I was in. People had evacuated, yes, but rarely would there be no deaths from the emergence of a hive. I knew that, obviously--everyone was aware of the dangers of a hive--but yet, I still entered.

The front door opened into a hallway. Windows interlaced between the floors, taking up the whole wall above the door. From the outside, you’d normally be able to see the stairs between the floors but, now, there was a hot, red mass of flesh that had crushed and crumpled the stairs right in front of me.

They were still disgusting, but at least I was getting used to them by now. The familiar urge to heave that had accompanied me in the previous hive was distinctly less influential this time, and my mind, surprisingly, felt clearer than the mindless, aimless running to here.

Be calm. You’re not weak; you’re a user. I slowly opened and closed my eyes and consciously regulated my breathing. My hammering heart was still pounding away but there was nothing I could do about that.

Unexpectedly, it was quiet. Perhaps my recent foray with Luna and S1 instilled in my mind constant chatter and noise when inside a hive but, right now, it was very nearly silent. There was a dim buzz from outside the building, from the G.U.G. employees talking or moving around, but there was no discernable sound coming from further in.

In a way, this lack of ambient noise nor any indication of life was eerie, in its own way. Contrasting the clearly homely and lived-in interior, the juxtaposition was frightening.

But I couldn’t just run out and leave. I said I was C-rank; I can clear this. It’d be far too suspicious to just leave. And, I need to clear this hive.

I resolved myself and, once I felt I was ready, I made for the first room on the left--the only one accessible.

The room was dark, the windows obscured by the mass of meat, and the ceiling lights struck to the ground with part of the ceiling. One of the walls had been torn down and the rubble littered the floor. The plaster was peeling off in places and what should’ve been a well-looked after apartment resembled a building on the cusp of demolition.

However, my eyes couldn’t focus on this room's overall state of disrepair. No, instead, my gaze was torn towards a pair of sickly-grey, canine-like creatures. They lacked fur of any kind and, instead, a porous skin was stretched over their boney, spindly bodies, like a vacuum wrapped skeleton.

They looked fragile, like a strong kick could break them apart, but the energy with which they thrust their head forwards suggested a reserved and hidden alacrity and forcefulness that would be deadly to underestimate.

However, as grotesque and alien as their visage was, they weren’t the entities that stuck me to my spot at the threshold to the room, standing where the fallen door no longer was. Instead, it was what they were eating that had transfixed me to my place, unable to will my body to move.

The bodies were as still as stone, no life to the face or eyes. They budged slightly as the two dogs tore into them with ferocious tenacity but they themselves were as lifeless as a statue. Even their skin lacked the warm flush from the translucency letting the blood from within shine through, remaining a cool peach colour.

I’ve seen it before--up close, even--but I wasn’t used to it. Like the uncanny valley, there was just something so...Wrong, about it.

There were two of them like that, lying on the rug and being chewed upon; a young man and woman--likely the occupants of this apartment. The woman was on her side, arms splayed in an uncomfortable way, and her stomach was ripped open, her summer dress torn all apart. Sausages spilled out of her, bathed in blood and viscera. Shiny balloons inflated with whatever was inside was pierced by the sharp teeth of the monsters eating her.

It didn’t look real. The woman was lacking warmth and was unnaturally still, just like a wax mannequin. Her organs were easily something that you could buy at a butcher’s shop, set up like they would when filming a movie. The monsters were the only irreplaceable element here, but I had experienced enough insectoid monsters in the previous hive to see those dogs as anything but fake.

In a way, it was like when you gave a stuffed toy to a dog; the dog was real and while he may be chewing at it like he was trying to kill it, in the end, nobody got hurt.

All of sudden, one of the dogs turned around, startling me. Whether it heard me or smelt me or something else, I didn’t know, nor did I care. Instantly, its previous meal was no longer as enticing as it was before as it laid its eyes upon new, fresher prey--me.

My calm, composed state was instantly eradicated once I stared straight into those piercing, dagger-like yellow eyes. I felt like a knife was digging gently through my skin for a split second before I managed to convince my body to move.

I dashed to side as the one dog that had spotted me lunged through the air, crashing straight through the doorway and rolling on the floor. It skidded to the wall of the corridor and collided with a loud, painful thud. Sadly, I couldn’t relish how narrowly I dodged that as the other dog, alerted by the obvious sounds of conflict, also turned away from its own human.

Its face was disgusting. Skin wrapped tightly around its whole body, the bones poking through and muscles miniscule, but its face looked like dripping wax, the skin loose and veins bulging through. It was revolting but, thankfully, I only caught a glimpse because I hastily activated my Specialisation and saw it also jump at me.

Reacting just in time, I swung out my leg and hit the dog midair, its small size showing how light it was as it flew off to the side away from me.

I need a weapon. The thought ran through my head as I saw the dog from outside the room charge back in--I could maintain my distance but that meant shit if I couldn’t kill them.

Immediately, my mind was racing. What could I use as a weapon? If you’re strong enough, you could bludgeon someone to death with a book. But I was weak. Therefore, I likely needed something either heavy or sharp.

Flustered, I looked around the room to my right and saw a lamp sitting on the table. It was small, lightweight, and looked to be made of ceramic. I gripped it around the stem, the curved and bulky handle nearly making it unwieldy. It’ll do for now.

The dogs, however, didn’t lunge and jump at me one-by-one again. Instead, they seemed to have a modicum of intelligence for they both approached steadily until they were of equal distance to me, my back against a wall.

Without any exchanging of signals I could observe between them, they somehow acted in unison, both jumping gracefully through the air like a frog.

The speed was frightening and sudden, and I immediately swung the lamp at the one aiming for my upper torso, ripping the lamp out of the wall socket, its plug flailing wildly.

Both my heart and my head was pounding as I left my specialisation on, far too fearful to deactivate it for a moment and risk being maimed.

With a satisfying ‘clonk’, I walloped the flying dog and partly span myself around with the force I exerted.

I couldn’t waste any time; as soon as I lowered my gaze, I sung the lamp downwards--without even having time to see what was there--and immediately, I made contact with the other monster.

It was so low down I myself fell to the floor as the lamp crashed down on it, pushing it a bit away.

Even while exerting every ounce of force that I could, it looked like I barely even managed to hurt them, and they were still eager to go. Sweat shined on my forehead and I already felt sticky and gross under my clothing.

Shit! That did nothing! What do I do next? Maybe there’s a kitchen here…

Scrambling, I pulled myself up to my feet as best as I could, a little wobbly, and opened the door immediately to my right. Thankfully, it was a kitchen.

It was small and the walls were tiled with a wood-panelled floor but the aesthetic decisions of the owners didn’t matter to me right then--my mind was preoccupied with my own survival.

Desperately, I lunged myself at the nearest draw, almost tearing it off it’s rails with the strength I pulled at it.

Fucking spoons! Where are the knives?

I felt my will to live dropping as I saw my face reflected upside-down in the polished cutlery.

What am I doing? Just look into the future!

I was too busy to scold myself for my momentary idiocy as I climbed up the counter and reached directly into the knife block, pulling out the biggest and most intimidating knife that I could.

With my mind fully engrossed with the intention to fight off these creatures as best as I could, I turned around, leaning on the marbled-counter, and held the knife in front of me. I’m sure from someone who could actually use a bladed weapon properly, I probably looked silly and amateurish but I felt confident in myself in the moment.

Without any time to rest or to prepare myself, the dog closest to me came rushing in through the door, its stick-like feet tapping on the floor excitedly. However, as much as it resembled a fluffy friend, I saw nothing friendly in the monster before me.

As soon as I was within the kitchen, I saw two of it at once. The first one image was the real one while the second was already at my feet, leaping through the air. I saw my arm fall downwards, the knife held in an ice-pick grip as the blade sunk through the skull, gravity assisting in its piercing of the cranium.

Almost immediately, I copied the movements I saw. I fell down myself as the dog bounded and jumped towards me. I felt the strong clash as I pushed the knife down towards its small head, the whole thing far happening far too quickly for me to react at all

Before I knew it, the squishy interior of the skill had been stabbed and blood had dashed against me, staining my darkly coloured clothes a wine-red and colouring the knife a brighter, more reflective red as well.

I knew the other beast was coming within seconds and so, reluctantly, I gripped the head of this small creature as firmly as I could, the skin uncomfortable to the touch, and pulled the knife outwards. Thankfully, there were no serrations and the cut was clean; the knife slid out smoothly and with little resistance.

I didn’t have time to react to the state of the blade, me, or the dog lying besides me as I twisted the knife in my hand and followed my movements that I saw, slicing horizontally in the air to intercept a flying, canine creature.

A small slab of skin was cut but the dog impacted the drawer right besides me, blood dripping from its wound. I missed anything vital, only slicing off a bit of dangling skin from its face.

I was sitting on the ground, lacking mobility, but that didn’t stop me.

Being so close to something so deadly, I was already adrenaline-fueled. With both hands, I gripped the monster around the neck and bashed it against the drawer as it swung its claws at me.

Its claws were sharp and built for tearing into the carcasses and corpses of dead animals. Compared to the weak, thin skin of a human, it drew blood easily. As its body hit against the side, I felt a pain course through me as a large gash was drawn on my arm, the blood rising to the surface and my eyes tearing up.

I couldn’t suppress a grunt of pain as the exposed flesh instantly began to sting, antagonistically drawing my focus away from the brutal beast.

Fear was creeping in but with my knife in hand, I stabbed it right in the side of the head, the blade sinking in. I could feel the flesh and bone of the dog, the difference in resistance. They may be monsters but the terrifyingly real crunch of bone and squishiness of flesh was too distinctive and similar to other creatures that I felt myself needing to turn away and throw up there and then.

I even did have some bile threaten to rise up in my throat, scorching my oesophagus with acid. Thankfully, that was the worst of it--a little heartburn.

Enervated, I let go of both the dog and the knife as its body fell to the floor, mixing in with the puddle of blood that was slowly seeping out of both corpses and my own arm.

I couldn’t even muster the energy to react to what had happened. I didn’t even know how I should’ve felt after all of that. Was that normal?

Only now, when my life wasn’t in danger, did the smell begin to make itself known. Rotting flesh has a particularly distinctive odour to it and never in all my life did I expect to know what that was so quickly.

The decomposition of monsters was unnaturally quick. Normally, it’d take days, weeks, for a human body to even begin the process of decomposition. But monsters? Within the day, they’d begin. Simply being outside the hive would speed it up as well.

It made sense why the preservation industry for monster parts was so lucrative.

For some time, my mind was just blank. I was tired, and I didn’t push my mind to think of anything. I had deactivated my Specialisation by then and the headache that assaulted me threatened to drown out any other thoughts or actions. Even moving felt like it would only exacerbate the issue,

Therefore, I just laid there in a pool of blood, huddled together with the dead bodies of two monsters that I had killed.

I knew it was necessary but after the fact, I almost regretted using my Specialisation. In the end, it wasn’t some super strength or lethal power that had killed the both of them but regular, human strength passing through the sharp blade of an ordinary kitchen knife.

Could I have survived--no, won--if I hadn’t used my System Specialisation? It was an enticing question--answering yes would’ve boosted my ego by quite a bit--but I knew the real answer.

I knew that if it was Luna in my situation, even without S1, she would’ve been able to fend both of them off quite easily. She showed remarkable experience with a bow and remained calm and composed under the pressure of a hive, like she’d done it all before.

In addition, she was so much stronger than me--mentally, physically, everything! I was only a liability in that last hive, barely pulling my weight.

Even as I wallowed in my thoughts, I didn’t feel like leaving this hive. It was scary--life-threatening, even--but I felt like I should continue on. I had killed two beasts, yes, and I knew that that didn’t mean that I could kill more but even so, I felt like I could.

I felt drawn to delve deeper into this hive. It was a mysterious compulsion of inexplicable origin, a puzzle my System Specialisation wouldn’t even be able to help me with.

One thing was for certain, though; I was not stopping here.

With both my arms, making sure to not move my wounded one too much, I held the little dogs body down as I withdrew the knife, making a sickening sound in the process as the compressed brain matter was filling the void the knife left in its wake.

For now, I had to do something about my arm. My mind was on the fritz, crying out in pain from seeing something no human being should be capable of but also desperately calling for my attention, to put some thought into merely paying attention to the pain plaguing my entire body.

It was the best that I could do to just not think about anything. I moved by body on instant, my mind shallowly following visuals that were implanted in my brain by memories.

I didn’t have any medical experience but with enough reading, you can learn a variety of different things. In this situation, I couldn’t muster the brainpower to know if things were true or false as well.

The first step was to apply pressure to a wound, to stop the bleeding. As I got to my feet, pulling myself up by quite heavily leaning on the counter, my arm nearly buckled under half of my weight. As soon as I was steady, I threw the knife onto the counter, needing full control of my hand.

I grabbed the flesh on my arm and held it firm, pulling it together and temporarily closing the wound. Instantly, it stung, like I was being stabbed all over again. Through gritted teeth, I tried my best to ignore the pain, the world blurry as my eyes moistened.

I didn’t know much germ theory nor did I know how to sterilise something other than by burning it, but I did know neither my blood-stained clothes nor the clothes of the dead occupants would make for good bandages.

Instead, I stumbled my way through opening all the cupboards in this rather small room before finding one that was filled with kitchen towels. At this moment in time, I didn’t very much care as to whether they were an appropriate material to staunch a wound so they were perfect in my eyes. I pulled down them, having the pile fall onto the counter, and picked up the one that seemed to be the largest.

Next, I turned on the cold water tap in the sink and subjected the wound in my arm to the torrent of running water for a good few minutes. I didn’t know how long you should clean a wound for but I thought that a few minutes should be good.

One-handedly, I rolled and scrunched a towel up and then held it firmly against my arm, the pain resurfacing and forcing my eyes closed. I clenched my jaw shut, trying to ignore the pain, the towel drying my wet arm.

As best as I could, I picked up another towel and wrapped that one around both my arm and the towel, somehow managing to loosely tie it together.

For now, this will have to do.

With that finally down, feeling resolved and energised from my rest, there was nothing left to do other than to venture forth deeper into the hive.