He fought and fought with little breaks in between. It was easy to kill them if his knife hit but that was the problem. While he was stuck on the ground unable to even move or turn properly these monsters were like a fish in the water. They struck him from the ground, from the above, from the front, from the back. They ambushed him, and even though he had not been ganged up until now he could feel the time between each encounter decreasing.
This trail of blood and flesh slowly flaked off the rust that had been growing upon his instincts. Slowly his body excavated the skills that he had used to survive through the most difficult time in his police career.
The fights continued seemingly with no change, he took damage and killed the monster and the pattern repeated but each time he tried to control where he took the hit using the expandable parts of his body as his shield when the monsters were able to close in on him.
The fights were quick but after disposing he moved slowly, taking in all of his environment, analyzing the paths where he could be attacked while he tried to move. With each battle he tweaked his actions, optimizing them just a bit more each time. The wound slowly became less and less fatal as he became accustomed to fighting in the tight walls.
Moving to the next floor he was again completely healed only adding more scars on his body. Each hand equipped with a knife he moved and the battle started soon. With each battle, he could feel the monsters coming near from all around. Slowly multiple encounters happened one after another, just tightening the time in between them a bit more and they would become a single battle where he would be assaulted.
The worst-case scenario had to be stopped so he became a bit more reckless, especially knowing that he would be fully healed on the next floor. The thought of dying did not even come into his mind as he gave his flesh to reap the lives of the monsters attacking him.
He moved a bit wildly letting his instincts control his body while he focused on his surroundings. He fought the one in front but it retreated, crawling on the wall. Already he could see and hear movement in the shadows coming closer causing him to run even faster but it was in vain. The monster moved much faster and quickly group up with others.
One of the knives cut through the air but it bounced off the wall, the target already gone. It dropped on the group and as the metallic sound echoed the monsters attacked. The number of monsters quickly grew, from one to two and then three. But even more of them were looking as he fought. Deflecting the blow he moved in, the knife stabbing the eyes. He bit even harder as the monster dropped its knife and used its sharp nails to cut into his skin. He could not back down otherwise it would retreat allowing the healthy ones to take its place.
The same attack patterns but as the number increased so did the difficulty. Each kill required him to squeeze all of his abilities as he thought of ways to kill them more and more quickly. Though the current situation was dangerous if he killed enough of them before he died he would be victorious.
The fights suddenly became much more bloody and dangerous, requiring him to quickly change his approach if he wanted to survive. Front, back and up, the three monsters that could attack at a time pushed him from all sides. The tight walls quickly turned insidious in his eye as they massively restricted his movement.
It pushed an even greater strain on his mind as tried to find a way out of this. He could feel the eyes upon him, the numbers greater than three. Again the monsters attacked but this time instead of waiting for them to come he pushed power in his legs and started climbing using the tightness of the surroundings to his advantage.
The monster had already jumped and it tried to reorient itself but he was not one to let go of his opportunity. Suddenly he released the force in his legs, pushing the walls with his hands, and accelerated downwards where the monsters were climbing the walls. One leg on each of their faces he grunted as the knives stabbed into his legs but still he persisted. Cracking sounds reached into his ears as their bodies cushioned his fall.
His eyes turned to the ceiling, and he threw a knife. Though the knife was deflected it stopped its moments. While it tried to grab onto the wall he was quickly moving towards it, quickly disarming it. He did not kill it though grabbing onto it and using it as a shield while he rushed at the monsters.
As he suddenly got a breakthrough, he started using the wall and the monsters themselves to create his advantages in an environment filled with disadvantages. The monsters kept coming and he kept refining his process even further while his instincts started gaining their edge back.
He moved to the next floor and again the difficulty increased not allowing him to wonder how it was even possible to recover from those injuries within a blink of an eye. The monsters were still the same, their power was identical but they became better at what they could do while adding new things to their mix. Each encounter became increasingly more complex but each time he survived, his eyes set on his goal, to get revenge.
Bloodied and battered he kept moving, despite being unable to move his arms and legs he kept dragging the body. He bit with more force, the blood went in and he wanted to gag but he kept biting down on its neck, his teeth hurt as he tore off a big chunk off its neck and bit in again, his hands slumped now just dead weight which he used to keep it pinned along the wall.
The connection snapped into place and his hazy mind automatically unraveled the connection and he was on the fifth floor. Again the fight started and he became more and more exhausted. His mind was hazy, his body dying, his will crumbling. By now he had adjusted to the number of monsters he had to kill. It was instinctive, thus he subconsciously used his body keeping that in mind but this time the connection did not snap into place.
Blood flowing, limbs protesting, it felt as though his body was chained down with heavyweights. A task as simple as raising his arm made him feel as though he was lifting the greatest weights. Suddenly despair swept over him as he could feel his life slipping out of his hand. Even though he wanted to waste himself in despair he did not have the luxury to do so. He had to make them pay. For the years he had wasted in the prison and for the pain, he was currently feeling to regain freedom. A freedom that was unjustly stripped from him. So started one of his most difficult fights as he gave up his flesh and bones to survive and take down another monster.
It was even worse than the year 2009. By then it had been nine years since he had joined the police forces and at that time a balloon had seemingly burst apart as terrorist activities suddenly spread all across the country. The tensions became ever high with each passing day. The situation had become so bad that he had to allocate his men for intelligence gathering praying to God to get just a single chance, a single clue before any bomb exploded.
Running at any hint that they got, shrinking their sleep times, exhausted bodies controlled by even more exhausted minds, it was at that time that he had gotten to know what true despair felt like. How difficult it was to find a particle of salt mixed within the sand because even though they gave their all, they still had to go collect the bodies. Rarely if ever were they able to capture the terrorists or find the bombs before they exploded.
Battered, bloodied, and with a hazy mind, he stumbled through the corridors one after another. The monster jumped on him, his body moved, small steps, small adjustments. Pinning it on the wall he slashed with the knife, the blade slid into its eye sockets. Another stabbed him in the back, the knife struck his rib which finally broke after enduring all the punishment. He stumbled back, pinning the monster but the knife went even deeper. He coughed spitting out blood and his knife dropped from his mouth. Slowly, he moved his arm, consciously adjusting its movement.
His arms moved unnaturally, like a badly made machine. No precisión, no power, no control. The monster started biting into his back when his arms grabbed it and tried pulling to no avail. He could not exert any power through them no matter how much he tried. Unable to pull it in front, he grabbed it with as much strength as his broken and bruised arm could muster and let himself fall, pulling the monster under him. Now the monster could not move. Its nails still scratched into his flesh while he tried to grab onto the fallen knife. It took a lot of effort to kill it.
Standing up was another ordeal. His arms were powerless and so were his legs. He tried standing up, each time he fell midway. Once, twice, thrice he continued until he stood up and continued wandering.
It was now hazy. The senses were faded. Physically he had never felt so much worse ever before mentally though he could still handle it. His steel-like willpower dragged his broken body through each fight. Each encounter further broke his body as he let himself be stabbed, bitten, and broken to kill the monsters in front of him.
His mind was slow not as he wandered, a trail of blood following him. The body had long since entered survival mode and only briefly when he fought did his mind return to its full potential. In this trial by fire, his abilities were only polished to an even greater extent.
By the time the connection snapped into place, he did not even notice as he continued fighting on and on as though he had forgotten his true goal. He kept on going until his body collapsed, unable to continue forwards. Soberness overtook him, causing him a massive panic but as he sensed the connection, without doing anything else he unraveled it.
***
Something was different this time, a ceiling above and a smooth floor below. The light was bright and there was more than enough space to move around in the big wide room. As he waved his arms around he felt unknown joy well up inside him. With a smile, he rotated and rotated. He kept rotating but the world still felt much more stable than it should have.
He slowly came to a stop and the dizziness quickly cleared, too quickly. His mind was clearer, he felt at rest mentally even though he had just gone through a trauma-inducing event.
The room was a square box-shaped structure with only the hologram inside it. In the end, he selected a random direction and started offering his prayers. Not knowing how much time had passed he offered prayers of five days at the same time. Even after completing his prayers, he sat silently.
What would he do when he got out? He pondered on that question. He could take revenge; it had been the force that had made sure he did not give up in any circumstances. Even when there was no hope to get out. He kept trying and trying. But what would he do afterward? He kept thinking about it. Many thoughts came into his mind, some that further opened more avenues inside his mind while others were just drifting thoughts that came trying to distract him. He kept thinking but no result came to him so he stood up and diverted his attention toward the hologram that was showing new options.