Will Against Fate

  Reckoning Day

  After the fierce battle against the beasts of the labyrinth, a massive explosion shakes the place. Then an earthquake. I can feel the ground shifting in a strange direction - downward, picking up speed by the second. Objects around me begin to float, bodies and blood lifted into the air. I have to cling to the railing of one of the windows to keep from being tossed along with everything else.

  A bright glow runs across the ceiling of the corridor. The central computer has finally recognized the problem and I can hear the artificial gravity system activating. In an instant, everything is slammed to the floor with cruel force, making the remains of this grotesque battle even worse. I brace myself for the impact as well, both feet barely able to withstand the searing pain as they hit the ground.

  Confused by what just happened, I step to the window next to me to look out. I see the Earth and its distant horizon, the stars stretching into the void. Atlantis is in space. From here I can see the damage done to the sad planet - now turned to ice, trapped in its eternal final ice age. The only remaining forms of life are those that survived on the cursed continent, in these final levels of this infernal game. And soon there will be even fewer of us.

  I can also see the blue and white sphere coming closer.

  Through the window, a strange play of lights begins to form just inches in front of me. Suddenly, flames engulf my vision. Another beam of light rushes down the corridor - Atlantis' spirit has activated another defense mechanism: its outer force field, the same one that shields it from thousands of nuclear bombs.

  The flames dance before me in a macabre, violent display. The fire unfolds in intense shades of orange and red, swirling with flashes of white and blue. The sky itself is burning, screaming in fury, demanding more death.

  There is pressure. There is heat. I can see the window frames beginning to change color, turning a terrifying, glowing red. The walls around me begin to suffer the same fate. The temperature becomes unbearable. That's when I finally realize - if I stay here, this will be my end. I will be boiled alive.

  I have to keep moving.

  I know what is happening. The Overlord has given his final command. Atlantis is falling toward Earth as we speak. He plans to use the magical continent to crash into it, destroying everything in his tragic final legacy. He is betting everything on the hope that, with luck, Atlantis' shield will be enough to keep enough of them from all dying in the process-only those strong enough to withstand a deadly gravitational impact might survive.

  A realization struck me, one I had always known. I will not survive this war, this battle.

  This time I will die.

  Luna's sacrifice would mean nothing. Nanami's efforts, Rose's work - forgotten. The thousand warriors lost in the futile offensive for salvation - I wouldn't even be a memory to anyone.

  I can feel the despair and fear of the void that certain death fills my body and mind.

  A desperate soul crying out for a false salvation that will never come.

  I have nothing left to lose, nothing left to be stolen from me.

  The only thing left to do... is to take as many as I can with me to the impending grave.

  Powerless against the unyielding and tyrannical weight of fate, I hate it so much. It is my enemy. And as my enemy, I vow to destroy it.

  To die in a final blaze of glory and pain, a brilliant and final moment dedicated to all my enemies.

  My tired and battered body heats up, the suffocating heat enough to make me forget the wounds I have suffered. My nearly extinguished consciousness now finds pleasure only in inflicting pain upon others.

  I take the shotgun from the corpse beside me, along with its ammunition pouch.

  I load a slug into the chamber - the one with which I will strike the hive.

  Then another round - the one with which fire will consume my enemies.

  Another shell - to make them feel true fear.

  The next shell-to freeze them in terror.

  Then another-to die the moment they see the end of my barrel.

  Followed by a shell filled with the desire for war.

  And finally, the last bullet-which hungers for nothing but death.

  Then I pull the pump of the Gun.

  It is time to spread misery to all.

  Four guardian dragons appear before me, hunting the last living prey on the continent. What a mistake they made. I see nothing but prey in their place.

  It is time for the hunter to be hunted - with the same cruelty.

  No one will ever remember me, but I will make sure that no one remembers them either.

  They pounced on me like ravenous beasts. The first shot to one of their heads was nothing more than a distraction, just enough to stun it for the real attack. With my own hands, I tear the lower jaw from a two-meter dragon. I continue to pull, and now its esophagus is separated from its body, still stuck in my hands. I pull it free and use its feeding tube to strangle its mate.

  Two come to stop me, clawing at me in vain. Instead, I shove one of their heads into the spear of its mate. The monster stands still for a second, stunned by the brutality of the fight. That was its mistake. I drive my rifle into its eye socket and fire several times. One of the bullets must have hit its brain, because its entire body just shut down.

  I've noticed something in this battle - these demon creatures have never known fear or terror.

  So when they're faced with it, they don't know how to react for a second. A small weakness.

  A way to kill with impunity.

  If I can make these monsters see me as something worse than themselves, they will finally feel terror, the very terror they once brought upon humanity.

  The average life span of a Nobady soldier in battle was ten seconds, but killing with certainty granted two more seconds of life. If I chained it with another kill, I would live four. Then another kill would make it six. If I kept killing, I could extend my life a little longer, make them suffer more.

  The Overlord's antechamber is filled with a garrison of enemies waiting to ambush me the moment I step through the door. I am cornered - perfect. Now I can attack in any direction and find an enemy. A slashed throat. A torn limb. A stolen weapon. A gutted belly. A dismembered head. The room fills more and more with red, with the insides of my enemies. I can hear their screams of agony and despair.

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  "It's a fucking Solo!"

  "Keep him away from me!"

  "Shit! This is the end!"

  "He's behind me - get him off me!"

  "Help!"

  I take the Commander's vial of blood - that stupid sacred and cursed liquid. The potion that created the damn dragons. "The Origin of the Primordial Dragon," "The Blood of the First Life." I don't care what it's called. I take it without hesitation. I was already a dead man walking. If it would help me bring more eternal damnation, I accepted the price to pay.

  To become a dragon so that I could hunt my new kin with ease.

  I'm going to die soon anyway.

  My arms heal, they feel lighter, stronger-I see claws instead of fingers, more tools with which to kill my enemies. Perhaps I am one of them now, but to me they will always be my enemies. The horror I am about to unleash will make them feel real fear.

  The Black Draconic Knights, the Imperial Guard of the Overlord, are nothing more than a wall against which I can measure my strength. They withstand my onslaught without emotion. I will awaken them that with my attack - when I rip the head off one and use it to crush the skull of another. When their impenetrable shields are simply ignored, struck from the side - have they never considered that death can come from anywhere? In their faces, I see the fury coursing through their veins. They see in me a formidable enemy, a creature through which they reaffirm their reason for existence - to protect their king. I see nothing but obstacles to crush as I move on to my next victim.

  They say violence begets more violence, but how do you stop a creature that wants you dead in every way possible? How do you negotiate with something that only sees prey in front of it?

  On this cursed continent, life itself was an act of absolute rebellion, the biggest "fuck you" one could scream at the uncaring world.

  These creatures, inferior to me, part ways so that I can walk among them, thinking it will spare them. Fools. Their deaths will be worse because they deny me the glory of painful battle and shared misery. When they realize this won't save them, they make a desperate last stand - oh, what a pleasure to see them now, insignificant.

  I do not fear them. It is they who should fear me.

  The door to Overlod is sealed with ancient magic. It will not open until I have passed the trials. Each surrounding chamber must be scoured, its guardian cleansed. Physical memories of every true dragon of the past-oh, what a joy to witness their death at my hands once again. A true gift to myself.

  Their claws, their teeth, their breath of fire do not frighten me. If we are all going to die anyway, what does it matter if it happens a little sooner or later? Oh, the irony - I won't even need anything but my human form to slaughter those who saw us as mere stones on their glorious path. The ecstasy of seeing Ulana hung from the ceiling for her treachery. The pleasure of burning Leviathan to ashes and scattering them across the floor. Drowning Zis in his own blood. Drive Bahamut mad and make him take his own life. Killing Orion again in battle, watching the light fade from his eyes - such a fleeting, delicate joy.

  Their existence is filth before me. They should beg forgiveness before me for their profane presence in this world.

  Overlord stands before me - a strange humanoid creature, seated on the original Jade Throne of Atlantis. At his feet lie the severed bodies of my companions, their lifeless remains scattered about. Sakura's dead eyes stare directly at me, her face twisted in the grotesque stillness of her terrible death. I don't care. The only thing I really want to kill is the one with his foot on her head - the damned creator of this hell, the one who brought it all into existence with his actions.

  He speaks of the end of the world and the heavens, of how fate is inevitable, that all paths lead to the same cursed destination.

  A sealed fate? And who decided this without my explicit consent?

  To fall and resign myself to death just because someone else decreed it? I am not weak enough to accept this.

  Founder and Emperor of Atlantis? His titles will mean little when his head is mounted on a spear and adorns a nameless courtyard.

  He speaks in old Atlantean, hard to understand, and talks nonsense about being the chosen one for some great purpose. How no Atlantean could ever become the seventh true dragon for some strange reason, how only an outsider could be the bastard who would base his entire existence on pure war-on-war. A foolish evolutionary path, an accelerator, the pursuit of an eighth True Dragon - the original, the first one before them. Risking our souls and our afterlife to get the Codex.

  I don't give a fucking damn what he says. I just want him dead. Nothing else.

  Only minutes remain. The floating continent makes its final descent, and we are at the very tip - the first to hit the ground.

  He finally utters his name - Yazmagrel - and the walls themselves groan, exhaling surprise and contemplation as they hear it. I didn't speak my name. What would be the point? Whether I lived or died, no one I cared about would remember me. They had left long before me, their fates far worse than mine. I gripped the hilt of my sword tightly and let myself go - whether it led to victory or defeat, it no longer mattered.

  At least for once in its cursed existence, the Overlord would know what it meant to face an enemy equal to itself.

  It was a thing seated on its stone throne, a vaguely human silhouette, yet it was difficult to comprehend how it existed - faceless, breathless, pale, skeletal. His only garment was a tattered cloak, worn by the passage of time. The evidence of his violence lay in the mangled bodies beside his motionless form, their faces twisted in expressions of primordial agony.

  Instead of pursuing me to attack, it was his throne that moved in unison with him - at high speed, without a sound. The strange creature just sat there, unmoving, while the throne obeyed and followed his will.

  When he was close to me, the throne stopped. In a grotesque twist, his body turned violently upside down until he stood upright. In a single frame, his movement stopped abruptly, like a statue, neither living nor dead, eerily waiting. The thing knew this was a fight to the death, yet it waited for my first move. It made me hesitate for a moment - was it mocking me? Or was it studying me?

  His hand suddenly reached forward in an instant, and Avalon - my sword - slipped from my grasp and landed deftly in the palm of my enemy's hand. The weapon for which we had fought and suffered so much had just been effortlessly stolen by our greatest enemy, now bound to his will against mine.

  With an even more sudden jerk, he began to move again, synchronizing his left hand with his left foot, then his right hand with his right foot. He moved the limbs of the same side together. Moreover, the feeling of acceleration didn't exist in his body - only the final acceleration and stasis.

  Damned monster, he wasn't even subject to the undeniable laws of the universe. As disgusting as his appearance was, the laws shunned him like an abomination.

  He spun his body with the weight of his great sword - a heavy, powerful blow. I dodged it with speed as I passed by his side. But in the middle of his strike, he stopped instantly, even though he was committed to the movement. Time stopped in his body, and instead of continuing with the momentum of his own spinning strike, without any inertia, he simply rotated his body as if he was changing posture after standing still for a second.

  "Bruh, what the fuck, do I really have to fight this incomprehensible 'thing'?" I said to myself ironically.

  This time, instead of moving his body, he stood still, but the world moved in his place. As if he was a statue moved by an invisible force, his body chased me relentlessly through the labyrinth, while all I wanted was a few seconds to reload more bullets into my weapon. He just floated through the place, motionless, watching me from the effects of his powerful attack. I knew that as soon as he was close enough to make sure he didn't miss, he would pick up where he left off.

  I put into practice everything I had learned about agility, evasion, and deception in my entire life, and I used it all to buy just three miserable seconds. I reached into my pockets for more shotgun shells. I quickly grabbed a handful; some fell to the ground, but there was no time to pick them up. With the rest, I slid them into the weapon, my fingers moving as fast as I could - one shell, another, another. A terrible sound approached, stones cracking under the weight of the monster. My enemy was close. I had to stop reloading abruptly. Three bullets was all I could load in the little time I had gained. I pulled the gun's pump, took aim, and waited for the monster to appear in front of me, betting everything on being the first to attack. Instead, the sound of footsteps on the stone floor suddenly changed. I no longer heard him dragging his footsteps down the hallway in front of me. Instantly, he was somewhere else - behind me. It was a trap, a dangerous sneak attack. Panicked, I lunged forward and felt something pass by - the sound of air being moved by something fast. I spun around as fast as I could. There were only three shells left in the shotgun. They would have to do. There was no other choice.

  I have no idea if a bastard weapon like a shotgun will work on strange, demonic gods from another dimension, but it's worth checking out; it hits a lot faster than my bare fists. I pull the trigger, hoping for a result that doesn't end in my immediate death.

  An instant after my finger moved, the half-dead corpse changed its hand from an attacking position to one in front of its face, sparks growing from it. The stranger had dodged the shot, nothing had been gained from the attack, or at least that's what it wanted me to believe with its deformed, silent and unchanging face. But it was too late; I had noticed, I had seen through its pantomime. It had blocked the attack instead of just taking it, and even though it didn't hurt it, it was enough to make it hesitate and protect itself from any damage. This meant that even if the shotgun was not enough, there must have been something that made it react. It was someone who knew the concept of damage and pain, now it was just a matter of finding out what it was.

  And a moment later in the fight, it all ended in a desperate counterattack, a careless mistake punished harshly. It was mortally wounded. In my final act of fury, I grabbed a nearby rock and smashed it against its head, then another, then another, then another, and again. Despite all his strength and powerful magic, the bastard fell to the first weapon of man.