Loud sirens were echoing all around me. It became an irritant to my ears. At first, I thought that Razi meant to murder me with the abysmal noise, for if this was the case, it was nowhere close to being my nightmare.

“I’m getting tired of this shitty noise.” My next course of action was to find a way to turn the alarms off. Razi had a device in her hand that controlled them. As I motioned forward to grab the damn thing from her hand, a sudden quake caught my attention.

Rumble!

“What’s this?” The mansion was experiencing an increasing shudder followed by tense atmospheric pressure. Later on, I got to realize that the vibration was being brought about by a stampede of men, some wearing overalls and others dressed in black suits.

These men were pouring into the mansion from numerous entrances, quickly filling the wide gaps with their clustering presence. Some had various threatening tools in their hands such as axes, machetes, bats, wrenches, hammers and guns.

“Where the heck are they coming from?”

Razi heard my question and shed light on it. She chuckled first before saying, “Are you scared? You should be. This is my legion of men who my father employed to cater to the estate.”

I got to know that most of these men were mine workers who came from the mine on the estate when they heard the alarm. The others were bodyguards and gardeners who had temporary residences in the villas scattered across the estate. Despite their varying occupation, sure enough, they were all gangsters who were employed by Big Red.

I was in awe by the sheer number of men who were surrounding me on multiple levels. I looked before me and there they were; I checked behind my ass and there they were lingering like my farts; I looked on the floor above me and there they were lined off like the audience in a stadium.

I couldn’t help but wonder, “Since when did Big Red have enough dough to bake the salary for this many henchmen?” They were more than the low-life Red Ants that I’d squashed underground.

“You’ve messed with the wrong daughter, you sack of shit!” Razi spat on my boot, got up from the ground and hurriedly lost herself in the sea of men. She ran to a higher vantage point where she would get to see her men tearing me to pieces.

“So this is supposed to be my worst nightmare?” I’m not going to lie, a part of me was indeed experiencing slight shivers when I ascertained the hundreds of bodies around me. It was no exaggeration when I say that the mansion was jam-packed like a sardine can. The only visible space consisted of a 5-metre radius where I was standing in the centre. That area was the only clearing where mobility was to some extent stable.

Shortly, the annoying sound of the sirens was disabled. I figured Razi disabled it so that she could get her voice across the mansion. “Listen up men! My father has been very generous to all of you, so I expect some level of loyalty to me even though he has passed recently. That man you see down there wants to kill me and steal everything that my father has built. He murdered my father now I want all of you to end his life.”

Razi's voice was laden with distress as she addressed her minions. At the time she assumed I killed her father she wasn’t aware that I was actually the one who killed Big Red. She just said that to get the men fired up and indeed it worked. I began to hear disgruntled gossip passing among the brooding crowd.

“This bastard killed Big Red? I don’t believe it.”

“Who the fuck does he think he is? Is he that arrogant to actually come here for Big Red’s daughter after taking him out?”

“We should dispose of that rubbish before his ego grows too big.”

“Hmm, isn’t that Bull and Darius’s body lying over there on the floor?” Someone identified their corpses. “Did this shithead kill them?”

“Who else could it be? It must have been him. I can clearly see the blood still dripping from his hands.”

“He did this with his bare hands. Is he some sort of monster? Which syndicate is he working for? Could he be one of those elite assassins I’ve been hearing about recently?”

“Monster or assassin, none of that shit matters. He’s just one man who’s offended our boss which in turn, offends us. I think we’ve delayed long enough. It’s time to make that sucker bleed out.”

“Damn right!”

“Heck yeah!”

“Let’s kill that cocky bastard!”

The boisterous hollers of the men became audible to the nth degree that it peeved me greatly. Their combined voices were even more annoying than the sirens. This wasn’t all. Certain steel doors began to cordon all the mansion's main exits.

This was Razi’s doing. Peering down at me from the balcony, her raging voice spoke soon after. “This is to make sure that you don’t weasel your way out and escape. Not that there is a chance of that happening. The moment you crossed me it has already been decided that you will die here, you big moron.”

“Tsk, damn brat. You have no idea who you are messing with.” I glanced around at the men and shouted, “None of you do! But you are about to find out.”

“Shut your bloody mouth and die!” This impatient individual couldn’t stand my voice anymore and acted out of malice to silence me. By his ragged appearance, I judged he was a worker from the mine who had a sledgehammer in his grip. He rudely tried to bash my head in with the damn thing, however, he ended up fatally wounding himself.

Smash!

The hammer bounced off my rigid body and slammed him in the face. He cracked his own skull not knowing how it had happened.

“What the fuck man! Why did you attack yourself?” The others were puzzled. They weren’t aware that it wasn’t intentional that, that man bashed his head in.

“Screw it!” Another man lurched out of the crowd at me with his axe. “Your head is mine punk!” He swung at my neck, wanting to sever it, but ended up getting cut in half from the pelvis upward.

“Holy shit! This guy is serious!” A wider ring formed around me as the men became nervous and retreated several steps.

“What the hell are you all getting scared for?” Razi was disappointed that the men ranging in the hundreds were frightened by my killer instincts. “He’s only one bloody man! Get in there and kill his stinking ass already!”

I taunted them when I heard this. “The little girl is right. Come over here and kill my stinking ass already.” Although I beckoned them with open arms, they were scared to approach. Maybe it was my ugly face that scared them or the pool of blood spreading below my feet.

“Look at that cocky fucker staring down at us. He’s just a man. Aim your guns!” This guy who commanded the other gunslingers to point their guns at me wasn’t around to witness how Darius and Bull failed in that department. Only Razi saw it but she didn’t mention this to them. Hence they rehashed the mistakes of their past brethren.

“Open fire!”

Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!

A storm of bullets was crashing into me from numerous angles. Gunslingers were in front, behind and above me, abusing my body with a serious amount of lead.

“What the fuck! How is he not going down?”

“I don’t know. Is he wearing bulletproof?”

“What kind of bulletproof is that skin fit? I’ve never heard of it!”

When they identified that I was still standing with my arms outstretched, they ramped up the firing rate of their bullets. They were running low on ammunition, yet they kept on firing for a drawn-out minute. Eventually, they worked their bullets into me until they began wearing down the effects of my bulletproof ability faster than usual.

The Rubik’s System’s warning indicated that I couldn’t afford to act invincible for much longer. “These bastards have dwindled the effects of my skill.” As a result, I had to expend more effort to deplete my troubles.

I equipped the Thirst Knife that I purchase a while back from the Rubik’s Store and began dashing around the mansion like a speedster while slaughtering every meaty obstacle in my path. I didn’t have to be too repetitious and precise with my stabbing. They were 2 reasons for this which had to do with how close my targets were as well as the knife’s special effects.

My preys were falling one after the other. I could tell by their level of disarray just how terrified they were of me. One man shouted, “Huh! Where the hell is all this smoke coming from?”

“I think it’s coming from him! He’s some sort of biological monster!”

“That piece of shit is cutting through us like a storm!”

He wasn’t wrong about this. Severed arms and legs were flying all over the place like festival decorations. Chopped internal organs were regularly vacating their skin suit. Loud cries were echoing everywhere.

This was sweet-sweet music to my ears. “What a lovely serenade.”