Birth of a Warrior (2)

"Ack!" Tiara almost slipped and fell the next time the surface shook. "She meant it literally?!" Tiara gasped at herself as she remembered Nakano's words. "What am I supposed to doooo?" She wailed, looking around in panic. It was very dark inside, with the occasional sparks of electricity lighting up everything around her.

The insides of this creature were enough to send her barfing across the creature's heart. She panted and wiped her mouth after emptying her stomach from its disgusting contents. "Damn, it's been a long time since I had vomited. Feels good."

The creature shook violently and she heard its entire insides whimper. The heart started beating faster to aid the creature's injuries. "Percy is really blowing this one off," she wondered with a smile. But she also realised that it wasn't time to laze about.

She needed a plan.

"So if I stab the heart, the creature will be dead?" she thought after jumping away from the heart and landing in a safe hollow place between the rib cage bones of the creature. The shaking was felt lesser there. But hearing its whimpers from inside evoked some sort of empathy in her. Tiara closed her eyes and touched her forehead to the inside of its skin. "Aw, you poor little thing…"

"Tiara stop that goofing around and do something!" She could almost hear Percy shouting at her from outside. She smiled sadly. But Percy wasn't here now. She was on her own. And this decision was hers to make. She rubbed the skin softly and the parts where she rubbed glowed.

[You are able to share your healing with this creature. Do you want to proceed?] The glow transformed into letters and she read the message from the system. Her eyes widened and she started to feel hopeful. "Woah…"

Without thinking, she nodded. "Yes!"

[This will decrease your own healing to 60%. Do you still wish to proceed?]

"Yes, yes, yes," Tiara smiled. She didn't know what this feeling was but in that short amount of time, she felt a deep connection with this creature and the hope that it might feel better… made her happy too. All this was weird for her too.

"Tiara, this creature is her enemy!" She again imagined Percy inside her head. Shr growled and gripped her temple. "Get out of my head already." She frowned as she realised that this was the billionth time that she was thinking about Percy involuntarily. She needed to check up on this later.

[Healing complete, the creature is now back to 5 times its attack power and will continue killing players according to orders.]

[Warning! The threat level of your surroundings drastically increased! Stay away from the place to avoid getting killed]

"Wait, what?" Tiara's jaw dropped. She swivelled around to frown at the heart of the creature that was pumping back at normal pace. "I heal you and this is how you treat me back!?" She wailed, feeling enormously betrayed.

"Top 10 anime betrayals," they system added unhelpfully, a snicker hidden in its voice.

Tiara looked up aimlessly. "You watch anime, system?"

"When I get the remote, yes," the system said remorsefully. It soon realised that it was breaking out of character, and to avoid confusion, it bounced back into its normal line of thought.

"It was a monster, after all. You, as a player, should have analysed your surroundings, before making a decision."

Tiara fell into a slump. She did the only logical thing that came into her mind and that had beautifully backfired. Feeling exhausted, her body hung from one of the ribs like a cloth from a hanger. "You're starting to sound like Percy now," she sighed. She rolled her eyes up to stare at the heart pumping rhythmically, ruthlessly, ready to kill her inside its body.

"May I lend a piece of advice, Player?" The system finally interrupted after noticing that Tiara wasn't moving at all. If she gave up now, it would only be bad for everyone.

"What."

"Have you read the Rules and Regulations of the game?"

Tiara grimaced. "No? Percy did, though. Oh…" she looked up again. "Percy did. And that's why he is so smart!"

Tiara felt a new wave of regret coming over her, but it was coupled with a feeling of new hope too. "I should read the Rules and Regulations!" She called up her personal character screen and her eyes darted from here to there before she finally saw an icon of a white book.

She ordered it to open and a manual fell on her lap. She smiled and opened the book while sitting in one of the hollow spaces between the bones.

Her smile immediately dropped when she saw the words.

"What the hell," she flipped through the pages and groaned louder and louder with every turn. "This is worse than my math textbook!" She tossed it aside and hung down on the bone again. "I can't read that."

The book flew away from her and slowly disintegrated before automatically finding its place back in Tiara's Starter character package. So that if she looked for it again, it would still be there.

"Time's running out," the system warned, but Tiara was deaf to those words. She shrugged and gave up as easily as she had started. "It's okay, guess Percy will handle it. He always does. I'll just try next time." She rolled her eyes. In truth, the only thing she was thinking was that, 'I'm just a kid, let the older ones handle it."

The system was frozen for a second for the first time in its life in this dream system. It couldn't believe how retarded the girl was being. Then it realised Tiara's true roots. The fact that she wasn't a little kid anymore seems to have not hit her yet.

Right now, it couldn't do anything but watch the events unfold.

...…

Miwen screamed as something from behind pushed her forward. She landed on the floor with a loud thud… and that was the last thing she heard as her eyes closed. She tried to keep them open and stay conscious, but her body had gotten the worst of her as she finally shut down.

Goren's eyes widened and turned into beads as he stared at the broken room door. He gasped and fumbled around for his phone and swiped on the light.

The beam of light danced across the room before landing on a tall man in a black shirt and a fearsome look. "Who are you?" Goren snapped, walking backwards as the tall man only edged forward.

"What did you do to her?" Her grumbled as he glanced at Miwen passed out cold.

"That's none of your business!" Goren said before connecting with his security guard system. Before the other tall man could stop Goren, he had already sent a distress message to his personal security guards.

'Shit,' the tall man cursed inside his mind. 'Time's short, if that's the case.' His eyes darted from Miwen and across the room. It landed on the window… and if he was right, this room was on the third floor and by hotel standards, a jump from the third floor would be… fatal.

'I have no choice,' he told himself before grabbing Miwen and securing her on his shoulder.

Goren laughed, "Where do you think you're going?" His fear seemed to have vanished now that his security was on the way. "Do you really think you can escape?"

V ignored him and pulled out a knife from his pants. Since he had been the security guard at the front entrance, he was able to skip the metal detector and get inside the hotel. Maybe he should have brought the gun instead of Mitchell, but V knew. He could never hold a gun properly. Not after seeing that much blood on that day, 8 years ago.

Because all guns followed loud bangs, screams and blood.

Some guns didn't. Some guns killed their victims silently and in cold blood, but that was even scarier than the first.

Goren laughed louder. "A knife? Very creative."

V thrust the knife towards Goren now, to show that he was serious.

Goren got the message.

His phone light switched off.

And for a while, V couldn't see anything. As his vision slowly adjusted to the dark, he caught a movement from Goren's side and gasped. V's knees felt weak. He fell to the ground as he felt the blood in his body curdle. Miwen slipped from his shoulder and fell to the tiles with a low thud.

V grasped his neck and his eyes bulged out as he tried to breath. He felt like he was drowning and he was trying so hard to swim, but his hands, legs and brain had gone completely numb. He didn't even have the strength to speak. 'What is he doing to me?' he desperately thought instead. He tried to move his eyeballs to look up at Goren but he couldn't. It was like his entire anatomy was suspended inside thick ice.

'Stop…'

'Stop, please…'

And then, in the next second, blood poured out from his mouth and his ears filled with Goren's laugh that was on the inch of maniac and psychopathic. "I wanted to handle you like a normal person," Goren reasoned with a hint of fake sympathy in his voice. "But then I thought, oh then when will I practice my cool new powers? And you seemed like the perfect doll."

V's eyes widened as he saw blood pool on the floor around him. He felt himself sweating at the sight. 'No, no, please, anything but blood.'

He tried to close his eyes, but nothing moved. And the blood kept rushing out.

And that's when he realised that he was going to die. Right here, on a hotel floor, in the middle of a mission that seemed totally senseless to him right then. Because in the face of death, will anything make sense?