Kauss charged the Tetson with his knife pointed at its heart. The Tetson spotted him and dodged out the way, roaring at him, exposing its razor-sharp teeth. The first blow was thrown; a fight to the death has begun. Man or beast, knife or teeth, the long awaited duel has taken place, and this time, no one’s holding back.

The Tetson dug under the ground and burrowed its way toward Kauss, shaking the ground with its movement. Kauss ran in an unpredictable pattern, hoping that the movement would confuse the predator before it came up and strikes. It succeeded for the moment as it popped out of the ground for a short period of time. He was behind it, ready to deliver a satisfying attack. Raising his blade, he ran toward the back of its head, preparing to sink it into its brain.

The Tetson moved out of the way, completely emerging from the ground. Kauss skidded to a halt and leaped back as its tail swiped at him. It turned around and Kauss could smell that gas gathering in its throat. He dodged out of the way as fire erupted past him. Any closer and he’d be bathing in hell for the rest of the afterlife. However, there was a large opening now. It couldn’t move while its fire was active. Taking advantage of the situation, he dived toward the Tetson’s neck, ready to end it for good.

Before he could puncture its neck, the Tetson moved forward, risking a burn before giving up its life by letting its neck get sliced in two. Kauss’ blade penetrated the Tetson’s body. This happened just like the last fight, but this time he didn’t have any lightning to fight back with.

The Tetson swerved its body around, sending him flying into the air, directly above its head. Kauss’ arms flailed about as he soared into the sky, unable to move on his own accord. It knew exactly what it was doing, and Kauss praised its genius brain despite being an animal. This wasn’t the end, however, and he would make sure of it.

The Tetson looked upward and opened its mouth, that smell of mint reaching Kauss’ nose. He could see down its throat as a small fireball formed just in front of its lips. In less than a second, that fire ball erupted into a full-blown flamethrower and burst forward. Flames completely enveloped Kauss’ body, and the heat seared him to no end.

His skin burned, his hair burned, his insides burned. The burning that contrasted with the amount of pleasure he felt before this moment upset him so much he nearly puked. There was no word to describe this amount of pain. Hurt would be heavily underestimating it, but the pain was far too great for something like agony or torture. So he just left it simple. It hurt like a bitch.

His arm and leg hair burned away. His clothes turned into ashes as they caught on fire and cooked him alive. Tiny fragment burned away into dust and joined with the smoke and ash as it piled onto the ground. In no time, he was completely naked, and the fire burnt his skin directly. However, Kauss refused to flinch in the face of such a threat to his life. If he backed down now and died without a fight, what kind of man would he be?

As he fell back toward the ground, he tightened his grip on the knife so much he could feel the metal bend. As he fell back toward the ground, he held his blade forward, unflinching in his resolve to kill his enemies. As he fell back toward the ground, he screamed his heart out, letting out all the pain and anguish he felt at that moment. Everything happening at this moment, if Kauss made it out of here alive, he would tell this story to any children he may have.

The Tetson stopped breathing its fire, its maw opened wide, welcoming a well-cooked meal into its stomach. To its animal brain, Kauss may be a rat, but he was a rat with a knife. He held his broken arm in front of him, and the Tetson closed its mouth around it. As its teeth sank into his cooked flesh, he raised the blade, and brought it down with astonishing force. The blade pierced its skull, and it roared, opening its mouth and letting him go. Kauss dropped back to the ground, but he didn’t remove the knife. As he fell, the knife dragged down its skull, slicing it in two, creating a neat incision in between its eyes. Perfect symmetry, just as it should be.

He dropped to his feet. From the amount of time he spent burning in literal flames of hell, the ground felt like ice beneath him. He couldn’t let that dissuade him from continuing the counterattack. With speed he never realized he had, Kauss went under its throat and stabbed the blade into its nape. It roared even louder, but this time it couldn’t move anywhere or stop him from finishing the deed.

Kauss felt great satisfaction as he sliced the blade across its neck. He’s been wanting to do that since the first time he fought one of these bastards. Now that it was here, he savored every moment of this experience. He savored the times his blade stuck against its bone. He savored the feel of blade through muscle, and blood pouring out of the wound. The roar of pain and defiance of death just helped him love the moment even more. He never enjoyed killing that much, but when the thing he was killing was not only inhuman but also pissed him off many times over, it justified the reaction to him.

Once the blade went all the way across, he backed away, panting, as he watched the beast roar in pain as it was brought down by someone beneath it in every way. It spewed its last remaining instance of fire as it crashed onto the ground, taking its remaining few breaths. Its death wasn’t quick in any sense of the term. It was drawn out and agonizing, just like how it should be. There was no gunshot to the head that leads to an immediate painless death, as God brought down his hand and covered their eyes, telling them all is okay. It was a death that made people wonder if there was even such a thing as God. Most likely, it’ll lay there for hours as it bled out and struggled to stay on its feet.

Kauss sighed, and walked over to the bag. The high was disappearing, and he realized how cold he truly was. Thanks to the amount of blue energy in his Gaxtex, the pain wasn’t much of a factor now that the constant onslaught of torture was over. He could barely look at his arms, however, since they were so badly damaged that he could nearly see bone. Just the fact that he could move his arms in the slightest was outstanding to think of. He couldn’t move the arm that the Tetson nearly chewed off, but he could move his right arm, so that had to count for something.

The wind blew past, and although he couldn’t feel the pain, he could feel the chill in the air. Despite the fire happening close to him, the temperature felt like it was in the negatives. He needed clothes this very instant. He dug through the bag and found Killian’s clothes. He hadn’t changed into his yet, and despite being a smaller size than him, he could just about fit in them.

As he took out the clothes, he took the time to look over grandmamma. He found the vase that she was in and searched for any instance of damage. He couldn’t see any first look through and he thanked God in return. Knocking lightly on the vase, it was still firm and refused to give, supplying him with more assurance that all was fine.

He took out Killians clothes and began changing into them. As he changed into them, he heard something rustle behind him. As soon as he buttoned up his pants, he spun around with his knife in hand, pointing at the throat of whatever was sneaking up on him. It turned out the one doing the sneaking was that one guard he met during the fire. He had a weapon in hand too. It looked like a wristband with a spike sticking out of the top. Whatever purpose it served, Kauss had no idea, and that put him more on edge.

“So after I do your dirty work, you’re going to kill me. Is that what this is?” Kauss said.

“No, this is just for my protection.” The guard replied. As soon as he said that, he pressed a button on the band. Immediately, lightning wrapped around the needle and expanded at the tip. The end result, he had a shield sticking out of his wrist. “I’ll ask you some questions, and if I don’t like the answers, then we fight it out.”

Kauss laughed it off and stood smugly with his hands on his hips. “You know I killed one of your lackeys, right?”

“You’ve never faced someone like me before, just saying.” The guard said, not letting the threat faze him. “First question, and you better answer honestly. Did Linux actually kill anyone?”

Kauss laughed as soon as he asked that. “Linux, killing anyone! Those two don’t even fit in the same sentence.”

“So that a no?”

“Yeah, from what my buddies told me, Linux let his guy go. Because of that, now we’re in this situation.”

The guard cursed as he looked down at the floor. Kauss wondered how he wouldn’t have known that. Wasn’t the whole reason for all of this being to kill them? The guard raised his head again and asked the next one.

“Why are you even helping Linux leave in the first place?”

Kauss, out of the corner of his eyes, looked at the bag that had grandmamma’s ashes inside. There was no way he would tell some stranger why he was helping him.

“For my own reasons. If we leave, no more damage has to come to your floor, so you keeping me here is just going to hurt you more.” Kauss spread his arms wide to the destruction happening nearby. “I mean, you guys aren’t so bad at damaging yourselves for a purpose. So I guess it wouldn’t really surprise me, would it?”

“I’m just following orders, okay.”

“Orders from what asshat! Who’s suicidal and selfish enough to give whatever you all did the thumbs up. And you guys think we’re your biggest threat.”

“Shut up!”

Kauss stopped talking and observed the guard. His hands were shaking and his eyes were full of anger. That’s when he realized what exactly was going on here. The guard most likely knew that what they did screwed them up badly, and was now lashing out in a desperate fit of anger. He’s had enough of this, so he bent down and picked up his bag. As soon as he did so, the guard yelled at him to freeze, and Kauss gave his best Killian stare. It wasn’t as effective as Killian could pull off, but it worked enough. The guard froze, not knowing what to do.

“You sure you want to stop me, buddy? You want to repeat the same mistakes that got you all in this shit to begin with?”

The guard’s hand began shaking as he looked back at those final moments before all hell broke loose.

He was hiding behind a large tree with his comrades. They had a monster tied up by its legs as the day was beginning to settle into night. The orange glow of the sky reflected in their eyes. As he waited, he went over the plan in his head as the sun was setting lower and lower.

Suddenly the ground shook, and a Tetson popped out and went after the bait. They were intelligent creatures, and so when it spotted the food hanging by a thread, it went on guard immediately. Food doesn’t just hang like that, so that set off the first alarm bell. It began smelling around for anything else nearby, and it could smell humans just behind it. The second alarm bells rang. When their smells began getting closer to it, the third, and final, alarm bells rung.

It turned and immediately sprayed fire. The humans dodged and weaved, each of them going after a different section of its body. The fight went on for a while. Even when orange was replaced by black, the night still shined thanks to the fire being spewed out every few seconds. Finally, the Tetson had enough of their antics and fled. The first part of the plan was down. They had a fresh Tetson hole that they could use.

One of his comrades walked over and began dragging out a box from their hiding spot. It was large and extremely heavy, so when they had to bring it all the way over here, they needed to switch out constantly, less they tire themselves out before the fight even began. He expected the fight to go poorly, considering what they were dealing with, but they managed to get lucky. None of them were an Oculn, so there was no way for them to fight it solo, and if one of them received life-threatening injuries, they could be out of commission for longer than they needed to.

Thankfully, none of them took any extensive damage. The only one out of them that needed to be out for any length of time was a female guard that had one of her fingers burned to the bone. She cried and shouted, but it would heal with time. He could only thank God that he didn’t receive as gruesome of injuries as that.

Inside the box that was being carried over was a weapon known as the Gone Red. It was a powerful bomb that could wipe out a Tetson instantly. The plan was to drop the bomb inside their burrows and let the lightning work its way through all the tunnels, either instantly killing them, or drawing them out. Since Linux and the first floorers were trying to hunt a Tetson, they were planning on drawing them out to make it easier for them. It would single-handedly get rid of their Tetson problem, while also making it harder for Linux to escape.

If somehow the plan went awry, there were water jets waiting at a spot near them that would put out any potential fires. However, from what they were told, the likeliness of that was slim to none. The lightning should work its way seamlessly through the tunnels with little to no issues.

“Depsy,” The female guard waved. He waved back as she approached him. “How do you think the others are fairing?”

“I have no clue. Hopefully, them people doing fine. What about your finger?”

She winced as soon as he pointed that out. “I about forgot the pain. I won’t have anything as worse as this for a long time.”

The guard with the bomb dropped it right next to them and wiped his brow. “We got it so fire off the signal.”

Depsy nodded and took out the seer gun he carried with him. He pointed it to the sky for just a moment and fired, sending red electricity flying into the air. It slowly evaporated into nothing as it lit up the sky for a short moment. Not even a blind man could miss a signal like this.

“You won’t have that much pain for longer you know.” Depsy said, a hint of sadness working into his voice.

“Well, you all got people waiting for you back home. It would only make sense that I’m the sacrifice.”

Even though those words exited her lips, she continued a smile that was the most honest smile he’s ever seen. She was a hero, and he would be damn sure to spread her name as the hero she was the moment this whole ordeal was over. Normally, she would gain a second chance, but as soon as she activates that bomb, she’ll dissolve into nothing so there wouldn’t be anything left to revive.

The second signal fired into the air and Depsy looked upon it, not realizing the actual danger that would be unleashed upon them. Now that the second signal went off, it was time for him to make his way over to the water jets. He waved her goodbye as she stared at the stars for one final time.

Nearly an hour had passed since the second signal went off and the third signal still had yet to fire. At first, Depsy thought they were still fighting the Tetson, but there was no way that a single fight could last so long. It wasn’t like they were fighting some supreme being; they were just hunting a monster that could rip open their spines in an instant. Now that he thought that, he blushed, thinking of how stupid he possibly sounded.

The third signal ripped into the air, and the show was scheduled to begin. From what he imagined, there would be three surges of red lightning going into the sky, like the fountain at Olten’s entrance. The sky would light up and then go back to normal as it dissipated from the world. That’s what he imagined and thought would take place. But there is one crazy aspect of the world that people forget. It isn’t always nice and simple. People lie, and those lies can cost everything.

The lie, that everything would be nice and dandy and all their problems would vanish. The cost, red lightning streaming into the air, zapping the ground and raising the earth, turning the world into a living hellfire. As he saw the first tree being sent high into the air coming right to them, he thought of what went wrong for him to be put into this mess.

“No, I don’t want to repeat these mistakes.” Depsy said as he pressed the button on his wrist again. The shield vanished, and he stood, defeated. “I just want everyone to be happy, but what am I supposed to do. I was betrayed by the people I fought for. Now what? How am I going to fix all this?”

He held back tears and sat on the ground, staring at the dying Tetson. His water jet was used up completely and he barely made a dent in the fire. If he couldn’t do it, how could his comrades hope to fight against this?

Kauss became uncomfortable as the man was nearly at the point of crying as he stared at the corpse of humanities enemy. He sighed and lowered his knife and lugged the bag over his arm. There were still some things that he needed to do, and one of those things involved finding his friends and Linux. For a single second, he wondered if all this was worth it. After all, if his mother was alive, or maybe if she was on the next floor, he wouldn’t need Linux to tell stories about her.

What if she wasn’t alive? What if she was on floor forty or something and he died before he could reach her? That chance was the risk he refused to take. He needed to know about her, even if it was from an unreliable source.

“Hey,” Kauss started a conversation. “Do you know where Linux is?”

“He’s not with you?” Depsy asked.

“No, we split up. He should be at Olten scouting the place.”

The guard’s head lifted, recovering from the foggy despair he was under. “I can guide you to Olten if you want. I wouldn’t recommend staying for long since the place should be covered by now.”

Kauss looked to the guard. He didn’t seem untrustworthy. In fact, the way he looked was probably the most honest look of a person on the brink of losing everything. No emotion was left unchecked on his face. The despair, the anguish, the guilt. It all shined raw on that face of his.

“Sure, but we’re walking side by side with distance between us.” Kauss said.

“Sure.”

Depsy stood, and they stood just like Kauss said. Side by side, standing nearly six feet away from each other. This way, Kauss could keep an eye on him. If he were to act, from this distance, he could react accordingly. With little time to spare, they ran off on the way to Olten.