A thunderous impact cratered the earth where he'd stood a heartbeat prior. Lacerta's body, moving on pure instinct, hurled itself backward—a hair's breadth from being erased in a single, monstrous gulp.
—It can see me.
The thought, cold and sharp, pierced the adrenaline fogging his mind. A problem. That was an undeniable problem.
Why?
The answer was wretchedly simple.
—Because he could not see it.
The world had dissolved into a swirling hell of dust and shredded foliage, churned up by the serpent's colossal, thrashing bulk.
His existence had narrowed to the deafening roar of scales grinding against the earth and the percussive blast of its strikes. His survival was a fragile thing, hanging by the thin thread of speed and perception that, for now, outstripped the beast's brute rage. A fleeting advantage, and a meaningless one.
For a second, far more critical problem presented itself.
—How do I kill it?
A fist? A kick? Preposterous. This was no brawl so why would that work? To slay a monster, one needed a weapon. A plan. Things he conspicuously lacked.
Lacerta: ["——!!"]
His retreat met a sudden, unforgiving obstruction. His spine screamed as it connected with something massive and unyielding—a tree. Of course. The jungle itself conspired against him. A rookie error, a testament to his battlefield inexperience, to be outmaneuvered by terrain… by a giant snake.
For some reason that annoyed him.
Lacerta: ["Hrgk—!?"]
Movement. A blur in the dust. Something colossal and wicked, cutting through the haze. Instinct, not skill, took command. He curled, knees tucking to his chest, arms crossing in a desperate guard—a pitiful human shield against a force of nature.
The world shattered.
The serpent's tail, a lance of scaled fury, struck his guard. The impact was absolute. It was not the feeling of being hit, but the feeling of breaking—the tree behind him exploding into a cloud of splinters, the air crushed from his lungs. He became a projectile, hurled through the canopy, a ragdill carving a trench through the undergrowth before skidding to a brutal halt.
Agony was a fire in his bones. But within that white-hot pain, clarity erupted.
Sprawled in the dirt, vision swimming, he understood. His fault. His error. His inevitable death if he continued like this. And simultaneously—the single, razor-thin path to victory.
The shadow of the serpent fell over him, its maw descending, a gateway to darkness.
—He moved.
Not away. Not in blind flight. He vaulted forward, under the lunging strike, the stench of rot and death filling his nostrils. His body, screaming in protest, twisted in mid-air. Every ounce of his weight, every iota of momentum, was poured into a single, vicious upward kick—his shin-bone connecting with the beast's snout with an intense impact.
The serpent's head snapped sideways with a startled, guttural hiss. It was not a lethal blow. And although it did have some effect, it was more an insult than anything.
And as the colossal head recoiled, shaking in rage and confusion, its hellish gaze refocused—not on prey, but on an enemy.
It found Lacerta already in motion, his back to it, pumping his legs, fleeing at a dead sprint.
—Not away. Toward something.
The enraged shriek that tore through the jungle was not of hunger, but of pure, undiluted hatred. The chase resumed, faster now, more violent, the beast consumed by a new purpose: not to feed, but to obliterate the insect that had dared to strike it.
A tempest of scales and raw fury, the serpentine beast devoured the earth between them.
Trees—ancient, towering sentinels—were merely inconvenient stalks to be shattered and cast aside in its blind rage. Its world had narrowed to a single point: the fleeing prey that dared to deny it.
The distance closed. A meter. Less. The heat of its breath, the reek of venom, washed over Lacerta's neck. A death foretold.
—But it was a fool.
Lacerta: ["—Hoomph!"]
With a sharp exhale, not of fear, but of effort, he committed his body to the empty air.
He abandoned the compromised ground, leaping into a space where the trees had been freshly cleared, where only the stubborn ivy hung like nature's lifelines from the jungle's edge. His arm shot out, a single deliberate motion in the chaos.
To the beast, it was an act of incomprehensible stupidity. Prey did not leap. Leaping sacrificed speed. Leaping was a surrender. It was a mistake.
—And indeed, it was. For it.
Its maw split wide—a pink, dripping cavern lined with needles—and it lunged to meet the pitiful human in mid-air, to swallow his despair whole. But despair was not what it found.
Lacerta's fingers closed around a thick vine. Not luck. Calculation. His momentum became a pendulum. He yanked, his body arcing upwards as the beast's own mass carried it forward, beneath him.
For a single, suspended instant, he was above the predator. His knees drew up, not to flee, but to counterattack.
His body remembered those previous thoughts he had... The fiber of his being, the core instinct that had been screaming at him since he first opened his eyes with no memory, finally had its answer.
This world was not kind. It was not fair. It was a grinder, a ceaseless contest where sentiment was a weakness and mercy was a toxin.
Survival of the fittest.
To live was to take life. To hesitate was to die. To show weakness was to be devoured.
The choice was brutally simple. It was kill or be killed.
And in that moment, hurtling through the canopy air, Lacerta made his decision.
Lacerta: ["—I choose to kill."]
The words were a cold statement of fact, a covenant with himself. And with them, he unleashed the force of his fall, driving both heels like piledrivers into the serpent's skull.
The impact was bone rattling, final. It was not a blow to slay, but to stun. To redirect.
The beast's triumph inverted into sheer, vertiginous terror as the world gave way beneath it. There was no ground to meet its fall. Only a gaping maw in the world itself—a ravine so deep its bottom was swallowed by an abyssal darkness it had been too enraged to notice.
Its roar of victory twisted, distorting into a pathetic, guttural plea—a sound that was profoundly, shamefully mortal. The darkness swallowed it whole, consuming first its body, then its sound, until there was nothing.
Silence.
Lacerta hung, suspended by a thin, green thread over that same oblivion. The only sound was the creak of the vine and the frantic drumming of his own heart—not in terror, but in affirmation. He had chosen. He had acted.
And he was alive because of it.
———————————————————————————————
With a heave that tore at muscles that—should have been screaming, but weren't—he launched himself over the chasm.
The landing was a jarring impact, a thud of flesh and bone against unforgiving earth. Scrambling, driven by an instinct he couldn't name, his fingers found purchase on the bark of a tree. He climbed. Up, up, until the canopy swallowed him, until the world was a dizzying mosaic of green and brown.
Here. This had to be safe. A place to breathe. A place to—
To think.
Right. Thinking. His brain felt like a mess of tangled wires, sparking with impossible data. Too much had happened. In the span of minutes—his entire reality had been upended, smashed to pieces, and crudely glued back together. Too much. Too much. Too much.
—Am I strong?
The question hit him not as a gentle realization, but as a physical blow. The chase, the desperate flight through the woods... His memory replayed it with a terrifying, newfound clarity.
The men pursuing him. Their movements, which had seemed so threatening moments ago, were now a pathetic, clumsy dance in his mind's eye.
Openings.
Gaps in their guard.
A hundred, no, a thousand opportunities his body had seen, yet refused to take.
Why? Why hadn't he just—?
And that massive monster. That monstrous thing. Its lunge, a blur of scales and fury, now seemed almost... sluggish. Predictable.
Then there was his own body. The most damning piece of evidence. This entire, frantic ordeal... and not once. Not a single time had his lungs screamed for air. Even now, perched precariously on a branch, his heart beat with a steady, almost mocking rhythm. He wasn't even winded. This was wrong. This was impossible. This was—
Lacerta: ["—Ah, damn it... I'm starving."]
A low, guttural growl from his stomach sliced through the mental chaos. A blunt, animalistic demand that was, in its own way, a relief. It was a single, understandable fact in a sea of contradictions. His body may be a wellspring of infinite stamina, but it still required fuel.
So, his physical prowess was unnaturally high. Compared to those men—who he'd mentally designated as the baseline, the "average"—he was something of a monster himself. It was the only logical conclusion. They sent the average to catch him, and the average failed spectacularly.
So why?
Then why did twisting my ankle feel like my leg was being ripped off?
The memory was sharp, pathetic. A flash of white-hot agony that had brought him to his knees. A pain so real, so visceral.
And yet—being slammed into a tree by that beast, twice... The impact had rattled his bones, the world had gone white, but the pain...? It was dull, muted in comparison. It didn't make sense. The ankle was nothing, the impact was everything. The pain should have been proportional. It wasn't.
Unless... maybe because that his first time feeling pain? That he could remember, anyway. Was his body just... unfamiliar with the concept of getting hurt? A ridiculous theory, born from a desperate mind trying to connect the dots. The bruises blooming on his skin proved he wasn't immune. So what was the variable? What had—?
Ah.
That place....
The hazy void. The pitch-black nothingness. His hand, reaching for... for something. A shift. A click. A fundamental change in the code of his existence. Ever since he saw whatever he saw, did whatever he did there, nothing had been the same. Was that it? Did that moment rewrite him into... whatever this is?
He scratched his head, a frustrated growl escaping his lips. A sigh followed, heavy with the weight of a thousand questions and zero answers.
It was all just too damned confusing to think about right now.