’My luck is so shit...’ Grey cursed, trying to pick himself up and then failing again.
Even if he did somehow manage to make it back, would he even do so in time? The Fog of Chaos had seemed only a few more seconds away from swallowing up the cabin and what was left of it.
By the time he managed to drag himself back, there might not be any part of this forest left that was outside of its influence.
Grey grit his teeth, a pulse of electricity jetting through his body.
Fury erupted in his heart. Even constricted by the darkness, it pushed against it, expanding until it felt like it really might be crushed to pulp.
"LEAVE ME ALONE!" Grey roared.
But no one heard him. The bastards in his chat right now were probably just as blocked by the Fog of Chaos as he was. Angry that they couldn’t see anything, they were prodding at him like he was some sort of trained steed they wanted to change stalls.
He had been doing so well. Things were still hard, but at least he was progressing.
Right now, though, it was like he was back under that microscope, slathered in a paste and slapped onto a petri dish for them to poke and dissect as they pleased.
It was more infuriating than he could put into words.
’I’m not going to die here. I refuse. Not until I run my fucking chainsaw through each one of their skulls.’
Grey growled and pushed himself up to his knees. He coughed, a mouthful of blood laced with darkness pooling out from his mouth.
He didn’t know what he was going to do. He couldn’t access his inventory anymore, death was seemingly no longer an option, and his body was basically nothing but a bag of scattered bones barely held together by what was left intact of his flesh.
But he sure as hell was going to do something.
The weight of the chainsaw on his back finally clicked for him and he slowly pulled it off. The moment it fell, he gasped for air and his body listened to him just a little bit more.
Using it as a crutch, he propped himself up and began to stumble forward. He just needed a chance, any chance.
Anything.
How far had he fallen? It couldn’t have been that bad since he slammed against that tree. 10 meters? 15?
He pulled on the one thing he had to rely on: his Perception.
He couldn’t sense anything. There was little more than a sea of blackness and tendrils that squeezed his heart tighter and tighter, but he took one step after another, dragging himself forward.
’Move. Move. Move.’
BANG.
Grey’s foot slammed against something wooden. He thought it was a tree, but it had too much give.
His heart shook when he realized what it was.
A siding panel of the cabin. He had walked so far? Where was Amunet? Where was Valdris?
’The door. The door...’
Grey placed a bloodied palm on the side of the cabin. With one arm on his chainsaw and the other on the siding, he used the latter as a guide and walked until he scraped against broken glass on a window sill.
The pain hardly registered to him as he peered inside.
Just there, in the faintest portions of light not touched by the Fog of Chaos, he saw Valdris.
The enormous man had shattered the roof of the cabin. In one hand, he held Esmeralda’s bloody corpse. In the other, he held a limp Amunet.
Amunet’s protective shadowy cloak was gone. In its place, half her clothing was torn, a pair of bloody teeth marks digging into her shoulder and hip in a single bite.
She looked as though she had been sucked completely dry, her once caramel and lively skin as pale as could be. Even her hair didn’t seem to carry the same dark gold light as before.
Valdris’ jaw unhinged and he took a large bite out of Esmeralda, moaning with pleasure. His arms shifted and he raised Amunet up once more as though to suck more from her, but then he frowned.
"To have such delectable meat and yet nothing to wash it down with. What a tragedy."
He threw Amunet to the side. Her body rebounded against the fireplace, bones cracking like dried firewood and ripping out of her skin as though it hadn’t the faintest hint of elasticity left.
Grey was already tumbling through the window. He couldn’t make it through the door. It was too far and he was slowly realizing that his body simply didn’t have much left to give.
The only reason he hadn’t bled out was because the darkness was squeezing down on his heart and stopping it from pumping properly. But it was also because of that that he was slowly turning blue.
Oxygen wasn’t making it to his body, and his stamina was ticking down so fast one would have thought he was running marathons a second.
Valdris didn’t hear him at all. All of the sound was swallowed up by the endless darkness around them. And that was exactly what Grey was banking on.
If he was going to die, he was going to do it in a blaze of glory. Or at the very least, he was going to take a piss down that tall bastard’s leg.
He revved the chainsaw the moment he hit the ground. He didn’t have the energy to move himself.
It would have to move for him.
Chi.
The rotating blades caught on the wooden planks and ripped itself forward, sending Grey flying with it.
Grey roared, raising the chainsaw with the last of his energy and activating Spark Fly at a cost of 5 stamina.
Valdris only managed to turn around at the last moment, but that only put the rotating, sparking chains right in line with the middle of his skull and nose.
That was what made it all the more terrible when it rebounded off his bloody maw as though it had slammed into a thick wall of steel.
Valdris’ head rebounded backward and he blinked twice before snatching Grey right out of the air.
"How convenient when dinner delivers itself right to you."
The last dregs of light were swallowed whole just before Valdris took a bite right into Grey’s body, his fangs puncturing his heart.