*

  The only thing I saw was a ceiling covered in vast, shimmering, glass-like curtains hanging all over, like translucent mineral formations.

  This somewhat relieved me of the terrifying thought that I had somehow stumbled into an Aggressor’s actual home world.

  The glowing glass-like sheets diffused a bright, even light, but it was not as harsh or blinding as the true sun.

  And there were familiar, thick vines, similar to those found in a Gate, crawling all over the distant ceiling.

  This gave me a solid guess that I was, indeed, still trapped somewhere within the confines of the Gate.

  I returned my gaze to the bizarre creatures before me, then, crouching low, I darted behind a conveniently close, jagged boulder.

  From this concealed position, I scanned the whole illuminated area and quickly noticed two other creatures, distinctly different from the rest, positioned a bit far away on higher ground, perched above a series of naturally formed, steps-like rocks.

  They were several meters away, directly in front of me, or the boulder I was hiding behind, to be exact.

  There, a tall, slender creature with long, elegantly pointy ears, dressed in a flowing, white, feathered robe, reclined.

  It looked like a ‘she’… and she looked very much like a human, strikingly so, except for her extremely pale-white, almost luminous skin.

  Kinda like how Daigo always used to describe elves from other people talks.

  She was laying on her side like some ethereal queen, gently, almost absently, rubbing her swollen, surprisingly transparent belly.

  Through the taut skin, I could visibly make out the form of an infant floating inside her – she was heavily pregnant.

  But the truly weird thing was the other Aggressor that stood directly in front of her, making soft, weird ‘humming’ noises as it, or he, rubbed her distended belly with its two… hands?

  The creature’s back faced me, so I couldn’t see its face, but this creature was pitch-black, its smooth skin adorned with intricate, pulsing red patterns all over its body.

  It didn’t seem to have a discernible neck that separated its head from its torso.

  It stood upright, much like a human, but it had no legs; it simply levitated a few centimeters above the ground, hovering silently, as it massaged the ‘elf-queen’ creature’s belly with a long, smooth, fin-like appendage that served as its hand.

  It basically looked like an animated, upside-down, black drop-of-water with two gracefully moving, smooth fins.

  Faint, red-coloured, visible electric sparks seemed to crackle and jump from its fins as they made contact with the belly of the pregnant creature.

  She, however, didn’t seem to be experiencing any pain whatsoever; it was almost like the black creature was some kind of gentle doctor or midwife, tending to her.

  The ‘elf-queen’ just relaxed serenely on a naturally formed, stone-crafted bench as the black, teardrop creature did whatever arcane thing it was doing.

  I looked back at the multitude of short, laboring creatures and saw five of them struggling together, trying to lift up a single, huge black-gem rock.

  To lift that particular rock, I figured it would take at least two Evolved with strength comparable to my own to even budge it, let alone carry it.

  This observation made me come to a quick hypothesis: these short, white bastards were very physically weak compared to almost all the E-Grade Aggressors I’ve fought in the past, including the brutal Zipper-spines and the relentless Flea-gloats, and certainly weaker than most E-Grade Evolved humans.

  The only ones I couldn’t get an immediate read on, the wild cards, were the regal ‘elf-queen’ and the mysterious, floating black ‘water drop’.

  I needed to get the fuck out of here, and fast.

  I didn’t even have a clue where an entrance or exit to this entire section might be, and the longer I stalled, the weaker and more vulnerable I would become.

  I had no source of food or even water down here, which eventually meant a slow, miserable death by starvation and dehydration if I chicken out of dicing these bastards.

  The only way outta here was straight through these motherfuckers.

  So, I made a hard, desperate decision right there and then: to dice the lot of these bastards, starting right now.

  I observed the short creatures’ movements and routines more carefully for a few moments, plotting how I would take them down with maximum efficiency and surprise.

  I gripped the rusted, but still somewhat serviceable, pocket knife tightly in my right hand and dived into my left pocket to grab one of the precious grenades.

  I silently, fervently, hoped they all still worked fine, despite how incredibly long they might have stayed down here in this damp, forgotten place.

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  I carefully removed the pin with my teeth, the metallic tang sharp on my tongue, and lobbed the grenade high over my head, still concealed behind the boulder, aiming for a dense group of those short Aggressors that were busy digging up and arranging a large heap of the black-gem rocks.

  The instant the grenade exploded, creating a satisfyingly loud CRUMP and a billowing cloud of dust and debris, I rushed from behind the boulder towards one of the short creatures closest to me.

  I stabbed it viciously in the neck with the pocket knife, as it and its nearby comrades were still disoriented, facing the area where the grenade had just detonated.

  I quickly snatched the short sword from its spasming hand even before the creature’s bloody and lifeless body slumped to the ground.

  Then, I was zooming off to the next one.

  I slantly slashed its head, the improvised blade slicing its skull nearly in two with a wet, tearing sound.

  Then, I spun hard to my right with what I hoped was dance-like, evasive footwork, and stabbed the left side of another creature’s face.

  This one had stood close to the second Aggressor I’d just killed, and it was just about to look in my direction as its doomed comrade had let out a weak, gurgling grunt.

  By this time, some of them in my immediate close range had looked in my direction, their surprise turning to fury, after several distinct, heavy thuds echoed as the dead bodies I’d created dropped to the cavern floor.

  They began charging at me, screeching in some high-pitched, alien tongue.

  I kicked the spear of one of the fallen creatures sharply with my foot, sending it spinning into the air, and expertly caught it with my now-free left hand.

  Without pausing, I hurled the spear with all my might at one of the pigmy creatures that was charging directly at me, leading the pack.

  One of these short, angry bastards thrust its own little sword at me (aiming for my right thigh, to be exact).

  I quickly moved my right leg back a critical bit, but the very tip of its sword still managed to stab into my skin, drawing blood.

  Enraged, I slashed off the arm of that creature, the one it had used to hold its short-sword.

  As the severed arm and the still-clutched short-sword flew through the air in a bloody arc, I didn’t hesitate for a second to snatch that second sword out of mid-air.

  I immediately adopted a defensive-offensive pose with the two short-swords now in my hands, one in each, as I waited for the armed and now thoroughly enraged unarmed creatures that were charging at me from all around to get within my deadly range.

  As they came swarming within my reach, I hacked them down, one after fuckin' another, moving like a demon possessed, a whirlwind of steel and blood.

  I slashed and stabbed with a savage fury, cutting off heads, severing hands, bisecting torsos, and parrying the clumsy attacks from their inferior weapons, turning these little motherfuckers into heaps of twitching meat.

  After what felt like a fuckin' long, adrenaline-fueled rampage, there were still some of them remaining, scrambling desperately, trying to arm themselves with the weapons of their fallen comrades.

  One of them grabbed the top half of a broken spear and ran suicidally towards me.

  I hacked my left-hand short-sword deep into the creature’s shoulder, then used the short-sword in my right hand to forcefully slice off its head.

  It wasn’t chopped off clean; some disgusting chuck of ashen meat and sinew was still grotesquely attached to its shuddering body.

  I heard a couple of them approaching rapidly from behind me, their little feet slapping on the stone.

  So, I retracted my right hand swiftly, then swung it violently backward in a blind, trusting arc.

  The blade hacked solidly into the right side of one of their temples.

  It made the creature just stand there, frozen in place, its eyes opened impossibly wide in shock and sudden, terminal understanding.

  One of its eyes was already tainted with blood, welling up from the inside, and bright red blood was now gushing out the side of its head like fuckin' piss from a burst pipe.

  I pulled my left and right hands, still gripping the short swords, from the nearly standing bodies of the creatures I’d just dispatched, and spun hard to the right, lifting my body off the ground a few centimeters with the momentum.

  The moment I landed back on the ground, I threw the sword from my left hand like a javelin at one of the remaining creatures.

  This one had been slashing the air wildly at the area I had previously stood, just before my acrobatic, life-saving spin.

  The thrown sword impaled the creature’s chest with a sickening thud.

  The creature staggered backward, its chest instantly bathed in its own dark blood, before toppling to its side, twitching, and then finally dying.

  I didn’t even notice the last creature behind me until after it jumped hard onto my back.

  I dropped my remaining blade in absolute shock from this unexpected attack, from what the hell was happening now, and tried frantically to throw it off my back, by wiggling and twisting my body around like a goddamn dancing mad-man.

  It tried to stab me multiple times with its tiny dagger as it rode me like a wild, bucking horse, but thankfully, none of its desperate, flailing attacks successfully stuck me.

  I managed somehow, through sheer luck and brute force, to grab it by one of its limbs and slammed it hard to the ground.

  The creature let out a helpless, pathetic squeak of pain as its back was slammed freaking hard against the unyielding stone floor.

  I swiftly snatched up the sword that the creature had been using to try and attack me, the one it had dropped, from the ground beside it.

  I stood over it as the creature laid there on the ground, sprawled on its back, dazed and vulnerable.

  Then, I viciously started hacking its head multiple times with unrestrained, brutal strength.

  I didn’t fuckin' stop, even when its small body stopped moving, even when it was clearly dead.

  I wanted to make absolutely goddamn sure it was fuckin' dead, dead beyond any shadow of a doubt.

  After hacking its head and upper body into something beyond recognition, a mangled pulp of flesh and bone, I finally stood upright, my legs planted over the dead creature, panting heavily in the suddenly silence-filled room, surrounded by tens upon tens of other dead, mutilated creatures.

  I looked up, my chest heaving, towards the raised dais, to see what the ‘elf-queen’ and the strange ‘black creature’ were doing now.

  Remarkably, they did not attack or even move all through the entire bloody battle.

  The ‘elf-queen just sat there, on her stone couch, looking at me with no discernible reaction at all, her face a blank, beautiful mask.

  And the ‘black tear-drop’ creature just slowly, almost mournfully, hovered around the distant walls of the cave, seemingly aimlessly (it was probably trying to figure out a way to escape, the coward).

  I casually, almost arrogantly, walked up to them, still clutching a gore-slicked short-sword in my hand.

  The strange, enigmatic two still showed no sign of fighting, even after I had just massacred scores of the short-white creatures in their very presence, and despite me now brazenly walking right over to them.

  I trampled over the heaps of dead bodies, my boots sticking in pools of their dark blood, my grip squeezing the handle of the short sword I held, and my eyes intensely focused on these two remaining figures.

  I was watching their every subtle move, ready to react instantly if they tried to pull any sudden, treacherous shit.

  As I walked steadily towards them, the ‘elf-queen,’ still lying languidly on the stone bench, lazily reached for the floor beside her and picked up a tiny, insignificant rock.

  Then, with an almost dismissive gesture, she threw it at me.

  It was a gross understatement to even call that a ‘throw,’ because the pebble utterly lacked any momentum or force.

  It landed with a soft click just a few feet in front of me.

  I mean, I have seen child-cripples throw a goddamn feather with greater conviction and force than that pathetic display.

  I stopped in my tracks and looked down at the tiny rock she had thrown, a flicker of confusion, then maybe contempt, passing through me.

  I returned my gaze back to her.

  She just looked back at me with that same, unnervingly indifferent, beautiful face.

  I didn’t know what the fuck was going on with her, what her game was, but frankly, I didn’t care to find out either.

  The ‘black tear-drop’ creature, still hovering erratically around, found its way directly in front of me as I came within about 6 feet away from them.

  It seemed to want to simply pass by me, showing no intention of a fight at all.

  But I had other plans.

  I drove the short-sword in my hand deep into its strange, yielding body.

  At that precise moment of impact, I felt a small but sharp surge of electricity entering and spreading rapidly through my body, originating from the hand I was using to hold the sword, then racing up to my shoulder, across my chest, and throughout the rest of my system.

  The jolt made me quickly retract my sword from the creature’s body.

  The ‘black tear-drop’ fell to the ground like a deflated ball, and the vivid red markings all over its body shimmered, then dimmed, like it was rapidly running out of some internal power source.

  I contemptuously kicked its inert body aside and walked right in front of the queen.

  The moment I stopped before her, a short and insanely strong, stabbing headache struck me, a blinding spike of pain behind my eyes.

  It made me involuntarily nudge my head forward as I instinctively took a small step back.

  But this debilitating sensation lasted for barely three seconds, then vanished as quickly as it had come.

  I quickly got myself back under control, shaking off the lingering disorientation, and took a determined step forward while raising my bloodied sword high up into the air.

  I looked directly into the ‘elf-queen’s’ calm, unblinking eyes and felt a peculiar, almost electric sensation, like a kind of spark, a jolt of unexpected connection.

  It was as if, for that fleeting second, I was looking at another truly intelligent being, a being of significant power and awareness.

  But that strange, unsettling feeling wavered, then broke, as I brought the sword down with brutal, decisive force, hacking deep into her slender, exposed neck.

  Thick, milky-white liquid flowed copiously out from the place where I had hacked her.

  It was definitely her blood, but it was much thicker, more viscous, than normal human blood, and it had no metallic smell.

  She fell completely onto the rocky bench she had laid upon, her body slumping as if she were merely sleeping, but with her wide, beautiful eyes still staring blankly up at the glowing ceiling, as her strange, white blood flowed and dripped everywhere, staining the stepping rock.