I carefully measured my steps as I made my way to a corner of the room. The floor was made of loose wood, so the last thing I needed was to trip in such a tense scenario.

The trio of Slim, Karl, and Kim also circled my position cautiously. Everyone knew everyone in the slums, so it didn’t take long for me to guess their identities.

They were a part of the ‘Adults’ but there were relatively low in the hierarchy. Still, this meant that the ‘Adults’ had torn all faces, and were ready to force me into compliance.

Yet, I could not back down right now and the fierceness on my face sent them a message.

‘I might not be able to beat you all, but the first person to come will be the first to die!’

In the slums, just the look on someone’s face told you everything you needed to know. Slum-Dwellers were sensitive individuals by nature.

How else were you to stay alive when everyone was gunning for your belongings?

Everyone knew that you could not underestimate anyone else in the slums. Children born in the slums were not normal by any measure of the word.

In fact, children’s lack of emotional development made them prized possessions by the ‘Adults’. Children would rarely survive exactly because they were so valuable.

Once children learned to kill, they would continue without hesitation or remorse… eventually, they would kill the wrong person.

I slowly withdrew a short dagger from my pocket. The dagger was a bit rusted and the blade only extended around 10 centimeters, but it was enough to puncture a heart nonetheless.

The rustiness of the dagger made sure that you would get extremely sick with just a small nick.

My hands trembled ever so slightly… of course, this was on purpose, I wanted to show enough weakness to encourage a reckless attack.

Sadly, I had been in such situations before, but it was the first time Rocky was not at my side.

Still, my plan seemed somewhat fruitful as Kim jumped forward with a knife she had received from Karl. She seemed reluctant to be the first to attack, but I knew she had no choice.

If she didn’t take the opportunity, the men would probably not feed her tonight. Such was the fate of those children-soldiers in the slums.

I didn’t mind the attack from Kim, sacrificing an arm to cut off the head of an opponent was my strategy.

I jumped backward to dodge her strike while concentrating all my strength in my right hand.

I knew Kim was just a lackey, and that Karl and Slim were the real threats.

I tossed my dagger at Slim with all the strength I could muster, the dagger cut through the air faster than he could raise his hands to block.

The next moment, the dagger was shallowly embedded in his left eye.

Sadly, the dagger was not long enough to cause anything apart from a slight laceration.

Still, a laceration in his eyes was enough to blind him indefinitely.

Everyone froze surprised at my action. After all, it was stupid to throw away your only weapon… doing that was guaranteed death.

While they were distracted by my unexpected action, I darted towards the first wall intending to escape.

Slim held his face while squealing in pain, Karl just stood there in a daze.

Kim, on the other hand, didn’t seem to pay attention to anything but me. She was driven by something else entirely – the need to survive.

Me tossing the dagger and injuring Slim was basically sentencing her to death. That was kind of my plan in the first place.

She wasn’t able to stop my attack, so even if I died, she would be punished by the two men. The punishment would probably kill her.

Why would I kill Kim in front of me when I can injure Slim and he would kill her instead?

I dashed forward swiftly.

The moment I was about to hop through the first broken wall, I felt something sharp pierce my leg.

I rolled onto the floor, carried forward by my momentum, and banged my head against the wall.

Even disoriented, I managed to kick backward on instinct, smashing the nose of Kim, who clung to my feet like a rabid animal.

At this point, she had gone completely insane because she knew what awaited her later. She would be lucky only to be starved for an entire week.

I kicked back twice more.

Still, her arms did not give in as she clung to my leg without a care for anything else. Luckily, I managed to knock the knife out of her hands, but blood still pooled from the wound on my leg.

With all the adrenaline in my body, I barely felt the injury at all.

I knew that later would probably be a completely different sensation, but you could only worry about later after you survived now.

Kim eventually released my leg with enough kicks.

Yet, I didn’t have time to get to my feet, the next moment I pushed off the wall and placed both hands in front of my face.

A massive impact sent my small body skipping across the floor and into another wall.

I groaned as my back made impact with the wall. Luckily, the wall was hollow inside, lessening the impact by quite a bit.

Through my dancing eyes, I saw Karl at my previous location, holding his legs in pain. My arms were probably harder than he expected, but my arms were also aching quite a bit from the kick.

I had been injured enough times to know when my arms were fractured… but fractured didn’t mean useless. I ignored the pain and dug into the floor as I pulled up a loose wooden plank.

The house was old so there were enough things to attack with. I dashed toward Slim who covered his bleeding eye.

Three quick steps and I was already next to the screaming Slim, beating him with the plank in my hand. Seeing my actions, Karl stopped trying to help Kim and lounged in my direction.

I barely had time to lift the plank in front of my face, before a strong force tackled me to the ground.

Dust flittered into the air from the force of our impact.

My stomach churned from the impact, but that didn’t stop Karl from pinning me onto the ground. I was still just a kid; I was no match for the strength of an adult.

While I was being beaten black and blue, I thought furiously about any weakness I could exploit.

‘What did an adult have that I didn’t?” I thought.

Then the answer came to me like a jolt of divine revelation. With a solid knee between the crotch, Karl curled over and squealed like a pig to the slaughter.

The way he groaned even made my own balls experience a chill, but this was survival of the fittest.

It wasn’t my fault that his balls had already started to hang downwards.

Suddenly, another panic attack struck, coupled with my aching stomach from the earlier tackle, I was forced to duck as I clutched my belly in pain.

*Whoosh*

A dagger missed my head the moment I ducked. Apparently, Kim had recovered in the time it took me to combat Karl.

Missing my head with the dagger, she spun around and struck again with reckless abandon.

Likewise, Slim rose to his feet and grabbed the plank I previously held, swinging it at my head. It was a pincer attack but I was not without options. I lowered my body and jumped towards Kim.

I hugged her waist, ignoring the dagger that pierced my lower back, and spun our bodies around. Before she could even realize what happened, the plank of Slim struck her head in my place.

A nasty crack was heard as her neck broke and she fell limply to the ground.

An agonizing feeling of disgust ran through my body…

I had just killed someone… I tried to tell myself that Slim did it, but I knew it was ultimately me. I stood frozen in shock, the experience not yet settling in.

I felt disgusted, nasty, hateful, but also relieved that she died.

My conflicting feelings caused my body to freeze long enough for both men to somewhat recover.

With another swing from Slim, my mind briefly swam in an ocean of darkness. Luckily, I had been hit in the head enough times to fortify my skull.

It was amazing what the human body could adapt to. I had seen kids get beaten so much in the slums, that they stopped feeling pain entirely. This was a similar scenario.

I crashed to the floor, vision swimming in a sea of stars, but my body knew that this was a critical moment in the battle.

Both men dashed towards me, intending to hold me down so they could beat me to death. But my body took over at that moment, and like a snake, I dodged the attacks of both men.

Now between the duo, I didn’t know what to do. My muscles ached, and my vision blurred, I couldn’t see where to attack even if I wanted to.

I spread out both arms and hugged the waist of both men. With no other options, I jumped upwards with my mouth wide open.

With no eyes to see, I chose the next best option.

With a bite that exhausted my remaining strength, I felt something soft and boneless enter my mouth. I shook my head from side to side with all my might as I bit without restraint.

I felt something slid down my throat, but I didn’t pay attention due to the heat of the battle.

Anger clouded my mind, and all that remained was the overwhelming need to bite both men to death. I managed to tear a few chunks out of them both before I found myself floating in the air.

*bang*

With a huge thud, I felt my body embedded in the hollow wall once more. Karl and Slim had pooled their strength to toss me across the room.

“My ear! That fucker ate my ear!” Karl yelled in fury and pain.

I smiled in victory while inside the wall.

I was no doubt going to die here, but at least, I did some major damage to my would-be murderers.

I felt the floor vibrate as both men stumbled towards me, but I had no energy left to fight some more. Both men were in bad shape, but they were nowhere near death’s door.

Suddenly, I felt a hand inside the hollow wall brush against my own, leaving behind something clenched between my fingers.

I wasn’t sure what it was, or if it was even real in the first place. There was a high possibility that I had begun to hallucinate with death being at my door.

Still, with all my remaining strength I pulled my hand from the wall and held out the thing clenched between my fingers.

At the very least it should be a weapon that would allow me to stab both men a couple of times before I was dragged into the afterlife.

But the moment both men saw what was clenched between my fingers, they froze in place.

With my vision blurry, I could not make out what I held… A couple of seconds passed and my vision returned, I saw the men slowly backing away in fear.

I stared at my hand and almost dropped the thing held within.

Inside my hand was a grenade with the pin already pulled. The only thing that stopped the grenade from exploding was my finger that rested between the fuse and safety pin.

Since there was no such thing as truce or running away in the slums. The men and I now faced three immediate choices.

Firstly, they attacked, I released my finger and we all died.

Secondly, they turned their backs and ran, I waited until they were far enough and tossed the grenade after them, then they would die.

And lastly, they let me go, I would report to Rocky and he would find them and kill them.

All three scenarios ended in their deaths either way.