'Damn it!'
He hissed as his body shuddered and his muscles burned from rolling over.
Again, he had to lie still for a while until he could regain some semblance of focus. There was also the aftershock of almost dying to some weird supernatural demonic statue and his somehow successful kill of said statue.
Reno had really no idea what to make of all this at the current moment.
The only thing he was sure of was that he had to find out if his wounds were fatal. His already quite extensive basic knowledge in medicine should at least help him to some degree.
He took in a slow breath, even though it still burned, and then opened his eyes. His hand finally let go of the metal case and dropped it to the ground behind his back, out of his sight.
Then, he slowly moved his neck and looked his body up and down. He was lying on his side while gazing at his abdomen, legs, and arms.
'That's not looking too good or is it?'
His dry mental remark didn't manage to uplift his mood at the harrowing sight. He didn't even need to have medical knowledge to tell that the monster had wounded him to a critical state.
The night guard uniform of the museum was shredded from his sternum downward and turned bloody red. Many differently sized scratches, but all deeply imprinted into his flesh, ran along his naked skin.
Where the creature had collided with him, a huge dark area was visible, indicating internal bleeding right under his skin.
Somehow, none of his vital spots seemed to be hit, though. It was really close, though. Reno spotted a scratch running along his left thigh, only a few inches away from his artery.
'Oh god ...'
His face seemed to turn paler than it already was.
If its claws had hit any of those, he would have bled out right where he had been lying. But even though he had been lucky in a truly unlucky situation, his situation was now far from well. Reno had still lost a lot of blood caused by the sheer amount of cuts.
He, without a doubt, understood the severity of his current bodily condition.
Reno needed to close the wounds and get a blood infusion as quickly as possible.
He slowly tried to sit up. The pain came immediately, and he ground his teeth together like every time he experienced intense bodily suffering.
'The pain is only caused by my nerves trying to hinder me! Come on now!'
With a lot of effort, he managed to sit up straight and take a look around him, his eyes shaped into tiny slits.
His gaze fell on the dark creature's odd-looking corpse. Its maw was agape, revealing two rows of sharp fangs with black blood dripping from it onto the carpet.
Reno shuddered at the sight. He hadn't even noticed them before.
'If that thing managed to bite me ... no. I can't think about that.'
He stared at it for a while, almost as if hypnotized by it, but he was actually just repulsed and shocked by its appearance. The reality of something like this existing shook the fundamentals of his worldview. Yet again, he began to feel sick when looking directly at it for too long and quickly averted his gaze.
'What the hell are you?' he asked himself as he started to lift himself up with shaky arms.
When he finally managed to find an unsteady balance and moved forward, his left foot hit something hard. He looked down, identifying the metal case.
The crate was dented in, and its lock had popped open, creating a small slit revealing parts of what was stored inside of it. The dark red, almost black color of the creature's blood covering most surfaces contrasted starkly with the faint golden glow coming from inside the crate.
As Reno wondered about the creature's weird blood color, he also noticed the faint glow in the box and raised an eyebrow.
A little reluctant but driven by his curiosity, he picked the crate up from the floor while his back screamed in pain. That didn't bother him much, though. His whole body already hurt with every move he made.
The smell of iron and something weird he couldn't quite identify reached his nose. The closest comparison he found was the stench of a months-old rotten egg, which might best describe it.
'That monster's blood smells exactly how it looks like. What a surprise.'
His face contorted at the unsurprising revelation.
Trying to ignore the genuinely unearthly smell, he opened the already severely damaged lit. The glowing became more intense as Reno's gaze landed on the object inside.
Was that ... a stone? A golden glowing stone?
It was roughly the size of an adult's fist, marred by an uncountable number of small, intricate engravings running along its perfectly smooth-looking surface. For some reason, the many lines, despite their manmade look ... seemed organic. He wasn't sure.
'What the hell ...'
He stared at the stone, momentarily stunned at the sight.
Was he maybe really dreaming or hallucinating?
No, he wasn't. The pain he constantly felt and the disgusting smell of the creature's blood were his reminders he wasn't.
He got so lost in the web of engravings that it seemed as if they were drawing him or even inviting him to come closer.
A sudden, distant, quiet noise echoed through the hushed hall, waking him from his stupor.
His head jerked up, his mind tense again after cooling down as best as it could from its first terrible encounter.
'What was that?'
If he wasn't mistaken, it had come from the hallway leading to the new gallery.
A few heartbeats of speculation passed when a bad premonition overcame him.
'Statues. There were three statues, not only one. Damn it!'
His heart was racing, his hands clamming onto the metal crate until they turned white.
What should he do? In his mind, he went through all the possible options to survive this nightmare.
He couldn't fight without any weapons. The crate was already too badly damaged, and his strength was gone, so breaking off one of the monster's claws as a dagger was out of the question. Picking up the flashlight was an option, but it had rolled somewhere under the corpse of the ugly monster, which would also require him to lift it up.
Adding to that came him slowly losing blood with every second that passed. If it continued to trickle, he would eventually faint and die. There was no way around the encounter and no time left ...
Because he already heard it. The sound of something hard scraping on the floor in the darkness beyond the bright hall. It had gotten closer quickly.
Reno stared into the distance, his face frozen still, as his thoughts swirled inside his mind like a tornado.
From this whirlwind, two stuck out the most.
First, he was going to die here. That fact was undebatable and made his mind go dark. The prospect of being killed by a bunch of supernatural monsters made his stomach twist, but he knew there was no way around it after what he had experienced.
Second, would he really go without a fight?
Would he let the other monsters kill him without putting up any resistance? He was now weak and could barely keep his focus, but that seemed trivial in the present moment because Reno was thinking about his mentality, not his physical strength.
Anxiety was welling deep within his mind, occupying most of the space, but there was also defiance. A feeling he had experienced a lot of times before. This time, though, it was way different - it was incredibly intense and pure.
It mixed with hatred for the one who had brought him to the brink of death without any rational reason or explanation. The bizarreness and his lack of understanding of all that had transpired and would transpire in this museum of insanity added desperate fuel to his mind.
Reno embraced these feelings and rejected the darkness caused by his anxiety—at least he tried. Of course, his body had a natural instinct to warn him from dangerous scenarios, which meant he couldn't really control his shaking, but he could at least influence his mind to some degree.
In his last moments, he didn't want to be controlled by the pathetic side of his personality. He wouldn't start crying and drown in despair. Reno didn't want to give the monsters a feeling of superiority, even in the face of death. That was his wish.
This strong resolve of him surprised him a little but wasn't something he would try to tame.
His gaze slowly wandered down to the metal case once more. The stone seemed to shimmer even brighter than before as if charging up or maybe urging him to do something.
Obviously, he was imagining that, after all, a stone couldn't possibly have a will of its own.
Suddenly, a small smile appeared on his lips that shouldn't have been there.
What if he used the stone as an instrument for battle? It seemed robust and the closest thing to a weapon he could use in the remaining time. Didn't people in the Stone Age also fight with stone stools?
Had the glow of the stone just become a little dimmer?
Reno shook his head and refocused.
He had decided. This was going to be his last stand, and he was going to give the grotesque demonic monsters a goodbye gift before dying.
As he made that internal decision, his mind suddenly became clear again, as if freed from its many worries. Reno had one distinct goal and knew the ultimate outcome, which led him to a level of mental clarity he hadn't experienced in a long time.
With dark resolve written all over his contorted face, he grabbed the stone with one singular motion of his right hand.
For some reason, it felt warm to the touch, and if he wasn't hallucinating, his mind became even sharper than before and filled with a weird sensation he couldn't quite put into words. It didn't feel bad; it was the exact opposite, comforting. This only envigorated him even further.
Without wasting any thought on the weird circumstance, he looked up again, his eyes still formed into tiny slits, staring into the darkness beyond, waiting for his enemies.