Sibir nearly collapsed into a panic.
His mind struggled to reconcile what his eyes told him yet how could he deny it? He'd seen more monsters than animals in the last hour alone.
His thoughts lagged, fractured, and scattered.
One moment, the city was overrun, and his body fell to its death.
The next, something else surged toward him.
With No time to think and No time to reason.
Another pike whistled through the air.
Sibir scrambled across the dry earth, barely registering the scream of pain in his ankle.
His movement was frantic, desperate.
A fresh gash opened on his upper arm, shallow but bloody.
He didn't stop.
He couldn't.
His instincts seized control.
His feet chose a direction toward the lone tree just left of where he had fallen.
It wasn't planned.
It was survival.
The monster remained largely stationary, a grotesque silhouette with bulging limbs.
Its larger arms coiled and flung newly-formed pikes with force.
Accuracy was limited, but power was not.
Fortunately, Sibir's erratic movement bought him seconds.
Only three more projectiles struck the ground before he reached the tree.
It was thick, the trunk round enough to shield his body, its bark weathered and gnarled.
Branches drooped toward him like crooked fingers offering aid though Sibir, barely coherent, noticed none of it.
He collapsed behind the tree, chest heaving.
Panic crawled up his throat.
His limbs trembled.
The world around him felt wrong.
The air tasted strange.
He peeked cautiously around the tree, heart pounding.
The creature was still there.
Still spitting.
Still throwing.
Thankfully, the tree held.
Each impact reverberated through the wood like a warning drumbeat.
But it couldn't hold forever.
He crouched low, shirtless, his pants torn and stained.
His jaw throbbed with a hairline fracture.
His right arm dripped blood.
His ankle, twisted and angry, throbbed under pressure.
He was a wreck.
And yet, somehow still alive.
I'm going to die... The thought looped over and over.
His breathing quickened again, but he forced himself to slow it.
Forced clarity and Forced thought.
'Where am I?' He asked himself.
'This place… '
it didn't match anything he remembered.
He had fallen into what? A crevice? A fissure? And Somehow, he had landed here.
In this… savannah?
No, Not entirely.
The terrain was inconsistent.
There were clumps of wild brush scattered around.
A large rock boulder-sized stood far to his left, the same direction he had originally fled from.
Directly ahead, somewhere around twenty meters out, lay a spring-fed pond, its waters strangely clear and quietly flowing.
Too strange.
A spring in a savannah? A boulder? Nothing here made sense.
Another pike slammed into the bark behind him.
The tree shuddered.
Time was running out.
Staying put wasn't an option.
He needed to run.
He needed a plan.
The scholar In him took hold
The rock was closer than the water and offered a solid barrier between him and the creature's line of fire.
If the monster still couldn't move, then the rock was the safest route.
As for the water, too risky.
He was bleeding.
The pool was shallow, endless, and possibly inhabited by unseen predators.
He couldn't afford that gamble.
Decision made.
Sibir inhaled, steadying his trembling limbs.
Three seconds.
Two.
One.
He lunged.
His limp turned his sprint into a staggered, pained dash.
Behind him, the monster's arms moved with brutal rhythm, each pike whistling just inches off-target.
One missed.
Then another.
The interval between them widened.
Sibir dared a glance.
A larger pike was forming, longer, heavier, and Slower.
He pushed forward with everything left in him.
Just one foot from the rock, he dove.
The ground met him hard.
A heartbeat later, the pike shattered against the stone, spraying flecks of toxic spittle across the earth.
He didn't have to look to know.
The rock had taken the hit.
He had survived...barely.
The first part of the plan had worked.
Now came the second: use the boulder as a shield, and limp away before the monster adapted.
Sibir's breathing grew heavier, more erratic though
Life-threatening stress was more impacting than work stress
Fatigue clawed at his limbs, and the weight of fear gnawed relentlessly at his sanity.
Yet, no matter how broken one felt, when the shadow of death loomed close, instinct took over.
Survival became the only law that mattered.
He clung to that instinct now.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he hoped, hoped that if he just kept moving, he'd stumble across someone, anyone, or perhaps even a doctor who could mend his torn flesh.
Behind him, the clash of pike against boulder echoed a third time, his signal.
One... two... He counted.
Then, on the third impact, he surged forward, limping in a broken sprint.
But that third strike never came.
A spike of unease cut through his chest, but he forced himself forward.
Perhaps it was creating another of those monstrous javelins. He had to keep going.
The monster hadn't moved.
That much, he'd noticed.
Perhaps it couldn't.
It lacked eyes; after all, it was probably hunted by sound.
If that were true, it might be able to launch projectiles blindly over the boulder.
That gave him a slim advantage: if he calculated his steps carefully and stayed alert for shifts in air pressure or the whistle of pikes slicing through the wind, he might, just might, survive.
At least, that was the hope.
But then there was nothing.
No sound, no projectiles.
Just an eerie silence thick enough to suffocate him.
And then a shadow passed over him.
He didn't even have time to curse.
The shadow came too late, the air already tearing from the force of something massive descending.
He dropped and rolled instinctively, dirt caking his face, and came up to his feet with another hop-step on his injured leg. He turned to see it, not a pike.
His eyes widened as fear gripped him again.
His body shook
The monster.
It had closed the distance.
Silent.
A pair of obsidian-colored pikes now rested in its massive hands, each the length of its torso.
Without pause, it lunged, attempting to pin Sibir down like an insect.
He narrowly avoided the first stab, backing away frantically.
The monster's movement was bizarre, jerky almost mechanical.
It stood on two legs but had four arms: two enormous and two smaller ones just beneath the larger pair.
It used the pikes not just as weapons, but as supports, jamming them into the ground and using the leverage to drag its lumbering form forward with chilling patience.
Sibir didn't wait to understand more.
He was limping, hopping, dragging himself forward, anything to get away.
His body screamed at him, every breath tasting like iron.
Still, he pushed on, throwing occasional glances over his shoulder to track the monster's slow but steady pursuit.
He wasn't looking ahead.
Which is why he didn't see the wall.
He collided face-first into something unseen, something solid.
The impact knocked him sideways, tumbling him painfully to the ground.
Pain flared through his already fractured jaw, and he clutched at it instinctively.
He rose slowly, confused, and reached out.
His fingers met a surface, smooth and unyielding.
A shimmer pulsed outward from where his hand had touched, revealing a transparent wall stretching impossibly far in both directions.
A barrier.
A cage.
He was trapped in
"No…" The realization slammed into him harder than the impact.
His hands pounded the wall again and again, desperation overtaking reason.
"There's no way out…" he muttered through clenched jaws
I'm going to die here, he thought.
Trapped.
Behind him, the monster stood tall, throwing its pikes with its massive hands.
One hurled weapon shattered uselessly against the invisible wall.
The other ricocheted wildly to the side.
The creature flinched.
Then its posture changed.
It dropped onto all fours.
The smaller arms touched down first, followed by the larger ones planted ahead like a grotesque, insectile predator preparing to pounce.
And then it leaped.
The sound was like thunder.
Its weight and velocity slammed into Sibir like a battering ram.
He felt his ribs crack under the force.
Blood sprayed from his lips before he could even scream.
He grunted, a muffled moan escaping as his body rolled to the side, just narrowly avoiding being crushed against the wall.
The monster halted its charge before colliding, stumbling back a step, shaking its head as though momentarily disoriented.
Sibir lay on the ground, hacking up blood, barely able to move.
The agony held him paralyzed.
He wanted to lose consciousness.
He prayed for it.
But the pain anchored him cruelly in the present.
And then he saw it, the monster was adjusting its stance, lowering its head, aiming once again.
It was going to charge.
Again.
And this time, there would be no way of dodging it.
With no place left to direct his pain, no outlet for the burning frustration coiled inside him, Sibir's only remaining focus was the monster in front of him.
In the face of death, a man either runs or fights.
And with nowhere to run, all Sibir had left was a fight.
His limbs trembled, bruised and half-broken, but they still obeyed him.
"I'm going to kill you…" he whispered, voice hoarse and shaking.
Tears streamed from his eyes, not from fear but from the crushing weight of hopeless defiance.
But his mind wanted to go on a frenzy and kill that thing.
The rebounded pike lay beside him.
The monster crouched, preparing for another charge.
Sibir didn't wait.
With a shaking left hand, he grabbed the pike and held it across his chest.
It wasn't a stance, he couldn't even stand but it was a final stand nonetheless.
He couldn't follow the monster's movements.
One blink and it was on him.
The impact stole the breath from his lungs.
But even pinned to the ground, something primal surged through him.
He latched onto the monster's massive arm, nails breaking, bones grinding, and held on as it lifted him with its rising body.
Its mouth opened wide, too wide, stretching across its entire face.
A grotesque maw was eager to devour.
But Sibir had waited for this.
With one violent thrust, he drove the pike upward into its face.
It met no resistance, no bone, no skull.
Just flesh, parting too easily.
The monster froze, as if confused
It's body senses lagging behind the pain
He didn't stop.
One strike.
Then another.
Then another.
On the fourth, a sickly grey-white substance oozed from the wound.
The beast shrieked silently, somehow, and flailed, as if just remembering it had arms.
It tried to toss Sibir away, and when the pike snapped, he was hurled to the ground.
Still, it couldn't pull the embedded shard from its head.
Its massive hands were too clumsy, and the smaller arms under its abdomen couldn't reach that high.
It tried to scream again, but no sound came out.
Sibir didn't care.
Bloodied and wheezing, he propped himself up with his failing right arm.
The remaining half of the pike was still in his hand.
He was directly beneath the monster's exposed underbelly, his one opening.
His mind raced.
Heart? Guts? Groin?
Then clarity struck.
One chance.
He thrust upward, ramming the pike into the monster's midsection and driving it up toward the neck with everything he had.
The weapon sank deep, tearing through muscle and flesh until it hit something vital and was lodged diagonally in what he assumed was the neck
Sibir collapsed with the motion, finally spent.
He couldn't breathe.
He couldn't move.
The darkness tugged at his consciousness.
A shadow loomed above him.
Then, unexpectedly, a voice, dry and gruff, echoed out of nowhere.
It felt pre-recorded as if triggered by some ancient script.
"Hello there. I'm the administrator of Floor One. Congratulations on ..."
The voice paused.
Then a second, softer comment.
"He passed out? Then I'll leave this here for you."
A dull thud sounded beside him as though embedded in the earth
And Sibir finally let go, slipping into unconsciousness.