[a grade-0 three-star adversary has been eliminated.]
sultan stood frozen like a statue, his hand still gripping the knife embedded in the wall. The insect hung lifelessly from the blade, a strange, sticky ichor leaking from its body.
For a fleeting moment, Sultan experienced a divine, stimulating feeling. Soul shivering from pleasure, He delectated on it.
Sadly and luckily, the experience proved to be short-lived. directly after a second, his eyes regained focus, and the tinkle in his skin dissipated gradually.
"Sultan, I think you'd better move." The Citizen's message was the first thing to flash before his eyes as his mind fully cleared.
"what was that?" Sultan murmured in a daze.
And no, he wasn't referring to the Citizen's message. In fact, He didn't heat the psycho any mind for now.
"Has the creature poisoned me?" With that thought, Sultan began inspecting his body, searching for any scratches or traces of an unfamiliar liquid.
"hey, time is running out."
This, as it turned out, was a very stupid idea.
Sultan's body was full of scrapes, grazed all over from his journey in the small tunnels, and the fluid of the monster was coating his hands. understandably, he has no method to differentiate witch one the creature might have caused.
"RUN, YOU FOOL."
Still determined to find an explanation, Sultan did something even more foolish.
Sliding the knife out of the creature, he began inspecting it with his fingers.
It had insect-like features: paper-thin wings on a slender, lanky frame ending in a nasty, pointy stinger that appeared warped, likely from its collision with the wall before dying.
There was just one detail that didn't add up.
Insects shouldn't be the size of a human head.
"Sultan, you're dead."
Exasperated, Sultan intended to ask the Citizen what all the fuss was about but froze.
He stood rooted in place, his eyes widening in horror. The quiet atmosphere was quiet no more.
It had been replaced by a deafening, thunderous roar of buzzing wings.
Predictably, the source is A multitude of swarms of frantically buzzing insects, likely of the same species as the one he had just killed. and they were rapidly approaching his location.
It seemed the family of the deceased was coming for revenge.
To make matters worse, they had already encircled him during the time Sultan had wasted messing around.
"Fuck… I'm so dead.
Knowing it to be futile, Sultan sprinted anyway, reaching the intersection at the end of the tunnel within mere seconds. There, he turned in one direction, then the other, only to find that every potential path was already blocked by a storm of furious, relentless wings, mere moments ahead of him.
Cursing fate, the Citizen, and everyone responsible for placing him in this hell, Sultan dashed back to the other side of the tunnel, only to be confronted with the same dire situation.
Cold sweat ran on his pack, and blood pulsed like drums in his ears, The tide of insects was nearly upon him, and there seemed to be nowhere to run…
… or was there?
As he continued darting back and forth like a man on fire, shoulders pumping between the closing walls like a tennis ball, a desperate idea struck him.
Sultan leapt into the wall.
It was a last-ditch effort, the mythical straw which all drowning men never managed to grasp in their final moments.
Sultan borrowed into one of the multiple openings decorating the sides. Scrambling on his knees, he clenched the knife between his teeth, not having the mind or time to be troubled by the grime clinging to its surface, and used both hands to feel along the banks of the narrow channel with every few steps.
"Please be there. Please be there," he pleaded silently.
After what felt like an eternity of desperate fumbling, his fingers brushed against his quarry, another hall branching off to the side.
Wasting no time, knowing that even a moment's hesitation could spell his death. Sultan hurled himself through the opening, landing hard in a familiar, empty chamber.
Adrenaline still firing through his vanes, Sultan scurried hastily, determined to put as much distance as possible between himself and the entrance, as if it is going to lunge forward and devour him.
Because like hell it will.
Scratch that. Eating him would be an act of mercy. What the enraged and maddened insects promised him is a far worse fate.
Huddled in the corner, Sultan feared even breathing. He wasn't sure that hiding in this cramped cubicle would be enough to avert the creatures' retribution, and he had no desire to lower his slim chances further by making unnecessary noise.
Yet, his heart seemed to not be on board with this plan, pounding furiously in his chest like a caged beast provoked by the pursuing enemies, stubbornly persistent to break free and face them head-on.
"Oh, man. Did you really have to piss them off?" the Citizen remarked.
"What did you expect me to do? Stick my neck out and offer my head with a smile, just so the creature could drive its stinger through?" Sultan shot back, a bitter laugh threatening to escape his lips.
"Why? Why? Why?"
"Why didn't you mention anything about those monsters?" Sultan demanded, his fear boiling over into anger.
"You see, that's the thing only my partner gets to do," the Citizen responded, following by an emoji of smug-smile.
"Haven't I urged you to move right after you killed that Adversary? And yet, you disregarded all my messages until it was too late." [reproachful-face emoji]
"you want to know why I ignored you?" Sultan typed back.
"I ignored you because you're a fucking moron ."
"a buffoon who can't stop clowning and quipping every single time I ask you something serious!"
"So don't you dare lay the blame on me now," he finished, grinding his teeth, his palm halting mid-swing before smashing the floor in barely contained fury.
Sultan has a stomach full of resentment and indignation, a storm of emotions with no outlet to vent. He wanted to scream, to cry out against the injustice of it all. the sheer unfairness of what was happening to him. He hadn't asked for any of this.
Yet he couldn't.
Not just because the outside hurricane of stingers and needles would shred him to pieces if they caught wind of his site, but also for it wouldn't change a thing. Howling like a mad beast or throwing a tantrum like a spoiled intitled child wouldn't bring him home or improve his situation in the slightest.
It was an arduous task, though. The outlandish and bizarre phenomenon surrounding this place were impossible to simply shrug off. And to make matters worse, the only person he could rely on was an uncooperative individual who treated this whole ordeal as if it were nothing more than a circus sideshow.
"Well, it seems the earlier message didn't serve its intended purpose," the Citizen remarked after a long and unsettling silence.
'what message?' sultan thought, a bad premonition nesting in his abdomen.
"That's okay. Your kind aren't known to be disciplined by words alone."
Sultan didn't have time to register the insult, because as soon as this message arrived, he felt it.
It began faint at first, like a nurse gently prodding a muscle with a needle before puncturing the skin. Sultan experienced a negligible pulsation of headache in his brain.
A split second later, it exploded , a piercing stab, a throb of sharp agony radiating through his brain.
searing and excruciating, The sensation was akin to driving a knife through his skull in reverse, the blade slicing from inside out as if wanting to escape.
The torment felt like an eternity while it lasted.
And Just As the wave of furious buzzing finally closed in on his area,
Sultan couldn't deny the heart-wrenching scream that tore from his throat.