As it turned out, accepting that mission was probably the worst decision Rob had made since coming to this crazy world. And given that he had been throwing himself from one blender to another from the moment he awoke in that white room, this mission being the worst said enough about how bad the situation was.

  Especially if his conclusion was right and those poor souls were truly here to kill the Great Mother like him—and ended up like this.

  What chance did he have?

  He had burned almost all of his energy points, received more injuries than he had started with, and only managed to disable one of the four.

  All of this before even confronting the main objective of the mission.

  “Dammit. Dammit all.”

  Rob cursed at the top of his voice. The words came out of his mouth more like a roar than the speech of a man. He just tried to let all the helplessness out of his system by shouting it away.

  “I will be back.”

  He finally said it, giving it everything he had to just keep killing the mockeries of humans before him.

  Thinking and pondering in such a situation wasn’t healthy.

  Rob knew what he needed to do next, and that was enough for now. He had to survive this current battle before starting to worry about the next.

  “Look out for the arrows,” he instructed the fearful bird. He didn’t worry that the bird wouldn’t listen. Deep down, he trusted it that much.

  Leaving his back for the bird to watch, Rob brought all his focus to the two currently trying to reduce him to a pulp. He scrutinized them from head to toe. His gaze searched for something he knew had to be there—a sign of a weakness they ought to have.

  A deep sense of danger alarmed him of an arrow coming from the side. Rob ducked down, his eyes still watching every movement and shift of the dead corpses.

  Maybe because they fought so efficiently. Maybe because at first glance they didn’t act stupidly or sluggishly like the other corpses and threadeyes. Or maybe just because Rob still wasn’t used to thinking with his head while fighting for his life.

  In any case, dumb Rob seemed to forget that he was indeed dealing with dead bodies. True, they were moving, armed, and armored dead bodies—but they were still dead bodies nonetheless.

  And what’s the weakness of dead bodies?

  They had already died.

  Something—or someone—had managed to hurt them so badly and so violently that life had left them as a result. And that, obviously, left a weak point in their bodies… or at least Rob hoped so.

  Although the parasite beetles were capable of stopping those dead bodies from decaying and rotting, Rob knew for a fact that they didn’t close flesh injuries or mend broken bones. They inhabited the body exactly as it had been before death.

  Rob frantically searched for the cause of death, evading the untiring attacks at the same time. Meanwhile, the bird’s timely alarms kept him ahead of the impish arrows.

  Until finally…

  He saw it.

  The staff warrior revealed its fatal weakness first.

  It always kept him at a distance. With its long staff and wide attacks, it never allowed Rob within three meters of its revolting body.

  That was why he had to get creative.

  He risked using his power to empower a blow against the defiled corpse. He pulled its staff toward his body—or, more accurately, he pulled his body toward the staff. But since Rob weighed more than the wooden weapon, and he targeted slightly below the tip, the staff came at him faster.

  Followed by its unprepared wielder.

  The undead creature stumbled forward, carried by the inertia of its speeding weapon. And Rob didn’t waste the chance.

  He went down, rolling on the floor and coming behind its open back to sink his talons in.

  Yet he didn’t get to.

  A frequently familiar pulse of danger warned him of an arrow coming from the side.

  Rob hastily stepped back. An arrowed projectile passed before his eyes a moment later. Following that, the great staff came rushing at him in a monstrous sweeping blow.

  Pushing against the ground, Rob escaped into the air.

  He smiled, sensing the final threadeye imitating him by stomping the floor and leaping toward him with its mace raised high above its head.

  He tugged on the nearest wall, veering slightly to the side. The bull-shaped man passed by him harmlessly, Rob even managing to deliver a back whip to its helmeted head.

  A manic, unrestrained grin split Rob’s face.

  “One died with a fractured spine. The other with a slit throat.”

  The conclusion wasn’t hard to reach if one knew what they were looking for.

  Although Rob’s attempted attack at the unarmored corpse’s back failed, he had taken a clear, unobstructed glance at the twisted curve in its spinal cord.

  And despite the lack of visible damage when his talon collided with the head of the mace holder, he clearly felt its head go back and forth with the force of his blow—as if nothing supported it except the helmet connected to the armor.

  Those weren’t the first or the last failed attacks Rob made during this prolonged fight. But they were by far the two that ultimately wrote the ending in his favor.

  The knowledge—the edge they granted him—was the difference between life and death.

  After that, he no longer fought reactively. There was a purpose for every attack, for every block, every leap, roll, and duck. He had a target to aim for, and with every second that passed without him dying or receiving a crippling wound, Rob edged closer to his goal.

  To victory.

  Eventually, Rob formed a decisive plan—a course of action that would end with him killing all three threadeyes if done right.

  And the key words here were “if done right,” because if not, it would be the literal end—the end of the mission, the end of the battle, and most likely the end of Rob’s very own life.

  In short, it was a risky, reckless, all-or-nothing kind of plan.

  It all came back to his position.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Rob tried to think of the battle as a football match. He couldn’t fully manage it, but even the hint of similarity he found between the two gave him a bit of confidence. And when one planned on gambling his very survival on the line, any trust in one’s own skill and capabilities made a world of difference.

  For his ploy to work, there were two vital factors.

  First, he had to position his body in the right place, at the right time. That part was easy for him.

  The second—and more difficult—part was his three assailants. They also had to be in a particular formation in relation to him and to each other. The threadeyes, of course, wouldn’t take instructions from him—so he had to manipulate them into being where he needed them.

  And Rob had grown up playing this game.

  What was football if not trickery and manipulation?

  Convincing the opponent that you’re going to run while planning to shoot. That you will fall back when you actually want to advance. That you’ll aim right while you plan to strike the center.

  And this was quite similar.

  Back then, Rob could move the entire field to his will with the ball at his feet.

  And now he could do the same.

  Well… except that the ball in this case was his head—and the bastards wanted to crush it to dust.

  In the end, Rob got them all where he needed them.

  He seamlessly allowed himself to be cornered. The staff wielder smashed its staff at him from the front, the mace wielder rushed from behind—and most important of all, he gave the far archer an irresistible direct shot at him.

  He just hoped the archer wouldn’t pass it up.

  And it didn’t disappoint.

  The bird screamed danger, and Rob acted instantly.

  He focused all his mental power on a very tiny point and pushed.

  Rob had never tried to use his magnet power on such a narrow scale before. He had learned early enough that the larger the target of his magnetic force, the farther and easier it connected.

  But now he was attempting to veer a flying arrow from its trajectory mid-way by using it as an anchor to push against.

  It was torturous. his head feeling like it would explode from the headache, Rob felt like he was trying to shove his hand into a the space of a needle. He even thought that he actually was uncapable of doing that.

  But in the end, he did it.

  The speeding arrow coming for his heart took a sharp turn midway and plunged into the unprotected, oblivious back of the staff fighter.

  Like a marionette losing its strings, the threadeye crumpled to the ground in a writhing mess of powerless limbs. Normally, an arrow to the back shouldn’t be fatal to an already dead man. And it wouldn’t have worked if it had been any other threadeye. But because this one was already functioning with a deformed spine, the arrow was the nail that cut the last connection in an already half-severed spine.

  As a result, true, the threadeye didn’t really perish—but it certainly wasn’t standing on its legs again anytime soon.

  Rob didn’t celebrate its fall, though. Now that the second one was down, the damn archer would find it much easier to aim its treacherous arrows at him. So he didn’t wait for that to happen. The moment the staff holder fell, he jumped into the air, moving backward.

  He landed on the literal top of the mace wielder, using its broad body to shield himself from the coming volley of arrows.

  Coiling his arms around its neck, Rob planted his knees on its wall-like back and pushed.

  The dead brute didn’t let Rob ride on his back unchallenged, of course. It surrendered its two-handed grip on the huge mace and used one hand to slam an elbow directly into Rob’s chest.

  Pain exploded in Rob's bones. An agony of a hundred stabbing knives descended upon his being. He screamed, and how he wished he could do more than that.

  He wanted to cry tears, to let go, to fall to the ground and slam the floor with his hands.

  He didn’t.

  He powered through the agonizing torment in his ribs by sheer will. He had to, if he didn’t want to give the monster time for another attack.

  Curling his fingers into the helmet’s eye slots, he pulled the entire head back and, with the other hand, slashed at its unguarded neck.

  In no time, Rob found himself holding a head dangling at the tips of his fingers, the headless corpse of an armored fighter collapsing beneath him as all power left it. The only thing that resisted His talons was the straps connecting the helmet to the rest of the armor.

  And despite the pain, despite his burning muscles and weary mind, despite his body that didn’t look that different from the moving corpses—or maybe even worse—despite it all, Rob raised his head back and laughed.

  He had done it. He had come out of that nightmare alive. He had won.

  True, he hadn’t actually finished any of the four beetles inhabiting the dead corpses yet, but they were so defenseless that killing them would be no harder than crushing a bug.

  Hence, the cleaning after that didn’t take much time.

  Rob’s laughter hadn’t yet subsided when he pushed against the falling corpse, hovering in the air as his eyes darted in search of the annoying archer.

  In complete honesty, he fully expected it to start fleeing. The threadeyes weren’t mindless enough to keep fighting a losing battle. And despite how much Rob wanted to kill the archer that had caused him most of the trouble, he wouldn’t hunt it down if it chose to run away.

  He was injured, full of pain and misery, and very tired. So tired that he just wanted to lie down and close his eyes for a long time.

  That’s why he was truly angered when he noticed a shape far in the corner raising its head to look at him while placing another arrow on the string of the bow.

  “Fucking hell with you all!”

  Rob hurled the head in his hand toward the stubborn archer. It avoided the projectile easily by stepping to the side.

  Right where Rob arrived a moment later, following it like a cannonball.

  Looking at its slender frame, he guessed the archer had been a woman when alive.

  He didn’t care, and he didn’t show mercy.

  With a kick, he sent her and her bow flying in different directions. Then he was upon her, his claws rather than mercy given form.

  Ironically, the archer was the last to fall and the first to truly die.

  Rob crushed her skull—and the struggling fat beetle inside it.

  Then he went and did the same to the rest of its siblings.

  The swordsman was in very bad shape. A pile of bones and skin was all that remained of the once skillful ranger. It seemed like the mace blow had done him dirty. His midsection was almost ground to dust. Plus, his original death looked to have been gruesome. Rob ventured that the poor guy had been devoured from the inside out. There were no gore or guts remaining in the corpse—just a skeletal frame covered with human skin.

  The other two, however, seemed to be in better shape. If a twice killed body could be described by the word better. The mace brute seemed so intact that Rob guessed he had died in one clean slash to the neck. The archer, meanwhile, had died from a stab to the heart, and the staff user had taken a crushing blow to his back.

  Rob hoped that he was doing them good by freeing their bodies from the Parasite Beetles. He crushed them one by one, gathered the resulting energy cards, and piled the bodies in one corner.

  Shortly after, he lay motionless on the ground, the gentle glow of scattered cards casting most of his body in a faint shadow.

  “It hurts… damn, it hurts.”

  He hurt so much that he almost fainted. The big guy had done him dirty with that parting blow to his ribs. In addition to the chunk missing from his thigh and the scratches all over his body, Rob could only dream of a bed.

  A place to relax.

  He just wanted to close his eyes and let sleep claim his exhausted body.

  He expected to feel better after resting for a while.

  He didn’t.

  The only thing resting gave him was time to realize how fucked he truly was.

  Exhaustion filled every fiber of his being. The extended jumping and constant fighting had taken a heavy toll on his body.

  And the worst part?

  It wasn’t over yet.

  The mission wasn’t finished because, as he suspected, the mother beetle wasn’t one of the four he had just killed. Which meant he still had to find that damned monster and end it as well.

  Of course, he didn’t have to. He could just leave and forget the entire mission.

  “I’ll be damned.”

  Rob hadn’t gone through all of this just to run away at the final moment. He had chosen to take the risk, and he would see it through to the end.

  What’s more, he had invested almost all of his energy in the last fight. If he didn’t gain more soon, he risked the seals on his wounds dissolving—and Rob wouldn’t last long with such injuries exposed.

  He had, of course, received a good amount of points from the corpses of the four he had slain—a whopping forty points from one of them.

  But most of that was currently being devoured just to stabilize the cracked injury in his rib cage. That wound was far too dangerous to ignore.

  “Please, just be a weak little pest.”

  If the great mother was equally—or even stronger—than just one of her guards, Rob wouldn’t have any hope of finishing it in his current state.

  So, in order to enhance his chances, he didn’t go right away looking for his target. Instead, he started directing the energy to mend his broken bones and seal his severe injuries.

  As he meditated, Rob found himself gaining more and more control over the energy running through his body. The reason was very clear: his desire to live was stronger than ever. The more the odds stacked against him, and the more this crazy world threw him into ever more harrowing hell after another, the hotter his flame raged.

  He wanted to live. to live despite it all.

  Unfortunately, even the otherworldly, miraculous energy had limits.

  While it was true that the energy wasn’t unruly anymore and didn’t delay in mending his broken body, it did so very slowly. Rob expected that if it continued at this speed, it would take days, or even weeks, before he was completely healed.

  By Earth’s medical standards, recovering from such wounds in such a short time would be outstanding—unbelievable, even. But it was still too slow for his current situation.

  Waiting for his body to finish healing was nothing less than offering himself on a silver platter to the threadeyes. He hadn’t forgotten that they were most likely, at that very moment, rushing back to his location, enraged and ready to tear him to shreds before he could even touch their mother.

  Therefore, the second he estimated that he would be able to move without worsening his injuries, Rob stood up, his features pained but resolved.

  He had a mother to reunite with her dead children.