making him bend over. Right after, his attention shifted to a nest of jet black hair that had been tied into a bun and a ponytail at the same time, however ridiculous it might sound. Some people simply did not need any meticulousness to be pretty and the person Harid prayed had not noticed their stunt was one of them.

"Coward." His long-handed friend whispered back after a few seconds, ignoring the pain in his side.

  The girl turned around her head and glanced at Harid, aware of some sort of a commotion that had happened behind her. Right away, he saw that she was mixed blood, a beauty with an Asian flavor not so common in this part of the city. She had black eyes and when their gaze met she just paused for a second and turned back, clearly used to some level of attention and uninterested in someone like Harid, who was not exactly a prince charming with his unkempt brown hair and not so bright expression plastered on his face.

"You missed your chance bro, but ain't gonna lie, she is way above your league." His air-headed friend said to him in a way the girl definitely had to hear. "But, hey, given that pajamas, you might have a chance."

  His schoolmate laughed to the point his long black hair was shaking, referring to the black t-shirt she was wearing that was obviously one size too large for her. She had to be quite an easygoing person to wear it in public.

"Shut your mouth Khaslan, she can hear you!" Harid whispered angrily as the sliver of hope that his primal male part had during their encounter had crumbled into dust.

  Meanwhile, the stream of people they were a part of reached the elevated platform where all kinds of passengers waited for the next train. Harid and Khaslan were attending a local high school that was just one station away and often bumped into each other on the way, which was a small miracle given all the people around them.

This day was not any different.

  By coincidence, they waited for their train while behind the same half-Asian girl and Harid's eyes could not but wander to the place where his hand had almost ended up a moment ago. He felt blood rushing not only into his face and a finger touched his hand. Instantly, he looked at Khaslan and told him with his eyes that he would kill him if he tried again and the good for nothing prankster backed down, not daring to go too far.

  He had probably guessed that she went to work, not to school like them and even he did not dare to try anything against someone older that was already out of school. Although a few seconds later, they had been shown that they were not the only ones capable of doing pranks.

  Purely by accident, the girl positioned herself to be exactly in front of them with her back almost touching Harid and bent to tie her shoelace. Both of them watched the spectacle that happened right in front of their eyes and Harid gulped, for some reason, the shorts were right in front of him at that moment. It did not help that their edge lowered and he expected that any second, he would be able to see the girl's panties.

A second later, he realized that his angle was very good given his position and he really should be able to see her panties, but he did not.

Another second ticked and he understood that the only logical explanation was that she wore nothing under the shorts. Suddenly, he felt even hotter and the moment until she would finally finish tying her shoelaces became an eternity.

  He heard the distant sound of a coming train and expected the girl to finally straighten her body up again, when he realized that her shoes had no shoelaces to begin with and it should had been a matter of two seconds to fasten them. His brain had no chance to process the situation further, because then she appeared to lose her balance and when she stumbled in his direction, the tight jean-panties that according to his opinion had been pulled down by a third by this moment had pressed against his proud soldier.

  Instinctively, he grabbed her hips to stop her fall and sealed what would have already looked like an awkward position, turning it into something utterly inappropriate. He would never have expected that an accident like this happened to a little insignificant grey rat of his caliber.

  However, it was not supposed to end as a simple morning incident, because Khaslan seemed to have reached his limit and was unable to just observe. He sneakily pushed Harid to the side to get in touch with the mesmerizing bottom as well, not in doubt about who would be the one receiving the girl's wrath afterwards. By doing so, he made Harid lose his balance too and in an attempt to prevent his fall, he grabbed Khaslan with his right hand and his left slid down from the hip he had been holding in the direction of a thigh. It ended up hooked where he had intended the least and all three of them crumbled to the ground like drunkards, overturning a nearby garbage bin in the process.

  Harid's head spun, his face red with shame. Most of the times, he was hesitant to talk even to pretty girls in his class, doing something like this to a girl like the half-Asian beauty would never even cross his mind. Especially with his left hand's final touchdown.

"I am so sorry, it was an accident!" He blurted out when he regained his faculties and began putting away the pieces of garbage that had been stuck to the girl's shirt. Midway his busy work, he was startled when no one seemed to pay attention to them.

That was unexpected, he would have certainly paid attention if he witnessed a similar situation.

  When he looked at the ground in front of him, he saw that some tiles their three entangled bodies were touching were glowing with faint blue light creating an unusual pattern that looked symmetrical and almost like a letter of some foreign language. When he looked further, there was a large circle of light on the floor around the letter. Up to that point everything looked as before except for the eerie glow, but beyond the circle there was no one as if all the remaining people outside of the bright circle had simply vanished.

"What the. .. " He stopped his garbage collection work and propped himself with one hand and looked around, but it was not only the lack of people outside of the large glowing circle that startled him. There was a creepy feeling like a bug crawling up his spine when he looked at the distant mouth of the tunnel where a train should have been passing just about that moment.

  Yet, there was nothing. No people, no train and everything looked dusty, oddly unused. When he focused on details, on the bars that prevented people from entering the area without paying for the subway, he found out that there were none. Worse, they seemed to never had been there.

  He quickly looked at Khaslan who kept staring at something with fear in his eyes and he quickly followed his gaze that was glued to the area of the rail which was lower than the passenger platform.

"Is this not a subway?" Harid uttered in shock while gazing at a wreck of a train, but even despite its dilapidated state, it was clear that it was not even remotely similar to the train they had been used to. Everything about it looked different, even the rail that had only a single metal rod to guide the train in its center instead of two.

"No, this is just not our subway." Khaslan corrected him in a dream-like voice and watched Harid's face being slapped hard by someone who finally managed to stand up and seemed to be too angry to pay more attention to her surroundings.

Yet, after just a single slap, the furious girl's hand had been caught by a man around his forty like a twig. He wore a suit and looked like the type that was always in rush to be somewhere.

"Silence, there is no time for games. Who has a light?" The man took initiative and only at this point Harid noticed that as the mysterious symbol and the circle kept fading away, there was nothing to replace the light they provided. The strangely altered subway station they found themselves in was slowly descending into darkness and with every vanishing ray of light he could feel the panic of the group of people rising.

"I have!" Someone who looked like a mechanic going to work frantically opened his bag and pulled out a flashlight. He immediately switched it on and its cone of light began wandering along the walls of the alien environment. What was peculiar about it was that its layout and proportions were the same as before, but that was where the similarities ended. The technology the place was equipped with was strange and everything seemed like it had been abandoned a long time ago.

"There is no signal! This is not funny, show yourselves!" A woman with more make-up than face shouted in annoyance, thinking that a camera crew would pop up from the nearest corner, telling them that they would be part of a television show.

Before more people managed to vent their opinions and fears, they heard rhythmic metallic sounds that seemed to be moving quickly in their direction.

"I will sue you! Stop this at once!" The woman shouted, anger and fear mixed in her voice.

  At that moment, the cone of light coming from the flashlight found the cause of the sound that moved fast and those with quick wit had already realized that those were in fact heavy footsteps of someone running towards them. Harid looked in the direction of the sound that stopped a dozen meters away from him and saw a shining figure that appeared to be blinded by the light for a moment.

It measured a bit over two meters, it was the figure of a huge man in a golden armor, his bright blond hair flowing across its thick plates.

"Great, so it is a show, but I will still sue you!" The lady put her arms against her hips, speaking harshly to the person that had so suddenly appeared.

"Ugly, so ugly!" The armored man growled, his deep voice was full of malice and through his golden helm a pair of blue eyes shone with their own light. His hand that was outside of the cone of light moved with extraordinary speed in the direction of the self-important woman and Harid's eyes widened when he realized that the hand wielded a giant sword that a split second later bisected the woman in half, her blood splattering all over the place.

  Faced with such a level of cruelty in an unknown situation, no modern human was ready for a similar encounter and a single emotion gripped the hearts of everyone, stronger than anything else.

Fear.

Not the kind of fear a person would feel when spending the last penny, the kind that overrides everything else.

  The emotion magnified when they saw the blood that had stained the beautiful golden armor vanish slowly, as if drunk by its sturdy plates. The unnaturally beautiful knight began to move in his richly ornamented armor again and his each movement drew even more blood, painting in its color the dark space around them.

  Some people started to scream, but strangely most were silently running away, aware that behind them the huge man kept sewing death with every movement of his deadly, colossal blade. Deep in their bones they knew that no amount of screaming would help them and they strained their muscles to their maximum, doing everything they could to distance themselves from the massacre.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  The one with the greatest advantage was the mechanic that could use the flashlight to see where he was running. He headed in the direction where the original station had its exit, but his boon soon proved to be his bane as the figure in the golden armor chose him as his next target when there were no more targets to slaughter in its vicinity.

  Harid thought the situation insane and wanted to wake up and actually go to school. He surely overslept and this was just him sleeping and dreaming a dream influenced by his bad conscience of not going to school!

  Sadly, not only Harid did not wake up, but he could hear more of the original sound. There were another footsteps of the heavy metal boots clashing against the floor coming from the direction of the exit.

There was more of them!

  In panic, he grabbed his friend and the girl that had been slapping him just a few seconds ago and pulled them off the passenger platform into the pit that housed the railway along with the remains of the absurd futuristic train.

"Let . . " The girl wanted to struggle when they stood up with sure feet on the rail, but he growled into her ear aggressively.

"No sounds, there is more of them. We have to quickly enter the tunnel." Harid surprised himself by his action, but his basic instincts were overpowering any logic that might try to wrestle back the control over his body. He only knew that at this moment they had to run away from a predator, nothing else was important.

  Urged by more sounds of blades meeting bones and flesh accompanied by screams of terror and pain, the three of them dashed into the dark tunnel, not paying attention to the pain in their feet as they kept hitting stones and the railway in the dark corridor that had not seen a working train for uncountable years.

The sounds of bloodshed behind them kept fading, but their feet did not stop moving and they dreaded to hear the terrible sound of metallic footsteps again.

* * * *

  Harid's feet hit the metal of the wide rail he ran on top of, it was the only way to avoid most of the stones he could not see, not ruining his toes even further. He had never been an extraordinary athlete and his lungs had started to burn with pain some time ago. However, he did not dare to pause to catch his breath and continued to run along with the two people in front of him.

  His friend was in a similar condition to him, but the half-Asian girl seemed to be doing better, her breathing measured and controlled. She had to run in her free time, something Harid envied her when yet another pang of pain assaulted his lungs. He knew that the two of them would not be able to continue on for too long and tried to motivate himself to last longer.

  Even the spectacular view directly in front of him was not able to do anything to him anymore, all he could see in front of his eyes was the golden knight detaching the limbs of the fellow passengers.

Who were the knights? Where were they?

He had always dreamed to be transported into another world and become a glorious hero, but this was not how he had envisioned it.

  His feet were slowly turning into lead and his lungs began to produce a strange sound. Were his lungs about to fail? He had always been more into games than sports and did not know what might happen when he pushed himself too hard. With unease, he observed the uncomfortable changes in his lungs, their unpleasant metallic sound.

Metallic sound of a frequency that did not quite match his breathing.

Harid's eyes bulged and he looked back. Naturally, he saw nothing but darkness, but he was sure that his lungs were not what was producing the sound.

"They are chasing us!" The girl said in a desperate voice and Harid realized that her condition was not much better than theirs.

  A moment later, all of them could clearly hear the sound that propagated along the walls of the tunnel, bouncing off them and making it impossible to guess the distance of the source. Despite that, It was obvious that the source was getting near fast and it would not take long for the dreadful knight to reach them.

"Stop, it will butcher us from behind. We have to fight!" Khaslan suddenly said and stopped, almost making all the rest of them bump into him and fall. Harid wanted to protest but was too busy filling his lungs with air while holding his knees.

"Haven't you seen how they move? We have no chance!" The half-Asian girl protested in his stead while catching her breath as well.

"We can do it, there is three of us." Khaslan took out a small knife and Harid suppressed an outburst of a bitter laughter. It seemed like his friend's brain had all but evaporated during the long run. However, when he looked how Khaslan stood with all his weight placed on his right foot with his expression that of pain, the situation was more clear to him.

He had to hurt his ankle somewhere along the way due to all the stones on the ground and was unable to run anymore. That was probably the real reason for his courage.

  The girl had to notice it too, because she resumed running without a single word before the argument shrunk their lead even further and Khaslan's eyes shifted to Harid who was torn between the two options.

However, a metallic footstep sounded more clear than ever before and crushed Harid's reluctance in an instant.

In shame, he quickly followed the girl, leaving his friend standing there speechless.

"Harid, what are you doing?! Together we are stronger, we have to make a stand! You coward! Burn in hell, traitor! Despicable scum!" Khaslan's emotions took him over and Harid listened to the insults that kept pouring his way, yet he did not waste a single breath to answer.

He was afraid to waste even a single molecule of air, the air that kept the terror made of gold at bay.

  In his mind, he apologized for being a coward and followed behind the cut jeans in front of him. He had to persist until they reached another station, there they would be able to split and one of them might survive.

  It took only about eight seconds and the curses shouted from behind were suddenly replaced by silence and the both of them knew what it meant. Harid noticed that she sped up even more and he wanted to groan in pain. He had been barely able to keep up with her original speed.

  Fatigue weighted down on him, causing him to space out for a moment and when he regained focus, he realized that the dreaded footsteps were directly behind him. He glanced back in panic and could already see a looming armored figure whose armor had lost all its luster in the darkness of the tunnel.

"I can see the station." He heard from the other side a female voice that was short of breath, but what would have filled him with hope before left him cold as ice at this point. It was clear that the knight would reach them a moment sooner and then a heavy sharp blade would descend onto his back, ending his short life.

  Yes, his time among the living had been too short, he wanted to do so much more! Where was his marriage, kinds, grandchildren? No, where were all the crazy drinking parties he had never really enjoyed, or just new movies and B-rated games he would never see? There would be no new mobile phone models he did not give a damn about anyway or a work he was sure he would hate based on all the long faces of the working people he met on the streets when he went from school. Where was his true love? His new dog? His eighteenth birthday? His new macho car?

  Harid began hyperventilating, starting to lose control over his breath. He thought that he had prepared for the moment, but when death finally reached him, he was more afraid than ever. He did not want to die. He did not want to feel his body parts detach and plop on the ground into a pool of his own blood. He did not want it. It was the only thought that permeated his mind, a mantra chanted by his every brain cell.

  Suddenly, his hand reached out decisively like of its own and did what it shied away from some time ago. He gripped the material of the shorts firmly, the back of his hand brushing against the bare skin of the half-Asian girl. What would have caused all kinds of reactions an hour ago left him cold, as if all his emotions had been switched off. The next second he pulled hard and sent the girl tumbling down while he continued to run ahead of her, not wasting a single second to observe the outcome of his action.

No, he wasted a single second when the girl was moving past him in shock, her body out of balance due to his action. Her pupils met his and he could see the lament contained within, a wordless shout speaking of his sin. It was like a burning hot iron pressed against his very soul and the one second felt like a minute.

He sped up and let the pain in his lungs burn the guilt away, but deep inside he knew that it would never truly vanish.

  Shutting his senses off, he focused all his being on running and after a moment, he had finally reached the station and climbed up the passenger platform, he tried to calm down his breath while slowly moving forth. He did not know if the station was infested with the knights as well, but he was no longer in the position to be careful.

"Just think!" He did not know where he was, but he knew that for some reason the subway was extremely similar to the one he knew since childhood. He searched his mind for a place where he could hide, because he expected that it was more dangerous outside the dark tunnels of the subway. He would die anyway in case the horrific knights were able to see in the dark.

He hoped they could not.

  He gulped and realized that he would be able to answer that question very soon, because two simultaneous heavy thuds announced that the golden knight chasing them had just jumped onto the platform.

"She was able to buy me only a short while?" Harid thought with disappointment and immediately hated himself for it, he had never thought of himself as vile, but maybe he should start.

  The bad news was that the knight was actually able to jump up there in all his armor in one fluid motion, that sole fact spoke volumes about his physical condition.The good news was that the knight had not immediately rushed to bisect him which meant that both of them could not see in the darkness of the station. The inky blackness that was not mitigated neither by the shining letter on the ground, nor the flashlight of the deceased mechanic.

  Harid froze in place, he knew that the moment he moved and made a sound, he would be dead. He held his breath and tried to remember again the layout of this station. As always, the reality had a sense for black humor, as this was the station where they would have exited the train, the station he passed through every day on his way to school. He knew it very well and searched in his memory for anything that might be able to save his life.

And when his face turned red from his effort to hold back his breath and eliminate all the sound he produced, he finally found it.

He bolted in the direction of a service tunnel that should be too small to let his pursuer pass through.

  With his first step, he could hear a movement that followed right after his, the source of the scraping not far away in the pitch blackness of the unlit subway station, the knight that was obviously not tired at all after the pursuit and rushed in the direction of the sound Harid's feet made. The student paused for a split second and continued to dash forward, hoping that he guessed the layout of the station and their positions right.

  The knight had waited at the edge of the platform and Harid was further away, halfway to the stairs. Running perpendicular to the railway for a moment, Harid quickly slipped through the gap between the second row of the pillars that supported the ceiling and heard a loud crash that was a music to his ears. He had run in a way to put one of the pillars in between the knight and himself and thanks to his good memory and the knight's inability to see in the dark, he made him slam into a pillar with a force that made the whole station vibrate.

  Knowing that the collision would not stop the pursuer for long, his outstretched hands met the cold concrete of the wall and began to search frantically for something. In his memories, there was a steel door that the lazy staff of the station kept only wired to the wall without a proper lock. He hope that they had been lazy even in this reality.

"Where, where?!" His hands shook while looking for the door's steel surface until finally, he grabbed their edge and quickly reached for the wire that luckily really was there. Harid tried to untangle the piece of metal, but realized something horrifying.

"It is welded! Why?!" Blood was pouring from his nails as he kept injuring himself during his desperate attempts to undo the wire, but his efforts were futile. It held fast and strong like a mujahideen's faith. He kicked angrily into the door and looked behind him to see how much time he had left.

  Even though it was very dark, he was able to see a peculiar glint of something metallic that seemed to be nearing his head. Without thinking, he dodged to the side and a large object passed through the spot he had just stood on, mangling a part of the steel door with the sound of a tortured metal. The only reason he was able to dodge was most likely because the knight could not see well and his movements showed a hint of caution.

  Were the knights not the alpha predators here? Harid did not know and had no time to think about it, because he realized that the wire that held the door closed had been torn apart. The knight paused for a second to understand whether he had hit the target or needed to strike again and Harid used that time to make the quickest door opening he had ever made, he opened the door violently and launched himself inside while pursued by the steel sword of his opponent.

  He slammed into a wall that was behind the door and the sword almost tore his shirt open, only inches short of reaching him through the door. Harid ignored the pain and threw himself to the side, not sure if the knight was going to throw some weapon at him. Standing up again, he backpedaled while watching the golden knight angrily attacking the door. The door could never stop him, but the tunnel itself was too small for his large frame and in the end, he had to give up his prey and walked away, leaving Harid alone.

"I, I have escaped." He whispered, unable to believe he had really done it. With the relieve he felt, all the pain and exhaustion hit him in full as the adrenaline slowly discontinued its work.

For the moment, he was safe and alive.

  Weary, he sat down and pressed his back against the wall of the service tunnel. He needed to rest after the mad escape, he did not know how far they went, but he had never run for so long with such speed and was totally exhausted. He closed his eyelids to rest, yet he still saw.

The black eyes, he could not unsee those eyes. They burned into him and from the depth within them a single question was being asked again and again. Why?

He wanted to sleep to regain some energy, but could not as a shrill Khaslan's voice kept waking him from his sleep calling him despicable.

  He placed his palms against his eyelids like he wanted to squeeze out what lay beneath just to make the staring eyes disappear and suppressed a scream when he failed to accomplish it.

"There was no other option! I had no choice!" He complained to the darkness of the narrow tunnel, but it did not make the eyes look away. He had a feeling that they never would.

  He had been transported somewhere, but instead of receiving powers and starting a beautiful adventure with some friends, he had received nothing and his companions were dead. It was unfair!

An embodiment of his last spark of hope, he uttered words into the darkness.

"Status, attributes, stats, system, goddess, skills, perks, cheats. . . " He went on and on yet nothing happened. He was alone and there seemed to be no glorious system to save him, he had just his own sore body sitting against a wall in a terrifying clone of reality that he did not understand.

Maybe he should have stayed with Khaslan, if nothing else he would have died with dignity that way.