The dense canopy of the Amazon rainforest swallowed the remaining shreds of daylight as the tropical sun hid beneath the horizon. Shadows lengthened across the forest floor, twisting into grotesque shapes that seemed to reach for the expedition team. The air grew heavy, thick with moisture and the suffocating scent of damp earth and rotting flora. Lifeless stood in a small clearing, his boots sinking into the soft mud. He looked down at the bodies of several massive constrictor snakes that lay coiled and lifeless around his feet. He had killed these normal big snakes with absolutely no effort spent. His movements had been fluid and precise, a testament to his freakish physical gifts. His mind remained entirely elsewhere.
He was completely overwhelmed by his thoughts because of Norris's death. The memory of his mentor hung over him like a suffocating shroud, a constant weight that pressed against his chest and made every breath feel labored. He kept seeing the final moments of the old man, the quiet dignity of a guide who had given everything to forge a warrior only to vanish into the dark. The realization that he was truly alone in a world that did not care if he lived or died made the grief even more volatile. It turned his sorrow into a toxic cocktail of regret and isolation. He felt like a ghost walking among the living, a weapon designed for war but stripped of any real purpose, abandoned to his own chaotic fate.
The sky turned darker by the minute as night came in with an absolute, crushing silence. The regular nocturnal hum of insects and the distant cries of predators seemed to fade away, leaving only the sound of the wind rustling the topmost leaves of the trees. Lifeless wiped a mixture of sweat and snake blood from his forehead. He turned away from the carnage and headed for his tent to sleep, hoping the exhaustion would grant him a few hours of freedom from his own mind. He reached for the canvas flap of his shelter when a sudden, distinct sound stopped him cold.
He heard the bushes moving.
The rustle was faint but deliberate, a sharp contrast to the random swaying caused by the evening breeze. Lifeless paused, his hand hovering over the tent entrance. Every muscle in his jaw tightened. He was afraid that a leopard or a jaguar might attack from the gloom, considering the hyper-aggressive nature of the local wildlife since the global collapse. The movement felt different. It lacked the heavy rhythm of a quadrupedal predator. It possessed a calculating stillness that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. This entity was stronger and smarter than animals.
It was a human.
In the Amazon, the place where nobody can survive, the rules of normal civilization were completely erased. Even Lifeless himself couldn't survive here indefinitely without being pushed to the absolute edge of his biological limits. Whoever this intruder was, he had traveled deep into the green hell completely alone, bypassing the military perimeter without triggering a single alarm. Whoever he is, he is stronger than anyone here, and if he is not on their side, they are doomed. The realization brought a cold chill that settled deep in the bones of the young protagonist.
"Who are you," Lifeless's voice hummed in the woods as echoes.
The sound bounced off the ancient trees, sounding unnaturally hollow in the dead night. A figure stepped out from behind a massive fern, emerging into the pale moonlight that managed to crack through the canopy. The stranger moved with an impossible, fluid grace that made no sound against the damp leaves. He appeared young, possessing sharp, refined features and a confidence that bordered on absolute arrogance. He wore sleek, dark tactical gear that seemed to absorb the surrounding light.
"The handsome guy who is going to keep my plan safe from you," the man spoke.
His voice carried a smooth, melodic tone that sounded completely out of place in the middle of a savage jungle. He looked at Lifeless with a smirk that showed he felt zero intimidation from the legendary strength of the boy.
"And what is your plan," Lifeless spoke, his voice revealing how worried he truly was.
He shifted his weight, his mind racing to analyze the threat. He had expected mutated monsters and ancient beasts, but a human adversary with this level of presence was a variable that broke all of his calculations.
"It is happening right now, empty the Amazon for myself? Is it not obvious," the man responded to the question.
He gestured to the vast, dark expanse of the jungle around them. He spoke as if clearing the most dangerous rainforest on the planet was a simple chore, a minor inconvenience that he was systematically resolving for his own selfish desires.
Lifeless did not waste any more words on pleasantries. He guarded his face with his fists clenched, raising his arms into a classic combative stance. He stood firm and forced his breathing to slow down. He was not afraid because he knew the Muzzle would use it against him. He remembered the brutal lesson from his past battles, understanding that any flicker of anxiety would allow the metal device on his neck to tighten its grip and muffle his power. He cleared his mind of doubt, anchoring his soul in raw, unyielding survival.
The man launched at Lifeless like a shadow detaching from a wall. His speed surpassed anything Lifeless had ever witnessed. He appeared as a mere blur of dark energy before delivering a massive punch directly into the face of the protagonist.
The force of the blow was staggering, exploding against Lifeless's jaw with the impact of a kinetic missile. Lifeless flies crashing into a tree, his heavy body fracturing the thick trunk as he smashed through the wood and hit the dirt.
He groaned, his vision swimming with stars as he struggled to find his footing. As he was getting up, the massive tree he had broken began to tilt, its immense weight coming down directly toward his head. The timber falls on him with a thunderous crash, pinning him beneath a mountain of wood and leaves. Lifeless let out a feral shout. He reached up, his muscles bulging beneath his tactical gear as he lifts the tree with both hands. With a massive surge of adrenaline, he throws it directly on the man, sending the multi-ton trunk hurtling through the air.
The stranger simply stood his ground. He dodges it effortlessly, tilting his torso by a single inch as the massive log roars past his shoulder and shatters against the ground behind him. Before Lifeless could even register the movement, the man turns invisible to the eye of Lifeless. He vanished from the physical spectrum entirely, leaving no scent, no sound, and no visual footprint in the dark clearing.
Lifeless spun around, his spatial field expanding as he tried to sense the displaced air. He found nothing. Suddenly, a brilliant crackle of blue energy illuminated the mud. An electric charge comes to Lifeless's ankles, the intense voltage wrapping around his legs and seizing his nervous system. The shock was powerful enough to disrupt his balance, sweeping him off the ground and leaving him suspended horizontally in midair.
While he was vulnerable and weightless, the invisible assailant struck. Rapid continuing punches was punching Lifeless again and again in the face. The strikes landed with a rhythmic, sickening speed, sounding like a machine gun firing into raw meat. Lifeless's head snapped back repeatedly as blood sprayed from his lips. He refused to remain a passive punching bag. He tracked the trajectory of the kinetic force, timing the exact millisecond of the next impact. He raised his left forearm and blocked a single punch with absolute precision. The sudden physical contact disrupted the stranger's concealment. The guy turned visible the exact moment Lifeless did that, his dark form corporate once more under the moonlight.
The man did not seem bothered by the block. He stepped back slightly, his expression remaining perfectly calm as he looked down at the battered teenager.
"A man's weakness is his thoughts," the man speaks, his tone dripping with a psychological cruelty that matched his physical prowess.
He began to circle Lifeless like a vulture around a dying animal.
"Think about where you are, a nice climax of your life right? No, you are a piece of unlucky flesh drifting in this planet causing deaths and trouble everywhere you breathe. You are a fail of society, you are THE shame," the man continues.
The words echoed through the silent trees, carrying an unnatural weight that seemed to bypass Lifeless's physical armor entirely. Lifeless listens to the words stabbing him over and over again.
Every syllable was a calculated strike against his fragile mental state, reminding him of Norris, reminding him of the people who called him an alien king, and reminding him of his own profound isolation. These were stabs that felt worse than knives, slicing through his confidence and exposing the raw, bleeding guilt that he carried inside his heart. He felt his breath hitch as the weight of his perceived failures threatened to crush his resolve.
"Prove me wrong and kill me," the man said, offering a mocking smile as he stood with his arms wide open, completely exposed.
Lifeless felt something snap inside his chest. The sorrow and the shame turned into an absolute, blinding fury. He grinned on his teeth, a feral, terrifying expression that bared his bloody gums to the moonlight. He launched at the man with every ounce of physical strength he could muster. He began punching him over and over, his fists moving so fast they created a wall of flesh.
All those punches were entirely useless. The man moved like water, his head and shoulders shifting with a supernatural agility that allowed him to avoid every single strike by a fraction of an inch. He looked bored as he evaded the assault. He waited for Lifeless to overextend, then stepped inside the boy's guard and punched Lifeless directly in his stomach. The blow carried a concentrated density that bypassed the muscle wall entirely. The impact made Lifeless grab his stomach and lay like a fetus on the wet ground, gasping for air as his internal organs rebelled against the shock.
"You are nothing but an empty shell."
Lifeless lay in the mud, his body trembling from the agony in his core. The insults and the physical abuse began to blend into a single, intolerable noise. The sentient storm inside him began to react to the sheer scale of his rage. Lifeless started sparking current everywhere, bright arcs of red electricity jumping off his skin and scorching the grass around him. The air grew hot, smelling of ozone and burning ozone. He rose up with a terrifying face, his eyes completely bloodshot and his teeth bared in a silent scream of defiance.
He launched a massive right hook, channeling a huge reservoir of power into the strike. Even though the current was strong enough to do massive damage to this guy, the stranger simply slid beneath the trajectory. He dodged it completely. It felt like the punches was resisting his body, as if some unseen force field or spatial anomaly was actively pushing Lifeless's fists away from the target before they could connect.
The failure to land a hit drove Lifeless into a state of absolute madness. He got even angrier and started throwing punches that made the air wave with them. The sheer velocity of his fists created concussive shockwaves that ripped the leaves off the surrounding bushes and cracked the stones on the ground. The clearing became a vortex of kinetic violence. They all were dodged effortlessly by the mysterious warrior, who continued to move with a serene, untouchable grace.
Lifeless gasped for air, his lungs burning as the sheer output of energy began to take its toll on his body. He realized that conventional fighting was completely useless against an opponent who could perceive his every movement before it happened.
He needed to change the nature of the battlefield. He screamed, a raw, gutteral sound that shook the very foundations of the clearing. Current flew out of his body like massive waves, a visual tide of crimson energy that expanded outward in a perfect circle, forcing the shadows back and illuminating the entire forest in a demonic red glow.
The wave forced the stranger to jump backward to avoid the raw discharge. Lifeless saw the movement and capitalized on the brief distraction. He overdosed current on his hand, drawing every single drop of red energy he could squeeze past the restriction of the Muzzle. His right hand became a blinding sphere of crimson lightning, the pressure so immense that the skin on his knuckles began to crack and bleed from the sheer potency. He surged forward and launched a final, desperate punch.
This time it hit him.
The fist connected with the man's left shoulder. The stranger only flinched from it, his body absorbing the massive electrical and kinetic discharge with a slight backward step. The crimson current exploded upon contact, blackening the sleeve of his tactical gear and leaving a faint trail of smoke, but his physical structure remained completely intact. He looked down at his scorched shoulder and then back at Lifeless with a cold, mocking expression.
"You are too weak and un agile," the man said, his voice entirely steady despite receiving a blow that would have vaporized a normal human being.
"Fuck you," Lifeless said, his voice hoarse from screaming.
He refused to give up. He advanced again, his arms moving in a desperate attempt to overwhelm the stranger's defenses. He punched the guy over and over again but it was dodged, again. The stranger moved his head left and right, his feet remaining almost entirely stationary as he allowed Lifeless to exhaust the last remnants of his physical energy.
Lifeless staggered backward, his arms dropping to his sides as his muscles began to fail him. He was completely spent, his breath coming in ragged, painful wheezes. He looked at the pristine condition of his opponent and then remembered the words that had been used to torture him just moments prior.
"A man's weakness is his thoughts," Lifeless mumbled, his voice barely a whisper against the wind.
He looked up, a sudden, desperate intelligence flickering in his eyes. He realized that if he couldn't break the man's body with physical force, he had to attack the mind. That was something that he can't dodge. Words could not be evaded by agility or spatial manipulation. They went directly into the soul.
"You are too evil to be human, you had every power to be a hero and yet chose yourself," Lifeless said, his voice gaining strength as he stepped forward. "Even if you win you already failed. You are not welcomed anywhere, even in your body. Everybody hates you."
The words came from a place of deep, personal understanding of isolation, and he threw them like spears at the stranger. Lifeless was wounded in shame but the man was only scratched physically. The emotional weight of the statement seemed to hit a hidden nerve deep within the stranger's psyche. The arrogant smirk vanished from the man's face, replaced by a sudden, jarring tension.
"You failed at being good. You are so bad at being kind. Look at your face, is that what you call handsome? Your eyes are horrible,"
Lifeless stabbed, targeting the very vanity that the man had used as his introduction.
The words were precise, cutting through the illusion of perfection that the intruder had manufactured. The stranger was wounded too, the psychological assault penetrating his defenses in a way that the red current never could. The man was frozen in his place, standing still as if his nervous system had been paralyzed by the sudden influx of self doubt and buried trauma. He was completely shocked from the words, his mind racing to process the insult to his appearance and his morality.
He didn't think quickly enough.
Lifeless saw the hesitation and closed the distance in a fraction of a second. He did not use current, he used the raw, concrete density of his physical frame. He tackled the stranger around the waist and drove him into the dirt with an immense thud. He pinned him to the ground, using his knees to lock the man's arms in place and overriding any supernatural agility with pure, heavy leverage.
Lifeless raised his fists. He did not care about form or technique anymore. He started deliberately punching him, delivering heavy, rhythmic blows directly into the face of the frozen man. The sound of meat hitting meat echoed through the clearing, over and over again, until the stranger's features were covered in dark blood and his eyes lost focus. Lifeless kept striking until the man was completely unconscious, his body going completely limp beneath the weight of the protagonist.
Lifeless stood up slowly, his body aching from the electricity and the physical trauma of the encounter. He looked down at the unconscious warrior who had threatened his mission and his sanity. He did not call for Jarvis, he did not alert the military team, and he did not seek medical attention for his bleeding face. He merely wiped the blood from his knuckles onto his pants and turned back toward his shelter. He got back to his tent to sleep like nothing had happened, closing the flap behind him and letting the heavy silence of the Amazon claim the rest of the night. He lay down in the dark, the red current quiet within his chest as he waited for the next phase of the hell that awaited him.