Ch-6 ***

Helna’s legs fluttered as the giant slowly chocked the life out of her. The starry sky reflected in her eyes as she scratched the vice clamped around her neck, to pry open the cage burring into her skin and crushing her bones. Her other hand tightly clutched her daughter close to her chest, afraid to lose her.

Chris exhaled the worry rotting his insides. He shook his head. There was no point worrying about what had happened. He still had to save the little girl from the monsters so she wouldn’t turn into a monster herself.

“Let her go!” Chris and the archer both said at the same time. Where Chris spoke calmly, the archer aimed an arrow at the giant, his voice sharp and piercing.

The archer blared when the giant ignored him. “I’m not joking! Let her go or I’ll kill you!”

“Have you lost a screw, Tempa?” The bandit leader Steve shouted, taking a step forward. He stopped when Tempa pointed the arrow at him.

“You want to shoot me?” Steve snickered. “Do you have the guts to kill the friend who taught you archery?”

“I used to believe in you,” Tempa gritted his teeth. “Not anymore. You are an animal. You all ARE.” He said looking at the bandits. “You are all insects of the same sewage. You are no different from the villains you used to catch. Now you have been caught, and it’s your time to die.”

Tempa, the archer, wiped his nosebleed on his shoulder and started distancing himself from the crowd to hamper anyone’s thoughts about a surprise attack, and to keep everyone in his range.

Steve didn’t stop him. He laughed instead. “Aren’t we brothers? Why don’t we just leave here, huh?” He opened his arms in a questioning manner. “You get your cut and we get our cut. You can get your house back and we’ll have some fun.”

The boy and the speedster grinned lecherously. Especially the speedster; he glared at Helna and licked his lips.

“Isn’t what I promised you? Isn’t that what you want?”

“I didn’t sign up for this!” Tempa shouted. He glanced at Chris, passed him a nod. Then faced the giant and told him in an icy tone of voice, “Let her go or you are dead.”

Steve’s face fell, his eyes hardened and he got on his haunches. He had been trying to get out of the mess without seeing blood, but he was serious no, ready to kill Tempa if he had to.

Steve raised his ax and glared at Tempa. “You wouldn't dare?”

“LET HER GO!” Tempa shot.

Everyone watched with bated breaths as the arrow sailed through the air and stuck true to its target, digging into the giant’s neck and piercing through.

The giant’s eyes opened wide as Helna fell from his hands. His feet staggered. He grabbed his neck with one hand and the arrow with the other. His thoughts spoke murder in his mind as he fell to the ground, his windpipe busted and breaths laborious.

“FUCK!” Bullet, the one with the daggers yelled and went after Tempa.

“BROTHER!” The boy shouted looking in the opposite direction, eliciting Steve to look.

Chris ran toward them with a sword in hand. There was a red patch on the bottom of his shirt, which fluttered in the air as the vehicle exploded behind him, spreading the fire everywhere. He looked like a demon from hell with the explosion rampaging in the background, and for a second Steve thought he had messed up.

It didn’t take long for Steve to remember whom they had targeted and calm down. The old man was just a merchant holding on to his dying breath. There was nothing to worry about. The guards were dead; he had the blaster. Though Tempa betrayed him for some godforsaken sense of righteous justice, everything was still under control.

“How are you holding?” Steve asked the giant who grunted in response. The man was in the process of breaking the arrow and removing it from his throat. Yea, nothing could kill him. He was a giant for god’s sake! Nothing short of a miracle could kill him!

Steve turned to Chris and raised his ax. “Come, show me what you got, dead man.”

However, Steve wasn’t one to leave things to fate. He went to grab Helna who lay uncurious on the ground beside the giant.

Suddenly he sensed something behind his back and rolled away just in time as an arrow wound past him, clipping through his cheek, drawing a line of blood.

His lips curled up as he rolled to the side. Another arrow flew toward him. He dodged it too, but his smile froze when he found himself in the path of a miraculous third arrow. There was no time to react. He hardened his muscles and the arrow struck his back, true to its target. His last maneuver saved his heart, but the arrow ended up penetrating through his lung. Air escaped his chest in frenzy for freedom. He kneeled on the roadside, a fire burning in his chest. His eyes budged as he tried to get up, but the pain kept a tight check on him.

Steve glared murderously in Tempa’s direction and saw him retreating away for them with bullet hot on his heels. Gritting his teeth he grabbed the arrow to stabilize it, then stood up facing the old man who should be dead and burnt to a crisp. He regretted leaving him with a breath of life to torture him. Everything was happening because he let Tempa fill his mind with useless sympathy. And where did that get him?

A vein popped on his forehead. “You have guts.” He coughed out to Chris who had ignored him and stopped beside Helna, eyes on him.

“I’m gonna kill you.” Steve wheezed out. He staggered but held his ground. “Then I’m going to rape your wife, and sell your daughter to the whore house, where she will stay for the rest of her pathetic life serving men like me who will use her like fucking cattle!”

Steve broke the arrow's tail, and then grabbed the arrowhead and pulled it out of his back. That alone took away half of his strength. But it made Chris vigilant and Steve liked that look of fear on that old wrinkled face. Grinning, he tore a piece of his shirt and plugged it inside the hole in his chest.

He drew a deep breath and exhaled a deep undulating vibrato. “I promise you, she will suffer!”

Chris managed to wake Helena. She saw him, bloody, destitute, a mess, and her tears flowed uncontrolled.

“For-forgive me...” Helna cried. “If-if I hadn’t ur-urged you...” She couldn’t complete the sentence, but held his arm, pushed her face into his chest, and wailed.

Chris couldn’t say anything to her. She wasn’t his wife, but he understood all too clearly how she felt. He knew her pain.

He put an arm around her shoulder and helped her up. Elissa quietly watched him from the blanket; her sunset red eyes were full of curiosity. He touched her cheek and she held his finger.

“I hope you won’t turn out the same way,” Chris murmured to her. He stood still for a second remembering everything she would go through if he failed there.

Suddenly, Chris heard something cutting through the air and coming toward them. He hurriedly freed his finger from Elissa’s tiny hand and pushed Helena back.

Steve had thrown his ax. It struck Chris’s shield, cut right through it, and went through the open space between Chris and Helna. It struck the ground somewhere behind them and caused a deafening explosion that was strong enough to send a cloud of dust flying five meters high.

“Let them leave and this can end here,” Chris said facing Steve.

“Or what? You are gonna kill me?”

“Worse. I’m going to keep coming back to life until I kill you.”

“Ha-ha,” Steve laughed. “Is that supposed to scare me?”

Chris shook his head. “You are already scared. You are wondering how the giant knew I was alive, and why he tried to kill her. You also can’t figure out why our friend suddenly pointed the arrow at you despite knowing it would be the death of him. You have many questions and no answers. Isn’t that right?”

Steve stared at him with large brown eyes. The grin was gone from his face, as was the laughter. He was serious. “Now I really want to see what makes you so confident.”

****

Chris came awake and sat up gasping for breath. His right hand went straight to his chest. He looked with fear in his eyes but found no additional smoking wound there.

A fire burned to his right, singing that side of his face. The smoke in the air made it difficult for him to breathe. Each cough made his heart palpitate.

He looked away and Freshened up. A cold wind took away all of his discomforts.

Chris sighed.

Fifteen minutes,

That was how long he had before everyone’s memories returned and they knew the truth. That was how long he lasted in the previous loop. The worst he expected to happen happened. Steve killed him and he was now part of the loop.

Chris bandaged his wound, picked up the sword, and waited. Only three minutes had elapsed by then. He ignored the pleas that Helna screamed. He closed his ears to Erissa's cries. He needed to focus. Another two minutes and he would be off.

He wondered what would happen once he saved Elissa, once the loop ends. He hoped the time would stop looping and continue as usual. He also hoped that he would return to his world. He had enough of dying and killing men for the time being. He was interested in finding out how time had passed on Earth while he was not there. Had it continued without him or stopped in wait for his return.

Shaking his head, Chris glanced at the red clock willfully going on, ignoring his thoughts, wants, and needs. Four minutes twenty-seven seconds, 26, 27--

“All right, run to the forest, hide at the same place, duck, kill the boy, hide, stab the sword, defend against the hammer, and kill Steve.” The list of his task was very heavy. Killing so many battle-hardened men in the span of seven minutes wasn’t going to be easy, but he had a trick up his sleeve, one which Steve had revealed to him in his overconfidence in the last loop.

The clock struck five minutes and Chris got up. He waved to the bandits and while they stared, glared, watched, and looked at him dumbstruck, he ran into the forest.

“What the hell?”

“Get him!”

Exactly the same words as always rang in the clearing behind Chris. He was numb to them, but he carried on, ran into the dark forest leaving bloody prints and signs of his presence behind him. He ran for a minute and hid behind a thick tree. The position didn’t matter only the direction did. The boy could always find him. The giant would follow him from afar as if to train him or something. That never went great for the boy in any of the loops. The giant thought of Chris as a helpless old man, who he was, nothing to rebuke there. It was a simple game of fate. They were up against the one person they could not kill.

Suddenly, Chris heard the forest floor talking to him, telling him someone was coming. Light as the footsteps were, they were still louder than a whisper in an empty hall. The forest was too dense and dark. It was easier there to hide in plain sight than to cover one's tracks or the sound of their footsteps.

When the sound stopped that was when Chris came into action. The sword cut past his head as he dropped to the ground and swept the boy off his feet. The boy fell down screaming flailing his arms, like a young chick thrown off the cliff by her mother in the hope it would learn to fly. The boy smacked his head on the ground and grew pensive for a moment. When that didn’t split his head open like an egg fallen from a nest up in the tree crown, Chris ended his short adventure by beheading him. Which was a much easier —though messier— alternative to stabbing one in the chest, for both the people involved.

It was the scream actually that made him change his stance… Chris was tired of hearing them.

The forest grew quiet around him at once. Chris hurriedly got to work. He removed the boy’s dagger and hid behind another tree in wait.

Soon the giant man appeared for the darkness, holding the hammer in both hands. He stopped beside the corpse and stared at it with his back to Chris.

Chris had learned from the previous loops and hid appropriately since the man always ends up standing with his back facing the road in each loop.

Chris saw his chance and went into action. He grabbed the dagger with both hands, sneaked behind the giant, and plunged the dagger into the man’s back.

That didn’t kill the giant but made him groan. It hurt the giant and in turn angered him. He swung his hammer with a roar.

Chris dodged the swing with a simple backstep; he got lucky as the hammerhead passed a mere inch from his chin. The contact would have blown his face to bits. He had moved the shield away to save it for when he needed it. The swing blew away the blanket of foliage covering the forest floor and threw them into the air.

The scene would have looked majestic in the day; at night, the two barely registered the leaves or their dynamic return to the forest floor.

Chris swung the sword in a diagonal arc. He put his weight behind it, but the man managed to save his neck by pulling his head back.

“Who are you?” The giant asked in shock. How in the hell was the old man suddenly so light on his feet? Were his eyes playing tricks on him?

The clock was still in the red, the giant's memories still stuck in the time vault, waiting for the right time, the right moment to appear. Chris was going to make sure the man doesn’t remember anything.

Three minutes until the clock turns green. Chris had ample time, especially since his opponent knew nothing about him while he knew everything he needed to know about the giant.

Chris stabbed unhurried, confident. The giant grabbed the sword with his bare hand and pulled Chris toward himself. He had the hammer ready to strike in the other hand. It was a reckless move, but an effective one against normal soldiers. Chris was far from normal. He was a magician with more near-death experiences under his belt than most front-line soldiers!

Chris released the sword, and rolled under the giant’s legs as the hammer came crashing down behind him and sent a geyser of dead leaves flying everywhere.

Chris stood up out of the giant's range and picked up the boy's sword. Two minutes and twenty-four seconds until the giant remembers everything. Chris charged forward.

The man gave a booming laugh and swung the four feet long steel hammer like a wooden toothpick. Chris surprised the giant by running headfast into the hammer. He almost scared the poor man because what he did was beyond reckless; it was foolish!

Then the hammer struck the shield and broke through it, but that small shift of momentum stunned the giant for a moment long enough for Chris to close the distance between them. There was no time to retrieve the hammer so the giant made a fist and elbowed Chris. The second shield Chris had called easily defended, stunning the giant in an awkward position with both his arms crossed.

Chris took the golden chance with strides.

The sword slashed in a diagonal arc, ripping open the giant’s unprotected throat. Blood flowed out of the lethal wound. The giant dropped the hammer, which fell softly into the forest's embrace. He clutched his neck to stop the bleeding, choking himself harder than he had choked Helna. He staggered back and forth around Chris, glaring at him with haltered-filled eyes.

Where was that going to faze Chris?

Chris replied silently with his action. His movement was simple, the swing even simpler, both together resulting in the giant’s demise. The giant’s body crumbled where he stood, spreading blood onto the foliage in a way representative of a volcanic eruption. While the head fell a few feet away, leaving small craters in the foliage wherever it bounced until it came to stop near a group of rocks teaming with small life.

{You have leveled up.}

“Finally,” Chris said slashing the sword to clear the blood on its surface. He glanced at the clock and started descending toward the road.

The clock was still red. One minute and ten seconds until Steve remembered everything. Tempa was dead if he remembered and the loop would fail. He might even catch Chris pulling Helna into the loop just to torture her repeatedly to turn the night into a nightmare.

Chris knew Steve was capable of that.

Chris’s clothes had gotten heavier after all the movements he made. They were drenched in sweat. He looked again; it was blood. The wound on his stomach was bleeding profusely. The rush of hormones and enzymes spared him from the pain, but not the lethargy. He could do nothing else than to remove his shirt and hold it over the wound and keep moving. Time was a luxury he didn’t have.

Helna saw him staggering out of the forest and urged him to run away. He understood why John had never left her side even though she couldn’t give him a child. He could have married any woman, but he didn’t. That was love.

Chris made his way to them with a smile. The clock was on the verge of turning green. Steve’s memories were waiting on the threshold for the signal to commence implantation.

Tempa raised the bow and targeted him. He would have killed Chris in a heartbeat if Steve hadn’t stopped him.

“What did you do to them?” Steve growled like a dog warning Chris to keep his hands where it could see them. “What did you do to my son!” He screamed.

So the boy was his son. That explained a few things.

Chris had nothing to say to the man. He yelled, pumped himself up, and ran toward Steve like a bullet leaving a gun. He held the sword high and didn’t stop when his wound opened and his intestine poked out.

Steve threw Helna to Tempa and rushed toward him barehanded. He wanted revenge and he wanted to make it bloody.

They were a few feet away from eachother when Steve’s nose bled suddenly. A drop of crimson red dripped from his nose as the clock turned green. His memories from the last time returned and his eyes opened wide as he remembered the truth. He was so shocked he didn’t know what to do. Chris grappled his waist at that moment to pull him to the ground, but Steve countered by grabbing his leg and throwing him back.

Chris rolled on the ground until he lay between Steve and Helna, who was confused by Tempa’s sudden change of heart as he urged her to take a horse and save herself.

Chris and Steve stared at eachother. Chris lay while Steve stood shell-shocked and speechless.

“Scared yet?” Chris asked with a grin.

“What the fuck is this?” Steve asked, keeping his distance from Chris.

“I told you I’ll keep coming back to haunt you. Do you believe me now?”

”This can’t be happening.”

“Oh but it is!” Chris snickered.

Steve hurriedly went to his wait to get something but didn’t find what he was looking for.

Chris raised a torch-shaped object with a beautiful rainbow-colored prism fixed at the helm and pointed it in Steve’s direction. “Looking for this?”

Steve saw the blaster and his eyes opened wide in horror.

“Thanks for showing off in the previous life,” Chris said. “If you hadn’t killed me with my prized possession I wouldn’t have known that you were hiding such a good thing. You have my thanks. We wouldn’t be here if not for you.”

The object was nothing else but the blaster Tempa had warned Chris the first time they had a conversation. It was basically a gun, but one that fired plasma bullets. One of them had burned right through Chris’s shield and killed him in the last loop.

“You don’t have to do this,” Steve said. “This thing that’s going on is an opportunity! You can have your life. Just think what we can achieve--”

“Fire,” Chris ordered and a bullet the size of his fist shot toward Steve at unprecedented speed.

The blaster used something called mana to charge. Chris didn’t know anything about mana, but he knew a lot about guns. With a gun, you point and shoot, and that logic applied to the blaster too.

In the blink of an eye, Steve now had a hole in his stomach, similar to the one on Chris’s stomach. It didn’t kill him, and Chris didn’t give him time to feel the pain.

Chris kept the prism pointed at Steve and kept firing one bullet after another until the thing ran out of juice.

By the end of it, Steve was dead and burnt beyond recognition. Smoke rose from his body when he fell to the ground.

Chris coughed blood at the same time. He had exerted too much in the loop. His end was close. He laid back. The blaster slid from his hand and dropped to the ground as he stopped resisting the weakness haunting him.

The sky reflected in his eyes. The full moon was oddly foreign, bigger and brighter. He was once again reminded that he was in a foreign world in an unknown part of space, floating in the universal ocean, on their journey alone. The stars painted a beautiful picture; one that he realized would never appear in the sky above his city. His heart yearned to remain there forever, and he regretted it a little bit.

Suddenly, a face appeared in his sight. Helna sat beside him and held his hand. He couldn’t respond to her touch. He had no strength left. Her emerald eyes were wet and trembling. Tears fell on his face, wet and warm as her hands. She held Erissa in her arms, close to her chest.

Chris looked at the tiny little thing wrapped in the blanket. What a sweet child she was. So many things happened around and she was calm as a cloud in the sky.

Chris touched her cheek and she stared back at him with curious sunset eyes. They gleamed brightly, not a hint of darkness surrounding them. Maybe he had saved her.

“Take care of your mother, okay.” He told the child as she held his finger and smiled.

Helna clenched his other hand tighter. She couldn’t hold on any longer and started sobbing. She knew he was dying. He had just lost too much blood.

“Don’t think everyone is the same. Don’t let the bullies bully you. And don’t hate people. Not everyone is the same. Some,” He looked at Tempa, “are just bound by circumstance, puppets of fate.”

She wasn’t Chris’s blood, but he could feel nothing but love for her. Guess it goes with everything he had done to protect her. The bond between them was built on the back of hardships and struggles. It might not be as pure as the bond between Erissa and Helna, but it was definitely thicker and stronger. He could say with pride that he had died saving her. Even her mother couldn’t compete with that! The thought made him grin.

“I hope you live a happy life. You deserve it.”

His hand fell lifelessly to the side. The world turned dark in Chris’s eyes. One by one, the senses slipped away from his grasp until he was nothing but a weightless cloud floating in limitless darkness.

Chris obsessively thought he was still in the loop until a blue screen appeared floating in front of his eyes and congratulated him for completing the quest.

[You have saved Erissa and now the world is a safer place.]

{Quest: Save the Hero is complete.}

{Reward: You will randomly acquire one of John vest’s skills.]

[You have acquired Freshness.]

{Reward: You have completed the quest with 42 loops remaining. You will be granted experience points for every loop saved.]

[Congratulations! You have leveled up x 6]

[You are now level 9.]

The hologram faded, the darkness exploded and Chris woke up kneeling on top of his authentic Sleek Grey rug; it was the first thing that April had bought after their marriage and the one thing he refused to throw out because it was his choice. He vomited a mouthful of black blood on the rug before falling to his side. He was back, but his head spun in waves. The room spun around him. He saw his emotionless Shadow staring at him and then lost consciousness.