Death from above.

That’s the only way I can describe the absolute monster above me. How am I supposed to fight this? It hasn’t spotted me yet, it’s the only reason that I’m still breathing. I can’t run away from something that flies in eleven minutes, it would spot me in an instant! I rummage through my pockets and grab a Spell-In-A-Tube. Maybe I can take it down if I use the effect of surprise to my advantage? Well, it isn’t like I can think of something else. I take a deep breath and aim at the belly of the beast.

My hands are trembling as I press the button. A Fireball appears in front of the throwaway artifact. I release the attack before the Harpy can react. The monster screams, making my ears ring. It tries to avoid the spell, but it strikes before it can run away. Flames erupt and engulf the Harpy, making it screech as it flaps its gigantic wings. The miniature tornadoes it creates send me flying, and I crash into a boulder. The taste of metal invades my mouth as I spit out a glob of blood.

“Fuck, that isn’t good!” I roll away, just in time to avoid a destroyed branch from flattening me. Meanwhile, the Silvery Harpy is going berserk. The Fireball burns a good part of its stomach area while its feathers are red-hot. The creature’s furious gaze lands on me and —

***Welcome, Heir of the Twilight World.***

***Countdown: 00:11:05***

I’m not receiving that attack! If a puny Scaled Flame Deer can kill me in one shot, then this Harpy can make me explode with a single glance. I run for five seconds before returning to reality. The area around the massive tree is now flat. The tree itself looks like it’s about to topple over. “Holy fuck!” a branch thicker than a car falls not too far away, creating a shockwave that shakes my very bones.

The Harpy’s gaze snaps towards me, and the enraged beast takes to the sky. I discard the Spell-In-A-Tube that I was holding on to and switch to my rifle. The Harpy is so large that I don’t bother aiming. I empty a mag in the general direction of my opponent, causing a shower of spark to erupt on its metallic feathers.

My jaw drops since most of the feathers only have a few dents.

***Welcome, Heir of the Twilight World.***

***Countdown: 00:11:00***

I run away as I reload my gun. If I learned anything from the fight against the Deer, it’s that staying in one place for more than a couple of seconds means certain death. The Twilight World recedes as nightmarish reality takes its hold once again, and I was right to flee. I can hardly recognize my new surroundings, trees became piles of sawdust and huge talon marks cover the ground. Even the massive tree that the Harpy landed on bears marks. The arboreal titan is now swaying with the wind. Its damaged stump now creaking under the massive strain.

Another scream from the Harpy knocks me down. This time it was so loud that it formed a shockwave around the beak of the gigantic bird. A hot liquid pours out of my eardrums, and I can only hear a faint, monotonous ring. “I hope the Lockheart can fix tinnitus,” I say to myself as I struggle to get up. I read somewhere that a lot of the organs responsible for balance are located in the ears. Both of mine are mush after a single cry. That Harpy is on a whole another level compared to the Deers. So much that I’m starting to believe that I wasn’t supposed to survive this test.

An epiphany washes over me. The Lockheart matriarch saw my powers and thought that I could be a threat. So she baited me into taking this ‘Test’. As luck would have it, it will be impossible for me to survive. Even if I, by some miracle, survive the ordeal then they have a convenient way to track me to finish the job. I narrow my eyes as I glance at the Tethering Bracer. This damn piece of shit has only brought me endless sorrow.

***Welcome, Heir of the Twilight World.***

***Countdown: 00:10:56***

I grit my teeth as I force my body to get up. Anger and hatred for that haughty bitch pulsates through my veins. No wonder I was wary of her! I should have seen that coming. I need to get away from this place. Away from the Harpy, and back to the entrance of the Pocket Dimension. Then, I’ll use the Twilight World to its fullest potential to destroy as many magical artifacts as possible. Who knows what I could do once I gain ten levels of Heir Qualifications in one go. And we will see how they can deal with me when all their weapons stop working.

But first, I need to take care of that Harpy. My countdown is too low to run away. I need to make it flee before I can recuperate. I glance at the swaying, the now dead wood is cracking at the base as it looks ready to fall over.

The Harpy should be here right now, and I only need contact to bring anything out of the Twilight World. A grin creeps on my face as I unload a magazine into the base of the tree. I then slam my palm on it. The world regains its colors in the next moment. Within an instant, twenty tons of dead plant matter appear out of thin air. The sudden collision between the real tree and the one from the Twilight World causes both of them to fall. The Harpy screams in surprise when it spots the two falling giants.

The massive bird flaps its wings, looking to flee. But I don’t give it a chance as I aim my last Spell-In-A-Tube and fire. The Fireball smashes into its target, too busy looking for an escape to notice the flaming orb. Fire engulfs its body as it crashes down, the shockwave sending me flying. The Harpy doesn’t have time to react before the gigantic tree slams over the downed creature. A loud splashing noise echoes as gore erupts from the body. Meanwhile, entire spans of the forest flatten. It’s an explosion of blood and viscera, but some feathers fly out because of the impact—

—Something goes through my stomach before pinning me to a tree. A torrent of blood trickles out of my mouth as an indescribable agony erupts, blinding all my senses. Pain is all that remains. Everything feels like it’s burning, I can’t move. I cough globs of deep red blood as the coldness of death starts to creep in. The Twilight World can’t save me here. The feather would come with me. At best, I could free the feather from the tree. Then I would die on the floor rather than standing up.

“Fuck.” My last words are less profound than I expected, even if they would make for a funny headstone. The worse thing is, I never got those Twilight Points. I knew I took a calculated risk when I took this Test Of Might. But now I have to admit that I’m bad at math.

My vision dims as my heart slows down for the final time. I see a blue glowing beam rushing towards me before I lose consciousness.

***Johnathan’s PoV***

“He fucking did it,” my jaw drops as the copy of a massive tree appears out of nowhere and crushes the Harpy with a loud thud. “He fucking did it,” I repeat, unable to believe what I’ve seen. I was ready to pull Zach out when he fought that Scaled Flame Deer, but he killed the beast with surprising ease. He even avoided a stampede that would have made me run away.

“Oh shit!” My brother slams his hand on the emergency retrieval device he pulled out after Zach’s encounter with the Iron Lamprey. All blood leaves my face when I realize that a stray feather has almost cut my friend in half.

“Call healers! Now!” I yell at Nathaniel, who nods with a pale face. “We need you now! Pocket Dimension Number 4!” I also scream into my phone after speed-dialing the Healer Department. Fuck, fuck! I knew it was a bad idea! I should have told him, I should have told him when I saw him with that rifle!

A gun can’t deal with a Silvery Harpy or anything with too much shielding! Especially when the Harpy is that big!

“Shit!” Nathaniel takes a step back once my unconscious friend emerges out of the Pocket Dimension. My brother’s wobbly knees show that he expanded a great deal of Mana to bring Zach back. “I’m a bit dizzy,” he says as he stares at Zach’s bloodied figure lying down on the cold concrete floor. “That’s a lot of blood.” His face gains a tinge of green as he pulls out a vial of red, pulsating liquid. My brother's trembling hands empty the container's content over Zach’s unresponsive body. The damaged tissues show signs of restoration after absorbing the potion.

I grit my teeth and clench my fists. When dealing with injuries of this magnitude, healing potions only help to leave a pretty corpse behind.

“What’s the problem?” four green Tethers appear as soon as the blast door slams open. Soon, half of the Healer Department arrives. “Prepare first aid!” An older woman wearing a gray set of thin armor with a red armband, the uniform of the Healer Department, barks orders. “What the—” she grimaces at the sorry state that Zach’s in. “What the fuck?” her furious gaze burns a hole into my back as he hurries to Zach’s side. The woman pulls out a small plastic bottle containing a green, half-transparent slime. The viscous mass slides on Zach’s body before a thin thread link it to the tip of the woman’s index finger.

“Heartbeat is low, blood levels are critical! Hemorrhages everywhere!” she yells to the other Healers, who are busy preparing what she needs. “Give me that blood bag. The patient is a male human, pure bloodline. AB+ blood group, thank fuck.” She slams a perfusion needle into Zach’s arm before pumping the blood back into his body. I can’t believe how fast the plastic bag is emptying. I then notice that most of the liquid is pouring out of his grievous wounds onto the floor.

“Fuck, the heart’s stopped!” the healer screams as electricity gathers into her hand before coursing through the slime. “Contact!” My friend’s body convulses. “Still no heartbeat!” The world slows down as another electric shock erupts. And another one.

My stomach feels heavy, and my head is light. I have seen this countless times before, again and again. The Healer Department working as hard as they can to save who they can. Even if the patients often end up — Even if they end up dying. Shivers make me shake uncontrollably as certain scenes I thought I buried deep into my memories resurface. Familiar faces were torn apart on long-forgotten battlefields, good moments with comrades that ended up being cut down right in front of me. The chagrin of the families who only have a dog tag to remind them of their lost children, their lost parents, is still fresh within my scarred mind.

As if it wasn’t enough, there’s that fucking guilt. Why them, why not me? Why did they have to die? So we can buy brand new carpets for that massive mansion? Because we owed a favor to a group of cutthroat bastards? And now that greed cost me another friend, again. That pattern of death and destruction has to stop, it’s not— I don’t want to live through it anymore.

Fuck the world of the Awakened. Fuck it all, burn it all away for all I care. I’m sick and tired of the needless deaths, the cloak and dagger politics, and the constant competition.

“Are you alright?” my brother takes me out of my grim memories. He's all too aware of what I’m going through. “No, of course not.” He mumbles. “Who could?” Nathaniel sighs as he looks at Zach’s body, whose heart starts to beat again. The Healers are now drawing complex ritual circles around Zach. Other Healers use complex healing spells to stabilize his condition. “Now, you understand why I smoke so much. It dulls the ache for a while.” Nathaniel passes me a cigarette without a word, and I put it into my mouth before lighting it up with his lighter.

The acrid smoke invades my lungs, making me cough. “How can you smoke that shit?” I ask as I pull it out of my mouth and exhale a puff of smoke. “It tastes like ass.”

“You get used to it,” Nathaniel replies after lighting his cigarette. “You get used to it.” My brother’s voice trails off as he goes through his own set of regrets and unending grief. We both watch the Healers in silence as they use the Tethers to bring in new resources to fuel the rituals. Crates of Mana Potions are also requested to refill the empty Mana pools of the sweat-drenched healers. They resume their continuous casting of spells after downing a large vial of the blue liquid.

I frown as I keep smoking, the taste almost making me vomit. I pull out the stick of dried tobacco and let it extinguish itself. I’m never getting into smoking, that’s for sure. “Do you think he’s going to make it?” I finally ask the question that was at the tip of my tongue for so long. My brother is two years older than me, so he has more experience when it comes to this. I can’t even describe what it feels like.

He deflates, “He should.” He turns towards me with a wry smile, his expression resolute. “But I don’t want to give you any false hopes. I know how it feels.”

“The patient’s condition has stabilized! Start the Body Reforging Circles!” the chief Healer, who is still monitoring Zach’s health thanks to the slime, gives new orders to her underlings. The precise drawings made of multicolored dust surge with power as many Mana Crystals the size of my thighs drain in a flash. The ritual activates as the dust turns into ethereal energy. The symbols then spin and rise into the air before slamming into Zach. His body twitches as it repairs at a visible rate. Many exhausted Healers collapse on the spot, having overextended their Mana beyond measure.

I hold my breath as the ritual ends. The room dims as the surges of Mana from the magical circles dwindle to nothing.