Thick tears threatened to fall from the corners of Harry’s eyes as he weaved through the labyrinth of short stalactites and bolted the distance to the outside. Fon lay feeble in his rather muscled arms, her breathing hitched and her violet blood dripping out and onto his skin, the warmth of it almost sickening.

As he ran, he just wanted nothing more than to curl up and sob, to forget everything he had just seen, but he knew the life of the woman in his arms was depending on him. He refused to let her die to satisfy his own cowardice. Harry had thought himself prepared for the horrors of the new world. He had seen the blood and the gore and the savage struggles of combat, and he had felt ready.

He had felt strong.

He really hadn’t been prepared for that though. Harry had never truly stopped to consider what he thought the horrors of the new world were actually going to be until now. Until they were shown to him freely. They weren’t mere horrors. They were disgusting, torturous, and vile. They were things that hurt people, and things that he didn’t wish to see.

Behind him, he heard a roaring explosion echo and shake the cave. Dust rained down around him, speckling his sweat laden forehead with a sheen of grime. Harry could at least take solace in knowing that Brock would kill every last one of those creatures.

Once more, the boy turned his gaze to Fon. He hoped she had invested some points in Constitution or Vitality, if not… well, he doubted she’d survive the injury she had sustained. He was certain no pre-System human would have, at least.

“J… just breathe slowly…” Harry pleaded to her as he ran. He had once heard that it helped lower your heart rate. He didn’t know a lot of things, but he at least knew that the higher your heart rate, the faster the blood moved. He had learned that from his father, and he’d never forget it.

Weakly, she nodded. Harry gritted his teeth and picked up the pace.

**

A storm of wind blades tore through the bestial tide assaulting him, splattering innards in every which direction and painting a tapestry of crimson onto the corpse ridden cave floor. Brock was a veritable whirlwind of destruction as he slashed, stabbed, kicked and punched, ripping into the ranks with torrents of raging flames and furious gusts.

The swarm of beasts appeared to be almost endless and no matter how many he slaughtered, more took their place and joined the battle. Brock winced as he felt his body being flooded with so many surges of energy that his pathways threatened to bulge and burst. The excesses were expelled through his pores, exaggerating each brutal movement with a smoky trail of red.

Rapidly, his level grew, and with each slew of death, he became faster and his Augments more overpowering. His blade cleaved through skull and brain alike and a Skies empowered kick blew another beasts’ organs out its back, showering the creatures behind it and blinding them. It was a neat little trick he had incepted mid-fight.

Instantly, the next wave were incinerated by a blast of superhot flame. Out of what seemed to be nowhere, more came and quickly replaced them.

There was a tide of flickering names above each and every head, with more appearing each second as he fought. Currently, there was so many that it was at the point where Brock felt himself blind to his ability to read. All he knew was that every monster present was far above level 30, and they still fell to his hand.

His aura had long been reduced to its final dregs, and any more use would hold the potential to bottom out the rest and knock him unconscious. It was fine. He didn’t need it anyway.

A throbbing headache had taken root within his skull as he utilised his Augments again and again, and he was coated in so much blood that he didn’t know which was his own and which was his victim’s. His clothes were ragged and torn, and his flesh had been slashed and punctured, some areas revealing the ivory bone underneath and others missing entire chunks of his flesh.

Impair him it did not and he powered through, leaving it to his effective Vitality of a little over 200.

Brock snatched a Skin Walker’s arm out of the air mid-swing, and with a savage tug, he tore it right out of the socket. Spinning around, he landed a foot in the creature’s chest and it folded in half as he stabbed the splintered bones of the arm into the forehead of another snarling beast. Both died, adding to his swiftly growing kill count.

He ducked, dodged, spun around, kicked, grabbed, crushed, stabbed, sliced. Each second was the herald of another movement as Brock became a maelstrom of death, the incarnate of a ravenous beast, no different than those that fell lifeless around him. Each strike reaped a life, and each movement avoided them from reaping his own.

At the end of the day, combat was a desperate struggle for supremacy, and the only winners are those who live to tell the tale. Brock felt himself on the cusp of realisation as his fire turned swathes of monsters to ashes. It was much like a beast in that regard, desperate as it struggled every second to stay alive. Always, it was its own survival or the survival of that which it consumed.

Without death, there would be no life. That was how his flame lived and would until the end of time.

His heel came down like an executioner’s axe and shattered the skull of a Skin Walker, spraying pieces of bone and brain onto those nearby. Quickly, they too were decapitated, a slash of wind promptly ending their animalistic lives.

He didn’t miss the ways they tried to outsmart him, feinting in one direction and going another, or distracting him and letting another utilise what they perceived as an opening. Of course, every attempt ended in the death of those involved, but it further cemented what Brock saw in the gaze of every single beast that gunned for his life; budding intelligence.

From the way they were acting, he doubted that they had enough to overpower or rationalise their baser instincts to kill and consume, but considering that the Skin Walkers he had seen before had appeared to have lacked it, he assumed their intelligence would only continue to grow. It was a harrowing thought, hordes upon hordes of beasts that could plan and think.

Slowly, Brock was beginning to understand the desperation that he had seen in Adam as he tried to get him to join their cause.

It was only after another five minutes of brutal combat that the horde began to thin. Then, another five after that, he held the final creature by the throat, gazing into its off-putting familiar brown eyes. When it spoke in its guttural and disfigured voice, he hadn’t even been surprised.

“…It… had promised… him…”

Brock didn’t deign to respond to what were the ramblings of the dead and squeezed, hearing the dull crack of its neck a second later as it went limp in his grasp. He threw it aside to the mounds of liquifying corpses around him and regarded the area solemnly.

Visibility was once again obscured by an utter sauna of sticky crimson mists, the slimy puddles of what were once the carcasses of Skin Walker’s evaporating and invading the air. The cave now held the overpoweringly sweet scent of flowers mixed in with the irony stench of blood and the humid smell of death.

The pyre still burned radiantly, illuminating the foggy area in shades of flickering orange, although it was doing a rather shitty job of it. Clicking his tongue, Brock nursed his headache with a delicate hand and sent out a powerful burst of his Augment of Skies, instantly dispelling the mists and clearing up his vision significantly.

What was once a cavern looked more like a bloodied swamp and Brock was forced to step through the melting remains of corpses to reach the nearest person on a hook. He checked their pulse. Dead. He went to the next. Also dead. The next. In pieces. Then, finally, he found a woman breathing so weakly it was almost inaudible. She was alive, up until he took her off the hook.

Dead.

Dead again. Another was dead. He was dead. She was dead. They were mutilated. Her other half was over there, and his other half was strung up there. Brock was beginning to lose hope until he happened upon a small girl, no older than fifteen or sixteen. Initially, he had thought that she too was dead, but she was instead just unconscious, her chest moving up and down slowly.

Please…

Delicately, he moved her off from the hook and onto the floor. Brock broke out in a wide smile. Her breathing continued steadily, though she was yet to wake up.

Satisfied immensely, Brock checked over her light spattering of wounds before continuing on. All around, there was just more and more death, although, by the end of it, he had managed to save more than fifteen people. Some were barely holding on, while others seemed to have been fresh additions to the hooks. Fortunately, the latter were capable of tending for those around them.

“Th… thank you!” One of the healthier ones called out to him as he began to walk away, although he could tell his bloodied and wounded appearance made the guy fearful, as well as everyone else. Brock smiled warmly in response and nodded the man’s way, before letting them all know he’d be back in a bit.

Far along the back wall of the cavern, initially hidden behind the gargantuan pyre, was a way further in that Brock had caught the barest glimpse of mid-fight. At first, he had been sceptical, but upon approaching it and feeling the powerful flows of energy emanating from within, he was all but certain it was the location of the Treasure Adam had spoken of.

It was quite surprising, as he had been fairly certain that the man’s words weren’t even true.

The tunnel was an extremely tight fight, but with the added flexibility afforded to him by his high Agility, he managed to fit in and make his way forward, feeling the energies become more and more potent with each step. Idly, he felt excitement begin to bubble up within his belly. It was an emotion he couldn’t help but despise himself for feeling as he thought back to all the lives that were just lost.

Eventually, the tunnel spread out into a small nook of space, no larger than the size of Brock’s jeep. The powerful waves of energy were at their strongest here, and the man settled his gaze onto the crimson plant growing in the centre of the area. A bulbous red fruit was hanging from its thick stalk.

He would have rushed over and plucked it then and there, if not for a simple fact. It was growing out of a corpse.

Clearly, it was the corpse of a Skin Walker, evident by the cheekless face and the spindly limbs. The only difference was that it was markedly more… human. The face had friendlier features and the hair was less matted and more silky, if only a bit. Even the barest of bulges had appeared on its chest, signifying faintly that it had been originally modelled after a woman.

And unlike all the others, it hadn’t melted. Not in the slightest.

Brock felt an upsurge of that very same nostalgia as he looked at the sorry state of the creature, its lower abdomen having been savagely torn open by the burly roots of the plant. Yet still, he couldn’t put his finger on who it reminded him of. It was a sensation that was almost maddening.

In the end, all he could do was pluck the fruit and tuck the tennis ball sized, grapefruit-esque item into the remnants of a pocket on the scraps of his jacket. He left the small cavity behind and once again returned to the grouping of people, many of which were looking on at the slopping corpses with astonishment and no small amount of disdainful joy.

Some were even mourning the deaths of those that had died on the hooks or were strewn about. They were friends and family, probably. Brock grimaced.

The young girl he had saved was one of them, now having awoken and hunched over the removed corpse of a woman not much older than herself. Her older sister, from what the resemblance told him. Others looked to him with budding fear as he made the choice to approach her, while some just gave sad smiles to the grim expression on his face.

Hesitantly, as Brock loomed behind her, he placed a hand delicately on her shoulder. She didn’t even seem to notice amidst her racking sobs. For a second, he stewed on what to say, and eventually just spoke to her quietly, his voice low with sorrow, “I’m… so sorry. She’s in a better place now. Like Valhalla or something.”

The girl spared a moment to glance at him, and he could see the gratitude in her eyes. Then, she once more turned to the corpse and continued to cry and scream. Brock decided to give her some space, and with the others, prepared to leave.

It felt cruel to say, but he doubted some of the people would survive the trip. It was only a couple or so, but the weakness of those people was almost palpable. If he had his ring and jeep, maybe it would be a different story, but no. They were going to have to trek across post-System France to get themselves back to Paris where the could be cared for.

Sure, there were the frontier towns, but from what he’d seen, they were barely able to take care of their own people, let alone others. Besides, New Paris definitely seemed to be the safest place around these parts, and these people had already been through enough. They needed a safe place so they could begin to rebuild their lives in peace.

And so, with him at the helm, Brock eventually led the survivors out of the cave, all of them following behind him meekly. The grim silence that had befallen them was only populated by retched coughs and idle hope.

Hope for a better tomorrow.