Immediately After Sultan's ears picked up the buzzing sound, a feeling of ghostly horror gripped his soul; it was so intense that he imagined his organs had shrunk to the size of worms, leaving his interior hollow and exposed for the wind to claim.
Since this deadly game had commenced, Sultan had been on the losing end of it. He was outnumbered, exhausted beyond belief, weakened from dehydration and starvation, and most importantly, his mental state was in shambles. So, it was quite sensible that he was teetering on a very thin edge, needing only a slight shove to fall to his doom. The bastard known as his fate had finally decided to do him the courtesy.
As he scrambled into one of the openings ahead, the buzzing revealed its source: one of the murderous, enormous bugs. A split second later, his nightmare doubled. Two of them, not just one.
"Dammit all. They shouldn't be here," Sultan cursed with a hiss.
He had been working under the assumption that his pursuers never entered these side passages, a belief that had proven profoundly wrong and would cost him dearly. If he had thought about it, Sultan should have noticed earlier that on more than one occasion, he had been startled by abrupt attacks originating from these openings.
The monstrous insects, however, wouldn't give him time to reflect. The moment he detected their presence, they darted toward him.
Protectively, Sultan raised his knife in front of his face, accidentally slicing one of the creatures in half. It happened so quickly that the thing, carried by the momentum of its flight, didn't even have time to stop itself in the narrow space before impaling itself on his blade.
[A Grade 0, III-Star adversary has been eliminated.]
This time, Sultan heard it: a congratulatory, celestial voice whispering in one ear and then the other. He also felt the same heavenly sensation once again, stunning him into stagnation, which might have cost him his life if not for, incredulously, the Citizen's timely interference.
"DUCK!" The warning blasted before his eyes with a shrieking ring.
Sultan quickly flattened his body to the floor, attempting futilely to shield his head. The flying stinger was faster. Sultan barely had time to react before it struck.
The pain came suddenly, sharp and excruciating. The creature had driven its stinger deep into his shoulder, mercifully protecting his head, only scratching his cheek in the process. The agony was molten fire injected into his veins. His entire left arm began to go numb, paralyzed by what this time undoubtedly had to be poison. And the cursed thing wasn't done with him yet.
With a sickening push, it tried to drive off his shoulder, withdrawing its stinger in preparation for another strike.
"Aren't these things supposed to die after stinging someone?" Sultan lampooned internally. How was it still alive?
Not waiting for an answer, Sultan finished it himself.
Adrenaline surged through him, drowning out the pain. He summoned every ounce of strength and twisted his body, trapping the creature under his weight by the stinger still lodged in his shoulder. With his uninjured hand, and while the insect's legs thrashed wildly in resistance, Sultan raised the knife high and brought it down with all his might, exactly in the spot above his left shoulder, wright next to his neck. Plunging it into the creature's head, the thing went still.
Gulping silently, Sultan waited for a few seconds, and then let out the breath that he had been intentionally holding.
"It seems there are no more of them, for now."
Sultan had experienced firsthand what it means to cheat death. If he had delayed the slightest bit in his reaction, the creature might have taken to the air, striking again, and this time it wouldn't miss. It would have targeted his spine or neck, ending him for good.
'I would have been dead without whatever the Citizen did.' And this left him conflicted.
Sultan's mind inherently wanted to feel gratification. Finally, the Citizen had done some of what he promised and actually helped. Sultan should be grateful, shouldn't he? And he would have been, if not for the voice in his head that scornfully reminded him of the fact that, most likely, if not for that psycho , he wouldn't have needed help in the first place.
Shaking himself into action, Sultan knew that this reprieve was short-lived. He couldn't spend time on fruitless thinking. The noise he'd made was bound to attract others, so he needed to hastily jump into one of the side cells to hunker down.
If his intuition proved correct, the rest of these creatures seemed to sense it when one of them died, receiving some sort of signal.
And it drove them mad.
This meant that in just a few moments, a furious storm of enraged insects will pass through here, and Sultan desperately required shelter.
Crawling forward painfully, Sultan relied on his uninjured hand, dragging his numb, useless arm behind him. The shoulder where the insect had stabbed him was completely unresponsive; he couldn't even manage to wiggle his fingers because of the pain .
With great effort, Sultan wiggled into one of the openings.
ironically, it was the same one the two insects had emerged from. Using a final push of his legs, he sent himself tumbling down, dropping to the floor below.
He knew it wasn't too high, so he didn't expect to seriously injure himself from the fall.
but this time it was quite different. instead of landing on the cold, hard familiar surface he had come to expect, Sultan plunged into a thick, warm, liquid-like substance.
Sultan yelped, flailing as he sank. For a few harrowing moments, he feared he might drown, until, with much chagrin, he remembered that these chambers weren't large enough to hold so much liquid that can engulf the entire of his body .
Summoning his willpower, Sultan forced himself upright, his back pressed to the wall, his legs stretched out before him. The substance covered him up to the very top of his chest. Standing up, it might barely reach his midsection , but in his current state, sitting was all he could manage.
He stayed like that for a while, trying to gather his wits.
Soon enough, he heard the buzzing outside intensified. The maddened insects has revealed their true wrath.
The sound of the manic fluttering wings engulfed the place like a tsunami, a relentless tide of firry. The anger in their search was palpable. Never before had they been so insistent, nor had they swarmed in such overwhelming numbers not in any of Sultan's previous encounters with them.
Except, perhaps, for the very first time. But back then, Sultan had been too disoriented, too unaware to pay attention. He still wondered how they had failed to reach him.
Sultan genuinely feared for his life. He froze as if he was a part of the wall laying on, holding himself utterly still. Sultan didn't dare to move a single inch.
Thankfully, the deafening volume of the mounting, moving wings gradually diminished, until only an occasional buzz could be heard here and there.