I am dead.

That was the only thought that blazed through everything else inside my mind as I truly realized what I had done. Jumped to my death.

Not death by fall, mind you. Death by dozens of bloodthirsty goblins, more like it. Even the euphoric frenzy that drove me to do such a stupid thing was frozen solid by the cold fear that enveloped me as I realized that.

That cold clarity, however, also allowed me to actually look up and take in my actual surroundings.

And what I saw almost made me cry. From relief.

It was lunchtime.

The horn must have sounded at some point while I was frenzying in my cave. Usually, I would have known, since the sound was quite loud and its echoes reached even the Moss Cave, but during my euphoric state, it must have gone completely over my head.

The majority of the goblins must have gone to feed themselves. Right now there were only four startled creatures looking at me with raised ears akin to that of spooked cats. I might even have had found the scene funny if four was not four more goblins than I could handle by myself.

Still, it was a remarkable improvement from "certain death by 20 plus goblins". Even if it was probably only to "likely death by exactly 4 goblins".

Those thoughts all passed through my mind in less than a few seconds, and as soon as they were gone, the hot madness from before took over again.

Must.

Get.

Out.

Fuck. What is this shit? My body burns like a 45°C degree fever and I feel like my entrails are burning. The rush I have to get out of here is an enhanced version of the one you get when you have a sudden attack of diarrhea inside a crowd. Except I have no anus and no idea of how to take a dump.

Don't laugh. It is not funny.

At the same moment my frenzy came back, so did the battle instincts of the feral beasts in front of me. Two of them immediately rose to their feet, readying themselves to circle me. One other started to crawl towards me, as his legs were both messed up down from his knees. The last one didn't even move. He just kept staring at me with huge eyes and completely messed up body. Both his arms and legs were mangled beyond recognition as if they had been chewed by a giant.

The two, less wounded ones that were slowly trying to circle me only had injuries on their feet, with missing parts. Probably bitten off.

Unfortunately, one of them was also between me and the exit.

My pounding head, incapable of rational thought, only managed to give me a single answer for this dilemma:

Push through this fucker right now! You have to get out of here!

And so I did that. Using my superior physique and whatever I was holding on my right hand — oh wait, it is my sharp stalactite! — I rush at this particular goblin, planning to swipe my tool while simultaneously doing a body slam.

Rushing, I think the sudden ferocity given by the frenzy surprised even the goblins. It certainly startled me.

Hah. That will teach him a lesson.

Take this you fu—!!!

Oh.

A sharp pain in my abdomen pierces through even my euphoria and makes me fall to my knees.

"AAARRGHHH!"

Looking down, there is a long, thin red line starting from my navel all the way to my back. It slowly gets redder and redder until blood starts to seep out from it. In but a few moments, it has become a large gash, pouring blood down like the red curtain that signals the end of a piece.

I drop my stalactite and use my hands to try to hold the blood inside. It doesn't help. The blood trickles between my fingers and keeps dripping into the ground. Unceasingly.

Soon my hands are a red, grisly mess and so is all the right side of my body.

Oh no. I am going to die? Please, no, not again! Tears form in my eyes.

What had I been thinking? I am a phone attendant, for god's sake! Not some fighter or soldier.

These creatures, however...

They are monsters. Every day there are dozens of them here, with battle wounds. They have probably fought every day of their lives. Killing machines.

I look back. All three of the ones that were moving are now close to me. Way too close.

They are looking at me, down into the ground. The one who hurt me didn't even move from the place he was. He has just turned to the place I fell while looking like the happiest goblin alive. The glee in his eyes creeps me as much as the bloody knife he brings to his mouth to lick.

Tasting my blood.

The wicked smile he gives afterward, tells me he has liked my taste.

Fuck.

The other two join him and start emitting sharp, guttural noises. They are laughing.

Yeah, laugh away. I am a fool.

Rushing like that at an armed individual used to fighting was sheer stupidity. I can't even fully blame the frenzy I was under. There was a small, naive part of me that actually thought that I may have succeeded. Been a hero.

In the end, all he did was to sidestep my body slam and leave his thin knife steady on my path. I wounded myself on it and my stalactite swipe went over his head, hitting only air.

Hahaha... ridiculous.

The other two goblins now seem to have given up their share of me, in some tribalistic agreement that gave the rights to the goblin with the knife. They back off and watch from afar.

By now I am lying down in a pool of my own blood, on my back. The winner, limping over to me with his half-eaten feet, approaches me and raises my head by my hair. With my empty hands holding in my entrails, I must look a sorry figure. Harmless.

As he raises his dagger to cut my throat, I ponder on the facts that the creature has missed.

Jack Coast may be a simple, depressed phone attendant. He may also fight like a freaking child and be dumb as a rock. But there is also another thing he is...

He is a Survivor. And he is in a fucking frenzy.

Focusing on the burning insanity that placed me here in the first place, I let go of my slipping entrails and swiftly use my hands to grab him. With one hand, I lock the wrist of his dagger wielding hand and with the other, I grab his throat.

He resists, but I am stronger and bigger. There is no skill needed here. Just brutal, primitive strength. With a grunt of effort, I am on top of him and his dagger hand is pressed to the ground.

Another grunt and I have raised his head by the neck. His clawed left-hand try to scratch my eyes out, but I am relentless. I don't stop, only turning my face and letting him gouge the side of my head all he wants.

Guiding and steadying his dagger wielding hand up, I swear. Then, with a roar of rage, I push down his raised head. The back of his cranium is hammered down, hard, into the knife held by his own right-hand. Once, twice, thrice.

When I am done, his red eyes have popped out of their sockets, pressured from behind by the bloody mess I made out the back of his head.

His left-hand claws made a mess of the right side of my face, I can feel. Bloody gouges crisscross from under my left eye to my cheeks.

But I am alive.

Standing up, I pull the entrails that hanged loosely from the wound on my right side back inside.

Looking toward the other two goblins, I see they have stopped laughing. They don't look impressed, but they are narrowing their eyes as if assessing how much of a threat I am.

I don't give them time.

Grabbing the dead goblin's dagger, I rush at the other goblin that is standing. This time I actually think about what I am doing. This goblin only has a bone club as a weapon. Even if he hits me with it, I can probably take one or two blows. All I have to do is grab him during this time. They can't win from me on a strength contest.

And so, as I rush him, I don't try to slam him into the ground. Instead, I go for a grab.

As I come, he swings his club on a horizontal arc and it catches my left shoulder. I hear a crack and I think something may have broken there, but I keep going.

Soon, I am inside his range of attack and as he tries to back off, I give him a one-armed hug. With my other hand, I shove my dagger inside his belly. Once, twice, thrice... And more.

Until a sharp pain on the back of my leg makes me remember there was another moving goblin, the one crawling around with fucked up legs.

He bits a chunk of my calf off and then tries to use his claws to climb into my back.

I don't let him.

Using my uninjured leg to kick him away, I grab for the dying goblin's club and use it to retaliate.

Holding the bone with both hands, the last thing the crawling goblin sees is my raging face as I bash his skull into a pulp.

I only stop when the grey matter of his brain splashes on my face and I realize all the moving goblins are dead.

They are dead.

And I am alive.

This realization opens the floodgates of my eyes, as tears come to my face and drop to the ground, unceasingly.

But more importantly, it also opens a different gate.

A gate to the Universal Truth. The same feeling I had when I first awakened here.

And as it opens, I feel the burning madness that consumed me and guided me to do all these things leave through that path. The gate welcomes it and transforms it into part of itself. And as a reward for me, it shows me more truths about things that I already knew but did not truly understand.

Now I see it. Suffering should not be avoided. To survive is to suffer. So suffer. Suffer knowing that eventually, everything can be regained. Everything can be recovered from. Everything can be regenerated.

And suddenly I know that all those wounds I have suffered will not kill me. Nor any other wounds I may suffer from now on. Death is the only true enemy and I will always thrive against it. No matter what.

And it also shows more things about myself. Things that I may have always had inside myself. Once forgotten, now brought to light.

For Fighters, fighting is a gift. It should not be avoided, but instead, embraced. For them, it is as important as the air they breathe, the water they drink and the food they consume. It is the fuel of their souls and the language with which they speak. Without it, they are not complete. They are less.

Hidden as it may be, the Fighter in me is unmistakably alive. For that, I should rejoice. Lose myself into my art and speak the language I was born to express myself with.

Realizations strike me like punches, one after the other.

And after I recover from them, more come.

Fighting is natural. As much as walking or breathing, everyone knows it. Knowledge may be hidden, but never truly forgotten. And so remember I shall.

With this one, a flood of information surfaces inside my mind. As if a dormant part of me had suddenly awakened.

Dear god... I blanch as I realize what has appeared inside my mind.

The knowledge should make me happy, as it revealed to me that I will survive even these grisly wounds all over my body.

The reality, however, is that it just makes me feel hollow.

I am spent.

Without the frenzy, that I understand now, was caused by the accumulated energy inside my body, I am void. Like back then, on my daily job, my daily drinking, my daily drudgery.

The pain of my wounds came back multiplied, and everything hurts. I just want to lie down and sleep.

But I can't. Now, more than ever, I have to survive. It is just who I am now. An inseparable part of me.

So I rise. Covered in blood, both mine and of the green creatures, I look around.

I had almost forgotten about the last, fourth goblin. He is still in the same place as when I first fell here. Invalidated as he is, he couldn't have moved even if he wanted. Which, looking at his scared, trembling face, I am not sure he wanted.

I limp toward his mangled body, made of twisted limbs and exposed flesh. He is currently laying on one of those sleeping mounds of theirs, resting his back on one of the cave's stone walls.

As I approach, he grows restless. Trying to get away from me, he twists right and left, but his limbs don't seem to answer to him. Eventually, his body loses balance and falls to the ground, awkwardly.

Reaching him, I raise the bone club high and prepare to—

What? Murder him? Bash his skull in as I have done with his friends?

I look around again.

What was before a resting place, even if a dirty and smelly one, is now a veritable slaughterhouse. There is blood everywhere. The stench, that before was the same sweaty one you could smell from homeless people and dirty animals, was now akin to putrefaction. Entrails, loose organs, brain matter, bone splinters, intestinal juices and all sorts of other terrible wastes were strewn around. The corpses of two of the goblins couldn't even be identified and the one who got killed by the gut wounds laid with a terrified facial expression on its face, frozen forever into that way. I didn't know which one was worse.

And then I look back at the twisting, terrified creature on my feet. His eyes were watering like waterfalls, and he was making sobbing sounds that sounded like a child crying. Looking at his wet rags, I was also pretty sure he had pissed himself.

God. What the fuck am I doing?

Disgusted with myself, I approached him one last time. Picking up his terrified body up, I propped him back on the cave wall. Then I took the fabric scraps that made up their beddings and gathered it around him, to make him feel more comfortable.

The creature seemed surprised and stopped crying once I let go of him without doing any further harm. It is a sad thing. He must never have been treated with anything but harshness.

Turning my back to it, I prepare myself to climb back to my hole, up there, near the ceiling. Looking around, I decide to take these weapons with me. The dagger and the bone club had both been instrumental to my survival here. They could be needed again.

So, I throw both things up there, on the hole, and then try to climb up with my empty hands.

It turned out to be a quite simple climb, even if made excruciatingly painful by the multiple wounds accumulated in my body.

Thankfully, the «Endurance» I had been given when first arriving here allowed me to ignore the pain and focus on the task at hand.

The shoulder, which I had suspected to be broken, had only been dislocated. At first, it stopped me from climbing, but then all I had to do was put it together in place. I had done that before, in one of those terrible survival dreams I had been having. Now I was glad I had them. It seemed they were useful, after all.

Once I got up there, I immediately dove back into the tunnels. It was only a few moments later that I heard the commotion and roars of rage as the goblins came back to the cave from lunch.

Just in time.

After that, it was all a blur. All I know is that at some point of that day, I was back inside my Moss Cave.

I would like to say that it was a victorious return, accompanied by a feeling of satisfaction and relief. But the truth couldn't be farther from it.

It was a crying, broken man that slept on that cold stone floor that day. Covered in blood, both his own and that of others, he couldn't help but wish, at least a little, that he had died back there. Because at least then, he would not feel that terrible, oh so terrible guilt.

It was not guilt born simply by the things he had done, the living, thinking creatures he had killed.

On no.

It was much worse.

What made me feel so terrible, so monstrous was knowing, deep down, how much...

I had liked doing it all.