Risking a glance skyward, he took in the surreal beauty: massive chains dangling from the jagged roots of mountains that floated like shattered islands in the void, water droplets scattering silver through the deepening dusk. Far off, dragons coiled lazily on their perches, scales glinting like molten obsidian, utterly indifferent to the vermin scurrying below. Eternal guardians of this nightmare realm. The sight twisted in his gut—a cruel cosmic joke, nature's half-hearted apology for the horrors it endlessly spawned.
Noctis tried to empty his mind, to drift in that fragile limbo just long enough to catch his breath. But his thoughts rebelled, circling like scavengers.
You ran again. All that bravado, and here you are, scampering like prey. He couldn't call it outright cowardice; survival was the only metric that mattered in this world. You're no hero, Noctis. Just the last fool still drawing breath.
His fingers twitched, absentmindedly tracing the deep grooves etched into the battered sword resting across his lap. Every nick and gouge told a story of failure snatched back from the brink—clashes with beasts that should have ended him. He pictured the lead goblin's sneering face, the system's mocking alerts narrowing his options like a noose. Sometimes, he resented his own stubborn survival. Wasn't meant to last this long. If every lesson demands more blood, maybe death's just logic's final mercy.
A shudder rippled through him. He forced another deep inhale, tasting the earthy rot of moss and his own coppery sweat. Five minutes. That's all you get. Five minutes to trick your body into thinking it's not shattered, your mind into believing it's not broken next.
Of course, the universe spat on his fragile truce.
It started with an itch—not the casual tickle of insect legs or the dull numb of swelling, but a insidious chemical heat slithering under his skin like liquid fire with intent. He rolled up his sleeve, bracing for a mere scrape or burrowing tick. Instead, a clutch of greenish ooze clung to his elbow, half-melted and pulsing with threadlike veins that throbbed hungrily. For a frozen heartbeat, comprehension stalled; his mind raced through a grim catalog of agonies—monsters and abominations etched into memory from near-death scrapes.
Then the pain erupted: surgical and vicious, an acid tingle dancing straight along his nerves, burrowing deeper with every twitch.
He jerked violently, nearly tumbling from his precarious perch on the tree's outcrop. Sword whipped into hand, he slashed down hard—the blade bit through the slime with a grotesque shluck, spilling glowing sap across his knuckles that burned like molten lead.
The mass merely split apart, then reformed seamlessly, utterly unbothered. Cold dread coiled in his gut like ice.
"Be careful," the echoframe boomed flatly against his eardrum, its mechanical tone devoid of pity. "Hostiles detected: several unidentified slimes in direct contact."
Panic surged as he tried to kick free from the tree, pain and numbing shock battling for control. Another patch oozed over his ankle, viscous and vibrantly alive, tendrils probing like questing tongues. The pressure built relentlessly—a slow, methodical invasion, turning skin to fire.
He stabbed wildly at first, pure panic driving the blade—slicing deep, yanking apart, desperate to sever the thing from his flesh. No use. The slime gorged itself, spreading faster, the agony mutating from sharp stings to a cold, gnawing hunger that chewed at his marrow.
"No, no, no—not now!" Noctis hissed through gritted teeth, his voice a raw scrape from a throat parched by fear.
"[System Message]: These slimes possess a single fatal point, very difficult to locate. All standard attacks ineffective. Analyze for weak spot—suggest precision targeting."
Rage boiled up, tangled with panic and a hysterical bubble of laughter in his chest. Great. A riddle wrapped in agony. Haven't solved enough puzzles for one night?
He forced himself still, biting the inside of his cheek until copper flooded his mouth—adrenaline's sharp clarity cutting through the haze. Pain clouded his vision to smears of green and shadow, but panic was death's eager handmaiden. Analyze, damn it. The system doesn't give a shit, but your bones do. Every monster has a flaw. Wolves choke on their own breath, goblins on their arrogance. What's yours, you parasitic little bastard?
The slime on his arm bulged grotesquely, veins twitching in rhythm. He watched, breath held, dissecting the pattern: the subtle pulse of contraction and release, the faint color shift rippling through the ooze with every frantic beat of his heart. Memories flashed—the wyvern's downfall wasn't its razor wings or venom claws, but the double heart hidden in its chest, pulsing out of sync. Secrets were always concealed, often fatal when exposed.
He tracked the largest vein's lazy circle: it vanished into the mass, then reemerged like a predator lunging. Sword trembling in his weakening grip, he sucked in shallow breaths that bordered on choking, waiting for the telltale flicker.
There—a minute shadow near the edge, a darkness swelling beneath the slime-green haze. He drove the blade in not with brute force, but surgical intent. The tip grazed, then pierced true as the blip expanded. The slime convulsed wildly, shriveling like punctured fruit before dropping free, leaving behind screaming nerve endings and mangled flesh.
"Found you," he rasped, a grim satisfaction cutting through the relief. "One point, one kill. Should've known. Should've cared sooner."
But relief was a lie. Two more slimes slithered up his boot, cold and insistent; another wormed across his ribs, half-buried under his shredded shirt. He gritted his teeth, every misplaced stab igniting fresh acid blooms. If this is my tomb, I'll carve the epitaph with calculation, not blind panic.
Slowing to a methodical crawl, he abandoned wild swings for precision. Track the rhythm. Spot the pulse. Wait for the kernel—that tiny, twitching shadow in the jelly—then strike. Blood ran thick beneath the invading masses; skin tore in ragged strips, muscles ignited in unrelenting flame.
"I'm not dying for lack of precision," he growled to the empty night. "If I go down, it's for sheer stubbornness."
One—two—three fatal points pierced, three slimes collapsing into inert puddles. Sweat carved burning trails down his forehead, mingling with ooze and blood. Vision tunneled through the agony, narrowing the world to his blade's edge, but his mind sharpened, demanding endurance.
Don't think. Survive. Watch the rhythm. Every monster dances—learn the steps before it leads you off the cliff.
A bitter laugh escaped as the immediate pain dulled to a humming undercurrent. Could've been easier if they handed out maps to their hearts. But in Noctis's brutal world, nothing came free—not even victory.
He pressed on relentlessly, arm trembling from aftershocks, mind forged into a blade by fear and fire. The night closed in tighter; chains overhead creaked in mocking sync with his hammering heart, distant dragons hunkering lower on their floating isles as if the realm itself sensed blood in the air.
Slimes kept spawning from nowhere—oozing from earth cracks, splattering from overhead leaves, seeping from bark knots like the tree itself conspired against him. Each tested his fraying limits: resolve, memory, the knife-edge focus to catch that infinitesimal shift signaling doom.
Early on, he'd flailed in panic—arms swinging wide, wasting precious energy and spilling more blood in stupid desperation. Now, exhaustion and necessity slowed him into something colder, more lethal. Patterns emerged like an algorithm in the slime's flex: the flex, the pulse, the kernel's twitch. Strike true, and it died.
Thoughts frayed amid the onslaught, pain woven into his every breath like an unwelcome companion. He learned to compartmentalize it—shove the roar into a mental box labeled not now. A perverse pride flickered through him. Let the world hurl torment after torment. I'll just refuse to drown in it all at once.
Not every strike landed clean. Aim wavered as vision blurred, exhaustion poisoning his muscles; slime tore deeper into tissue, heat flooding his veins like fever.
"Slower," he muttered, voice a rasp. "Catch the beat. You're not allowed to die sloppy."
Weakness summoned ghosts: the goblin's guttural taunts, the wyvern's shrieking dive, endless beasts that had mauled his flesh, fear, and soul. All had come inches from victory. None had claimed it.
Watching a droplet of his blood swirl into a dying slime on his thigh, a wild thought struck: Am I turning into them? Cold. Instinctive. Surviving at any cost?