He spun on one heel, the motion so violent his shoe tore the emerald moss. The
bone dagger
in his hand flashed in a silver arc, reflecting the pale-yellow moon.
Squelch.
The jagged blade sliced clean through the neck of the Shadow-Dart mid-air. The decapitated head, mouth still opening to deliver a bite, flew past his hip, missing his femoral artery by an inch. It landed in the muck, jaws snapping shut on nothing but air, while the headless body sprayed cold, black blood across Solās shredded clothes.
"One down and only a thousand more to go" Sol hissed, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. But there was no time for a victory dance. Due to him slowing down for the strike, the gap had closed. And more snakes were upon him.
...
A
Mist-Spitter
... a serpent with a bloated, translucent throat pulsing with neon-green bioluminescence... reared up from the ferns. Unlike his perverted counterpart, this thing didnāt want to hug. It hissed, pulled its head back, its throat expanding like a balloon.
HISSS-PFFT.
It released a horizontal fan of liquid, spraying it into the air like a pressure washer.
"Thatās it? Better try next time," Sol joked, his brain running on unhinged adrenaline. He easily stepped aside, avoiding the spray. But as the liquid hit a patch of ferns behind him, the plants didnāt just get wet. They hissed. They blackened. They dissolved into a smoking sludge.
The smell of burnt vegetation and sulfur filled Solās lungs, choking him.
"Damn! Acid? Really? Who the fuck designed this biome?!" Sol screamed, diving into a frantic, messy roll, away from the arc of acidic mist. A drop of the mist landed on his shoulder, sizzling against the Cobra hide cloak. Thankfully the cloak held on, but he could still feel the heat radiated through, stinging his skin.
As he scrambled back to his feet, another nightmare was already waiting for him...
Bone-Rattler
... a thick, heavy serpent with scales like granite and a tail tipped in a cluster of heavy, ossified spikes... swung its rear half like a medieval mace.
WHOOSH.
The air displaced by the swing hit Solās face. He threw himself backward, his spine cracking with the effort.
CRASH.
The tail slammed into the iron-wood tree trunk right next to Solās head. The impact was terrifying; it shattered the bark, sending lethal splinters flying like shrapnel. If that had hit him, his skull would have been powder.
"Okay, that was dangerous," he wheezed, his eyes wide and heart thumping hard.
But of course, he wasnāt just gonna skip around and play a death dodgeball. He used the momentum of his rise leveraging the fact that the heavy snake was momentarily stuck in the wood.
He drove the bone dagger upward.
SHUCK.
He buried the blade into the Bone-Rattlerās soft, pale underbelly, and ran forward with the blade dragging through the meat, cleanly unzipping the serpent from mid-section to tail.
Blue gore drenched his arm, hot, sticky and utterly disgusting, but he could even less in this moment.
But... in this moment of offense, his own defense faltered and his calf caught a sharp, stinging pain. He stumbled and looked down. A
Crimson-Krait
... small, fast, and more importantly a deadly one... had grazed him. It hadnāt latched on, but a single fang had scratched the skin.
"Well, it seems like my time has come, sayonara," Sol whispered.
He immediately felt a cold numbness spreading from the scratch, turning his veins to ice, which means, it was a neurotoxin and a fast-acting one.
He didnāt stop. He couldnāt. If he stopped to treat it, the swarm would bury him.
But leaving aside jokes, he wasnāt gonna go down like this, he still had a card, he focused the Charcoal energy in his chest. He didnāt use it to control the snakes, not like he could control so many of them. He was gonna use it to
burn
. He directed a burst of dark, concentrated heat straight to his calf, visualizing the energy cauterizing the vein from the inside out.
The pain was a white-hot iron poker being driven into his leg. A scream trapped itself behind his clenched teeth, vibrating in his skull. He could even smell his own cooking flesh.
But thankfully, he had succeeded in his bet, as the numbness stopped spreading.
"Walk it off," Sol snarled at himself, limping forward. "Just walk it off."
...
The attacks were relentless and varied and the fight became a blurred montage of frantic movement and sharp, stabbing pain. Sol was no longer a man; he was a machine of survival, fueled by the Charcoal energy that was eating away at his remaining stamina.
Screech!
Without warning, three
Needle-Tooth Gliders
launched themselves from the canopy above. They didnāt fall; they soared on flaps of skin stretched between their ribs, aiming for his eyes with needle-point beaks.
Sol didnāt even look up; He relied on the heightened sensory map in his brain, and swung his bloody arm in a wide arc, the back of his hand smashing two of them into the rock face with a wet
crunch
, leaving them twitching on the stone. He stepped aside for the third, letting it sail past him into the darkness.
Suddenly, two vipers launched themselves from a low-hanging root at chest height. Sol caught one in mid-air with his left hand... the thorns on the snakeās scales stinging into his already shredded palm... and slammed it into the other airborne snake with a sickening crack.
Both skulls shattered on impact. He dropped the tangled mess of reptilian bodies and kept moving.
But of course, it wasnāt enough to scare them or anything, in fact, the smell of blood made them even more frantic, doesnāt matter if it was of their compatriots, meat was meat.
A small, iridescent boa tried to loop around his ankle. Sol didnāt break his stride; he stomped downward with his heel, *
SPLAT*
crushing the snakeās skull into the mud and using the impact to propel himself forward.
"Come on!" he roared, his voice hoarse.
They instantly obliged and a
Sky-Strangler
dropped from an overhanging branch, its thick muscular coils seeking his neck. Sol ducked at the last possible millisecond, the serpentās weight brushing his hair as it slammed into the ground.
He didnāt even look back, stomping its head into the mud just like the previous one.
He stumbled into a small clearing and stopped.
He found himself surrounded by a dozen
Iron-Scale Vipers
. They moved in a synchronized, mesmerizing circle, their bronze scales clinking like chainmail. Their rattles shook in a unified rhythm of death.
Every time he tried to break out, three would lunge at his ankles.
He began a frantic, hopping dance, his boots crushing the occasional skull while his dagger warded off the strikes aimed for his knees. He was a whirlwind of frantic, messy violence. He was no longer just running; he was navigating a puzzle where every wrong step meant a thousand fangs. He hacked, he stabbed, he stomped.
In a moment of pure, improvised madness, he even used a dead anaconda lying near his feet... a beast he must have killed earlier, he couldnāt remember, as a literal whip to clear a path.
The dead weight slammed into the circle of Iron-Scales, knocking three of them into the air and clearing a path through the writhing carpet of scales.
"Move!" Sol screamed.
He saw an opening... a fallen tree that offered a narrow path upward. He leapt for it, but an anaconda-thick
Gorge-Constrictor
lunged from the shadows beneath the log. Its mouth was wide enough to swallow Solās head.
Sol didnāt have room to dodge. He didnāt have time to swing his corpse-whip.
He jammed his dagger forward.
He thrust his hand right into the snakeās open maw. The bone blade drove upward, piercing the soft palate and sticking firmly in the roof of the beastās mouth.
The snake gagged, its jaws trying to clamp down on Solās arm, but the vertical dagger acted as a prop, holding the mouth open.
Sol didnāt pull back. He used the snakeās own momentum and the handle of the dagger as a vaulting pole.
He swung his legs up, vaulting over the creatureās head. For a split second, he was airborne, his hand still inside the monsterās mouth.
As he passed over, he ripped his hand free, leaving the dagger stuck in the snakeās skull.
He landed on the log with a heavy thud, slipping on the moss, scrambling for purchase. He pulled himself up, gasping, until he was standing six feet above the swarm.
He looked down.
Below him, the gorge floor was a writhing sea of frustration. Hisses and rattles echoed off the walls. The Gorge-Constrictor was thrashing, trying to dislodge the bone shard from its brain.
Sol stood there, swaying, his chest heaving like a bellows. He was covered in blue, green, and red blood. His clothes were ribbons. His leg burned with cauterized agony.
"Is that all youāve got?" Sol roared at the carpet of scales, raising his middle fingers. "Iāve had more dangerous bowel movements than you lot!"
But the bravado was a lie.
His vision was starting to narrow into a dark tunnel. Black spots danced in his eyes. Every breath felt like inhaling broken glass, and every step was a battle against the "Realistic Survival" difficulty he had been gifted. Even the use of Charcoal energy was nearly reaching its limit, and the natural exhaustion of his broken body was catching up with a vengeance.
He turned and limped along the tree trunk, heading toward the light, praying he didnāt pass out.
Ā°***+***+***+***Ā°
A/N: Happy New year! May this new year bring you health, wealth and all the thing youād ever wished for.
May this year maybe the turning point of your life and you become the "True Protagonist" of your own life story.
As an author, I know, I shouldnāt be saying this, but Iāll still say, donāt spend all of your time reading these novels, spend time on yourself, with your friends and family, because these moments wonāt last long.
And just like me donāt regret not talking to all your old friends you had lost contact with, because I just recently found about the unfortunate death of my childhood best friend due to cancer, and how I wished, I could have at least hit him up one last time before his death.
But alas! so is life, thatās why spend time with your family, friends and loved ones, so you donāt regret it forever later on.
Anyways, Happy New Year, letās meet again next year and spend a long time together.