"Damn it!"
Hill gasped as his body disobeyed him once more, walking towards the plague beast standing just a few meters ahead. His legs trudged forward mindlessly, pulling the rest of his body with them.
The abandoned warehouse loomed around him. Broken windows staring down at him from all sides in pity as he marched towards his end.
Throughout the eight months that he had spent surviving on his own, he had never encountered an irregular. That is... until now. The irregulars, unlike the regular plague beasts, were rumored to possess supernatural powers.
He had been warned to run as fast as he could if he ever encountered one.
But as he stared at the oozing bullet wounds that he'd inflicted on the irregular, he couldn't contain his anger.
'Run' they said! Those fuckers told me to run!
A manic giggle escaped his lips.
But I can't!
The numbness faded away, allowing him to scramble backwards. Unfortunately, every five seconds, the numbness would return. His legs would then disobey him and march forward, reclaiming the forward progress.
Deliberately falling to the ground didn't work either. His legs would relentlessly scrape against the ground in order to draw him closer, cutting his skin against the shards of glass that covered the warehouse grounds.
His crimson eyes zeroed in on the pulsing appendage that dangled from a growth located on the forehead of the irregular. It was the only feature on the human-looking monster that gave away what it truly was.
Every time that appendage pulsed, the numbness would immediately take hold of him for five seconds before fading away during the next three. Unfortunately, that meant he only had two seconds to create distance before the next pulse.
In essence, he was stuck in a loop. One that he couldn't escape from no matter how hard he tried.
Even so, I can't give up like this. He grimaced, darting backwards just as he regained control of his legs. If I can't escape... I'll just go in for the kill!
But that wasn't going to be easy.
He'd dumped all his ammo into the irregular, but it had tanked all of it. A specific unknown organ or area needed to be hit, and the only thing he had left to kill it with was a rusty butcher knife. However, going in for a close range fight seemed suicidal.
After all, why else would it try to draw him in? It definitely had something unpleasant waiting for him.
The lure pulsed again. He involuntarily stepped forward, but as he did so, a plan began to churn within his mind.
He glanced down at his arms, and then at the butcher knife strapped to his thigh.
Alright. This is it. Either I do this... or I die like a coward!
His body took four steps before freezing up, indicating that the numbness was fading away. But instead of scrambling backward, Hill drew the butcher knife and stepped forward.
Not too close now. He grimaced. Just enough to stop in front of it at the next cycle...
The lure pulsed, causing his body to take five steps this time, stopping around two meters short.
As the numbness disappeared, Hill lunged forward and swung the butcher knife towards the irregular. The blade managed to cut into the fleshy stem of the lure, drawing a thick spurt of green ichor that splattered like a bursting water balloon.
But it wasn't severed all the way. Hill drew the blade back for another swing, his eyes widening as a menacing smile crossed his face. He wasn't sure moments before, but he was now.
I can kill this—
Before his blade could reach the bleeding wound on the lure, four seams appeared on the irregular's head before splitting open in a gory mess. From the top of its skull to the base of its neck, four sections of skin and bone unravelled like the petals of a flower, revealing several spiraling rows of sharp teeth.
Hill's eyes widened.
That's not good!
His knife bit into one of the unraveling petals, clashing loudly with the exposed teeth. He tried to back off, but the lure managed to pulse again, freezing him in place. His knife hand froze in place, refusing to obey his instructions.
No, no, no—
There was nothing he could do.
He watched in horror as the maw of the beast clamped around his neck. Bursts of unimaginable pain overwhelmed him.
And then...
Silence.
...
Or so he thought.
Death — as he imagined it when he was younger — should've been a consuming silence so severe that no thought could possibly form.
However, the sensation of something cold pressing against his skin begged to differ. He opened his eyes and gasped.
He was seated in the center of a circular platform, surrounded by a towering cage that reached endlessly into the darkness above. The ground beneath him — a luminous marble — reflected the light coming from the burning white torches that were fixed to the cage in ascending rows. A mass of darkness swirled around the platform as if the platform was in the middle of a colossal tornado.
He sat up, grasping at his throat in search of the grizzly wounds he expected to be there, but found none.
What?Is this a dream?The afterlife?
His eyes narrowed.
Didn't I die just now?
He wasn't sure, but based off of what he was seeing with his own two eyes, he could only assume one thing.
This has to be the afterlife.
While it was true that he held the position that there wasn't an afterlife for most of his life, it wasn't because he truly believed it. In fact, he believed the opposite.
He simply didn't want it to exist. It would be too cruel.
Heaven, hell, and everything in between. It all seemed more plausible than life being the product of luck and millions of years. However, he wasn't religious. He never was. Instead, the apocalypse — which descended unto Earth upon the surface of a meteor — was the reason for his beliefs.
When the reports of a meteor landing in the golden plains of the Peridian Empire reached the news cycle, many people just shrugged it off. Sure, a meteor hitting the surface was an incredibly rare occurrence, but it wasn't something to go crazy about. It had happened many times throughout history. And this time, it only created a small crater and a decently sized wildfire.
But a week after the meteor's descent disappeared from the news cycle, the Peridian Empire collapsed. Apparently it was due to a rapidly growing horde of zombie-like creatures that were dubbed as 'plague beasts'.
The world was taken by surprise. It had been an unimaginable reality for the mighty Peridian Empire to fall so quickly. Especially because their might rendered them so powerful that even a global coalition of countries couldn't defeat them.
Many celebrated due to their deep seated hatred of the empire. They assumed that the horde could be contained on the shores of the empire or potentially annihilated using nuclear weapons.
But then they crossed the ocean.
It was the work of the irregulars, no doubt. One by one, countries fell like dominos, eventually reaching Edonesia, the country where Hill and his family dwelled.
That was when the apocalypse became a reality to the scrawny red-eyed boy. It was also the moment where he began to believe in earnest that an afterlife existed.
This was due to the death of his family.
As their bodies were ripped apart in front of his eyes, Hill had noticed two things.
The first was his mother falling limp... and then mutating into a plague beast.
And the second, his father and sister falling limp... and then vanishing from existence.
These two cases were a constant and observable phenomena that happened to anyone that died to a plague beast. Hill had witnessed plenty of death to confirm the theory.
I—I guess my body vanished, eh? He asked himself, standing to his feet as he looked around the lonesome space. Is this where they were taken?
Then he froze.
Or maybe...I was turned into a plague beast, and my consciousness is now here? An uncomfortable feeling settled in his gut. Could this be a prison for my soul?
A sudden pressure descended from above, crashing down upon his shoulders. His gaze whipped upwards, where he saw a figure descending from the darkness above.
It had two sets of black, bat-like wings that flapped loudly, emitting a horrid sound that sent shivers down Hill's spine. Clothed in white and gold embroidered robes, the figure looked lavish and royal, almost like an angel. But it barely had a face. Its head was simply a skull wrapped in pitch black skin, with glowing vertical slashes of white replacing its eyes and mouth.
It hovered in the air for a moment... and then the slash of its mouth expanded horizontally into a crooked smile.
"I must confess... " It began, its voice deep and heavy. "I didn't expect there to be any earthlings left alive. The trial chambers have been silent for many months." Its smile widened. "It appears my patience was not wasted after all."
The figure clapped its hands together, sending a thunderclap through the empty space. Hill flinched hard, falling to the ground as his eyes caught hold of a dark green smoke swirling together below where the figure was hovering. The smoke solidified, condensing into a shape that Hill recognized immediately.
It was the irregular that killed him. The one with that damn lure.
But before Hill could do anything about it, a series of glowing runic glyphs materialized out of thin air and swirled around his body before smashing into each other, forming a series of characters that Hill was somehow able to understand.
[5:00]
Hill's eyes widened.
Is that a timer?
The figure's voice boomed loud overhead.
"Welcome,