Underneath the warm glow of the fire around us, and the sound of gunshots as the tank mauled over the remaining Undeads, all I could do was to avoid yet another strike by the machete.
I was tired, both mind and body. It was clearer than ever that the Mark was slowly taking its toll on me. And yet, I continued to fight.
Right in front of me was a man driven by the same rage, the same beast that I housed. His eyes, his movements were all culminations of this symphony of hatred that drove his heart, and yet his swings and strikes were all so smooth that I could never take them lightly. There was simply just no window for me to use to launch a single bullet.
"What's the matter, Rain boy!"
Catching me by surprise, the man named Chad quickly swept me off my feet by a quick succession of footwork. I tried dodging his advances, but his sudden flurry of speed caught me off-guard. Before I even knew it, I was already on my way to a painful fall onto the ground.
Immediately rolling out of the way once I'd landed, I once again dodged a close call from having a machete stuck up my head. I quickly got back onto my feet and settled to have some distance between the two of us.
Breathing heavily, I tried to think of something. Sadly, even this was not allowed.
Without even a tempo amiss, I was quickly barraged by more swings and strikes. All I could even afford to think of was what to do in the next exact second, but this proved to be a difficult feat with how my body was slowly deteriorating in speed. All of my senses were maxed out to its absolute limit, and yet my mind couldn't keep up to it. One, two, one, two; my mind stuck to this basic tempo, and even this only worked for some short period of time. As soon as my mind had caught up to what was happening, I was met by the edge of the machete just inches away from my face. In short, I was completely out of breath.
Fortunately, I managed to recover quickly and jumped out of the way just in time.
"Is that all the best you have, m'boy?" The man asked intensely, his voice quivering with rage. "My men! My loyal men died to someone as weak as you!?"
As he presented to me this angry serenade, slowly did he come to approach me.
"You can't even dodge my attacks properly! And you're saying you've killed my men!"
Closer was he now. Only a few steps left for me to reach him.
"Look at me in the face when I speak, boy. I said, LOOK AT ME!"
Now!
Lunging forward, I ran as low as I possibly could, adrenaline rushing up into my head. This was it. This was my chance! His guard had been lowered, so I had to strike now!
Dodging a cut onto my left cheek, I quickly made my way around the man and got behind him, holding onto his waist with all that I had in my right arm. This surprised him greatly, which caused him to stagger just long enough to allow me to do what I was just about to do. Pulling out every single ounce of energy that I could, I brought him up into the air in the clutches of my right arm just before dropping him back down again to have his right kidney be driven straight onto my knee.
The hit was short, but I knew it did exactly what it was meant to.
The next couple of seconds immediately went hazy, as I, filled with a new sense of momentum, continued on with my turn of attacks. All I could remember was watching things past by through the lens of my eyes.
Having just pushed him down to the ground, I blessed the man's face with my right fist three times, causing it to have bled to red.
Hell, I would've even done more if it weren't for his quick recovery!
Jumping out of the way from a chokehold, I backed down momentarily, catching a bit of my breath which had been lost during the discord earlier on. However, this didn't last very long as I catapulted myself into the air just a second later. Back into the action! I thought to myself.
At that time, all I had in mind then was to just knock off the air out of his lungs from the impact, but unfortunately, the counter that the man produced did come off as being a huge annoyance.
"How do you like this!" He said maniacally as he brought his machete up to his chest.
"Shit!" I cursed out, as I slowly descended towards the sharp landing. I was already in mid-fall, what the hell was I supposed to do!?
Brain thinking over a thousand miles an hour, I finally came to the decision to roll myself in mid-air, in an attempt to move out of harm's reach and out of the machete's range. All I could rely now was my instinct, and so I didn't even hesitate for a second before doing it. I did exactly as what I had envisioned in my mind, and closed my eyes, letting the wind carry me.
Fortunately, the machete never came. Instead, in its place, my right side was met with yet another crash landing onto the ground.
Painful, but better than the alternative.
A murderous intent flung its way through my whole body, as I opened my eyes though and just as I was about to look up, I saw a silhouette of a man blurred by the fire behind him towering over me. His hands were held up high, and they held something between them. Something long and sharp...
A machete!
Finally regaining my senses, I barely missed the machete's strike just as it hit the piece of road right next to me. It was a strong blow, but it was met with the ground, a renown immovable object, which caused his grip to loosen.
This was all I needed.
Grabbing onto the machete with my right hand, I pulled it away from the man's clutches and took it for my own. I yanked it straight out of the ground, and pushed the man on top of me with all my might using my two healthy legs.
And now, I was no longer defenseless.
In fact, I now had full control over the offense.
Having absolutely no time to waste, as the fire around us kept on getting bigger and bigger, I immediately went for the kill. I needed to end things soon! It was getting out of control, especially with the endless waves of Undeads that continued to come. There hadn't exactly been any other Irregulars per se, but if it weren't for the tank and a certain Kai distracting these rotten masses' attention away from both moustache dictator here and myself, we would've been screwed over already by now!
Slashing away all of these thoughts, I sliced the air with my newly-acquired machete and was just about to give the man a nice red gash on his face when... He managed to dodge just in time, the git!
Frustrated by this failure, I quickly jumped back to my feet and further pressed the opponent right in front of me with my own barrage of swings and blows. It surely seemed like I had the higher ground as time passed by, but knowing how crafty this man was, I was ready for anything to come at my face.
And right I was in being so cautious.
With speed akin to that of a cheetah, the man pulled out one of my guns and pointed it directly at my face just before pulling the trigger.
Bang, bang, bang.
Three consecutive shots in less than three seconds. All of them barely missing its targets, but doing more than the machete ever could. Realising that the danger was very, very real, I went on for close-quarter combat with no hesitation at all.
I needed to make sure that he could not use those guns anymore! I had to!
"What's the matter!?" The man asked loudly, noticing this change in urgency of my moves. "Realised you're out of your depth now, boy!"
"Like hell I am!"
Enticed by this response, he pulled out the other gun out of his sides. Sadly for him, this time, I was ready, more than ready.
Pulling the machete behind me in an arc, I dragged the thing along with me in mid-air, imbuing it with my own forward momentum. Time slowed down yet again, and in this short period of time, all my mind could focus on was the timing. The tempo. The beat. Taking a deep breath as my feet slowly got closer to being back on the ground, it was only then I finally brought the machete back to the front, piercing through everything that was on its path, including the man's left hand.
SWOOSH!
As metal came into contact with flesh, I managed to take the man's hand off one of the guns. Blood decorated the scene, and what was already a fiery scene had become even redder.
At that exact moment, all I could even think of was the machete, the gun and myself. Everything else had simply been tuned off.
As quickly as my body allowed, I grabbed onto the gun which had been flung into the air and reloaded it. So quick were these succession of moves that I, myself, wouldn't have believed it if not for the fact that I actually did it! Having finished clogging up the thing with my own set of blood bullets, I aimed straight towards the man and shot.
...
A second later, both of our eardrums were filled with nothing but ringing as the sound of bullets remained echoing within our head.
The two of us had shot; one having met its target, and the other missing by just an inch. Both of us had let out our final blow, and the both us fell onto our knees. Time once more resumed its usual pace, and with its return, came a death in its hands.
The screaming and the explosion around us began to take the place where the ringing used to be, and my vision began blurring out of focus. My head felt as if it was being split apart, and as I looked down towards my abdomen, all I saw was red.
But it wasn't mine.
Looking back at the man right in front of me, I saw the end-product of what a blood bullet could fully do to a person. Blood oozing down from his neck, the man was already barely alive and yet he still fought on, pressing his hands over the wound.
If only such a world could exist where that would seal up the bleeding...
"Curse you!" The man said with his dying breath, his face growing into a hot mess of demonic anger. "Curse you, boy! Hell shall take me down into its depth, but you ― YOU! ― shall come along with me! You shall die a painful death! MARK MY WORDS! A PAINFUL AND LONELY DEATH! NOBODY SHALL EVER COME TO YOUR DEATHBED, AND NOBODY SHALL EVER ACCOMPANY YOU IN YOUR FINAL MOMENTS! MAY YOU BURN IN HELL FOREVERMORE, AND MAY YOUR SOUL BE FOREVER TORTURED! I CURSE YOU! I CURSE YOU! I CURSE YOUUUUU!"
But these rants could continue no longer as the life slowly drained out of the man's eyes. He was on his last leg, and this was his final parting gift to the world.
Utter trash, I wanted to say and yet I couldn't.
What I did to them was the same exact thing that the world had once done to me. It was just that I had the greater luck in seeing things through, I just had something I needed to do more.
Slowly, I walked towards the man's dying body, watching him pitifully withered in pain as his eyes continued to show its demonic gleam. He was angry, alright, that at least I knew. Whatever he was seeing right there and then, I hoped it satisfied him for it'd be the last thing he would ever see.
"You know, your men might have been great followers, but they really weren't the best in choosing who to follow now, were they? Your luck's just run out, mine was bigger. Whatever it is you're doing what you're doing, the souls of the people you've killed won't be that forgiving. Just because you think you're doing the right thing doesn't mean you're right. Hope you and your men could all come to know that... Or I guess you will, seeing you're all headed to the same place."
Having given my final verdict, I turned around and left the man to rot. That was simply just how life was in this God-forsaken world. Simply how it was.
"May the Dark Marksman kill you when the time comes."
...
I turned around to see the man finally dead, but the words that he had said remained fresh in my mind.
The Dark Marksman? He knew who he was?
As I turned around just to be greeted by the tank mourning the death of its leader, I connected the pieces as I tried to figure out what those last words meant.
These people know the Dark Marksman?
"Then that means you should too right?" I muttered, facing the tank in front of me.
It seemed that the fire had raged across the battlefield so much that the Undeads were slowly dying out, but one giant remained standing, pointing its turret straight towards me.
It seemed there was still work to be done after all.