46/48 29:57

Chris came awake and sat up gasping for air. Nearby fire singed his face. His ears buzzed; he had a foggy sight.

“There is a horse; Helna and Elissa are in distress, and I have an ally,” Chris repeated while rubbing his eyes open on his bloody sleeves. Tinnitus squeaked in his ears, but it was not a problem. His ears weren’t damaged only sleeping, and he know how to scare them awake.

Chris ignored the horse and the bandits, the dead bodies, and the smell of blood in the air. He lowered himself and crawled to his usual spot behind the fire, to hide in open sight. He needed a new plan that would include the archer in it.

Yes, he knew there was a chance that old man might betray him, but he had lives, many lives, and chance, and no one could take that from him no matter what they tried. He once believed he was in the cage with the bandits.

Confidence and experience changed his thoughts.

Now he believed they were in the cage with him; he was the beast and they were the prey.

Chris had the keys and he was the driver with the destination. Everyone else was but a passenger in his car. He could always run into the forest and wait it out to start a new loop with no baggage until he untimely dies that is.

Shaking his head Chris remembered his conversation with the archer.

Right, I need to kill myself.

He glanced left and the bodies were there, again, horrifying, dismembered, and bloody. He pulled his head back, his stomach churning, telling him it had something to say. The corpses still distressed him. He hadn’t gotten used to seeing them and their crimson tears. It was up to debate whether it was a good or a bad thing. Compassion is a difficult thing to quantify. At least he was sure his feelings weren’t of cowardice.

He didn’t like the metallic taste of blood in his mouth; it was permeating all over, covering his senses, nauseating him. He had been ignoring it in the past time loops, but he was not the same anymore. He knew more about himself, especially about skills and their effects. He checked John’s skills again and found one that could help him.

“Freshness,” He uttered plainly and sat unnerved as the skill came into effect.

A cool breath washed his mouth. The haze covering his eyes cleared and his ears popped, letting the sounds in. He could have lived without the last one really. The child’s screams and Helna cries for help were too blood-curdling, seething.

The skill had a tremendous effect. He felt alive again; the headache reduced to murmurs in the back of his mind. He took deep breaths and sat up to plan, but first thing first. He crawled around the fire and got himself a sword. He promised the dead soldier he would avenge them and pull back behind the vehicle, his back to the fire and the sword's body reflecting its menacing apathy.

The fire doesn’t question, it acts. Destruction was just a means for it to survive. Chris needed to be like the fire -- do whatever he had to do to survive.

He pointed the sword at his chest, deciding whether to believe in the old man and stab his heart or to do things differently. He could choose to give himself a five-minute buffer before committing suicide, so even if the next loop fails he would have five minutes in the succeeding loop to plan. Perhaps, he could use those five minutes later to run into the forest to extend the buffer time, but it was a road with no end. And if he somehow ended up dying to the others hand then everyone will be in the loop and that was a clusterfuck he didn’t want to get into.

Suicide or not, he needed all the time they could get to kill everyone. There was no way he was getting through four men with ten minutes less in an already tight schedule.

They would only have one chance to set things right, to save Helna and Elissa. The giant would know about the archer's betrayal if they fail, which would have unforeseen consequences. Chris was sure of that.

Seeing no other way, Chris decided to go for it, but in the next loop. He decided to do something else in this one. Another level up will give him another skill, which might increase their chances. Anyways, it would only be death at most. No matter how stupid that sounded, he was right. Besides, being murdered was much easier on the mind than committing suicide.

Tearing strips off his coat, Chris bandaged his bleeding stomach. He called a shield and then waited for five minutes to pass so he could have a backup in case the shield breaks and stood up with burning motivation.

He didn’t foolishly call the bandits but crawled over the grass to get as close to them as possible. He was halfway there when the archer noticed him.

Was there going to be a friendly fire? Chris fixed the shield to his head and continued crawling forward. Unfortunately, the archer didn’t remember him and told the bandit leader about his actions, their eyes met and the man grinned from ear to ear.

“Hey, look who’s there.” Steve, the bandit leader grabbed Helena from her hair and forced her head in Chris’s direction. “Isn’t he a brave man? Look, he wants to save you.”

Helna saw John crawling toward her and the tears she had been holding back streamed down her swollen cheeks without stopping.

“NO!” She croaked, clutching her child to her chest. “Don’t come here! RUN, HONEY! Run!”

Steve, the bandit leader laughed, rubbed his bearded face on Helna’s cheek, and licked her face. “What do you think, honey?” He said looking in Chris’s direction, the grin a permanent fixture on his face. “Are you gonna run?”

“Get away from me you Bastards!” Helna elbowed him in the chest but he didn’t let her go. “I’ll never forgive you. NEVER!” She screamed, crying, defeated. John's harrowing appearance broke her in a way that fear hadn’t.

Chris’s heart lurched. His throat dried. Helna wasn’t his wife, but he had John’s memories. Her every tear was a wound on his heart, and he would have stayed in the loop just to kill the fucking bastards a hundred times over if he could. They deserved all the pain in the world. He hated himself for leaving her to the animals. He should have fought them from the start, taking the fight to them despite everything. So what if they could remember? He was still the only one who could lee up in the loop. Maybe he would have reached a high enough level to overpower them all single-handed. However, they would have noticed it, and used Helna and the child to blackmail them. Torture him and them.

She didn’t deserve such treatment. No one did. Chris decided, strong or not, that fucker needed to die.

Chris stood up somehow, raised his sword to the bandit leader, and proclaimed, “I’m going to kill you.”

“Are you now?” Steve bellowed madly, threw Helena to the ground, and rested the ax on his shoulder.

Helna didn’t defend herself but protected her child in her arms. The impact sent her head whipping around like a ball hanging from the edge of spring. She curled up there on the road, her state unknown.

“Come then,” Steve said. “Show me what you got in your old bones.”

He raised his chin and stared at Chris in amusement, hoping to be entertained.

Taking his mockery as the order to kill, the bandits rushed toward Chris.

Chris planted his feet and took a stance with his head tucked in to keep everything between his eyes and heart behind the shield. It was the only way to survive the first onslaught and proved effective when the first arrow bounced off the very edge of the shield, causing it to ripple in effect. It didn’t break but alerted the fiends of his magical ways.

“He has a barrier!” Someone yelled, but the bandits weren’t cowards. The barrier made their eyes glisten in greed.

“I told you to search him properly!’ Steve blared. “Don’t you fools know the cost of a barrier artifact?”

Chris ignored Steve’s nitpicking and picked a target. He chose the young boy he had killed twice in the previous loops and stepped in line with him to block the archer’s sight, a very useful tactic in a gunfight.

Arrow and bullets might be deadly for normal people like him, but they travel in a straight line. You block a gunner’s sight and you effectively make them useless.

Unfortunately, it was the third man who reached him first. He was short, fast, and effective. He wore lightning on his feet and held thunder in his hands. His two daggers made the air scream like a virgin maiden every time he slashed. He was nimble like a panther and Chris had no idea when or how he got behind him. Chris only felt him when the pain came and blood erupted from a newly cut wound. He was being toyed with, but instead of getting angry, he thanked his luck. The man could have killed him, ten times over in ten-second.

Yet he lived.

If it wasn’t a miracle then what was it?

Then he came again, slower this time, enjoying it. The man was in his late twenties, still youthful, holding a grin that seemed to say he was enjoying torturing Chris.

Chris hurriedly moved the shield between him and the man who disappeared in the time it took him to move his left hand forward. Then two sharp blades cut into his back. The man could have killed him, stabbed his kidneys and he’d be dead, but he had decided to play instead. Give Chris a chance.

Chris didn’t turn around. His instincts told him the man was no longer behind him. He focused on the boy instead who had just reached him with his sword drawn parallel to the ground, the same swing, the same height. Chris knew he could dodge it. He didn’t let the shield take him.

NO.

That would have been a waste.

Chris waited with held breath for the boy to swing the sword at him and then watched the lofty unpracticed parallel slice toward him. It moved so slow Chris had dodged it way before it had even reached halfway between them. Chris waited for the sword to pass above his head before going for the boy's guts.

He was faster than the boy but much slower than the arrow that came, not from behind the boy, but from the side. Chris had lost sight of him while being hacked apart. The arrow struck his side and he bucked over as the sharp pain tore through his body. He wasn’t sure what hurt more a bullet or the arrows but he had never been shot so he stuck to an arrow instead.

God, it was embarrassing.

Somehow, even with one foot in the grave, Chris jealously held his sword. Ah, he was planning to see the Bandit leader in action, but he couldn’t even get past the three stooges. The giant hadn’t even joined the fray. Where was he actually? Chris had lost sight of him too. He was not doing so hot if he could lose sight of such a large man. He looked around in panic and saw the giant standing still beside his leader, watching things play out.

Chris was right to believe attacking straight ahead was stupid. There was nothing to gain here, but plenty to lose.

Chris hissed and straightened his back. The arrow acted like a meat grinder inside his waist. How he wished to pull it out, but he would have died faster that way. Well, the pain was one thing, but the boy had settled his feet and glared at him. He was hoping to kill the boy to gain that level but the chance was gone now.

When Chris finally stood upright, he found the giant rushing at him from the side holding the giant hammer in front of his chest.

It was a great technique to run carrying something so heavy.

Then the giant lunged. He really did.

It surprised Chris and made him curse. Well, he would have rolled away like a dog if there wasn’t an arrow sticking from his waist, but where was the fun in that? He had to take it like a man, and by a man, he knew he meant a middle-aged man going through a mid-life crisis whose life was less exciting than the pigeon that had nested outside his apartment window. At least they were fucking eachother. He was only fucking himself.

Chris appointed the shield above his head and let it take over. The power behind that hammer blow would have shoved his arm into his body if he had dared use it to hold the shield.

Not to say the shield held off though. Chris noticed a glow around the hammer and understood the man was using a skill. Chris had the idea of holding the sword and letting the giant pin himself to death, as he had in the last loop, but that idea flew away with the wind that blasted at him when the hammer struck the shield.

He didn’t know who replaced his hard shield with soft paper because the hammer easily tore through it. It was another thing that the hammer entirely missed Chris by a head’s gap and struck the ground with a loud sharp bang. The ground trembled and dirt exploded upward.

Was the man always that strong? Chris thought as the wind forced him back.

Maybe jumping at him from so far away threw the giant off. Whatever the case, it was his loss and Chris’s gain. Finally, he had another opportunity. Gosh, he had been waiting for it.

Chris ignored the upset giant and came into action. God bless his soul. He jumped toward the boy instead. The dirt cloud hid him and his motive. No one noticed him fall—lunging at the boy who squeaked like a hamster instead of defending himself.

The boy was the only one who didn’t seem to belong in the group. He was too young, too inexperienced, and grew flustered at the sudden attack. Where did they find him? Was he their goalkeeper? Did they practice shooting with him? Fuck it.

Chris grabbed the boy’s waist and took him to the ground. His sword fell out of his hands though and his testicles climbed up at the impact. It hurt! BAD.

What was he expecting? Things were bound to go a little sideways. He caught the chicken but lost his breath. Was he going to die before getting a taste? NO!

Chris gathered his marble and caught the boy’s ankle. The boy screamed and kicked him in the face, but he was already numb to pain. The fire in his waist had short-circuited his nervous system a long time ago. The kick only did the job of angering him. He crawled faster, pulled the boy's dagger from his waist, and then stabbed him in the heart. Once, twice, he did not stop.

He wanted to say something inspiring at this moment, but where did he have the time or energy? He could only roar and keep stabbing in the same spot until the warm blood had splashed an abstract art around them and turned him into a painter, his hands and clothes dyed in the red cries of the boy’s ending life.

Something changed in him in that instant. No, he didn’t go crazy. The speedster finally did what he should have done from the start, stabbed his back and replaced his kidneys with two soulless daggers. Chris liked the new configuration of his body very much.

Chris died, from the giant’s blow who tore his head from his torso with his bare hands. But hey, he leveled up. He didn’t get into too much trouble over it either. He only suffered some pain, which was nothing new. He could have done without the emptiness that followed, but then again, one can’t have everything now, can they? Perhaps others could, but not him. He didn’t deserve happiness.

****

Chris came awake and sat up gasping for air. His hands —covered in blood— shook like two feathers blown away by a light breeze. He closed his eyes to bock the hazy figures. He wanted to be in the darkness for a little bit longer. Let his thoughts settle so he could think better for what followed next.

The shaking hands flustered him, but there were things he need to do and there was not much time to waste.

Chris opened his status, dropped the attribute point he had earned into wisdom and the two skill points into the water element, acquiring a new ability.

[You have acquired water element: Telekinesis (Shield)]

[Telekinesis (Shield): Now you can mentally direct the shield anywhere you want.]

Now both his hands were free. He could hold two swords!

He called the shield and it appeared instantaneously one meter from his face. He wanted it to go left and it went left. He wanted it to go right and it followed his order without emotions. The movement was quick, but not so fast that he could make it revolve around his head and produce blurry afterimages in the wake, like the wings of a helicopter. It would have been more useful that way.

Chris shrugged his shoulders; he liked what he got. He could also sense the shield’s presence, allowing him to know its position at any given time without needing to watch it with his eyes. It was another useful thing.

Chris freshened up, and then let five minutes pass before standing up and walking toward the corpses. The bandits obviously noticed him.

“HEY!” Steve said turning around.

Chris paid him no heed.

“Mother fucker!” Steve pulled the reins of his horse and together, they charged toward Chris. He raised his ax to cut Chris’s head and finish him off once and for all.

Chris was faster. He kneeled beside the corpse of the man who lay dead on his stomach and picked up the man’s sword.

“I haven’t forgotten my promise,” He told the dead and slit his throat.

“What the hell? Why the fuck--” Chris heard Steve’s heavy voice utter in confusion as the world lost color around him.

He fell to the ground beside the corpse, bleeding from his throat. Blood filled his lungs. His eyelids grew heavy as life slowly trickled out of his body. He died an agonizing death with one thought in his head -- pierce the heart next time.

*****

29:45

Chris came awake and sat up gasping for air. His face was on fire! Eyes bleeding, a pounding headache drilled into his brain.

WHAT IN THE HELL IS HAPPENING!

He couldn’t breathe. His chest felt heavy, sinking. He collapsed to the ground holding his chest. Fingers dug into his flesh.

I need to move! His mind thought but his body acted indifferently.

He was dying and it sure felt like that. Was it because he died twice in quick successions? Or was it because he killed himself? The reason didn’t matter, only pain did which was frightening, hollowing, unbelievable!

This was worse, worse than just remembering. He felt it with his body. His teeth clacked, toes curled in, the hair stood up. This was not a phantom pain he had carried over from the previous loop! He needed to hold on! The time was slipping. He only had five minutes to prepare. He somehow opened his eyes and glared at the corner of his sight through blood-red eyes. The clock slipped second by second. He had lost a minute, and another was going the same irreversible direction.

He needed to get up, to survive, to save, and to protect. Thank god he couldn’t speak, couldn’t hear, or he would have been screaming and cursing and flailing like a mad man.

He held through the pain, which started heavy but eventually faded, dimmed, diminished like always. Slowly, but surely, the pain dissolved into a toothache at the back of his jaw that only poked out its rotten head when tested.

Four minutes had elapsed by the time Chris finally found his senses. He was breathing laboriously through the open mouth, eyes staring at the fire. He heaved through the annoying tiredness and gathered whatever marbles he could find and got himself the sword. He kept an eye on the time. He had a minute before the archer and the giant got their memories of past events.

The plan was to have the giant and the boy chase him into the forest and kill them there before returning to deal with the bandit leader Steve alone.

Fifty-five seconds,

Chris crawled to the sword, considered sneaking to the bandits and killing one of them before their memories returned. The giant would then definitely try to kill him and the archer could take him out while he deals with the other two. However, he had no way to survive the short speedster. The man was fast and cunning, a deviant with more blood lust than a leech. Although the ma liked to play, Chris didn’t think the man would play with him if he deemed him dangerous.

He would definitely take hold of Chris.

Chris grabbed the sword and glanced at the clock hovering in the upper-left corner of his sight.

Ten seconds,

There was too little time!

What was the agency’s protocol in such a situation? Not like any agent had ever been in a time loop… but there are tricky situations everywhere. The situation might ask for a change in plan.

Anytime that happened the agency’s stand was to always--

Five seconds,

--stick with the plan.

Chris stood up in front of the fire just as the clock turned green, visible to anyone who was looking. Bandits far away had bled through their noses, disoriented because of the new and strange memories pouring into their minds.

“YOU!” The shout came from the far side of the road. The giant now awakened took a step forward. Chris raised a hand and taunted the giant to follow him, then made a mad dash to the woods.

“What the hell!” The bandit captain Steve shouted. “Get him!” He ordered. The boy took a few steps when another voice made him stop and look to the side where the giant stood with his monstrous hand around Helna’s feeble neck.

“Stop” The giant’s thick voice thundered the road down the road. “Or I’ll kill her!”

Chris halted at the edge of the forest, gritting his teeth.

What could go wrong had just gone wrong. The plan was bound to fail from the start. Why did he ignore the possibility that the giant would ignore his taunt and harm Helna instead? This was a miss on his part. He was too reckless, too confident. Now someone else would have to pay the price of his foolishness.